Puritans Behaving Badly (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781108478786)

Tracing the first three generations in Puritan New England, this book explores changes in language, gender expectations, and religious identities for men and women. The book argues that laypeople shaped gender conventions by challenging the ideas of ministers and rectifying more traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Although Puritan's emphasis on spiritual equality had the opportunity to radically alter gender roles, in daily practice laymen censured men and women differently - punishing men for public behavior that threatened the peace of their communities, and women for private sins that allegedly revealed their spiritual corruption. In order to retain their public masculine identity, men altered the original mission of Puritanism, infusing gender into the construction of religious ideas about public service, the creation of the individual, and the gendering of separate spheres. With these practices, Puritans transformed their 'errand into the wilderness' and the normative Puritan became female.

Author: Monica D. Fitzgerald
ISBN-10: 1108478786
ISBN-13: 9781108478786
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/21/2020
Pages: 186
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.00h x 7.10w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2021