User:RaccoonReader/Puritans

Gender and punishment

While Puritan doctrine viewed men and women spiritually equal, laymen reinterpreted spirituality to reflect their ideas of masculinity. Men displayed their spirituality through their public actions and behaviors, such as being a good neighbor to the community and father to their families. Women were expected to reflect their inner spirituality with their entire being. The human soul was often described using feminine language, but men were allowed to separate their mind and body from their souls in order to maintain an image of masculinity on the outside. If men and women were found to have not met these standards, they would face censure.

People would be censured for things that ranged from immodesty and cursing to domestic abuse and fornication. In these proceedings, the accused would confess to their wrongdoing in front of the congregation so they could serve as an example. The audience would listen for certain words that demonstrated the accused was truly remorseful for their actions. Similar to the distinction between female and male spirituality, the language women and men used in their confessions differed. The feminized language expected from women included words such as “shame,” “wounded,” “great sin,” “nature,” “pity,” “evil,” “poor,” and “grief.” On the other hand, men used more objective phrases such as “rules,” breach,” offense,” desire,” forgiveness,” actions,” and “brethren.”

The process itself of censuring an individual in the community was gendered. While anyone in the community could accuse another person of sinning, only male laymen could vote on a church censure. Additionally, the things men and women were censured for differed. As a result of the Puritan belief of women as “Eve,” a temptress and sinful seductress, women were censured for fornication far more often than men. In the economic sphere, women lacked formal power. Thus, men were censured more often for poor business practices. Even if a commercial dispute arose for a woman, the congregation treated her differently than a man. Such was the case for a woman named Chaplain: “In 1696, Dorchester’s Sister Chaplain borrowed money from John Green to buy a shipment of wine. When Green died and his estate tried to collect the debt from Chaplain, she refused. The congregation did not cite her for breaking a contract, but censured her for lying.” Women would also at times face harsher punishments than men for the same sin. “Boston's Second Church censured John Farnum for making bad comments about another church and its pastor, and they noted he was "breaking the rule of truth." However, that same congregation recorded much harsher words about Sarah Stevens, whom they admonished for "many evill carriages and sundry filthy speeches, not fit to be named." And when they censured her, they said she "grew more vile and hard hearted." The court also took up her case and sentenced her to jail and two whippings.”