Stray Wives

Marital Conflict in Early National New England

Mary Beth Sievens

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781479835423
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia nordamericana

Whereas my husband, Enoch Darling, has at sundry times used me in so improper and cruel a manner, as to destroy my happiness and endanger my life, and whereas he has not provided for me as a husband ought, but expended his time and money unadvisedly, at taverns.... I hereby notify the public that I am obliged to leave him.
Phebe Darling, January 13, 1796

Hundreds of provocative notices such as this one ran in New England newspapers between 1790 and 1830. These elopement notices--advertisements paid for by husbands and occasionally wives to announce their spouses' desertions as well as the personal details of their marital conflicts--testify to the difficulties that many couples experienced, and raise questions about the nature of the marital relationship in early national New England.

Stray Wives examines marriage, family, gender, and the law through the lens of these elopement notices. In conjunction with legal treatises, court records, and prescriptive literature, Mary Beth Sievens highlights the often tenuous relationships among marriage law, marital ideals, and lived experience in the early Republic, an era of exceptional cultural and economic change.

Elopement notices allowed couples to negotiate the meaning of these changes, through contests over issues such as gender roles, consumption, economic support, and property ownership. Sievens reveals the ambiguous, often contested nature of marital law, showing that husbands' superior status and wives' dependence were fluid and negotiable, subject to the differing interpretations of legal commentators, community members, and spouses themselves.

1
A “Disobedient, Clamorous” Wife
The Problem of Wifely Submission

In 1802, the Reverend Martin Tullar, pastor of the Congregational Church in Royalton, Vermont, published a series of sermons entitled A Concise System of Family Duty. The first two sermons outlined the respective duties of husbands and wives. Tullar instructed husbands to provide a “comfortable subsistence” for their wives, to respect them, and to “treat them with great tenderness, and much forbearance.” Turning to the proper role of wives, Tullar explained that “it is … incumbent on a wife, that she, with care, and diligence, improve those materials for family support, which may be committed to her instrument.” The good wife was modest, neat, faithful, good-humored, and pious. She was “an help for the man, in all the cares, and concerns of life,” and she continually worked to maintain “the comfort and prosperity … the good and well-being” of her family. These ideals and roles were not innovative. From the earliest days of colonial settlement, Puritan ministers had instructed husbands to support their wives economically and to treat them with kindness, while reminding wives to assist their husbands and to tend to their household duties diligently.¹

Tullar also did not stray from accepted traditions when he described the ideal relationship between husbands and wives as one between a superior and a subordinate. However, like many ministers before him, Tullar qualified his description of the marital hierarchy: “in the divine arrangement of things, superiority was given to the man: yet, … it was not the design of his great Creator, that he should exercise a tyrannical control, over his female companion; but treat her on the principle of equality, as a joint associate in the common scenes of life.” While his advice on the other duties of husbands and wives had been clear and consistent, when Tullar addressed the issue of husbands’ authority and wives’ submission he became tangled in a web of contradictions. In one sentence, Tullar proclaimed both that husbands were superior to wives and that husbands should treat wives as joint associates on the principle of equality. At another point in his sermon, Tullar insisted that “not only respect and reverence, but even subjection to husbands is a duty incumbent on wives, as that of an inferior, to a superior.” But he also maintained that “wives were never designed for slaves, nor drudges; but to be companions, and partners.”²

Tullar never acknowledged or resolved the contradiction inherent in his assertion that wives were both submissive inferiors and equal partners. In fact, this tension surrounding the proper relationship between husbands and wives was embedded in early American law and society. Anglo-American custom and law insisted on wives’ subordination to their husbands’ authority, but it was a subjection that differed significantly from that in other hierarchical relationships. One minister described the nature of wives’ subjection as “peculiar … not indeed the submission of slaves to their masters, or of subjects to their sov[e]reign, or even of children to a father. —It has more of equality in it—accords with the idea of a helper, companion, friend.”³

An impressive body of scholarship has analyzed early American wives’ legal and economic subordination to their husbands, as well as prescriptive injunctions enjoining wives to be submissive. However, in spite of this legal and cultural consensus, many Americans struggled to define the proper boundaries and character of husbands’ authority and wives’ submission. Changing marriage ideals that emphasized the importance of love and affection and that rejected the exercise of harsh, authoritative measures complicated this struggle. In the ideal marriage, husbands exercised their authority judiciously and benevolently, while wives offered advice, but submitted willingly and graciously to their husbands’ decisions. In the real world, however, wives defied their husbands’ authority and men sometimes resorted to violence to enforce their will. Legal treatises, sermons, elopement notices, and divorce petitions reveal that New England men and women disagreed over what separated the legitimate exercise of a husband’s authority from illegitimate, unacceptably severe violence. Nor could New Englanders agree on what separated a wife’s duty to submit to her husband from her right to escape an intolerably cruel situation. In their desertion postings and divorce petitions, Vermont and Connecticut couples participated in a larger cultural and legal contest over the proper boundaries of patriarchal authority within marriage. Historians have demonstrated that in the early national period, cultural norms increasingly idealized marriage as a companionate union and defined violence within marriage as unacceptable. However, older traditions that identified patriarchal authority as essential to orderly, stable families and communities persisted. Legal ambiguities reflected these cultural tensions, and differences in Connecticut’s and Vermont’s marriage laws illuminate the contours of this debate as well as the essentially conservative nature of the legal remedies designed to address the abuse of patriarchal power.⁴

On the surface, the cultural consensus throughout the Anglo-American world maintained that “subjection is the portion of the daughters of Eve.” Wives heard that they should “read frequently, with due attention, the matrimonial service; and take care, in doing so, not to overlook the word—obey.” Prescriptive writers warned that “domestic happiness is disturbed by the attempt of the wife to wear the husband’s clothes; or, in other words, by assuming the place of command.” Magazine essays counseled wives to “dispute not with [their husbands], let the occasion be what it may; but much rather deny yourself the trifling satisfaction of having your own will.” God had decreed wifely submission in the scriptures and Americans agreed that “implicit submission in a man to his wife is ever disgraceful to both; but implicit submission in a wife to the will of her husband is what she promised at the altar: what the good will revere her for, and what is in fact the greatest honour she can receive.” Americans believed that wifely submission was vital to the maintenance of stable marriages and families, which in turn provided a secure foundation for an orderly, prosperous society.⁵

Women of the early republic understood the serious consequences of wives’ duty to submit to their husbands. Their perceptions of the dependent, subordinate status of wives caused many single women to experience what historian Nancy Cott has termed “marriage trauma,” a reluctance ever to marry or an emotional withdrawal from the marriage relationship.⁶ These young women recognized that “care should be taken not to relinquish the ease, and independence of a single life, to become the slave of a fool, or a tyrant’s caprice.” Women knew that they would be required to submit to their husbands, but they also knew that the nature of that submission would differ according to whether their husbands were fools, tyrants, or men who expected “a reasonable and advantageous submission,” men to whom their wives could be “submissive from choice, and obedient from inclination.”⁷ A young woman had to take great care in choosing her future husband, for their marriage would place her under his authority. Because divorce in many states was difficult, if not impossible, the choice of a marriage partner had life-long implications. Not all women chose well. In her retort to her husband’s elopement notice, Esther Kimball detailed his abuse and lack of support, and then stated, “I write this to let people know that if I was foolish for marrying you that your ill usage has learnt me some wit.” A woman’s foolish choice could result in a marriage plagued by quarreling, abuse, or poverty. Esther Kimball realized her mistake too late: she remained estranged from her husband and died a pauper in 1859.⁸

Ministers and the authors of a vast body of prescriptive literature repeatedly emphasized wives’ obligation to submit to their husbands; however, a closer examination of this surface consensus reveals contradictions and tensions regarding husbands’ authority and wives’ submission. Writers often blamed the tyranny of husbands for marital difficulties. They repeatedly reminded husbands that “God has not required from the woman the submission of a slave.” One newspaper essayist explained that when a husband will “use a woman of sense, birth, and fortune, every way equal to himself, as a slave or a fool, it is no wonder that domestic peace is interrupted.” In The Guide to Domestic Happiness, William Giles advised husbands not “to impose what is unreasonable” or “to enforce any thing but what conscience demonstrates to be right, and urges as a duty.” Prescriptive authors agreed that wifely submission was not slavery and that husbands should not be unreasonable tyrants, but they had difficulty translating these broad precepts into prescriptions for everyday life. One minister declared that if husbands “let conjugal authority be founded upon love, be never exercised in opposition to revelation or reason, and be regulated by the idea of companionship, … then there needs no particular rules for its guidance.” Most ministers and authors were not satisfied with such vague maxims, however, and many sought to outline the nature and boundaries of wives’ submission in more precise terms. Their advice, as well as evidence from desertion notices, demonstrates that a wife’s duty to submit frequently clashed with a reality in which it was not always possible or desirable for women to defer to their husbands.⁹

Ministers placed one limitation upon wifely submission without hesitation: wives must not submit to their husbands if in doing so they would disobey God. One pastor warned wives that “if the demands of a husband oppose the will of God, you are pre-engaged by a law of universal operation, and ‘ought to obey GOD rather than man.’” The anonymous author of The Wife explained, “I would not here be understood that a woman should yield a slavish submission to every little whim or caprice of her husband; or to relinquish her reason and judgment to gratify his folly: no, that might be, perhaps, to sin against a more supreme authority than what the law has conferred on him.” These writers advised women to judge the requests and commands of their husbands and to use their reason to determine whether obeying their husbands would violate God’s laws.¹⁰

The Puritan doctrine of the equality of all souls made women accountable before God for their own actions and salvation. Did wives’ accountability before God supersede their accountability to their husbands? Two Vermont women demonstrated the extremes to which ministerial advice to “obey God rather than man” might be taken. Both Zebulon Huntington and Ammi Andrews reported in their desertion postings that their wives had left them to join the Shakers, a religious order that abolished marriage, practiced celibacy, and advocated greater equality between men and women. Mary Andrews and Hannah Huntington defied their husbands’ authority by joining the Shakers, but they no doubt believed it was God’s will for them to do so. When ministers and essayists counseled wives to obey God they did not intend their remarks to support women who left husbands and possibly children to join religious sects that espoused radical doctrines proclaiming equality between men and women. However, their comments contributed to a confusion about married women’s relationship to God that stretched back to Ann Hutchinson, Sarah Osborne, and other colonial women who dared to claim that following God’s will released them from traditional gender roles.¹¹

Wives’ desire to obey God did not disrupt most marriages to the extent that it did the Huntingtons and Andrewses. Yet sermons and marriage manuals offered other advice that revealed some tensions surrounding wives’ roles in more practical, day-to-day settings. When Hannah Loomis of Montpelier, Vermont, died in December 1813, Reverend Chester Wright commiserated,

Let us weep with a husband … [who] had hoped with her to pass the remainder of his days; to enjoy her assistance in the cares and duties of domestic life; to share with her every pleasure; to divide with her the weight of every trouble; to receive her advice in every emergency, and to have his virtue strengthened by her prudent and discreet example.

This picture of Hannah Loomis shows her assisting, advising, strengthening, dividing, and sharing with her husband. Reverend Wright did not commend Hannah for her submissive qualities; rather, he praised her as a partner and an advisor. Likewise, Reverend Asa Burton praised Joanna Shaw because “the trials of her husband she alleviated by her counsels,” and Reverend Isaiah Parker expressed his sorrow for Esther Chaplin’s husband, who had lost “the partner of your joys and sorrows … in whose good judgment, fidelity and integrity you could place the greatest confidence—one with whom you took sweet counsel.” Funeral sermons for married women frequently extolled wives for having been model partners, for having shared equally in the cares and concerns of their families, and for having advised their husbands on family affairs.¹²

The model of the wife as partner, and especially as an advisor, was a popular one in prescriptive literature. Advice authors told husbands to “deliberate with her who ought to be his dearest, and is his most disinterested friend—even in those affairs which it is his immediate duty to superintend. He may derive useful hints from a female mind.” The husband also “should consult his wife on money matters generally, not only because she is also interested, but her advice may be a saving of much expense … believe me, however confident you may be of your sufficiency to judge of the disposal of your case, you will receive great benefit by such consultations.” Instead of describing wives’ roles in submissive, deferential terms, these authors portrayed married women as capable advisors and active partners in the management of family affairs.¹³

Authors and ministers did not believe that this model of wife-as-partner/advisor conflicted with the model of wife-as-submissive-subordinate. Instead, they believed the two models were entirely compatible. The good wife offered her husband advice, but she let him make the ultimate decisions and then helped him carry out those decisions, even if she disagreed with them. A wife was a junior partner in the family enterprise: she should “be made acquainted with … and give her opinion in relation to the management and disposal of” family affairs; however, “This privilege should always be taken with the utmost caution and discretion, and never exerted, or too strenuously enforced.” A wife could advise her husband on the proper course of action to take in the family’s interest, but “whenever she attempts to create an interest of her own separate from the interest of her husband; or to establish for herself a reputation independent of his, she is assuming a character which does not belong to her … [and is] laying a sure foundation for domestic wretchedness and strife.” If a husband and wife disagreed over what course of action to take, the wife had to submit to her husband’s decisions. Prescriptive writers believed that the opportunity to offer their opinions compensated for the submission that was then required of wives. One essayist claimed that “would [the husband] consult her on his affairs, converse with her freely upon all subjects … she would rattle the marriage chains with less impatience and difficulty.” Wives had to content themselves with their advisory role and not attempt to usurp their husbands’ decision-making authority.¹⁴

Likewise, prescriptive writers were quick to praise the beneficial effects of women’s influence on their husbands, but careful to remind wives that their influence over men should not extend to control. These authors celebrated women’s ability to turn men away from vice and toward virtue while warning wives to “avoid all thoughts of managing a husband.” In a newspaper essay entitled “Female Influence,” the author praised women for being

of great service to mankind. Many young men have by their [women’s] virtuous example been allured from the apparently blooming paths of vicious pleasure, into the road of virtue leading to happiness. For their sake, the drunkard hath relinquished his cup, the gamester his table, the profane swearer his blasphemous imprecations, and even the debauchee has sometimes returned to continence. By their influence, sloth has been metamorphosed into diligence, pride and arrogance, into modesty and affability, and cowardice itself into bravery.

Male authors believed that women were capable of turning vicious men into virtuous citizens, but they were never completely comfortable with the power of women’s influence. They quickly added that, while “a virtuous woman is the glory of human nature, a female, without prudence, is a very dangerous character.” Women were both “the source of good and evil to man,” capable of reforming vicious husbands but also capable of “destroying the harmony and tranquility of families” by attempting to exert so much influence that they challenged their husbands’ authority.¹⁵

Most prescriptive writers dealt with the issue of women’s influence as they had handled wives’ role as advisors: women could attempt to influence their husbands, but ultimately they had to submit. One minister advised wives who were “united with a man of … dishonorable habits, or vicious practices,” that an “affectionate and dignified course of conduct … [would] succeed in reclaiming him from vice, and restoring him to virtue.” However, should these “laudable exertions fail, and should poverty and distress be, finally, the unhappy consequence of your union with such a man, you will enjoy the rich satisfaction of having faithfully performed your duty.” If wives could not persuade their husbands to live virtuously, they had to suffer the consequences. Female submission was necessary because “order and peace in any community … require that those of every rank should be respected according to their rank. The want of this, is invariably attended with disorder and confusion.” To avoid this disorder and confusion in the family, Reverend Martin Tullar advised husbands to “take the lead of all family concerns. It belongs to them to administer family government…. In this little republic, the husband is a principle, the wife a secondary officer.” In an era when egalitarian, democratic ideals were replacing deferential political traditions, many authors sought to bolster the family as a bastion of hierarchy. They believed that a wife could attempt to exercise her influence, but in the end she was a “secondary officer” who owed deference and subjection to her superior officer, her husband.¹⁶

This cultural consensus in favor of wives’ submission to their husbands complemented a legal system in which wives’ subordination was firmly entrenched. However, while the common law clearly established wives’ subordination, it was subject to differing interpretations that highlighted tensions regarding husbands’ authority ...