Massachusetts Gender Ways: The Puritan Idea of a Covenant Between Unequals

Within Massachusetts marriages, conjugal relations rested upon an assumption of inequality between the sexes. This conventional idea was routinely asserted by men and acknowledged by women—even women of high estate. The New England gentlewoman Anne Bradstreet eloquently expressed this idea in her poetry:

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are,

Men have precedency and still excel,

It is but vain, unjustly to wage war;

Men can do best, and women know it well;

Preheminence in each and all is yours,

Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.¹

A similar attitude was expressed by that spirited Puritan lady Lucy Winthrop Downing, who wrote to her brother John Winthrop, “I am but a wife and therefore it is sufficient for me to follow my husband.”²

This idea of gender inequality, however, was modified in important ways by the religious faith of the founders. The Puritans deeply believed that women and men were equally capable of joining the church, receiving grace and entering the kingdom of heaven. Further, many women took an active role in the Congregational churches of Massachusetts. Ordination was denied to them; women were not allowed to become ministers in a formal sense, and were explicitly forbidden to preach to men. But Puritan women ministered to others of their sex, and were admitted to church membership more often than their husbands. The Christian ideal of spiritual equality between the sexes was specially powerful in the seventeenth century, when the fires of faith burned so brightly in the Calvinist colonies.³

In the culture of New England, these two contrary ideas of equality in “the soul’s vocation” and inequality in other spheres were combined in structures of delicate complexity. Puritan minister Samuel Willard wrote on the subject of relations between husbands and wives, “ … of all the orders which are unequals, these do come nearest to an Equality, and in several respects they stand upon an even ground. These two do make a pair, which infers so far a parity.”⁴

The Puritans often quoted the Pauline expression that the husband was “the head of the wife.” Sermons and advice-books (all written by men) uniformly urged that a woman was duty-bound to submit to her husband, and counseled obedience and resignation in that respect. Ministers also preached that the husband ruled with God-given authority, and even represented divine sovereignty in the family. This idea was summarized in one of Milton’s mighty lines: “He for God only; She for God in Him.”⁵

On the other hand, the laws of Massachusetts gave women many protections. Every woman without exception was equally entitled to the physical protection of the law. Her husband could not beat her, or even verbally abuse her—a rule that was sternly enforced. There was also an elastic clause that forbade husbands to command their wives to do anything contrary to the law of God. Further, the common law of New England recognized that women both single and married could own property, and execute contracts.⁶

Normally, Puritan moralists preached that husbands and wives should not have separate property. They were expected to work together for the common welfare of the family. There was no clear idea of “separate spheres” in this culture. Depositions filed in the court of Essex County, Massachusetts, during the late seventeenth century describe women routinely doing heavy field labor, carrying sacks of grain to the mill, cutting firewood, tending swine, and castrating steers. One minister wrote that a woman “in her husband’s absence, is wife and deputy-husband.”⁷

A Puritan writer also argued that “tho the Husband be the head of the wife, yet she is the head of the family.”⁸ Custom as well as law in the Bay Colony required husbands to treat their wives not only with decency, but respect. When a man in Essex County told his spouse that “she was none of his wife, she was but a servant,” the neighbors brought a criminal complaint against him, and though the wife herself refused to support the prosecution, he was heavily fined by the court.⁹

Puritan moralists on the family universally routinely agreed that husbands and wives should love one another and live in harmony together. In these beliefs, they were no different from most people in the Western world. But Puritanism was a form of social striving which labored obsessively to close the gap between ideals and actuality. Surviving letters between husbands and wives in Massachusetts commonly described a world in which both partners worked very hard at perfecting their relationship, in a mutual effort to achieve love and harmony within the household.

There was also a darker side of family life. The court records of Massachusetts contained cases of unhappy families in the Bay Colony. But this evidence points two ways. When outward signs of trouble appeared, the entire neighborhood was apt to swing into action; then the churches intervened; and finally the courts.

It did not take much of a domestic disturbance to set this social machinery in motion. A sudden quarrel between husband and wife could end in a criminal indictment. The object of these proceedings was not punishment or retribution, but the restoration of good relations within the family. The Puritans had a very low tolerance of domestic discord, and high expectations for peace and harmony.¹⁰

It is also important to note that these disciplinary proceedings tended to be remarkably even-handed as to the treatment of husbands and wives. A comparative study of adultery in New England and the Chesapeake finds that men and women convicted of this offense commonly received similar punishments in Massachusetts. But in Maryland courts, women were punished much more severely than men.¹¹

The Puritans also expected that important family decisions would be taken by the husband and wife together. Agreements for the sending out of children referred to both the husband’s and the wife’s consent. Business ventures were often undertaken jointly. Men and women were not equals in these relationships, but they were partners in the conduct of their affairs.¹²

Between husbands and wives, the culture of New England sought to create a covenant of unequals which was cemented by a spiritual communion of love, harmony, caring, forbearance and mutual respect. The ideal was captured in an immortal verse of Anne Bradstreet, addressed to her “dear and loving husband.” The first lines of her poem are most often quoted, but the last lines are the key to this covenanted relationship:

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me ye women if you can. …

Thy love is such I can no way repay,

The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.

Then while we live, in love let’s persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.¹³