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Puritan and Indian Women
Term Paper ID:34110
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Essay Subject:
The lives of Puritan and Native American women were probably more similar than we ...... More...
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4 Pages / 900 Words
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Paper Abstract:
Analysis of the lives of Puritan and Native American women. Contends their lives were somewhat similar, but they were fundamentally different from each other, with Puritan women far lower in the hierarchy of their society than were American Indian women and with no expectations that their status would improve throughout their lives.
Paper Introduction:
Despite the fact that there were a number of important differencesbetween Puritan women and women among the native peoples that Puritansettlers first encountered there were also at least some key similarities This paper examines the ways in which the lives of Puritan and native womendiverged from each other as well as the less common ways in which theyconverged It is important to note at the beginning of this discussion thatPuritan women were far more homogeneous as a group than were AmericanIndian women
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Nathanial Hawthorne'sshort story "Young Goodman Brown" illustrates this connection beautifully:Not only were Puritan women not as powerful as men but they were not asgood either, in a world in which goodness and evil were taken veryseriously. Puritan women had relatively less status vis-à-vis their husbandsin no small measure because of the theocratic nature of Puritan society.Few Christian sects grant women even near equal power (although arguablysome, such as Quakers, do), but Puritan families were especiallyhierarchical, with women formally as well as pragmatically subservient totheir fathers and husbands both in their religious and secular lives. In other ways, however, there were substantial similarities betweenthe two groups. Despitethe fact that both groups of women might well have had a dozen - or evenmore - pregnancies, both groups worked hard and their labor contributedsubstantially to the economic well-being of their households. Moreover, Puritan women weresuspect in terms of their moral standing because of conservative Christianideas about the link between female nature and Satan. Despite the fact that there were a number of important differencesbetween Puritan women and women among the native peoples that Puritansettlers first encountered, there were also at least some key similarities.This paper examines the ways in which the lives of Puritan and native womendiverged from each other as well as the less common ways in which theyconverged. It is important to note at the beginning of this discussion thatPuritan women were far more homogeneous as a group than were AmericanIndian women, who may have seemed similar to each other as heathens fromthe view of the colonists but in fact belonged to a number of differentcultural and linguistic groups. This pervasive misogyny, according to Karlsen, made women susceptible to charges of witchcraft, particularly those who stood to inherit large estates that would have endowed them with uncommon economic influence (http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/erelwom.htm). Although subordinate to their husbands in the religious life of both home and church, Puritan "goodwives" played an important role in the economies of their households, and husbands entrusted them with a wide range of practical responsibilities (http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/erelwom.htm).Indian women also had economic responsibilities in terms of trade and theproduction of high-status luxury goods. The lives of Puritan and Native American women were probably moresimilar than we might initially suspect, but they were fundamentallydifferent from each other, with Puritan women far lower in the hierarchy oftheir society than were American Indian women and with no expectations thattheir status would improve throughout their lives. Women's sexualityhad the potential to disrupt the order of the Puritans' world; it had nosimilar power within the world of the Native American tribes, and this madea substantial difference in terms of the way of life for these two groupsof women, one of whom was born sinful while the other was not. Women had less power than did men in the Eastern Woodland cultures,but they did hold some positions of formal power in the tribal structure inall of the groups with which the Puritans had contact and in some of thesetribes (including most importantly the Iroquois) older women had asignificant amount of power in determining tribal law and policy.(http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_ 18 _colonialcult.htm). However, the Eastern Woodland Indians (asthe tribes with whom the Puritans came into contact are now called) sharedkey beliefs and practices, including the practice of owning land in common.Such communal land-ownership (both in terms of hunting as well as in termsof farming) practices are generally associated with relatively egalitariansocieties. Both sets of women would have been in many ways defined bypregnancy and childbearing. Womenhad little formal voice in church policy in a society in which the churchheld enormous power over every aspect of life. Native American women were connected to no such forces of elementalevil. Both Puritanwomen and Indian women performed a substantial amount of farmwork, althoughNative American women performed an even greater percentage than did Puritanwomen with "The work of women provid[ing] the vast majority of the food thetribes ate."(http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_ 18 _colonialcult.htm.) Puritan women also were often given responsibility for financialaffairs within their households. Works Citedhttp://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_ 18 _colonialcult .htmhttp://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/erelwom.htm The repeated pregnancies of women in bothgroups would have limited their ability to perform a number of tasks andwould have had similar health consequences for both sets of women. Even though husbands regarded their wives as "potentially dependable helpmeets," as Carol Karlsen argues in The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (1987), most Puritan men still harbored dark suspicions of all women as daughters of Eve, greedy for both power and sexual gratification. While Indian women were excluded from some rituals (although theyalso had rituals from which males were excluded), in the polytheistic andgenerally at least somewhat animistic religions of the indigenous peoplewomen's roles as mothers and caregivers were celebrated. This was true of the Woodland Indians; although tribal eldershad far more power than younger tribal members, all members of the tribecould look forward to gaining power and respect as they grew older.
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