Erica Ellis HIS 467 Final Paper Women have been, in times of societal struggle and change such

as the Protestant Reformation, the wild card in the events and choices of a male-dominated world. Englands Henry VIII separated from the Catholic Church and formed his own Church of England, sending the country into civil war and unrest. All to marry a woman he would behead shortly thereafter, as he would to his fifth wife as well. How women interact with the powers of their time varies from state to state and woman to women. Phyllis Mack states in her book Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England that the attitudes towards women in the early 1600s were a strong dichotomy between good and evil that cannot be accounted for by simply a misogynist society. The issue of perceptions of women does in fact go much deeper than that. However, finite conclusive evidence to form a concrete pattern about these perceptions does not exist. Hans Hillerbrand states in his introduction to the story of Elizabeth, a Dutch Anabaptist Martyr that those who deviated from the religion of the government were persecuted by those same authorities. In some cases, the deviation from that religion was the punishable offense but in others the fear that the religious dissenters intended to overthrow existing law and order was the underlying cause of such actions levied against the people.1 Anne Hutchinson was one such woman who faced accusations for such actions against society. Womens positions within society were as unstable as the religious scene of the time, though they were maintained within Hans J. Hillerbrand, The Protestant Reformation (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 195.
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2 the bounds of a strict and polar dichotomy. Views of women's susceptibility to both Godly and Satanic influences in the post-Reformation 1600s were a reflection of class status, fear for social security and even whim rather than being based in religious grounds, a society of sexism or even good versus evil where the number of women who were condemned outnumbered those who were esteemed. On a spiritual level there is not such a clear distinction between men and womens gender roles. Cultural and religious ideas of the time allowed men to take on fluid masculine and feminine roles based on whether they are in a relationship with Jesus, God or his king (where he takes on the feminine) or a relationship with his wife, congregation (for preachers) or in daily life (here he assumes his masculine role). Gender can move about as indicated by mens fluid gender roles in this period. Biology could change as well, based upon an imbalance of the humors of the body. A woman could become a man if their body were to heat up through acts like work. This was not acceptable in society and stores about such changes were spread as cautionary tales to the women of the time. By making the gender roles more fixed for women, they were more easily suppressed in the community. The biological or as it was called during the times of the Reformation and the Calvinist model, humoral makeup of a woman makes gender roles unbreakable when viewed through a social lens. When a woman like Puritan Anne Hutchinson of the Massachusetts Bay Colony assumed a male duty such as preaching and educating other women, she violated the societal norms but furthermore the spiritual ones as well. She cannot assume a male role in the church in the same ways that a man can assume a feminine role. With two counts against her she was tried and

3 convicted not because she was a witch or what she was saying was wrong, but because society wouldnt allow her to upset the balance of power that was in place. A strict dichotomy was in place for women with extreme ends, dire or magnificent.2 Women can change between a good or evil state without changing their gender roles. John Webster wrote that women to man is either a god or wolf.3 By using the term wolf, Webster alludes to men of God as the flock, a descriptor commonly used in the world of the church that was the power during this time. By giving the men this label they remain good, the sheep of God, and set them out to be displayed as the potential victims of women under bad influences. This claim also insinuates that women are capable of being used for both good and evil, and those actions are based on the influences that act upon them. Women, speaking from the models used by John Calvin and Martin Luther, are much more open to such influences than men. According to Mack, under Calvins model of the humors, a womans body was believed to be more wet and spongy than a mans.4 They absorb with great ease and cannot let go of the influences that seep into their bodies.5 This humoral model also makes it easy for the people around you to see your spiritual state as your outside appearance is a reflection of your inner spirit.6 Luther, who preached the importance of works to exhaust the body, would have also found a reason for the weakness of women. According to Lutheran doctrine, the function of physical works was to exhaust the body so that it could not be capable of Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 19-20. 3 Mack, 18. 4 Mack, 25. 5 Mack, 25-26. 6 Mack, 22. Martha Finch, Dissenting Bodies (Columbia University Press, 2012), 12.
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4 being possessed by the devil and doing evil.7 Because women generally performed less labor than men, the mens bodies were better protected from the evils of the world, but women were not. Based on that evidence the corollary may be drawn that lower-class women, who may have had to work with their husbands and such, were slightly more protected than those upper class women who did not have to work. These upper-class women would also be more protected in society and less likely to be accused a witch or lunatic. With such an amphibious, changing nature, there was no real sense of self, which God or Satan could take advantage of and influence.8 Structurally (based on Calvin) and socially (based on Luther), women are designed to be more pliable and influenced by outside and sometimes supernatural forces. This supports the idea at the time that they needed to be under the control of a man, to provide them with the structure and good influences that they need to attain good position.9 Webster identifies two things in his statement of the relationship of women to men. First, that there is a strict dichotomy that a woman may fall into. Secondly, that one is good, Godly in fact, and that the second is evil, a wolf to seduce, destroy, undermine and devour as the animal does to the flock. Many upheld an idea similar to this, that a woman could be used as a strong (Godly) and/or dangerous (Satanic) vessel.10 Though Webster makes this statement in a more poetic way than most, the ideas of women as either devoutly good or pure satanic had long permeated the structure of society. Luther

Hillerbrand, 46-47. Mack, 24. 9 Ibid., 27. 10 Ibid., 23.

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5 believed that women only existed to provide children to the next generation.11 While marriage was more highly prioritized beginning with the Reformation, it elevated their status but kept them subjugated with the idea that the man was the head of the household.12 Women were described in many ways both good and bad. Cunning and malleable whores were negative perceptions while the mother, virgin and wife were held to be more esteemed gestures.13 Women who were accused of being seductresses were compared to Eve and the way she seduced Adam into the original sin while in Eden. When it came to prophetic and visionary women of the time, they were also regarded as just a silly old woman.14 It was as if to discredit her knowledge or visions by saying that if God really had something important to tell His people, he surely would not go through a woman to deliver it. Many of the women of a visionary or prophetic nature were treated as condemned, insane or wicked during this time period. A few exceptions to this model can be made for those who possessed wealth, education or aristocratic status. Being that there was a variation in reaction to individual women, circumstances unique to each helped to determine their fate.15 Women who were of such beliefs were to be rid of, for the fear that their thoughts may leak over into the minds of others, disrupting social order and taking power from men. Womens humoral make-up and the resulting emotional disposition made them especially high risk for contracting and passing on such lunacy.16 According to Mack,

Peter Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2009), 85. 12 Marshall, 84-85. 13 Mack, 19. 14 Ibid., 22. 15 Ibid., 17. 16 Mack., 26.
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6 Sarah Wright, a female visionary, was thought to be more effective at passing along her message when she cried during her speaking.17 Ideas were thought to be carried from person to person better through emotions, making women more targetable than men. As a leader of a group of women, Anne Hutchinson was just such a women the church and town elders of her community would fear. Hutchinson was found to have troubled the peace of the commonwealth [of Massachusetts Bay] and the churches [there][and having] spoken divers (sic.) things [which were actions not] fitting for [her] sex.18 She was found guilty and expelled from her community. More cases exist where women were looked down upon in similar ways to Hutchinson and there are also cases those where the women were seen to still be of honor and respect. Lady Eleanor Davies experienced both states of social perception during her life. At first she was heralded as a prophet after she was able to predict the deaths of her husband and the Duke of Buckingham.19 However, once she published a book on her political thoughts and vandalized a church she was considered insane and committed to Bedlam as both a witch and a lunatic.20 When she was released she correctly predicted fire in London and came full circle to again be seen as a prophet.21 She was buried with honor upon her death.22 Had this been any common woman, her story surely would not have ended so neatly. She came from a rich, powerful and eccentric family, all things that helped her stay in the limelight and avoid too heavy or lasting punishment before being

Ibid., 26. The Trial of Anne Hutchinson 19 Mack. 15-16. 20 Ibid., 16. 21 Ibid., 17. 22 Ibid., 17.
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7 restored to honor.23 Further, she was only displayed as a witch, heretic and a lunatic after she published a book of political thoughts that upset the king and her accurate predictions gained her a loyal following. Concern for her soul or the church was not part of the equation, nor was religion or witchcraft. Similar to Lady Davies, Mrs. Joan Drake was saved in the eyes of society by her aristocratic background. For almost ten years she was convicted of what ministers believed had to be satanic influence.24 But eventually, one of her counselors, Thomas Hooker explained that her case was paradigmatic of the believers inward preparation and ultimate spiritual triumph.25 Concern and desire for the patronage of her aristocratic family kept her safe from exile or even death despite the ministers certainties about her possession.26 Having such status allowed Drake to slip under the radar of heresy and damnation. Coming from an educated background, even spiritually, was not enough for a visionary woman as the leader of a group to be absolved by her courts. Anne Hutchinsons father had been a minister and she grew up with a better understanding of religion than most women and possibly men by the time she arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Though the ideas she preached to the people were not wrong, the fact that she was not a minister and not to mention a women, made her a threat to the male, and theoretically properly educated ministers. She also questioned the authority and souls of the ministers when she claimed that they preached a covenant of works instead of a

Ibid., 18. Ibid., 33. 25 Ibid., 33. 26 Ibid.

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8 covenant of faith, being the Puritan belief.27 She only gave credibility to one man Mr. Cotton and discredited the others, angering and offending them. Being a threat to them made her a threat to the safety of everyone in the town and she had to go. Not because she was wrong in what she spoke, but because she was a woman and had no power to bargain with. She was alone, in an unfamiliar place with only one alliance (Mr. Cotton), rendering her outnumbered and without hope of saving. Like Anne Hutchinson, Margaret Vincent probably felt as though she was doing no wrong, or was even helping God when she murdered her two ungodly children.28 Without the guidance of a man (i.e. church and the law) she was driven mad, according to authorities, to strangle her two children with her garter.29 Though she was viewed in her community as a nice woman with a good education and background, she was hanged for her crime when her brain became, as Mack outs it, a nuclear weapon in the paws of a wild animal.30 Such a dramatic analogy, using technology not applicable to the sixteenth century illustrates how fearful people had grown of the women they believed were under the influences of evil. Even those women who were viewed as good people can be changed in an instant, rendering them both as unstable and as dangerous as a nuclear bomb. It was often assumed that the sins or graces of women could be passed on to their children in various forms. It was regarded that where an un-churched mother walked the grass would not grow, and that her sins would continue to punish life.31 When Mary

The Trial of Anne Hutchinson 27. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid., 36.

27 28Mack.,

9 Onion refused to take the blame placed on all for Eves original sin, she was punished with the stillbirth of her child, making her realize she had neglected her spiritual good.32 A well-regarded woman, Elizabeth Gouge, died quietly in childbirth as a soldier, with honor as was thought to be her calling.33 Mary Parsons, in contrast to the other women, blamed her witchcraft and turn to the devil on the loss of her child. The Devil disguised himself ass her lost child and persuaded her to evil.34 Upper-class women were more likely to experience stillbirths because of the stress placed on them to produce male heirs.35 The birth of an ugly baby was a reflection of the sins of the mother. Despite the biology obtained from the father a deformed child could only be the result of an unfit woman. After Anne Hutchinsons expulsion by her town governors, she was said to have given birth to over 30 monsters as a reflection of her inner deformation.36 Anne Askew of England is perhaps the exception to the rule. Though she was born into a noble family and is assumed to have had a good education, she was horribly persecuted for her religious beliefs. She was first arrested after trying to divorce her Catholic husband on the grounds of religious differences (she was Protestant).37 After her release she was recaptured and was tortured so badly she needed to be carried around in a chair.38 She was eventually burned at the stake as a heretic July 16, 1546.39 Perhaps her refusal to be bullied by the authorities is what caused her conviction.40 This seems to be a

Ibid., 37. Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 28. 36 Ibid., 42. 37 HIllerbrand, 27. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.
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10 logical answer because the monarch of England at the time of her death and before it was Protestant Edward VI, who would have shared her beliefs and not prosecuted her for heresy the way his successor Mary Tudor, also known as Bloody Mary, was famous for doing to Protestants during her reign. However, war, economic crisis and religious turmoil in England (partly due to the mess Henry had made before Edward) could have tipped the scales out of Annes favor if she were to cause any kind of trouble. Even women without visions, but who were unmarried could have been considered too dangerous for society and some cities had laws that prevented them from living in cities. Girls who came from a family with little money, primarily not enough to pay her dowry were sent off to convents, which essentially exiled them from society and life. Any actions that the patriarchal rulers of Europe and colonies across the Atlantic deemed unfit were to be stomped out in order to create the image that all was peaceful and that the people were happy with their governmental and church bodies. Women, who were the most oppressed by these structures, posed the greatest threat to this picture perfect life and had to be dealt with. Concern for the afterlife and their souls were not priority because afterlife did not affect those living, and in power. Women have been looked down upon and persecuted all through history for many different reasons. Henry VIII finally beheaded Anne Boleyn for allegedly committing incest with her brother. Women were burned at the stake as witches and regarded as nothing more than tools to produce heirs. Curiously enough, the women who were said to have been destroying society, undermining men and committing sins against God were only expressing ideas that scared and threatened the power of the men who ran society at this time.