The Virtuous and Violent Women of Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts

Emily C.K. Romeo,Elaine Crane

• Editore: University of Massachusetts Press
• Anno: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781613767634
• Argomento: Historia
• Categoria: Historia del mundo

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.

Chapter 1

The Limits of Household Violence

Order and Disorder

As neighbors in seventeenth-century Salem, Martha Wolfe and Elizabeth Woodberry had a close and contentious relationship. The fields each woman’s family used for grazing livestock shared a common boundary, on which Martha and Elizabeth kept a watchful eye from their houses nearby. One spring day in 1657, the women’s concerns over encroachment on their families’ property erupted into a violent quarrel. Regardless of the fact that both her husband and her son were in the field with her, Martha took it upon herself to defend their property when she accused Elizabeth of allowing her oxen to graze on the Wolfes’ land. Martha then physically attacked her with a stick. Elizabeth fought back against the blows and scratches by pushing Martha, who fell over a bush. Martha then said that “she thought the Divell would take [Elizabeth] away for . . . lying” and accused her of going “to the meeting for nothing but to diceive others.” In response to these attacks and insults, Elizabeth went to church authorities, repeated Martha’s offensive words, and showed them the blood on her face. They declined to get involved, citing a lack of cooperating witnesses. Court magistrates presented and admonished both women for fighting after the incident had become public knowledge.1

This conflict offers a glimpse of how colonial Englishwomen used violence in seventeenth-century Massachusetts in the domestic arena. Men made up the majority of violent offenders brought before the courts, but women also appear as a visible, vocal minority in the criminal record. Women accounted for 18 percent of all the persons accused of all types of physical violence, or the immediate threat of violence, in the county-level courts in Essex County between 1636 and 1710. When instances of “household violence” are taken into account—violence between two or more people who interact in or near the household, such as husbands and wives, children and parents, masters and servants, and even neighbors—this number rises to approximately 25 percent. Given the close-knit nature of settlement in colonial New England, relationships with neighbors could sometimes be as intimate as those with family members. I therefore have expanded the definition of household violence to reflect this societal norm.

Women were brought before the court for fighting with or attacking their husbands, overcorrecting children and servants, and quarreling violently with neighbors during disputes over property or status. While both men and women were violent actors, what marked violence by women was its consistent application in the service of perceived family needs and interests. Just as Martha Wolfe defended her family’s land from wandering livestock, most women’s violence was focused on their primary domain: the household and surrounding areas. Court records show that men used violence in the household as well, but they were more likely than women to be involved in more general displays of aggression in the community, such as drunken tavern brawls and violent contests for masculine dominance. Women’s violence was more targeted, aimed at maintaining familial order or preserving family property, safety, or status.2

The court record surrounding the dispute between the Wolfes and Woodberrys is also revealing of how colonial authorities responded to interpersonal violence between intimates by both men and women. Salem church authorities declined to get involved in the fight between Martha and Elizabeth, even after Elizabeth appeared before them bearing injuries from the altercation. While the Puritan leadership of seventeenth-century Massachusetts condemned violence between spouses and against children, servants, or neighbors, authorities were reluctant to actually intervene in household or inter-household affairs in response to violent actions alone. Some Puritan leaders like John Winthrop sought to make violence the monopoly of the state in this new land and discouraged extreme forms of violence in the household.3 This was not due to a general aversion to violence; Puritanism was not a religion of the meek. Violence employed by women in the normal course of their everyday lives usually went overlooked and did not threaten a woman’s dignified anonymity. But overtly quarrelsome households, they preached, were a danger to social order.4 As in the case of Wolfe and Woodberry, only after word had spread around the community did the court step in and try to resolve these issues. When it did intervene in cases of violence alone, the action it took was usually aimed at minimizing public disruption.

In seventeenth-century Essex County, it appears that violence was tolerated, and even expected, from both men and women in certain household circumstances. This is due in part to the fact that most of the early settlers of New England remained thoroughly “English.” The long ocean voyage may have symbolized a spiritual rebirth for some, but it did not erode loyalties to English social customs, domestic habits, and established means of order and subordination. As in England, early Americans employed violence to enforce their standards of social order. The physical “correction” of wives, children, and servants was particularly common, just as it was not unusual for disputes between neighbors to erupt into violent disagreements.5 Puritanism did not counteract these practices. As the altercation between Martha Wolfe and Elizabeth Woodberry shows, it was not just those outside the bosom of the church who participated in household violence. One, if not both, of the women regularly attended meeting. Religious conviction did not determine a person’s willingness to use violence.

At a time when the rest of the world, including England, was immersed in revolt and internal strife, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a relatively cohesive society for much of the seventeenth century. There were no massive demonstrations of violence or violent challenges to the power of the state until the end of the century. Puritans’ emphasis on obedience, and their willingness to expel dissenters from their midst, were partially responsible for this stability. Still, Massachusetts was not the happy Eden of its founders’ imaginings. Court records from the early years of the colony, from the Essex County Court to the colony-wide Court of Assistants and the General Court, are filled with brutal acts of violence, including murders, rapes, and assaults.6 What ultimately helped maintain the social cohesion and stability of Massachusetts Bay was its reliance on the household and family as the foundations for society and, in a seeming paradox, the employment of violence therein. This occurred, if not with the tacit approval of the Puritan leadership, at least with the benefit of their blind eye.

The diffusion of authority in early New England reached unprecedented and perhaps unanticipated levels that went beyond the English model. Without social welfare systems, police forces, or penitentiaries, the household filled the roles of all three and was the building block of social order. The patriarch of each household acted as its representative in the village or town, but such a system distributed authority within the household as well. It was primarily the mistress’s responsibility to ensure that everyone in the household was fulfilling his or her duties. Both household ideology and practical circumstances required wives to maintain the integrity of their household and family, with or without their husband’s participation.7 In New England, the uncertainty of life on the edge of wilderness made women’s engagement in household preservation and governance even more crucial. As a result, men did not possess a monopoly over household violence.

Cases of household violence by women and men in Essex County fail to follow patterns established by historians who chart a neatly progressive decline in violence in seventeenth-century New England. According to records in Essex County, the number of cases of household violence peaked in the 1640s, and again in the 1670s and 1680s, depending on the specific type of violence involved, and then dropped off almost completely as the eighteenth century approached. This pattern holds for both male and female perpetrators: the prosecutions for a specific type of violence peaked for men and women at the same time. The number of men brought before the Essex County Court in the seventeenth century for wife abuse peaks in the 1640s and then again in the 1670s–1680s. The number of women brought for husband abuse follows the same pattern, peaking in the 1640s and again in the 1670s–1680s. The numbers of both men and women accused of child abuse peaks in the 1660s and 1670s. The numbers of both men and women accused of violence against servants peaks in 1670s. Neighbor violence deviates from this parallel pattern slightly more than other forms. The number of women brought before the court peaks in the 1670s; the number of men peaks in the 1660s and remains constant through the 1670s.8 This parallel pattern of violence does not fit the description of a society that disapproved of female physical violence per se or targeted it for prosecution. It also does not portray a society that was gradually moving away from more violent means of social control and interaction.

For both men and women, instances of household violence appear to have reached the attention of the court only when they were too dramatic, or too openly expressed, to be ignored. The cases that appeared in court records were therefore only the tip of a “violence iceberg.” Silences in seventeenth-century court records reveal the acceptability of a wide array of violent behaviors between intimates, even for women. The legal system in seventeenth-century America was a “cultural performance” for the community in which social and cultural norms could be expressed and reinforced. As these cases illustrate, colonial courts chose to address instances of household violence when they encompassed other issues of greater concern to Puritan communities, such as sexual indiscretion or slander. Barring other complicating factors, most instances of violence remained beneath the authorities’ notice.9

spousal violence

The phenomenon of household violence in seventeenth-century Massachusetts was part of a larger continuum of violence that extended from the most mundane acts of physical aggression to the most sensational. As the foundation of life in colonial New England, marital relationships are the logical starting point for an examination of this continuum. The importance of marriage in seventeenth-century New England cannot be overstated. As much as the Puritan leadership of Massachusetts Bay wanted to keep at least the outward appearance of peace between spouses—the Massachusetts Body of Liberties outlawed “conjugal correction” in 1641—spousal violence remained a normal part of marital life in colonial New England. English practices of violent marital discipline and interaction proved impossible to abandon. Some New English husbands used violent means to “correct” their wives and maintain their authority. Some wives responded in kind, or lashed out at their husbands, usually for failing to live up to their expectations as a family patriarch, husband, and provider.10 Seventeenth-century New Englanders saw marriage as a contract, and violence alone did not void that contract; violence was a natural, if regrettable, part of the marital relationship.11

Though willing to police other types of personal behavior, courts in seventeenth-century Essex County were hesitant to intervene in violent marital relationships. Court records reveal that cases usually failed to reach the courts unless physical violence between spouses reached outrageous levels—such as those verging on murder—or unless the instances of violence were particularly public and therefore undeniably disruptive to the community at large. Otherwise, for an instance of marital violence to receive court attention it usually had to involve another issue of more serious concern, such as adultery.

When the problem was limited to acts of violence, most neighbors and community members as well as court magistrates in seventeenth-century Massachusetts chose to avoid meddling in the married lives of their fellow village or town residents. This pattern in the Essex County Court records does not necessarily contradict the findings of other historians who have emphasized the almost unrestrained interference of neighbors and authorities in the family life of others in Puritan New England. In matters involving sexual conduct outside of marriage, for instance, communal policing appears to have been the norm. Because marital violence per se was not seen as a threat to marital stability, it was less subject to community comment. When cases of violence became too destructive and disruptive to ignore, however, the Puritan tendency toward communal vigilance eventually emerged. This was not a question of communal vigilance versus family privacy. Notions of privacy did not appeal to the English Puritans who migrated to the New World. They believed that neighbors and the church had a duty to regulate family life. Nonetheless, they also believed that separating married couples was justified only in very unusual circumstances. Violence alone was not considered unusual, and authorities went to great lengths to keep troubled marriages intact.12

The cases against Daniel Ela of Haverhill and Thomas Russell of Marblehead illustrate this reticence toward intervening in neighbors’ violent marriages, as well as the Essex County Court’s reluctant pursuit of spousal abuse cases. Daniel Ela was not averse to using violence to enforce familial obedience. The court officially frowned on such behavior only when violence as a tool of interpersonal social order was used to excess and became disorderly in itself. Ela was brought before the court in Ipswich in 1682 for the severe beating of his wife, Elizabeth, and for making threats against her life with both a knife and a cudgel. Following a beating, Elizabeth fled their house in a snowstorm looking for help, but her neighbor refused to assist her even after she warned, “If you do not entertaine mee and lett me abide in your house I will lie in the street in the snow & if I perish, my blood be upon your head.” The neighbor chose instead to return her to her husband, who threatened him for “meddling” in his attempts to “order” his wife. Elizabeth fled to another neighbor. At that point the disruption was significant enough to reach the local authorities, who pressed charges against Daniel.13 During court proceedings, so many neighbors attested to the abuse Elizabeth had received—the same neighbors who had chosen to watch her struggles from behind closed doors—that the court could not ignore the incident entirely and fined Daniel for his misbehavior.

Thomas Russell of Marblehead also inflicted persistent and intense violence on his wife, Mary, violence that was significant enough to gain the attention of authorities when combined with Thomas’s other violent threats against neighbors. In 1680 Mary testified before the Essex County Court that on one occasion her husband came home late, beat her unmercifully, kicked her around the house, and struck her on the head. He had threatened to cut her throat or burn her, adding that if she complained, he would kill her. At least one neighbor testified that he had seen Mary bloody from her husband’s abuse. Other residents of Marblehead testified that Thomas was a violent man and had frightened them many times at night by brandishing a gun or pistols “like a mad man.” Regardless of his violent tendencies, however, the Essex County Court was willing to drop all charges against Thomas upon his promise of reform and Mary’s petition attesting to their reconciliation. Since the time of her complaint against him, Thomas “hath carried it like a loueing husband to her,” her petition stated.14 This was enough for the court to drop the matter and move on to more pressing concerns.

Violence within seventeenth-century marriages was certainly not perpetrated exclusively by husbands against their wives. Both spouses were capable of inflicting serious harm. In most cases of wives abusing their husbands, the men appear to have failed to fulfill their role as household patriarch providing for the personal and financial security of their families, to which their wives responded with violence. Although these women’s actions are reprehensible, the motivation behind them becomes clearer when they are placed in the context of a seventeenth-century household. As the prominent Puritan William Perkins explained in his 1609 treatise on domestic relationships, while it was a wife’s duty to “submit” to her husband—at his side as a wife, as opposed to a servant—she must also be able to “depend on him in judgment and in will.” When either piece of that dynamic failed to fall into place, violence seems to have been the result. For a household in colonial New England to function properly, the patriarch of that household needed to be both dependable and capable. If he could not appropriately head the household, he at least had to be out of the way, allowing his wife to take over the management of household affairs. From the outside, violence against a husband by his wife may have appeared to be the ultimate inversion of familial order. Indeed, according to Puritan teachings, a husband-beating wife affronted not only her spouse “but also God her Maker.”15 Clearly, however, there were instances in which women deemed that inversion necessary. This behavior would have sprung not from an anachronistic desire for individual power but from the need to respond to relationships and households in disarray. Surprisingly, even when these women appeared before them as violent perpetrators, courts were hesitant to intervene.

In the late 1640s, the Pray household was in chaos. Richard Pray frequently beat his wife, Mary, and verbally abused her, bragging about this ill-treatment in front of the family’s houseguests. Richard would have failed to live up to William Secker’s advice ...