Euro-Am. Women in the Colonial Era: Community and Control

Remember Coverture? Euro-American women were controled by the principle of Coverture in everything they did. Euro-American culture was EXTREMELY Patriarchal. Men ruled households. Men owned everything. Only widows could own private property. Men ran courts, governments, churches.

B. Anne Hutchinson 1. Midwife, Wife and Mother 2. Strong Theological education from her father. 3. Religious Lay person. 4. Notices, in her mid-wifery work, a flaw in Covenant of Works Begins preaching Covenant of GRACE in Home Bible Study Group

Bad Anne!

, put on Trial for Heresy, despite the fact that she and her ideas were Popular; also, she’d never talked about Grace in Public. 8. Church Elders had trouble making a case. 9. UNTIL, she said she wasn’t afraid of them, she answered only to God, and that God had told her this stuff. PROBLEM SOLVED!

Witches, Witchcraft Accusations and Gender in Puritan, Colonial New England I. Intro Stuff: A. Can We Agree.... ? B. Nonetheless, Puritans did NOT Agree with us. They believed in a corporeal Satan who walked the earth and thus he may have had minions/witches to do his bidding.

What Do “Witches DO? A. Non-Possession 1. Ruin Crops or animals 2. Dance Naked in the Woods (hey, who doesn’t?) 3. Stay dry in the rain and snow.

B. Possession Type Activities 1. Possess Young girls/women 2. Possess Adult Men and “Hag Ride” them. 3. Possess Adult Men and Force them to have sex with the Witch.

To Sum Up: 1.Most Witches Women 2.Some “Man Witches”– considered leaders 3.Older Men more vulnerable to witchcraft Accusations and Executions. 4. Possessed Accusers likely young women, (Least Powerful Puritan group) 5. Non Possessed Accusers likely to be Adult men (Most Powerful Puritan Group) 6. Women INHERITORS way most likely to be Executed (dead) witches. 9 lf Puritan women were losing power over time.

WHAT’S IT ALL MEAN? Puritan Witchcraft cases were moments of patriarchal control of powerful or potentially powerful women (the inheritors). Men were assisted in this oppression of women by young women, who were anxious about the fact that they were likely to have less power than the generation before, and thus taking it out on women, not men.

WHY? 1.Class Status Anxiety 2.Stockholm Syndrome

WITCHING HOUR IS OVER!