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Race and Gender in the Early Modern World
From: Cambridge University Press
| By:
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Witch crazes, laws to maintain "purity of the blood," sermons against women in masculine dress--early-modern Europeans and Americans were obsessed with creating hierarchies of gender, race and religion. Merry E. Wiesner relates the drastic steps these societies took to maintain what they believed was the natural social order. |
 nce we begin to investigate all relationships of power ("political" in its broadest sense) we find that gender was a central category in the thinking of early modern Europeans. Not only did the maintenance of proper power relationships between men and women serve as a basis for and a symbol of the larger political system, but also for the functioning of society as a whole. Relations between the sexes often provided a model for all dichotomized relations that involved authority and subordination, such as those between ruler and subject. Women or men who stepped outside their prescribed roles in other than extraordinary circumstances, and particularly those who made a point of emphasizing that they were doing this, were seen as threatening not only relations between the sexes, but the operation of the entire social order. They were "disorderly," a word that had much stronger negative connotations in the early modern period than today, and two somewhat distinct meanings--outside of the social structure and unruly or unreasonable. |
Women were outside of the social order because they were not as clearly demarcated into social groups as men. Unless they were members of a religious order or guild, women had no corporate identity at a time when society was conceived of as a hierarchy of groups rather than a collection of individuals.  One can see women's separation from such groups in the way that parades and processions were arranged in early modern Europe; if women were included, they came at the end as an undifferentiated group, following men who marched together on the basis of political position or occupation. The Athenian Mercury, a periodical designed to provide scientific knowledge for the general public, noted that its mission was to "all men and both sexes"; by "all" it meant all classes, ages, stations, and occupations, divisions that were not essential when reaching out to include women, for whom sex was the only significant variable. |
Rather than deny that women were less divided by class or occupation than men, a few feminist authors celebrated it. The Venetian writers Moderate Fonte and Lucrezia Marinelli both created models of societies based on cooperation and egalitarian relationships, which they saw as the essence of relationships between women; a feminized society, in their opinion, would be one without rank, and infinitely preferable to the hierarchies that prevailed among men. For most authors, however, such lack of hierarchy was a threat. When a few women in London appear to have adopted slightly masculine dress in the early seventeenth century--wearing shorter gowns, cutting their hair, and perhaps carrying small daggers--a host of pamphlets immediately attacked them for being "Men-women" and James I ordered the preachers of London to preach against the practice. The pamphlets were not especially concerned with the women's sexuality--they regarded them as aggressive man-chasers, not lesbians--but that such dress would lead to a breakdown in distinctions of social class as well as gender, because a woman in man's clothing did not reveal her class affiliation the way she would with her normal dress. To male eyes, middle-class wives and noblewomen all looked the same in doublet and hose. |
Women were also more "disorderly" than men because they were unreasonable, ruled by their physical body rather than their rational capacity, their lower parts rather than upper. This was one of the reasons they were more often suspected of witchcraft; it was also why they were thought to have non-diabolical magical powers in the realms of love and sexual attraction. At the same time that the number of witchcraft accusations grew, there was also an increase in accusations and trials for love magic, another way in which women could gain power over men's bodies and minds. This same period saw an increase in accusations and punishment of women for scolding, name-calling, and other types of verbal abuse, particularly when it was directed against their husbands. Through these legal sanctions, communities disciplined women who used words to gain power in their households or neighborhoods. |
Disorder in the proper gender hierarchy was linked with other types of social upheaval. Groups and individuals intent on some alteration in political or social hierarchies were also charged with wanting to change the proper hierarchy of the sexes. This charge was leveled at Anabaptists speaking about spiritual equality, Levellers advocating fewer economic disparities, and Quakers unwilling to take off their hats for social superiors. Only in the case of the Quakers was this charge justified at all, for, as we have seen, most Anabaptists on the Continent and revolutionary groups in England had very traditional views on gender roles. In cases where it was clear the group did not advocate equality between the sexes, charges of destroying the proper gender structure were still often made, but in these instances the charge was holding or wanting to hold wives in common. "Community of wives" appeared even more shocking to early modern Europeans than community of goods, requiring harsh suppression in the few instances it actually did appear--such as the Anabaptist community at Münster--and provoking scandal when simply mentioned as part of a mythical utopia--such as Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun (1602). ("Community of husbands" would be still more shocking, of course, which is perhaps why even those attacking Campanella could not mention that the arrangements for procreation in his utopia would have meant this as well.) |
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| Shakepeare's use of gender inversion is demonstrated by this nineteenth-century print of Miss Walstein as Rosalind in men's clothes. By the end of the play, Rosalind is back in women's clothing, and the social order has been restored. | |
Women dominating men were connected with other ways in which the expected hierarchy might be overturned--the unlearned leading the learned, the young controlling the old--in both learned and popular literature and popular festivals. Carnival plays frequently portrayed domineering wives in pants and henpecked husbands washing diapers alongside professors in dunce caps and peasants riding princes. These figures appear in woodcuts and engravings, and in songs, stories, and poems. Shakespeare and other learned authors used gender inversions, especially women in men's clothing, as plot devices with both serious and comic intent, but by the end of the plays the women are back in women's clothing, generally happily married, and the proper social order has been restored. |
Hierarchies of race and religion
Gender hierarchies were also linked with developing notions of racial difference, which grew out of earlier ideas about religious and class difference, all of which were conceptualized as "blood." People were regarded as having blood that was Jewish, Muslim, or Christian--or after the Reformation Protestant or Catholic--noble or commoner; marriages across these groups were often prohibited or regarded as threatening because they involved the mixing of unlike blood. In early modern Spain, "purity of the blood"--having no Jewish or Muslim ancestors--became an obsession, and throughout Europe children born of religiously mixed Christian marriages were often slightly mistrusted, for one never knew whether their Protestant or Catholic blood would ultimately triumph. Blood was also used to describe national boundaries, with those having "French blood" distinguished from those having "German blood," "English blood," or "Spanish blood." Describing differences as blood naturalized them, making them appear as if they were created by God in nature. |
As Europeans developed colonial empires, these notions of blood became a way of conceptualizing race as well as religion, class, and nation. In some cases religious and racial differences were linked. English Protestant authorities, for example, regarded the Catholicism of Gaelic-speaking Irish as one sign of the "natural" barbarity and inferiority of the "Irish race." Christian suspicions of those with "Jewish blood" or members of the "Jewish race" were not limited to Spain, with Jews throughout Europe increasingly regarded as a separate race as well as religion. Religion was also initially a marker of difference in colonial areas outside Europe, where the spread of Christianity was used as a justification for conquest and enslavement. As indigenous peoples converted, however, religion became less useful as a means of differentiation, and skin color became more important. For example, Virginia laws regarding fornication distinguished between "Christian" and "negroe" in 1662, but by 1691 between "white" men and women and those who were "negroe, mulatto, or Indian." Religious affiliation thus came to have no effect on one's blood in the binary racial classification developing in colonial North America (and its mother countries), where "one drop of [black] blood" made one black. In contrast to this binary classification, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies developed more complex racial hierarchies, but these were also based increasingly on skin color in what has been termed a "pigmentocracy." Racial categories in these colonies were to some degree arbitrary, with priests and officials granted the power to declare an individual "white" for the purposes of marriage, entering a convent, or becoming a priest, no matter what his or her ancestry. |
The situation in early modern Latin America highlights the fact that like gender, race is socially constructed and historically variable. (Indeed, most scientists who study the human species as a whole, such as biologists and anthropologists, avoid using the word completely.) Because it marked the beginning of Europe's colonial enterprise, the early modern period was a time when Europeans were more concerned with "racial" differences than they had been earlier, when they were actively engaged in creating social meanings for racial categories. They drew on polarities of white and black which had existed in western culture since ancient times to develop a racial hierarchy to parallel hierarchies based on class, gender, and religion, and then worried about the relations among these hierarchies and the ways in which disorder in one might create disorders in the others. It was clear to most Europeans who stood at the top of the hierarchy--white men--and who at the bottom--non-white women--but the middle was more ambiguous. They wondered which hierarchy was more significant, God-given, and natural, that of race or that of gender. Which was easier to overcome, that is, was it easier for a woman to be "manly" or for a non-white man? If social class could outweigh gender as a determinant of social role for a woman like Queen Elizabeth, could gender outweigh race for a man like Shakespeare's Othello? |
Because of the possibility of intermarriage and other intergroup sexual relations (which would, of course, erase the differences if they became common enough), gender often entered into these discussions in a sexualized way.  European explorers and colonizers described their conquests in sexualized terms, portraying territory and its peoples as feminized, weak, and passive and themselves as virile, powerful, and masculine. The ambiguous middle of the hierarchy--white women and non-white men--was particularly threatening in terms of sexual relations, a threat not lessened by the rarity of such relationships in Europe during this period. With even greater vigor than the boundaries of class and religion, interracial boundaries were described as "natural," making any crossing, particularly a sexual one, unnatural or even demonic. The "debate about race" in early modern Europe has not been studied as extensively yet as the "debate about women," but it is clear the two are closely related. |
The most vigorous debate about race took place in the European colonies rather than Europe itself during this period, for in the colonies racial differences were a matter of day-to-day policy and practice as well as theory. For most authors in Europe, and, judging by court cases, popular customs, and family records, for most people, reversals of the gender hierarchy were the most threatening way in which the world could be turned upside down. Literature and art provided examples of strong women, but their independence was usually restricted in the end, or they voluntarily chose to restrict it through marriage or entering a convent. Men and women involved in relationships in which the women were thought to have power--an older woman who married a younger man, or a woman who scolded her husband--were often subjected to public ridicule, with bands of neighbors shouting insults and banging sticks and pans in their disapproval. Adult male journeymen refused to work for widows, though this decreased their opportunities for employment. Fathers disinherited disobedient daughters more often than sons. The derivative nature of an adult woman's authority--the fact that it came from her status as wife or widow of the male household head--was emphasized by referring to her as "wife" rather than "mother" even in legal documents describing her relations with her children. Of all the ways in which society was hierarchically arranged--class, age, rank, race, occupation--gender was regarded as the most "natural" and therefore the most important to defend. |
Conclusion
The early modern period appears, then, to be a time of continual reinforcement of gender hierarchies and patriarchal structures, which we can trace in court records, marriage manuals, dramas, paintings, songs, sermons, and a variety of other sources. Just why that message was so strong during this period has not been fully explained, however. Were women acting in ways that appeared to be or actually were breaking down these hierarchies, so that our evidence represents the reverse of what was happening in reality? Were men not doing what was expected of them? Were economic, political, or intellectual changes--the growth of capitalism, the rise of the nation-state, the Scientific Revolution--making the old gender roles obsolete before satisfactory new ones had been created? Do these changes only make the continuities in patterns of gender and power seem stronger than they do in other eras? Questions such as these are now being investigated, and someday we may have an answer. For the moment, we can safely say only that by looking at the experiences of women and the role of gender, we have discovered that the changes which occurred in the early modern period are even more complex than we had previously assumed, and that at no time or place did they mean the same for men and women. Our investigations of women's lives have led us to realize the extent that women's experiences differed from those of men, the extent that they varied among women, and, most recently, the extent that men's experiences varied in ways that have received little attention. Let us hope that our toleration for complexity and ambiguity exceeds that of our early modern forbears. |
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