Warm-Up: 10/6/14What is the significance of the poppet in ACT II of the Crucible? What happens at the end of the ACT?

What do you predict might happen in ACT III?

THE ROLE OF WOMEN & PURITANISMHuggins, Spring 2014

“The Weaker Vessel in Both Body & Mind”

General consensus that women were the “weaker” gender

Community leaders were male and accepted inferiority of women

Men considered keepers of social order and emotional security

Women should not challenge men, women should never show temper, should be subordinate to their husbands, and allow their husband to handle all financial matters

Female Shaping

a technique used by English writers of the seventeenth century to enforce the female “role”

There was a great deal of emphasis on the cosmology that women were frivolous, greedy, fickle, nagging, gossiping, and vain.  

The purpose of stressing women’s weaknesses was to warn men not to be influenced by their wives.  

What Was Female Shaping?

What Was the Purpose of Emphasizing this aspect of Women?

Mothering and Childbirth Women were allowed to

have direct authority over their children

How well they reared their young, had a direct influence on their social standing within the community 

Mother taught her children religious piety, manners, discipline, and affection.  

Duties Childbirth and Mothering Food and clothing production

Most specialized in a skill, and they depended on other women in the community to barter their wares. Skills included: Bread baking Weaving Candle Dipping Cheese Making Midwifery

Women & Religion Puritan men believed that women,

even though they were supposed to be weak, were able to influence men and that they played a large part in the success of a minister.  

Women were the largest attendants in congregations and their responsiveness to the sermons affected the popularity of the minister.  

Due to this fear, women were not allowed to pray publicly with a congregation, could not lead prayer, and they were not supposed to interpret the Scriptures because they were not considered educated enough.

Puritans supported the idea that all people should be literate in order to read the Bible without a minister. 

Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) A strong-minded Puritan woman

who grew up with a solid foundation in religious thought from her father, Francis Marbury, an Anglican minister and school teacher.

She decided to utilize the influence that she had on the society by forming a church group within her home. 

Soon the meetings and their discussions of the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works drew the governor, Sir Henry Vane, and other political officers to the meetings. 

Antinomian Controversy (1636-1638)

Anne was brought to trial because she challenged the church authorities

At her trial, she believed that she was being charged because of her sex, which demonstrates that women were aware of the roles they were supposed to fill in society.

The Covenant of Grace: stressed that a human would receive salvation out of God’s good grace.  This was the principle belief taught at her meetings, which she had learned from John Cotton.

The Covenant of Works is the belief that an individual would earn salvation through good works.  John Wilson and John Winthrop, representatives of the conservative order in Boston, believed that the Covenant of Grace was a serious threat because it eliminates the need for a clergy.

Puritan Children Many children were

sent to live with another family at fourteen or earlier

Children of all social classes were frequently fostered out for long periods to: learn trade work as servants or attend school

Young boys wove garters and suspenders on small looms, weeded flax fields and vegetable gardens, combed wool and wound spools of thread

Some were taught to be blacksmiths, coopers, cordwainers (shoemakers) tanners, weavers, or shipwrights

Puritan Children (Continued) Teenage girls taught

“housewifery” or spinning, carding, sewing and knitting

Girls helped mothers or mistress by hoeing gardens, spinning flax and cotton, tending orchards, caring for domestic animals

Marriage took place relatively late; average age for men was twenty-five, and few women married before age of twenty

Significance of a Poppet? Another term for “doll” In folk-magic and

witchcraft, a poppet is a doll made to represent a person, for casting spells on that person or to aid that person through magic.

Fashioned from such materials as a carved root, grain or corn shafts, a fruit, paper, wax, a potato, clay, branches, or cloth stuffed with herbs