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| womens role in puritan society: Damned Women Elizabeth Reis, 1999-01-18 In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Position of Women in the New World's Puritan Society in the Seventeenth Century Stephanie MacHate, 2011-03-14 Essay from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Dresden Technical University, 8 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In order to examine women's status and life in a Puritan society in the New World, we first have to know why people left their native country. Marilyn J. Westerkamp tries to give some reasons in her book Women and Religion in Early America: In the early sixteenth century the Reformation arrived in England (3) and in the following decades a Puritan culture developed. A website1 tells us that in its core a description of man's direct relationship to God could be found and that thus no one needed a priest to contact God. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Puritan movement was attacked by Anglican bishops so that a few tried to flee. When Charles І became monarch, a tendency of being less tolerant towards Puritan clerics grew; as a result of this many influential Puritans were arrested. Due to the fact that under the reign of this king numerous ceremonies were formalized and made more complex, the Puritans felt that religious ceremonies became artificial and thus their dissatisfaction grew. From 1628 on, they started to think of emigration to escape the monarch's control (Westerkamp 13). English Puritans founded in April 1630 a colony in the New World, called New England. Westerkamp calls this community, which was built in the wilderness, a holy experiment. As New England was created with the help of England, but without an interference of the monarch (Westerkamp 14), it was possible to develop the colony independently from the oversea's monarchy. In this experiment as many women as men were involved and due to the direct contact between God and the individual, religious power could be given to anybody (Westerkamp 11). Therefore the status and the role of a woman might differ to that in England. |
| womens role in puritan society: Women and Religion in Early America, 1600-1850 Marilyn J. Westerkamp, 1999 In this contribution to the study of women and religon, Westerkamp analyzes how the Holy Spirit empowered women inPurtanism and evangelicalism. she argues that these women, socially and politically subordinate according to custom and law, expreinced the Holy Spirit during their lives and discoved their own charismatic authority. Focusing on prominent women, like A. Hutchinson, J. Lee, and N. Towle, Westerkamp explores the interactions between gendre and religion in Purtanism, the First Great Awakening, Methodism, and voluntary associations. |
| womens role in puritan society: Puritans Behaving Badly Monica D. Fitzgerald, 2020-05-21 Tracing the first three generations in Puritan New England, this book explores changes in language, gender expectations, and religious identities for men and women. The book argues that laypeople shaped gender conventions by challenging the ideas of ministers and rectifying more traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Although Puritan's emphasis on spiritual equality had the opportunity to radically alter gender roles, in daily practice laymen censured men and women differently – punishing men for public behavior that threatened the peace of their communities, and women for private sins that allegedly revealed their spiritual corruption. In order to retain their public masculine identity, men altered the original mission of Puritanism, infusing gender into the construction of religious ideas about public service, the creation of the individual, and the gendering of separate spheres. With these practices, Puritans transformed their 'errand into the wilderness' and the normative Puritan became female. |
| womens role in puritan society: Love Thy Body Nancy R. Pearcey, 2018-01-02 Why the call to Love Thy Body? To counter a pervasive hostility toward the body and biology that drives today's headline stories: Transgenderism: Activists detach gender from biology. Kids down to kindergarten are being taught their bodies are irrelevant. Is this affirming--or does it demean the body? Homosexuality: Advocates disconnect sexuality from biological identity. Is this liberating--or does it denigrate biology? Abortion: Supporters deny the fetus is a person, though it is biologically human. Does this mean equality for women--or does it threaten the intrinsic value of all humans? Euthanasia: Those who lack certain cognitive abilities are said to be no longer persons. Is this compassionate--or does it ultimately put everyone at risk? In Love Thy Body, bestselling author Nancy Pearcey goes beyond politically correct slogans with a riveting exposé of the dehumanizing worldview that shapes current watershed moral issues. Pearcey then turns the tables on media boilerplate that misportrays Christianity as harsh or hateful. A former agnostic, she makes a surprising and persuasive case that Christianity is holistic, sustaining the dignity of the body and biology. Throughout she entrances readers with compassionate stories of people wrestling with hard questions in their own lives--their pain, their struggles, their triumphs. Liberal secularist ideology rests on a mistake and Nancy Pearcey in her terrific new book puts her finger right on it. In embracing abortion, euthanasia, homosexual conduct and relationships, transgenderism, and the like, liberal secularism . . . is philosophically as well as theologically untenable.--Robert P. George, Princeton University Wonderful guide.--Sam Allberry, author, Is God Anti-Gay? A must-read.--Rosaria Butterfield, former professor, Syracuse University; author, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert An astute but accessible analysis of the intellectual roots of the most important moral ills facing us today: abortion, euthanasia, and redefining the family.--Richard Weikart, California State University, Stanislaus Highly readable, insightful, and informative.--Mary Poplin, Claremont Graduate University; author, Is Reality Secular? Unmasks the far-reaching practical consequences of mind-body dualism better than anyone I have ever seen.--Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president, The Ruth Institute Love Thy Body richly enhances the treasure box that is Pearcey's collective work.--Glenn T. Stanton, Focus on the Family Essential reading . . . Love Thy Body brings clarity and understanding to the multitude of complex and confusing views in discussions about love and sexuality.--Becky Norton Dunlop, Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow, The Heritage Foundation Pearcey gets straight to the issue of our day: What makes humans valuable in the first place? You must get this book. Don't just read it. Master it.--Scott Klusendorf, president, Life Training Institute |
| womens role in puritan society: Women Before the Bar Cornelia Hughes Dayton, 2012-12-01 Women before the Bar is the first study to investigate changing patterns of women's participation in early American courts across a broad range of legal actions--including proceedings related to debt, divorce, illicit sex, rape, and slander. Weaving the stories of individual women together with systematic analysis of gendered litigation patterns, Cornelia Dayton argues that women's relation to the courtroom scene in early New England shifted from one of integration in the mid-seventeenth century to one of marginality by the eve of the Revolution. Using the court records of New Haven, which originally had the most Puritan-dominated legal regime of all the colonies, Dayton argues that Puritanism's insistence on godly behavior and communal modes of disputing initially created unusual opportunities for women's voices to be heard within the legal system. But women's presence in the courts declined significantly over time as Puritan beliefs lost their status as the organizing principles of society, as legal practice began to adhere more closely to English patriarchal models, as the economy became commercialized, and as middle-class families developed an ethic of privacy. By demonstrating that the early eighteenth century was a crucial locus of change in law, economy, and gender ideology, Dayton's findings argue for a reconceptualization of women's status in colonial New England and for a new periodization of women's history. |
| womens role in puritan society: Puritan Family Edmund S. Morgan, 1966-01-01 The Puritans came to New England not merely to save their souls but to establish a visible kingdom of God, a society where outward conduct would be according to God's laws. This book discusses the desire of the Puritans to be socially virtuous and their wish to force social virtue upon others. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Religious History of American Women Catherine A. Brekus, 2007 More than a generation after the rise of women's history alongside the feminist movement, it is still difficult, observes Catherine Brekus, to locate women in histories of American religion. In this collection of 12 essays, contributors explore how considering the religious history of American women can transform our dominant historical narratives. Covering a variety of topics--including Mormonism, the women's rights movement, Judaism, witchcraft trials, the civil rights movement, Catholicism, everyday religious life, Puritanism, African American women's activism, and the Enlightenment--the volume enhances our understanding of both religious history and women's history. Taken together, these essays sound the call for a new, more inclusive history. |
| womens role in puritan society: The position of women in the New World’s Puritan Society in the seventeenth century Stephanie Machate, 2007-06-16 Essay from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, Dresden Technical University, language: English, abstract: In order to examine women’s status and life in a Puritan society in the New World, we first have to know why people left their native country. Marilyn J. Westerkamp tries to give some reasons in her book Women and Religion in Early America: In the early sixteenth century the Reformation arrived in England (3) and in the following decades a Puritan culture developed. A website1 tells us that in its core a description of man’s direct relationship to God could be found and that thus no one needed a priest to contact God. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Puritan movement was attacked by Anglican bishops so that a few tried to flee. When Charles І became monarch, a tendency of being less tolerant towards Puritan clerics grew; as a result of this many influential Puritans were arrested. Due to the fact that under the reign of this king numerous ceremonies were formalized and made more complex, the Puritans felt that religious ceremonies became artificial and thus their dissatisfaction grew. From 1628 on, they started to think of emigration to escape the monarch’s control (Westerkamp 13). English Puritans founded in April 1630 a colony in the New World, called New England. Westerkamp calls this community, which was built in the wilderness, a “holy experiment”. As New England was created with the help of England, but without an interference of the monarch (Westerkamp 14), it was possible to develop the colony independently from the oversea’s monarchy. In this “experiment” as many women as men were involved and due to the direct contact between God and the individual, religious power could be given to anybody (Westerkamp 11). Therefore the status and the role of a woman might differ to that in England. |
| womens role in puritan society: American Jezebel Eve LaPlante, 2004 |
| womens role in puritan society: Ornaments for the daughters of Zion Cotton Mather, 1692 |
| womens role in puritan society: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England Carol F. Karlsen, 1998-04-17 A pioneer work in…the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft. —Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University Confessing to familiarity with the devils, Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was taken with very strange Fits, fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem. More than three hundred years later, the question Why? still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society. |
| womens role in puritan society: Women in Early America Dorothy Auchter Mays, 2004-11-23 This volume fills a gap in traditional women's history books by offering fascinating details of the lives of early American women and showing how these women adapted to the challenges of daily life in the colonies. Women in Early America: Struggle, Survival, and Freedom in a New World provides insight into an era in American history when women had immense responsibilities and unusual freedoms. These women worked in a range of occupations such as tavernkeeping, printing, spiritual leadership, trading, and shopkeeping. Pipe smoking, beer drinking, and premarital sex were widespread. One of every eight people traveling with the British Army during the American Revolution was a woman. The coverage begins with the 1607 settlement at Jamestown and ends with the War of 1812. In addition to the role of Anglo-American women, the experiences of African, French, Dutch, and Native American women are discussed. The issues discussed include how women coped with rural isolation, why they were prone to superstitions, who was likely to give birth out of wedlock, and how they raised large families while coping with immense household responsibilities. |
| womens role in puritan society: Good Wives Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 2010-12-29 This enthralling work of scholarship strips away abstractions to reveal the hidden--and not always stoic--face of the goodwives of colonial America. In these pages we encounter the awesome burdens--and the considerable power--of a New England housewife's domestic life and witness her occasional forays into the world of men. We see her borrowing from her neighbors, loving her husband, raising--and, all too often, mourning--her children, and even attaining fame as a heroine of frontier conflicts or notoriety as a murderess. Painstakingly researched, lively with scandal and homely detail, Good Wives is history at its best. |
| womens role in puritan society: American Women's History Susan Ware, 2015 What does American history look like with women at the center of the story? From Pocahantas to military women serving in the Iraqi war, this Very Short Introduction chronicles the contributions that women have made to the American experience from a multicultural perspective that emphasizes how gender shapes women's--and men's--lives. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-century Massachusetts Emily C. K. Romeo, 2020 Dismantling the image of the peaceful and serene colonial goodwife and countering the assumption that New England was inherently less violent than other regions of colonial America, Emily C. K. Romeo offers a revealing look at acts of violence by Anglo-American women in colonial Massachusetts, from the everyday to the extraordinary. Using Essex County as a case study, Romeo deftly utilizes seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources to demonstrate that Puritan women, both virtuous and otherwise, learned to negotiate the shifting boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable violence in their daily lives and communities. The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts shows that more dramatic violence by women -- including infanticide, the scalping of captors during the Indian Wars, and even witchcraft accusations -- was not necessarily intended to challenge the structures of authority but often sprung from women's desire to protect property, safety, and standing for themselves and their families. The situations in which women chose to flout powerful social conventions and resort to overt violence expose the underlying, often unspoken, priorities and gendered expectations that shaped this society. |
| womens role in puritan society: Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism Bryce Traister, 2016 Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism reconsiders the standard critical view that women's religious experiences were either silent consent or hostile response to mainstream Puritan institutions. In this groundbreaking new approach to American Puritanism, Bryce Traister asks how gendered understandings of authentic religious experience contributed to the development of seventeenth-century religious culture and to the post-religious historiography of Puritanism in secular modernity. He argues that women were neither marginal nor hostile to the theological and cultural ambitions of seventeenth-century New England religious culture and, indeed, that radicalized female piety was in certain key respects the driving force of New England Puritan culture. Uncovering the feminine interiority of New England Protestantism, Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism positions itself against prevalent historical arguments about the rise of secularism in the modern West. Traister demonstrates that female spirituality became a principal vehicle through which Puritan identity became both absorbed within and foundational for pre-national secular culture. Engaging broadly with debates about religion and secularization, national origins and transnational unsettlements, and gender and cultural authority, this is a foundational reconsideration both of American Puritanism itself and of American Puritanism as it has been understood in relation to secular modernity. |
| womens role in puritan society: Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction Francis J. Bremer, 2009-07-24 Written by a leading expert on the Puritans, this brief, informative volume offers a wealth of background on this key religious movement. This book traces the shaping, triumph, and decline of the Puritan world, while also examining the role of religion in the shaping of American society and the role of the Puritan legacy in American history. Francis J. Bremer discusses the rise of Puritanism in the English Reformation, the struggle of the reformers to purge what they viewed as the corruptions of Roman Catholicism from the Elizabethan church, and the struggle with the Stuart monarchs that led to a brief Puritan triumph under Oliver Cromwell. It also examines the effort of Puritans who left England to establish a godly kingdom in America. Bremer examines puritan theology, views on family and community, their beliefs about the proper relationship between religion and public life, the limits of toleration, the balance between individual rights and one's obligation to others, and the extent to which public character should be shaped by private religious belief. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam. |
| womens role in puritan society: A History of Women in America Carol Hymowitz, Michaele Weissman, 2011-08-24 From colonial to modern-day times this narrative history, incorporating first-person accounts, traces the development of women's roles in America. Against the backdrop of major historical events and movements, the authors examine the issues that changed the roles and lives of women in our society. Note: This edition does not include photographs. |
| womens role in puritan society: Women in Early America Thomas A Foster, Carol Berkin, Jennifer L Morgan, 2015-03-20 Tells the fascinating stories of the myriad women who shaped the early modern North American world from the colonial era through the first years of the Republic Women in Early America, edited by Thomas A. Foster, goes beyond the familiar stories of Pocahontas or Abigail Adams, recovering the lives and experiences of lesser-known women—both ordinary and elite, enslaved and free, Indigenous and immigrant—who lived and worked in not only British mainland America, but also New Spain, New France, New Netherlands, and the West Indies. In these essays we learn about the conditions that women faced during the Salem witchcraft panic and the Spanish Inquisition in New Mexico; as indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland; caught up between warring British and Native Americans; as traders in New Netherlands and Detroit; as slave owners in Jamaica; as Loyalist women during the American Revolution; enslaved in the President’s house; and as students and educators inspired by the air of equality in the young nation. Foster showcases the latest research of junior and senior historians, drawing from recent scholarship informed by women’s and gender history—feminist theory, gender theory, new cultural history, social history, and literary criticism. Collectively, these essays address the need for scholarship on women’s lives and experiences. Women in Early America heeds the call of feminist scholars to not merely reproduce male-centered narratives, “add women, and stir,” but to rethink master narratives themselves so that we may better understand how women and men created and developed our historical past. |
| womens role in puritan society: Under Household Government M. Michelle Jarrett Morris, 2013-01-07 Seventeenth-century New Englanders were not as busy policing their neighbors’ behavior as Nathaniel Hawthorne or many historians of early America would have us believe. Keeping their own households in line occupied too much of their time. Under Household Government reveals the extent to which family members took on the role of watchdog in matters of sexual indiscretion. In a society where one’s sister’s husband’s brother’s wife was referred to as “sister,” kinship networks could be immense. When out-of-wedlock pregnancies, paternity suits, and infidelity resulted in legal cases, courtrooms became battlegrounds for warring clans. Families flooded the courts with testimony, sometimes resorting to slander and jury-tampering to defend their kin. Even slaves merited defense as household members—and as valuable property. Servants, on the other hand, could expect to be cast out and left to fend for themselves. As she elaborates the ways family policing undermined the administration of justice, M. Michelle Jarrett Morris shows how ordinary colonists understood sexual, marital, and familial relationships. Long-buried tales are resurrected here, such as that of Thomas Wilkinson’s (unsuccessful) attempt to exchange cheese for sex with Mary Toothaker, and the discovery of a headless baby along the shore of Boston’s Mill Pond. The Puritans that we meet in Morris’s account are not the cardboard caricatures of myth, but are rendered with both skill and sensitivity. Their stories of love, sex, and betrayal allow us to understand anew the depth and complexity of family life in early New England. |
| womens role in puritan society: Women and the Law of Property in Early America Marylynn Salmon, 1986 Women and the Law of Property in Early America |
| womens role in puritan society: The Quakers in America Thomas D. Hamm, 2003 The Quakers in America is a multifaceted history of the Religious Society of Friends and a fascinating study of its culture and controversies today. Lively vignettes of Conservative, Evangelical, Friends General Conference, and Friends United meetings illuminate basic Quaker theology and reflect the group's diversity while also highlighting the fundamental unity within the religion. Quaker culture encompasses a rich tradition of practice even as believers continue to debate whether Quakerism is necessarily Christian, where religious authority should reside, how one transmits faith to children, and how gender and sexuality shape religious belief and behavior. Praised for its rich insight and wide-ranging perspective, The Quakers in America is a penetrating account of an influential, vibrant, and often misunderstood religious sect. Known best for their long-standing commitment to social activism, pacifism, fair treatment for Native Americans, and equality for women, the Quakers have influenced American thought and society far out of proportion to their relatively small numbers. Whether in the foreign policy arena (the American Friends Service Committee), in education (the Friends schools), or in the arts (prominent Quakers profiled in this book include James Turrell, Bonnie Raitt, and James Michener), Quakers have left a lasting imprint on American life. This multifaceted book is a concise history of the Religious Society of Friends; an introduction to its beliefs and practices; and a vivid picture of the culture and controversies of the Friends today. The book opens with lively vignettes of Conservative, Evangelical, Friends General Conference, and Friends United meetings that illuminate basic Quaker concepts and theology and reflect the group's diversity in the wake of the sectarian splintering of the nineteenth century. Yet the book also examines commonalities among American Friends that demonstrate a fundamental unity within the religion: their commitments to worship, the ministry of all believers, decision making based on seeking spiritual consensus rather than voting, a simple lifestyle, and education. Thomas Hamm shows that Quaker culture encompasses a rich tradition of practice even as believers continue to debate a number of central questions: Is Quakerism necessarily Christian? Where should religious authority reside? Is the self sacred? How does one transmit faith to children? How do gender and sexuality shape religious belief and behavior? Hamm's analysis of these debates reveals a vital religion that prizes both unity and diversity. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Social Sex Marilyn Yalom, Theresa Donovan Brown, 2015-09-22 “Fascinating . . . The Social Sex is a paean to companionship. Share it with a bosom friend.” —NPR From historian and acclaimed feminist author of How the French Invented Love and A History of the Wife comes this rich, multifaceted history of the evolution of female friendship In today’s culture, the bonds of female friendship are taken as a given. But only a few centuries ago, the idea of female friendship was completely unacknowledged, even pooh-poohed. Only men, the reasoning went, had the emotional and intellectual depth to develop and sustain these meaningful relationships. Surveying history, literature, philosophy, religion, and pop culture, acclaimed author and historian Marilyn Yalom and co-author Theresa Donovan Brown demonstrate how women were able to co-opt the public face of friendship throughout the years. Chronicling shifting attitudes toward friendship—both female and male—from the Bible and the Romans to the Enlightenment to the women’s rights movements of the ‘60s up to Sex and the City and Bridesmaids, they reveal how the concept of female friendship has been inextricably linked to the larger social and cultural movements that have defined human history. Armed with Yalom and Brown as our guides, we delve into the fascinating historical episodes and trends that illuminate the story of friendship between women: the literary salon as the original book club, the emergence of female professions and the working girl, the phenomenon of gossip, the advent of women’s sports, and more. Lively, informative, and richly detailed, The Social Sex is a revelatory cultural history. |
| womens role in puritan society: First Generations Carol Berkin, 1997-07-01 Indian, European, and African women of seventeenth and eighteenth-century America were defenders of their native land, pioneers on the frontier, willing immigrants, and courageous slaves. They were also - as traditional scholarship tends to omit - as important as men in shaping American culture and history. This remarkable work is a gripping portrait that gives early-American women their proper place in history. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood, 2011-09-06 An instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from “the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction” (New York Times). Now an award-winning Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss. In this multi-award-winning, bestselling novel, Margaret Atwood has created a stunning Orwellian vision of the near future. This is the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who have only one purpose: to breed. In Gilead, where women are prohibited from holding jobs, reading, and forming friendships, Offred’s persistent memories of life in the “time before” and her will to survive are acts of rebellion. Provocative, startling, prophetic, and with Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit, and acute perceptive powers in full force, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once a mordant satire and a dire warning. |
| womens role in puritan society: Being Good Martha Saxton, 2003 A pathbreaking new study of women and morality How do people decide what is good and what is bad? How does a society set moral guidelines -- and what happens when the behavior of various groups differs from these guidelines? Martha Saxton tackles these and other fascinating issues in Being Good, her history of the moral values prescribed for women in early America. Saxton begins by examining seventeenth-century Boston, then moves on to eighteenth-century Virginia and nineteenth-century St. Louis. Studying women throughout the life cycle -- girls, young unmarried women, young wives and mothers, older widows -- through their diaries and personal papers, she also studies the variations due to different ethnicities and backgrounds. In all three cases, she is able to show how the values of one group conflicted with or developed in opposition to those of another. And, as the women's testimonies make clear, the emotional styles associated with different value systems varied. A history of American women's moral life thus gives us a history of women's emotional life as well. In lively and penetrating prose, Saxton argues that women's morals changed from the days of early colonization to the days of westward expansion, as women became at once less confined and less revered by their men -- and explores how these changes both reflected and affected trends in the nation at large. |
| womens role in puritan society: Female Piety in Puritan New England Amanda Porterfield, 1992 This treatise documents the claim that, for Puritan men and women alike, the ideals of selfhood were conveyed by female images. It argues that these images taught self-control, shaped pious ideals and established the standards against which the moral character of real women was measured. |
| womens role in puritan society: In Public Houses David W. Conroy, 2018-08-25 In this study of the role of taverns in the development of Massachusetts society, David Conroy brings into focus a vital and controversial but little-understood facet of public life during the colonial era. Concentrating on the Boston area, he reveals a popular culture at odds with Puritan social ideals, one that contributed to the transformation of Massachusetts into a republican society. Public houses were an integral part of colonial community life and hosted a variety of official functions, including meetings of the courts. They also filled a special economic niche for women and the poor, many of whom turned to tavern-keeping to earn a living. But taverns were also the subject of much critical commentary by the clergy and increasingly restrictive regulations. Conroy argues that these regulations were not only aimed at curbing the spiritual corruption associated with public houses but also at restricting the popular culture that had begun to undermine the colony's social and political hierarchy. Specifically, Conroy illuminates the role played by public houses as a forum for the development of a vocal republican citizenry, and he highlights the connections between the vibrant oral culture of taverns and the expanding print culture of newspapers and political pamphlets in the eighteenth century. |
| womens role in puritan society: Mistress Bradstreet Charlotte Gordon, 2007-09-03 Though her work is a staple of anthologies of American poetry, Anne Bradstreet has never before been the subject of an accessible, full-scale biography for a general audience. Anne Bradstreet is known for her poem, To My Dear and Loving Husband, among others, and through John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet. With her first collection, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, she became the first published poet, male or female, of the New World. Many New England towns were founded and settled by Anne Bradstreet's family or their close associates -- characters who appear in these pages. |
| womens role in puritan society: Beyond Authority and Submission Rachel Green Miller, 2019 |
| womens role in puritan society: Sexual Revolution in Early America Richard Godbeer, 2004-02-18 An Alternate Selection of the History Book Club In 1695, John Miller, a clergyman traveling through New York, found it appalling that so many couples lived together without ever being married and that no one viewed ante-nuptial fornication as anything scandalous or sinful. Charles Woodmason, an Anglican minister in South Carolina in 1766, described the region as a stage of debauchery in which polygamy was very common, concubinage general, and bastardy no disrepute. These depictions of colonial North America's sexual culture sharply contradict the stereotype of Puritanical abstinence that persists in the popular imagination. In Sexual Revolution in Early America, Richard Godbeer boldly overturns conventional wisdom about the sexual values and customs of colonial Americans. His eye-opening historical account spans two centuries and most of British North America, from New England to the Caribbean, exploring the social, political, and legal dynamics that shaped a diverse sexual culture. Drawing on exhaustive research into diaries, letters, and other private papers, as well as legal records and official documents, Godbeer's absorbing narrative uncovers a persistent struggle between the moral authorities and the widespread expression of popular customs and individual urges. Godbeer begins with a discussion of the complex attitude that the Puritans had toward sexuality. For example, although believing that sex could be morally corrupting, they also considered it to be such an essential element of a healthy marriage that they excommunicated those who denied conjugal fellowship to their spouses. He next examines the ways in which race and class affected the debate about sexual mores, from anxieties about Anglo-Indian sexual relations to the sense of sexual entitlement that planters held over their African slaves. He concludes by detailing the fundamental shift in sexual culture during the eighteenth century towards the acceptance of a more individualistic concept of sexual desire and fulfillment. Today's moral critics, in their attempts to convince Americans of the social and spiritual consequences of unregulated sexual behavior, often harken back to a more innocent age; as this groundbreaking work makes clear, America's sexual culture has always been rich, vibrant, and contentious. |
| womens role in puritan society: Born for Liberty Sara Evans, 1997-08-22 A history of American women from the Indian woman of the 16th century to the dual-role career woman and mother of the 1980s. |
| womens role in puritan society: Making America Carol Berkin, Christopher L. Miller, Robert W. Cherny, James Gormly, W. Thomas Mainwaring, 2000-08-09 With an accessible reading style abundant pedagogy, and reasonable price tag, MAKING AMERICA, BRIEF, is the perfect choice for inexperienced students and cost-conscious professors. The Second Edition features chapter-opening maps, timelines, and chronology charts that emphasize key developments, enhance geographical awareness, and highlight political events. |
| womens role in puritan society: Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson Rowlandson, 2018-08-20 Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of the “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” (1682). Mary Rowlandson (c. 1637-1711), nee Mary White, was born in Somerset, England. Her family moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the United States, and she settled in Lancaster, Massachusetts, marrying in 1656. It was here that Native Americans attacked during King Philip’s War, and Mary and her three children were taken hostage. This text is a profound first-hand account written by Mary detailing the experiences and conditions of her capture, and chronicling how she endured the 11 weeks in the wilderness under her Native American captors. It was published six years after her release, and explores the themes of mortal fragility, survival, faith and will, and the complexities of human nature. It is acknowledged as a seminal work of American historical literature. |
| womens role in puritan society: Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs Samuel Adams Drake, Walter Kendall Watkins, 1917 |
| womens role in puritan society: Woman's Life in Colonial Days Carl Holliday, 1999-07-01 Classic study suggests that, in spite of hardships, many American colonial women led rich, fulfilling lives. Thoughtfully written, well-documented account explores daily lives of women in New England and Southern colonies. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Passion of Anne Hutchinson Marilyn J. Westerkamp, 2021-06-03 When English colonizers landed in New England in 1630, they constructed a godly commonwealth according to precepts gleaned from Scripture. For these 'Puritan' Christians, religion both provided the center and defined the margins of existence. While some Puritans were called to exercise power as magistrates and ministers, and many more as husbands and fathers, women were universally called to subject themselves to the authority of others. Their God was a God of order, and out of their religious convictions and experiences Puritan leaders found a divine mandate for a firm, clear hierarchy. Yet not all lives were overwhelmed; other religious voices made themselves heard, and inspired voices that defied that hierarchy. Gifted with an extraordinary mind, an intense spiritual passion, and an awesome charisma, Anne Hutchinson arrived in Massachusetts in 1634 and established herself as a leader of women. She held private religious meetings in her home and later began to deliver her own sermons. She inspired a large number of disciples who challenged the colony's political, social, and ideological foundations, and scarcely three years after her arrival, Hutchinson was recognized as the primary disrupter of consensus and order--she was then banished as a heretic. Anne Hutchinson, deeply centered in her spirituality, heard in the word of God an imperative to ignore and move beyond the socially prescribed boundaries placed around women. The Passion of Anne Hutchinson examines issues of gender, patriarchal order, and empowerment in Puritan society through the story of a woman who sought to preach, inspire, and disrupt. |
| womens role in puritan society: A Companion to American Women's History Nancy A. Hewitt, 2008-04-15 This collection of twenty-four original essays by leading scholars in American women's history highlights the most recent important scholarship on the key debates and future directions of this popular and contemporary field. Covers the breadth of American Women's history, including the colonial family, marriage, health, sexuality, education, immigration, work, consumer culture, and feminism. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Includes expanded bibliography of titles to guide further research. |
| womens role in puritan society: The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse Anne Bradstreet, 1867 |
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