The Talk of the Town: Women, Gossip, and Watchfulness in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts
Johnson, Melissa
2019
Abstract
This dissertation examines women’s talk in seventeenth-century Massachusetts through the lens of holy watchfulness, investigating the gendered politics of speech by focusing on gossip—the oral exchange of information that was personal rather than political and concerned affairs of the household and neighborhood rather than the state. It considers when and why women’s speech crossed the line from authorized watchfulness to stigmatized gossip and argues that women’s lives in early Massachusetts can be better understood by examining their participation in holy watching. Focusing on women’s authorized speech and examining the talk of goodwives and servants rather than Antinomians and witches reveals women’s words being heard and accepted in public forums. Breaking down distinctions not only between speech and writing but also between sight and sound shows that a material and spatial history of women’s lives, work, and speech expands our understanding of how watchfulness operated and of who was actively participating in the transmission of information. Rather than focusing on illicit speech, this dissertation approaches gossip as a form of information to show that women’s talk was instrumental in the formation, adaptation, and maintenance of early New England’s religious culture. In a face-to-face culture that prioritized community watchfulness, women’s words were vital to the maintenance of order but could easily be viewed as disorderly when deployed in ways considered inappropriate. Authorities tried to rein in threatening aspects of women’s speech not just by limiting it but also by putting it in the service of social order, moral policing, and surveillance. Watchfulness harnessed what would otherwise have been illicit speech in the service of church and state as a way of containing disorder. This dissertation first surveys the ways that surveillance was embedded in church and state efforts to contain disorder. Puritan ideas combined with older structures to make family government and moral enforcement reliant on ordinary people’s observations. It then examines how community surveillance functioned in the daily lives of women in Boston and how gossip helped shape the patriarchal family and household. Focusing on female domestic servants, wives, and neighbors, it shows how official surveillance could be inoperative or ineffective when disorder took place behind closed doors, how women’s access to intimate spaces countered hierarchical relationships, and the contradictory messages women received about keeping and revealing men’s secrets. It then considers the consequences of gossip for ministers who were accused of sexual indiscretions, showing how political considerations and the historical record have determined whether women’s words have been remembered or forgotten. A short epilogue describes the conditions at the turn of the eighteenth century when prominent men formed associations for overseeing the morals of their neighbors and tried to circumvent the role that women had previously held as carriers of information about order and disorder in their communities. Examining women’s gossip allows a reassessment of women’s roles in New England puritanism and in Protestantism more broadly. Reconceptualizing women’s public roles to include their everyday lives and their conversations restores their significance in early Massachusetts society and the development of American religious practice. Redefining gossip as a form of information not only reveals a range of actors helping shape puritan religious culture but also underscores the importance of historicizing distinctions between public and private in early America in ways that make women’s lives visible.Subjects
Puritan Boston New England Gender Speech politics Early America
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