Beyond "duty":
The female code behind America's strength
April 13, 1645, an ordinary day. John Winthrop, then governor of Massachusetts, wrote in his diary: Mr. Hopkins, the head of Hartford, Connecticut, visited Boston, and his wife devoted herself to reading and writing for many years, and wrote a lot, but ended up in a weak and delirious trance. Even though her husband cared for her, it was too late to discover the problem.
Winthrop's next comment is classic, defining "a woman's duty":
"If she had taken care of the housework according to a woman's duties, instead of going beyond her vocation to do what only men with stronger brains should do, she could have kept her mind and cultivated herself in God's place, making herself more useful and dignified."
At this time, Winthrop had only been in the Americas for 15 years, and he should still be considered an Englishman who had moved to this side of the ocean. His view of women is still inherited from the British and shared by the earthlings of that era.
The troubles of human society have always been thousands, and the matter of equal rights for men and women has never been on the table, and it will not be on the agenda until almost the 20th century. In the North American colonies, people worried all day long about whether their sins could be forgiven, and whether they would go to heaven or hell after death. The Puritans lived in this world, but did not consider themselves to belong to it.
But then again, ideas are ultimately a product of reality, and the situation is always stronger than people. In the special environment of the poor and remote North America, the pressure of real life is revising and transforming the original concept bit by bit, and colonial women are somewhat different in all aspects, and they are silently creating the unique tradition of American women.
First of all, it manifested itself in religion, which was a top priority at the time. With the same desire for grace, the same need for a holy life, women can also become full members of the Church in Massachusetts, and they gain an equality of faith and identity.
This is how the story of Ann Hutchinson, the first propagator of "Ladies Relay: America's Changemakers," happened: a woman who became a dissident leader, had a large following, and had an impact large enough to unease the authorities. This is probably rare in other societies of that era.
Ann Hutchinson (1591-1643)
Hutchinson was a maverick thinker, a woman who clearly went far beyond Winthrop's definition of what it means to be a woman, but she was real in early Massachusetts and had a real impact.
She was formally interrogated and allowed to defend herself, and she was eventually expelled from the colony because the fledgling colony could not withstand the onslaught of such theological dissent, let alone the challenge of a woman who did not conform to women's morals.
In order to facilitate reading the Bible, girls in the colonies went to school with boys between the ages of 5 and 7, but the educational opportunities after the age of 7 were very different.
If boys have good grades, they can go to grammar school for another 7 years, and then they may go to university. Girls' studies ended there, turning to needlework and, at best, private education. But anyway, girls are not illiterate after all, which is still leading the world at that time.
In the economic aspect, the wilderness is simple, a poor family cannot afford to support idlers, and women must participate in labor. Even the mistress of the Southern Manor, the figure closest to a lady in the New World, often took on a great deal of the chores of caring for and settling slaves.
When women contribute, they are likely to have a say in family affairs and have a more equal position in the family. At the same time, outside the family, colonial women also had the opportunity to make a living on their own: opening their own shops, running businesses, and working as nannies, all of which were seen as women's legitimate livelihoods, that is, women had independent economic outlets.
In terms of marriage, the colonies naturally adhered to the Christian ethic of monogamy, and at one point celibacy was not even allowed. In the New World of that era, a person can live to forty or fifty years old, probably even if he dies, has a short life expectancy, and has a high mortality rate, whether male or female, it is common to marry two or three times in a lifetime, and there are not a few left. The state of existence was such that life and death were commonplace, families were frequently reorganized, and the status of women became correspondingly equal: there was no discrimination against widows in society, they could inherit property after the death of their husbands and remarry with them, and wealthy widows were often ideal objects for courtship by gentlemen.
Thus, the result of the combination of objective conditions was that the colonies created a new woman that was slightly mutated from the Old World, and Bullstin wrote: "There is ample evidence that colonial American women played a more diverse, more active, better role in activities outside the kitchen, and, on the whole, more productive, than English women." ”
▲ American drama "1883" stills
The social roles of men and women have always been different from inside and outside, and the human world seems to be divided into two parts: the outside society is the world of men, and within the four walls of the family is the place of activity for women. North American colonial society, because it was rudimentary, thin, and simple, opened a side door for women, allowing them to quietly step out of the family and pay attention to social affairs while fulfilling their traditional role as women.
However, as Bulstine puts it: "Women in the colonial period were in many ways more productive than women in later periods, and their role in professional and public life was more prominent, a situation that did not reappear until the 20th century." ”
The sadness of women lies in this, their road to liberation will not be completed all at once, and the new traditions of colonial women have not been carried forward, but have risen and fallen with the development of society.
However, American women have never given up their pursuit of freedom and equality, and female pioneers of all eras have worked hard and persevered for hundreds of years. It can be seen from their stories that they not only live wonderful lives themselves, but also lead the majority of women to complete a century-long relay, just to fight for a new society with equal rights for men and women.