Early modern views of women and social order

I. Importance of hierarchy

  • Authority flowed downward
  • Household (not the individual) seen as the fundamental unit of government
    • Governed by the male head
    • Often included servants and apprentices
    • “Household” vs. “home”
      • Arena of production 
      • Emphasis on order
      • Family as a “little commonwealth”

Patriarchy: A form of social organization in which power is vested in the head of the household, who has legal rights over, and moral and economic obligations for, his dependents.


II. Women’s subordination

  • Should mirror the servant’s subjection to the master, the child’s to the parent
  • All humans subordinate to God
    • Key: subordination was the norm
    • “Equality” a foreign concept
  • Differing interpretations: Ulrich v. Reis

III. The “weaker vessel”

  • Assumption of female inferiority
  • Women were seen as weaker
    • Intellectually
    • Physically
    • Morally
      • Eve
      • Assumption that women were highly sexual beings
  • In sum: Women seen as less capable of self-governance; needed to be under the control of a strong and capable patriarch
  • Notion that the ideal woman was the silent woman
    • Gossip as a “weapon of the weak”

IV. Sexuality/bodies

  • Female sexuality seen as tightly linked to reproduction
    • Womb hungry for seed
  • For conception to occur, both partners had to “ejaculate”
  • Female body seen as essentially like, but inferior to, the male body
    • “One-sex” body model
  • Bodily humors
    • Women were cold and moist; men were hot and dry
  • Women could even spontaneously turn into men (but not the reverse)

V. Women’s legal status

  • Differed according to marital status
  • Femme sole (single woman)
  • Femme covert (married woman)
    • A “covered woman”

Coverture: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband; under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything.” (William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England)

  • What followed from coverture?
    • Turned the married couple into one person— the husband
    • A married woman could not sue, sign contracts, own assets, execute legal documents on her own
    • Could not be sued for a crime committed with her husband
    • Economic consequences
      • Upon marriage, lost control of her assets and future earnings, which (in theory) became her husband’s property
      • Gained the “right” to support, protection

VI. Marriage

  • Marriage as a contract
    • Entered into voluntarily: Had to consent to being subjected
      • “A true wife accounts her subjection as her honor and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free, but to be in subjection to her husband’s authority.”  (John Winthrop)
  • Puritan ideal of marriage
    • Most “equal” of unequal relations
    • Ideal wife defined as a good “consort,” or “helpmeet”
    • Emphasis on social harmony
      • Afforded some protections to women

“…of all the Orders [relationships] which are unequals, these do come nearest to an Equality, and in several respects they stand upon even ground. These do make them a Pair, which infers Parity: They are in the Word of God called Yokefellows, and so are to draw together in the Yoke. Nevertheless, God hath also made an imparity between them, in the order prescribed in his Word, and for that reason there is a Subordination, and they are ranked among unequals.”  (Rev. Samuel Willard)


VII. Alternatives to Anglo-American model

  • Dutch who settled in NY
    • Women exercised greater rights
  • Spanish law, partially derived from Moorish (Islamic) law
    • Women had full legal personhood as father’s co-heirs
    • Women had equal rights to their offspring

VIII. Motherhood

“A ship under sail and a big bellied Woman, are the two handsomest things that can be seen”  (Benjamin Franklin)

  • Reproduction as the “axis of female life” in early America
    • Most women gave birth within 15 months of marrying
    • Spent much of next 20-25 years pregnant or breastfeeding
  • Emphasis on the physicality of motherhood
    • Breastfeeding—powerful symbol
  • Motherhood as extensive v. intensive