Historically women have been continually overlooked and underrepresented in many areas of society. In the ages before feminists and suffragettes, women’s autonomy was consistently tread upon. In the centuries of corsets and petticoats women have been undermined and overlooked. But even with these challenges, how have women exercised the very basic human right of decision making and acting upon one’s free will?
Colonial Virginia provides an excellent framework for examining this question. By examining the lives of both English colonists and American Indians allows us to examine women in varying and distinct circumstances and in doing so emphasizing the choices that they could make without the influence of men.
Throughout the colonial period and even far after it, patriarchy was the normal and accepted societal structure. A woman’s worth was tied to her husband and her purpose was in the home to reproduce and raise a family. A girl’s upbringing was not centered around any type of career training or even general education beyond that which her future role as homemaker would require. As her male counterparts would go to school or learn a trade, a young woman would be restricted to the home, where her mother would teach basic reading, writing, and math skills as well as practical abilities such as making clothing and cooking. A woman’s life was kept to the private sphere, where she raised children and took care of her husband. Her only interaction in the public sphere was typically purchasing home goods or socializing. Native American women also lived in a world of patriarchy, although less so that European women, but they still needed to seek out ways to exercise autonomy. European perceptions of Native women are also reflective of these European gender roles. Eyewitness accounts (generally written by men) focus on Native men, only mentioning women in the context of labor division and those instances are only used to provide a critique of Native men.
Clearly, the lives of women in colonial Virginia need some filling in, for certainly they did more with their lives than raise children, and perhaps if indeed child rearing was their entire lifestyle, they surely showed more autonomy than simply allowing their husbands to dictate their lives. In colonial Virginia, where patriarchy was a normal and accepted European societal structure, European women found multiple ways to act independently. Although Native women held more power than their European counterparts, men carried more authority in European eyes. This essay will examine several methods in which English and Native women exercised autonomy in the public spheres of colonial Virginia: English women through indentured servitude, upholding moral standards, and business ventures and Native women through roles in government, division of labor, and sexuality. These methods clearly demonstrate colonial women’s abilities to act independently of men and to maintain their individual autonomy. However, colonial women will never be able to fully escape the patriarchy, even in our study of them. As we will see, these methods paradoxically both support women’s autonomy and uphold the patriarchy.
In the early days of colonization in Virginia, few family units came to the New World. Because of this, the many single men in the area were looking for wives and any single woman could have her choice of several men. The first way that women exercised autonomy in early Virginia is through indentured servitude in the earlier days of the colony. Indentured servitude is a system in which a person would pledge years of service (generally anywhere from five to seven years) to another person in exchange for passage to the New World. Male indentured servants would typically receive tools and a set amount of land upon the fulfilment of their duty while women would be able to choose their future upon their release.
Because the number of women in the early colonies was few, indentured women could have their choice from multiple bachelor’s once they finished their contract. This provided an opportunity to raise their station or just simply have a choice in their future, unlike their counterparts in England. This system gave lower class women an opportunity to raise their social standing by getting passage to America and then marrying a man of a higher station.
Here’s where our first paradox lies: these women, although they would later get the opportunity to choose a mate, would first have to give up all of their independence for multiple years. For many, this was worth the trade. With the Industrial Revolution beginning in England, jobs were harder and harder to find, and there weren’t many opportunities for women in the first place. Many women in England settled in the choice of mate because they didn’t have a choice. They would marry the first suitor that came along in fear that there would be no others. And depending on the person they were indentured to, life as an indentured servant could be worse. For example, when Mary Gorms was indentured to John Smith in 1692, her contract stipulated that he had to provide her with food and lodging for the five years that she worked for him. Nonetheless, indentured servitude was not an easy life, but would be considered worth it for many women who wanted to have a choice in their lives and thus exercise their individual autonomy.
As the colony continued to develop, the role of women in public society shifted. It soon fell upon “good wives” to uphold moral standards in society. In doing so, they exercised a life outside the home and independent from their husbands. In order to sustain morality in society, these good wives would be on the lookout for potential moral downfalls and report them to their husband or other male leaders.
In the trial of Thomas Hall, for example, it fell upon good wives to determine societal standards. Thomas/ine was an intersex man living as both a man and a woman in colonial Virginia. They were raised as a woman, but was indentured as a man. These “good wives” rumored that Thomas/ine switched between man and woman and that they had sexual relationships with both genders. This was brought to court after Thomas/ine slept with a maid. They were then subjected to a physical search by “good wives” and forced to live as a man. This instance shows the “good wives” involvement with the law and that their opinions were deemed trustworthy in colonial society.
The paradox here lies in the fact that an unmarried woman or a female indentured servant was considered a “nasty wench.” This therefore still places a woman’s worth and identity in her husband’s hands, or her master’s, and in his standing in society. This idea also allows men in general to define stereotypes for women and to categorize them based upon marital and racial status.
During the 18th century, female-owned and managed businesses (usually taverns) became more and more common. Some men would choose to leave their business to their wives upon their deaths and their widows would then continue to run the business. In some cases, wives would also manage their husband’s business ventures while they were away. Women would also leave their business ventures to their daughters upon their death. As Sarah Meacham examines, Virginia magistrates would prefer to give tavern licenses to men whose wives had tavern keeping experience. In the eighteenth century, a tavern was more than a bar or a restaurant, as we think of them today. Instead, a tavern was a meeting place, a hotel, a market, and a post office. In a tavern, men would meet to exchange ideas, discuss politics, and share news. People would buy and sell goods and slaves there and collect their mail at a tavern. Taverns would host events and social occasions, connecting “the southern colonies to European high culture.” Clearly, a great historical significance lies in taverns, which were most frequently owned by or managed by women.
Therein lies another paradox in business ownership as well. Although women managed taverns and their husbands were rarely very involved, the tavern license was still in their husband’s name and it was their husband who had completed the application process and been accepted. As mentioned before, this decision was frequently made due to the wives’ experience, but it was still under the man’s name.
In Native societies, because women are seen as life givers, a patriarchal societal system was non existent in Indian eyes. Europeans on the other hand, inherently saw Native society through a patriarchal lens. In Native societies, however, kinship is matrilineal, meaning one’s family line is traced through the mother, not the father as in European patriarchal societies. This degraded the role of a father, which was taken on by a maternal uncle. Native women exercised autonomy through government roles, division of labor, and sexuality.
In Native society, women held more power than English women. As mentioned before, Native kinship is matrilineal, giving women more power in government at the clan level. Even in diplomatic efforts, women were present and could show their disapproval at sachem decisions. Women also could impeach and elect male leaders for their clan. However, European men saw the Native men as the authority in Native societies and their interpretation gave more power to Native men as it degraded the role of women.
Unlike European women, whose typical gender roles were typically confined to the home, Native women actively made contributions to society as a whole. In Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, she highlights the physical labor involved with moving camp. As observed by Helen Rountree, Native women were much more physically robust than English women. Native men therefore respected women because they were viewed as imperative and central to their society. John Brereton supports this saying that “the [Native] men are very dutifull towards [the Native women].” John Smith summarizes Native women’s usual tasks, saying that they “make mats, baskets, pots, morters, pound their corne, make their bread, prepare their victuals, plant their corne, gather their corne, beare all kind of burdens, and such like.”
Paradoxically, these gender based labor divisions still supported the patriarchy for the English colonists because English observers would critique Native men. They would see Native women farming, a task performed by men in European societies, and wonder what Native men did other than hunting, thus labeling the men as lazy and the women as dominating. John Smith for example, describes typical Native gender divided labor, stating that “The men bestow their times in fishing, hunting, warres, and such man-like exercises, scorning to be seene in any woman-like exercise, which is the cause that the women be very painefull, and the men often idle.” Although Native women held more power in society than their English counterparts, this was used to uphold the dominating patriarchy in the English colonies.
Native women also exercised their autonomy through their sexuality. Because of a gendered labor division and matrilineal kinship, Native men and women had very little in common and no real need for emotional intimacy. According to Helen Rountree, Native women were free to take extramarital lovers, as long as they had their husband’s permission, which was typically given. Men were free to do the same. Because of a lack of understanding between the sexes, husbands and wives did not expect much from one another and thus were usually accepting of their partner’s lovers. Situations of cowives were also not uncommon. Under this condition, men could take two wives: a young wife married for affection and an older wife married for her practical experience and life skills. Contractual marriage agreements also took place, establishing a marriage for a given period of time, which could then be renewed if both parties agreed. All of these situations were possible because of the lack of intimacy between men and women.
In this paradox, women had the same power as men, but they also had the power to make decisions for themselves, a luxury not usually afforded to European women. The other paradox is that a woman could take lovers with her husband’s permission, but the husband did not require her permission to do the same. John Smith describes a time when women were used as sexual diplomats, thus uniting the men in their mutual pursuit of sexual partners and upholding the patriarchy. He says that “[the women] solemnly invited him to their lodgings, where he was no sooner within the house, but all these Nymphes more tormented him then ever, with crowding, pressing, and hanging about him, most tediously crying, Love you not me? love you not me?” He also describes another instance in which the Powhatans offered him “life, libertie, land, and women” in exchange for his advice in attacking Jamestown. Women were also a sign of influence; as Smith says that “the Kings haue as many weomen as they will, his subjects two and most but one” and that as he met with Powhatan “At his heade sat a woman, at his feete another.”
By looking at both English and Native women in colonial Virginia, we can see that both groups of women exercised autonomy even though they did not actively fight the English patriarchal system. Although these early feminists clearly had some level of independence, this freedom often came at a cost of a paradox, usually one that reinforced the patriarchy in some way, shape, or form.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Secondary Sources:
Brown, Kathleen, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Meacham, Sarah Hand.“Keeping the Trade: The Persistence of Tavernkeeping Among Middling Women in Colonial Virginia,” Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal vol. 3, no 1 (2005).
Rountree, Helen C. “Powhatan Indian Women: The People Captain John Smith Barely Saw,” Ethnohistory vol. 45, no 1 (1998).
Primary Sources:
“Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia,” 8 April 1629, Jamestown, VA in Internet Archive (Pittsburgh, PA: 1924), archive.org/details/minutesofcouncil00virg.
Brereton, John. “A Briefe and True Relation of the Discouerie of the North Part of Virginia,” 1602 in Early Encounters in North America (Chicago), http://solomon.eena.alexanderstreet.com.proxyse.uits.iu.edu/cgi-bin/asp/philo/navigate.pl?eena.49
Rowlandson, Mary. “Soverainty and Goodness of God,” 1682, Massachusetts in Early Americas Digital Archive (College Park, MD), eada.lib.umd.edu/text-entries/soveraignty-and-goodness-of-god/.
Smith, John. “A True Relation of Such Occurences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of that Colony,” 1608 in Early Encounters in North America (Chicago), http://solomon.eena.alexanderstreet.com.proxyse.uits.iu.edu/cgi-bin/asp/philo/getobject.pl?c.115:3:0.eena
————–. “The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles,” 1624 in Documenting The American South (North Carolina), http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/smith/smith.html.
Smith, John. “Indenture of Mary Gorms to John Smith,” 7 November 1692, Middlesex County, VA in America, 1493-1945 (New York), americanhistory.amdigital.co.uk.proxyse.uits.iu.edu/Documents/SearchDetails/GLC03434.68.
MaryBeth Ames 