Married and Puritan, Part 1

It seems funny to me now to think that when I started the Anne Bradstreet project, I didn't really want to get into gender issues. I knew that seventeenth-century puritans would have differing opinions than we moderns on the role of women, but I didn't want to focus on that. I just wanted to tell the puritan story through the lens of Anne Bradstreet. But, silly me; I chose Anne Bradstreet of all people, who offered a challenge to the gender roles of her day. Now, it was a muted challenge, but there it is, so I have to get into those pesky gender roles. Oh, well; it will make a better read if this ever becomes a book.

I've made a New Best Friend lately: William Gouge, a seventeenth-century preacher who wrote a long book called, Of Domesticall Duties. It's all about proper roles within the family: husband/wife, children/parents, masters/servants. It addresses issues like, what qualities make a good husband? How should a wife behave toward her husband? And so on. It was a blockbuster of the time; a sort of 1600s "Dr. Spock" book, I believe running through several editions. Mr. Gouge is nothing if not thorough; he goes point by point in laying out these relationships, and then takes on the "but what if" questions: But what if the husband is bad at business and the wife is really good at it -- can she step up and run the family business? He addresses hundreds of these "what if" scenarios.

Gouge is especially helpful in his counter-examples. For every instruction he gives a counter-example of how something should not be done. So for instance, after talking about how husbands should speak gently to their wives, he might say, the contrary example is that of many husbands, who rant and rave at their wives -- etc. And then historians like me can say, aha, the norm ("many husbands", says Gouge) was for husbands to yell at their wives.

So what is his advice in the marriage relationship? What advice would Anne have gotten as a young bride? By what standard was she expected to conduct herself? What messages would have been coming from the pulpit? Well, let's say off the bat that we are in the seventeenth century, and we must be in touch with that and not be shocked by that. Women are expected to obey their husbands, and husbands to rule over them. Oh, yes, I hear you moaning, and I am not listening, because if you want to read about female equality you are in the wrong century. You must leave at once.

For the questions we need to address is not ones like, "How unequal were women to men?" Answer: very unequal. "How much worse was it to be a woman in the seventeenth century than the 21st?" From the viewpoint of legal and political status: much worse. "What kinds of careers could a woman pursue?" None, mostly. But we know all that and we've known it for a long time. If we're going to hang out in the seventeenth century, we have to get to know the people and find out how it all really worked.

Wives must obey husbands: granted. But was there any nuance in that? Any exceptions? Was it all black and white -- "Obey me, ignorant corrupt woman!" or were there shades of grey? As it turns out, there were shades of grey, plenty of them. Oh, women were hindered by a myriad cultural and legal barriers, but they were not slaves or serfs. Domesticall Duties makes it clear that there were cracks in the wall of discrimination because real life demanded it, but also because the Bible would not have it any other way. I will talk about those cracks next time.

Anne's "Feminism," Part IV

Last time I talked about how Anne expressed some counter-cultural ideas in her poetry, ideas about gender equality that might have been perceived as dangerous, and was not rebuked for them by her authoritarian community. Further, it appears that the men in her life, all prominent community leaders, conspired without her knowledge to get these published. And we have to ask: how did she escape censure?

I haven't really settled on a firm answer for this for myself, but here are some possibilities.

Her high rank and social status protected her. As Thomas Dudley's daughter and Simon Bradstreet's wife, she was the sort that the authorities -- the rest of the authorities, that is -- would think twice about lowering the boom upon.

She wasn't actually doing anything so radical. Maybe she "got away with it" because there was nothing she was really getting away with. Maybe the people of her time did not give a collective, loud gasp when she said hey, folks, women have talent, too. Likely women chiding men was acceptable sport in that day, just as it is in our day; or as those under authority these days chide those who have authority. You've all read "Dilbert" so you know what I'm talking about; we do what the boss-man says, but talk privately about just how pointy-haired s/he can be at times, and that is perfectly acceptable. In the seventeenth century, the lines of authority were much tighter, and something as disrespectful as "Dilbert" would never fly. But whenever we paint an era only in black and white, we get into trouble. English women had an inferior legal and social status at this time, but they were not slaves; they made their will known, and they pushed back.

I think this is the best explanation. It jives nicely with one of my "first principles" of historical interpretation: always assume first that what people in the past are doing is NOT radical or ground-breaking, even if it looks like it at first glance. Often we just don't understand the time or the motivations, and (more important) we have a cultural bias of our own that makes us identify everybody we can as a trailblazer or a radical because we just love superheroes so much. Personally, I don't think Anne had a radical bone in her body. She wasn't made to be a rebel. She may have been spunky or feisty, but rebellious? Not the way I read her.

I think too we need to remember she was not writing to make a public statement. Her poems were for herself and for those in her circle. She didn't plan on The World reading her stuff. And further, let's keep in mind that Englishmen were familiar with the idea that some women were exceptionally talented, the supreme example there being Queen Elizabeth.

The really good question in all of this is, why did her menfolk take such pains to get her work published? This is the part of the story that I will go ahead and say is -- okay -- radical. Sort of. (Thomas Dudley in a Superman suit -- if you knew the man, you'd realize how funny that is.) They would not have done it to bring fame to Anne, never to "get her out there" and "let her talent be seen." Puritans would have regarded such motivations as worldly arrogance and vanity. Instead, they must have seen her poetry as having some role in their life's work, which was to bring the Kingdom of God to earth, and as much as possible, to build a truly godly society in New England.

Hey, I really like that. A woman writing classical-esque poetry based on the science and philosophy of the day, the sort of poetry that usually only men wrote -- and these puritans saw that as, in its own way, having a role in their grand experiment of building a truly godly society. More food for thought in that, eh? But I'm going to leave this particular line of discussion and move on to something else next time.