Woman's Life in Colonial Days by Carl Holliday

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It is a genuine pleasure to us of little faith to note that such trust
was indeed justified; for, continued Johnson: "As they were encouraging
one another in Christ's careful providing for them, they lift up their
eyes and saw two ships coming in, and presently this news came to their
ears, that they were come--full of victuals.... After this manner did
Christ many times graciously provide for this His people, even at the
last cast."

If we will stop to consider the fact that many of these women of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony were accustomed to the comfortable living of
the middle-class country people of England, with considerable material
wealth and even some of the luxuries of modern civilization, we may
imagine, at least in part, the terrifying contrast met with in the New
World. For conditions along the stormy coast of New England were indeed
primitive. Picture the founding, for instance, of a town that later was
destined to become the home of philosopher and seer--Concord,
Massachusetts. Says Johnson in his _Wonder Working Providence_:

"After they had thus found out a place of abode they burrow themselves
in the earth for their first shelter, under some hillside, casting the
earth aloft upon timber; they make a smoke fire against the earth at the
highest side and thus these poor servants of Christ provide shelter for
themselves, their wives and little ones, keeping off the short showers
from their lodgings, but the long rains penetrate through to their great
disturbance in the night season. Yet in these poor wigwams they sing
psalms, pray and praise their God till they can provide them houses,
which ordinarily was not wont to be with many till the earth by the
Lord's blessing brought forth bread to feed them, their wives and little
ones.... Thus this poor people populate this howling desert, marching
manfully on, the Lord assisting, through the greatest difficulties and
sorest labors that ever any with such weak means have done."

And Margaret Winthrop writes thus to her step-son in England: "When I
think of the troublesome times and manyfolde destractions that are in
our native Countrye, I thinke we doe not pryse oure happinesse heare as
we have cause, that we should be in peace when so many troubles are in
most places of the world."

Many another quotation could be presented to emphasize the impressions
given above. Reading these after the lapse of nearly three centuries, we
marvel at the strength, the patience, the perseverance, the imperishable
hope, trust, and faith of the Puritan woman. Such hardships and
privations as have been described above might seem sufficient; but these
were by no means all or even the greatest of the trials of womanhood in
the days of the nation's childhood. To understand in any measure at all
the life of a child or a wife or a mother of the Puritan colonies with
its strain and suffering, we must know and comprehend her religion. Let
us examine this--the dominating influence of her life.

_II. Woman and Her Religion_

Paradoxical as it may seem, religion was to the colonial woman both a
blessing and a curse. Though it gave courage and some comfort it was as
hard and unyielding as steel. We of this later hour may well shudder
when we read the sermons of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards; but if
the mere reading causes astonishment after the lapse of these hundreds
of years, what terror the messages must have inspired in those who lived
under their terrific indictments, prophecies, and warnings. Here was a
religion based on Judaism and the Mosaic code, "an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth." Moses Coit Tyler has declared in his _History of
American Literature_:[2] "They did not attempt to combine the sacred and
the secular; they simply abolished the secular and left only the sacred.
The state became the church; the king a priest; politics a department of
theology; citizenship the privilege of those only who had received
baptism and the Lord's Supper."

And what an idea of the sacred was theirs! The gentleness, the mercy,
the loving kindness that are of God so seldom enter into those ancient
discussions that such attributes are almost negligible. Michael
Wigglesworth's poem, _The Day of Doom_, published in 1662, may be
considered as an authoritative treatise on the theology of the Puritans;
for it not only was so popular as to receive several reprints, but was
sanctioned by the elders of the church themselves. If this was
orthodoxy--and the proof that it was is evident--it was of a sort that
might well sour and embitter the nature of man and fill the gentle soul
of womanhood with fear and dark forebodings. We well know that the
Puritans thoroughly believed that man's nature was weak and sinful, and
that the human soul was a prisoner placed here upon earth by the Creator
to be surrounded with temptations. This God is good, however, in that he
has given man an opportunity to overcome the surrounding evils.

"But I'm a prisoner,
Under a heavy chain;
Almighty God's afflicting hand,
Doth me by force restrain.

* * * * *

"But why should I complain
That have so good a God,
That doth mine heart with comfort fill
Ev'n whilst I feel his rod?

* * * * *

"Let God be magnified,
Whose everlasting strength
Upholds me under sufferings
Of more than ten years' length."

The _Day of Doom_ is, in the main, its author's vision of judgment day,
and, whatever artistic or theological defects it may have, it undeniably
possesses realism. For instance, several stanzas deal with one of the
most dreadful doctrines of the Puritan faith, that all infants who died
unbaptized entered into eternal torment--a theory that must have
influenced profoundly the happiness and woe of colonial women. The poem
describes for us what was then believed should be the scene on that
final day when young and old, heathen and Christian, saint and sinner,
are called before their God to answer for their conduct in the flesh.
Hear the plea of the infants, who dying, at birth before baptism could
be administered, asked to be relieved from punishment on the grounds
that they have committed no sin.

"If for our own transgression,
or disobedience,
We here did stand at thy left hand,
just were the Recompense;
But Adam's guilt our souls hath spilt,
his fault is charg'd upon us;
And that alone hath overthrown and utterly
undone us."

Pointing out that it was Adam who ate of the tree and that they were
innocent, they ask:

"O great Creator, why was our nature
depraved and forlorn?
Why so defil'd, and made so vil'd,
whilst we were yet unborn?
If it be just, and needs we must
transgressors reckon'd be,
Thy mercy, Lord, to us afford,
which sinners hath set free."

But the Creator answers:

"God doth such doom forbid,
That men should die eternally
for what they never did.
But what you call old Adam's fall,
and only his trespass,
You call amiss to call it his,
both his and yours it was."

The Judge then inquires why, since they would have received the
pleasures and joys which Adam could have given them, the rewards and
blessings, should they hesitate to share his "treason."

"Since then to share in his welfare,
you could have been content,
You may with reason share in his treason,
and in the punishment,
Hence you were born in state forlorn,
with natures so depraved
Death was your due because that you
had thus yourselves behaved.

* * * * *

"Had you been made in Adam's stead,
you would like things have wrought,
And so into the self-same woe
yourselves and yours have brought."

Then follows a reprimand upon the part of the judge because they should
presume to question His judgments, and to ask for mercy:

"Will you demand grace at my hand,
and challenge what is mine?
Will you teach me whom to set free,
and thus my grace confine.

"You sinners are, and such a share
as sinners may expect;
Such you shall have, for I do save
none but mine own Elect.

"Yet to compare your sin with theirs
who liv'd a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less
though every sin's a crime.

"A crime it is, therefore in bliss
you may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
the easiest room in Hell."

Would not this cause anguish to the heart of any mother? Indeed, we
shall never know what intense anxiety the Puritan woman may have
suffered during the few days intervening between the hour of the birth
and the date of the baptism of her infant. It is not surprising,
therefore, that an exceedingly brief period was allowed to elapse before
the babe was taken from its mother's arms and carried through snow and
wind to the desolate church. Judge Sewall, whose _Diary_ covers most of
the years from 1686 to 1725, and who records every petty incident from
the cutting of his finger to the blowing off of the Governor's hat, has
left us these notes on the baptism of some of his fourteen children:

"April 8, 1677. Elizabeth Weeden, the Midwife, brought the infant to
the third Church when Sermon was about half done in the afternoon ...
I named him John." (Five days after birth.)[3] "Sabbath-day, December
13th 1685. Mr. Willard baptizeth my Son lately born, whom I named
Henry." (Four days after birth.)[4] "February 6, 1686-7. Between 3 and
4 P.M. Mr. Willard baptized my Son, whom I named Stephen." (Five days
after birth.)[5]

Little wonder that infant mortality was exceedingly high, especially
when the baptismal service took place on a day as cold as this one
mentioned by Sewall: "Sabbath, Janr. 24 ... This day so cold that the
Sacramental Bread is frozen pretty hard, and rattles sadly as broken
into the Plates."[6] We may take it for granted that the water in the
font was rapidly freezing, if not entirely frozen, and doubtless the
babe, shrinking under the icy touch, felt inclined to give up the
struggle for existence, and decline a further reception into so cold
and forbidding a world. Once more hear a description by the kindly,
but abnormally orthodox old Judge: "Lord's Day, Jany 15, 1715-16. An
extraordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow.... Bread was frozen at the
Lord's Table: Though 'twas so Cold, yet John Tuckerman was baptised.
At six a-clock my ink freezes so that I can hardly write by a good
fire in my Wive's Chamber. Yet was very Comfortable at Meeting. Laus
Deo."[7]

But let us pass to other phases of this theology under which the Puritan
woman lived. The God pictured in the _Day of Doom_ not only was of a
cruel and angry nature but was arbitrary beyond modern belief. His wrath
fell according to his caprice upon sinner or saint. We are tempted to
inquire as to the strange mental process that could have led any human
being to believe in such a Creator. Regardless of doctrine, creed, or
theology, we cannot totally dissociate our earthly mental condition from
that in the future state; we cannot refuse to believe that we shall have
the same intelligent mind, and the same ability to understand, perceive,
and love. Apparently, however, the Puritan found no difficulty in
believing that the future existence entailed an entire change in the
principles of love and in the emotions of sympathy and pity.

"He that was erst a husband pierc'd
with sense of wife's distress,
Whose tender heart did bear a part
of all her grievances.
Shall mourn no more as heretofore,
because of her ill plight,
Although he see her now to be
a damn'd forsaken wight.

"The tender mother will own no other
of all her num'rous brood
But such as stand at Christ's right hand,
acquitted through his Blood.
The pious father had now much rather
his graceless son should lie
In hell with devils, for all his evils,
burning eternally."

(_Day of Doom._)

But we do not have to trust to Michael Wigglesworth's poem alone for a
realistic conception of the God and the religion of the Puritans. It is
in the sermons of the day that we discover a still more unbending,
harsh, and hideous view of the Creator and his characteristics. In the
thunderings of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, we, like the colonial
women who sat so meekly in the high, hard benches, may fairly smell the
brimstone of the Nether World. Why, exclaims Jonathan Edwards in his
sermon, _The Eternity of Hell Torments_:

"Do but consider what it is to suffer extreme torment forever and ever;
to suffer it day and night, from one day to another, from one year to
another, from one age to another, from one thousand ages to another, and
so, adding age to age, and thousands to thousands, in pain, in wailing
and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth; with
your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, with your bodies and
every member full of racking torture, without any possibility of
getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your
cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him.... How
dismal will it be, when you are under these racking torments, to know
assuredly that you never, never shall be delivered from them; to have no
hope; when you shall wish that you might but be turned into nothing, but
shall have no hope of it; when you shall wish that you might be turned
into a toad or a serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would
rejoice, if you might but have any relief, after you shall have endured
these torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it; when
after you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and stars, in
your dolorous groans and lamentations, without any rest day or night,
when after you shall have worn out a thousand more such ages, yet you
shall have no hope, but shall know that you are not one whit nearer to
the end of your torments; but that still there are the same groans, the
same shrieks, the same doleful cries, incessantly to be made by you, and
that the smoke of your torment shall still ascend up, forever and ever;
and that your souls, which shall have been agitated with the wrath of
God all this while, yet will still exist to bear more wrath; your
bodies, which shall have been burning and roasting all this while in
these glowing flames, yet shall not have been consumed, but will remain
to roast through an eternity yet, which will not have been at all
shortened by what shall have been past."

When we remember that to the Puritan man, woman, or child the message of
the preacher meant the message of God, we may imagine what effect such
words had on a colonial congregation. To the overwrought nerves of many
a Puritan woman, taught to believe meekly the doctrines of her father,
and weakened in body by ceaseless childbearing and unending toil, such a
picture must indeed have been terrifying. And the God that she and her
husband heard described Sabbath after Sabbath was not only heartily
willing to condemn man to eternal torment but capable of enjoying the
tortures of the damned, and gloating in strange joy over the writhings
of the condemned. Is it any wonder that in the midst of Jonathan
Edward's sermon, _Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_, men and women
sprang to their feet and shrieked in anguish, "What shall we do to be
saved?"

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is
dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks
upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; he is
of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten
thousand times as abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and
venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than
ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand
that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; it is ascribed
to nothing else that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was
suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to
sleep; and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped
into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held
you up; there is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to
hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure
eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea,
there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not
this very moment drop down into hell."

Under such teachings the girl of colonial New England grew into
womanhood; with such thoughts in mind she saw her children go down into
the grave; with such forebodings she herself passed out into an
uncertain Hereafter. Nor was there any escape from such sermons; for
church attendance was for many years compulsory, and even when not
compulsory, was essential for those who did not wish to be politically
and socially ostracized. The preachers were not, of course, required to
give proof for their declarations; they might well have announced, "Thus
saith the Lord," but they preferred to enter into disquisitions
bristling with arguments and so-called logical deductions. For instance,
note in Edwards' sermon, _Why Saints in Glory will Rejoice to see the
Torments of the Damned_, the chain of reasoning leading to the
conclusion that those enthroned in heaven shall find joy in the unending
torture of their less fortunate neighbors:

"They will rejoice in seeing the _justice_ of God glorified in the
sufferings of the damned. The misery of the damned, dreadful as it is,
is but what justice requires. They in heaven will see and know it much
more clearly than any of us do here. They will see how perfectly just
and righteous their punishment is and therefore how properly inflicted
by the supreme Governor of the world.... They will rejoice when they see
him who is their Father and eternal portion so glorious in his justice.
The sight of this strict and immutable justice of God will render him
amiable and adorable in their eyes. It will occasion rejoicing in them,
as they will have the greater sense of _their own happiness_, by seeing
the contrary misery. It is the nature of pleasure and pain, of happiness
and misery, greatly to heighten the sense of each other.... When they
shall see how miserable others of their fellow-creatures are, who were
naturally in the same circumstances with themselves; when they shall see
the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames of their
burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that
they in the meantime are in the most blissful state, and shall surely be
in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!... When they shall see the
dreadful miseries of the damned, and consider that they deserved the
same misery, and that it was sovereign grace, and nothing else, which
made them so much to differ from the damned, that if it had not been for
that, they would have been in the same condition; but that God from all
eternity was pleased to set his love upon them, that Christ hath laid
down his life for them, and hath made them thus gloriously happy
forever, O how will they adore that dying love of Christ, which has
redeemed them from so great a misery, and purchased for them so great
happiness, and has so distinguished them from others of their
fellow-creatures!"

It was a strange creed that led men to teach such theories. And when we
learn that Jonathan Edwards was a man of singular gentleness and
kind-heartedness, we realize that it must have tortured him to preach
such doctrines, but that he believed it his sacred duty to do so.

The religion, however, that the Puritan woman imbibed from girlhood to
old age went further than this; it taught the theory of a personal
devil. To the New England colonists Satan was a very real individual
capable of taking to himself a physical form with the proverbial tail,
horns, and hoofs. Hear what Cotton Mather, one of the most eminent
divines of early Massachusetts, has to say in his _Memorable
Providences_ about this highly personal Satan: "There is both a God and
a Devil and Witchcraft: That there is no out-ward Affliction, but what
God may (and sometimes doth) permit Satan to trouble his people withal:
That the Malice of Satan and his Instruments, is very great against the
Children of God: That the clearest Gospel-Light shining in a place, will
not keep some from entering hellish Contracts with infernal Spirits:
That Prayer is a powerful and effectual Remedy against the malicious
practices of Devils and those in Covenant with them."[8]

And His Satanic Majesty had legions of followers, equally insistent on
tormenting humanity. In _The Wonders of the Invisible World_, published
in 1692, Mather proves that there is a devil and that the being has
specific attributes, powers, and limitations:

"A devil is a fallen angel, an angel fallen from the fear and
love of God, and from all celestial glories; but fallen to all
manner of wretchedness and cursedness.... There are multitudes,
multitudes, in the valley of destruction, where the devils are!
When we speak of the devil, 'tis a name of multitude.... The
devils they swarm about us, like the frogs of Egypt, in the most
retired of our chambers. Are we at our boards? beds? There will
be devils to tempt us into carnality. Are we in our shops? There
will be devils to tempt us into dishonesty. Yea, though we get
into the church of God, there will be devils to haunt us in the
very temple itself, and there tempt us to manifold misbehaviors.
I am verily persuaded that there are very few human affairs
whereinto some devils are not insinuated. There is not so much as
a journey intended, but Satan will have an hand in hindering or
furthering of it."

"...'Tis to be supposed, that there is a sort of arbitrary, even
military government, among the devils.... These devils have a
prince over them, who is king over the children of pride. 'Tis
probable that the devil, who was the ringleader of that mutinous
and rebellious crew which first shook off the authority of God,
is now the general of those hellish armies; our Lord that
conquered him has told us the name of him; 'tis Belzebub; 'tis he
that is the devil and the rest are his angels, or his
soldiers.... 'Tis to be supposed that some devils are more
peculiarly commission'd, and perhaps qualify'd, for some
countries, while others are for others.... It is not likely that
every devil does know every language; or that every devil can do
every mischief. 'Tis possible that the experience, or, if I may
call it so, the education of all devils is not alike, and that
there may be some difference in their abilities...."

What was naturally the effect of such a faith upon the sensitive nerves
of the women of those days? Viewed in its larger aspects this was an
objective, not a subjective religion. It could but make the sensitive
soul super-sensitive, introspective, morbidly alive to uncanny and weird
suggestions, and strangely afraid of the temptation of enjoying earthly
pleasures. Its followers dared not allow themselves to become deeply
attached to anything temporal; for such an emotion was the device of the
devil, and God would surely remove the object of such affection. Whether
through anger or jealousy or kindness, the Creator did this, the Puritan
woman seems not to have stopped to consider; her belief was sufficient
that earthly desires and even natural love must be repressed. Winthrop,
a staunch supporter of colonial New England creeds as well as of
independence, gives us an example of God's actions in such a matter: "A
godly woman of the church of Boston, dwelling sometime in London,
brought with her a parcel of very fine linen of great value, which she
set her heart too much upon, and had been at charge to have it all newly
washed, and curiously folded and pressed, and so left it in press in her
parlor over night." Through the carelessness of a servant, the package
caught on fire and was totally destroyed. "But it pleased God that the
loss of this linen did her much good, both in taking off her heart from
worldly comforts, and in preparing her for a far greater affliction by
the untimely death of her husband...."[9]

Especially did this doctrine apply to the love of human beings. How
often must it have grieved the Puritan mother to realize that she must
exercise unceasing care lest she love her children too intensely! For
the passionate love of a mother for her babe was but a rash temptation
to an ever-watchful and ever-jealous God to snatch the little one away.
Preachers declared it in the pulpit, and writers emphasized it in their
books; the trusting and faithful woman dared not believe otherwise.
Once more we may turn to Winthrop for proof of this terrifying doctrine:

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