Gendered Order of Colonial America

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Gendered Order of Colonial America
Mrs. Elizabeth Freake with Baby Mary ca. 1674
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Early modern views of women and social order

• Importance of hierarchy
• Authority flowed downward
• Household as the fundamental unit of government
• Colonial household
• Governed by the male head
• Often included servants and apprentices
• Arena of production
• Importance of order and discipline

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Patriarchy

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

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The weaker vessel

• Assumption of female inferiority
• Viewed as less capable of reason
• Physically weaker
• Less capable of self-governance and morality
• Eve
• Women seen as highly sexual beings
• Sexuality seen as tightly linked to reproduction
• For conception to occur, both men and women had
  to ejaculate to reproduce

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One-sex body

• Female body as essentially like, but inferior to,
  the male body
• Females possessed the same genitalia as men, but
  theirs were located on the inside
• Bodily humors
• Women were cold men hot
• Women could spontaneously turn into men

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1552 illustration of male and female sex organs
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1611 illustration of male and female sex organs
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Womens legal status

• Differed according to marital status
• Femme sole (single woman)
• Femme covert (married 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)

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Legal meaning of marriage

• A married woman could not sue, sign contracts,
  own assets, execute legal documents on her own
• She could not be sued for a crime that she
  committed with her husband
• The woman lost control of her assets and any
  future earnings, which (in theory) became her
  husbands property
• Gained the right to support, protection
• Marriage as a contract

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Important exceptions

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

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Cultural ideal of marriage

• Puritans in particular highly valued marriage
• Most equal of unequal relations
• Ideal wife defined as a good consort, or
  helpmeet

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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
• Motherhood as extensive v. intensive
• Motherhood as a physical activity
• Breastfeeding
• Extensive rather than intensive mothering
• Social childbirth

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Regional differences

• New England
• Spiritual enterprises
• Colonists emigrated as family units
• Low death rates (average age of death 68-69)
• Chesapeake
• Economic reasons
• Most (85) colonists were single and young
• Staggering death rates (average age of death 43)
• Sex ratio severely imbalanced
• In 1700, probably 31
• Prevalence of bound labor

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Indentured servitude

• Contracts of 4-7 years
• Women came in search of marriage
• High rates of pregnancy

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African slaves

• Relatively few African slaves in North America
  prior to 1700s
• Initially, many blacks were treated as indentured
  servants
• By 1640s, records reveal the institution of
  slavery coalescing
• 1660s Slave codes
• The mothers status determines the childs status
• Because marriage is a contract, slaves could not
  marry
• Interracial marriages banned
• 1664 Maryland law White women who had married
  slaves became slaves until the husbands death

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Slave women in the colonies

• Imbalanced sex ratio 21
• Considered fit for field work
• Not punished for pregnancy
• Childbearing rates remained very low