Women of America / Woman: In all ages and in all countries Vol. 10 (of 10)

by John Ruse Larus

So, at the close of the early period of colonization, when the land was beginning to thrill with the first stirrings of nationality, the Puritan woman, not yet a type though strongly individual, stood looking into the future as one that sees but does not fear the coming time of need and responsibility. No longer English, not yet American, she stood a transition product, but one that was to find result in a permanency that would lay the strongest impress upon the nation that was to arise in after years.

Meanwhile, there was advancing in another portion of our country--a portion so remote from New England as practically to be a different land in all but ties of birth--a feminine civilization of a type widely different from that of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Northern culture was strongly and preeminently democratic in its origins; that of the South, before the close of the period now under consideration, had come to be as preeminently aristocratic. Beginning in the same way as that of Massachusetts,--even with lower origin, since for a time it threatened to be a mere penal settlement,--Virginia soon began to attract to herself a class of adventurers widely differing from those who sought religious liberty on the bleak shores of Plymouth Bay.

Differing from the general rule in such matters, in Virginia it was the better class which survived, the convict class being gradually submerged by the persistence of the higher grade of immigrants. It must not, however, be forgotten in recalling the origin of the Virginian feminine culture that even among the convicts there were many who were mere prisoners of state and were of birth and standing the equal of any free men whom they left behind them in England. Nor are origins of so much concern as results; it is only where the former are evidently and persistently causal that they need dwelling on in this work. Therefore, we will pass from Virginia in the act of formation to Virginia as settled by a people who were as individual in their way, though a most diverse one, as their brethren of New England; but before completing the journey from Massachusetts to Virginia let us pause for a moment at an intermediate colony, to commemorate the deed of another woman pioneer in America, Mistress Margaret Brent, of Maryland, the first American woman to demand equal rights with men in the councils of state, the prototype of every female reformer of later times.

It is necessary to suppose the reader familiar with the government and affairs generally in that peculiar palatinate, the colony of Lord Baltimore in Maryland. On the 9th of June, 1647, Leonard Calvert, the Governor of Maryland and vice-gerent of Lord Baltimore, died at St. Mary's, then the capital of the colony. He was attended during his fatal illness by his kinswomen, Mistresses Margaret and Mary Brent, and the former was made administrator to his estate. From this resulted an unprecedented incident, when in January, 1648, the new governor having called a session of the Assembly, Mistress Margaret Brent appeared in the council chamber and demanded "to have a vote in the House for herself and another as his Lordship's [Lord Baltimore] attorney." Upon the refusal of the Assembly, shocked at such a revolutionary demand, to consider the matter, Mistress Brent "protested in form against all the proceedings of that Assembly, unless she might be present and vote as aforesaid." Her protest did her very little good, unless it be well to have one's name handed down as a baffled reformer, but she thus won for herself at least a right to have her name placed on the pages of any volume dealing with the progress of the women of America. As far as there is any record, Margaret Brent was absolutely the first woman who ever even dreamed of being accorded equal rights of citizenship in a commonwealth of modern times, though antiquity could show other examples. She was at all events the first American woman to demand the privilege of the ballot and of a share in the government of her country; and her demand was based on the same foundation as that of her sisters in later times, that of the rights conferred by the care of property and a stake in the welfare of the commonwealth. The women reformers of our day should promote Margaret Brent to the position of their patron saint and protomartyr.

Let us resume the journey to Virginia and study as best we may the aspects of feminine culture as found in the great Southern colony. Unfortunately, even in general matters there is great dearth of authoritative record of Virginia colonial days, and in the matter of the doings of individual women, or even of the sex generally, we find but little of interest. We can only gather up the fragments and judge from them of the feast of which they tell. Though Maryland may be considered a southern colony, and was indeed so regarded, we must not take Margaret Brent as representative of the feminine status or spirit in the South. The women of Virginia in the early colonial days were less independent, less assertive, than their sisters of New England, where women, as we have seen, occasionally took the lead in matters of public import. It was not so in Virginia. There women were held in less account, though not in less respect, than in the northern colonies. This was caused by a multiplicity of reasons, chief among which is the fact that in Virginia there was far greater difference of rank and station than in the North. The consequence of this was that, while in New England the woman was a needful and recognized adjunct of the home, that unit on which was based the civilization of the North, in Virginia she was more of ornament than necessity. Hence, while in the councils of New England woman had made herself felt and recognized as a power and thus had come to be held in mental esteem as a sex, though not always overtly, as we have seen, she was in Virginia still the lady, the almsgiver, the comforter and inspirer, but not the fellow-laborer, the equal in danger and toil and therefore in counsel. For it cannot be denied, save by him who has studied history with blind eyes, that in the matter of descent the colonists of Virginia were far superior to those who made to blossom the bleak shores of Massachusetts Bay. On both records there are too many blots of birth to make it safe for the ancestral tuft-hunter to delve very deep into the past in his search on American soil; but the balance of rank is with the Virginian. Therefore it is that, while we instinctively regard the early New England woman, taken collectively, as a worker, a true colonist, we turn to the representative Virginia woman of the same day with the expectation of seeing a dame dressed in a short skirt of divers colors, with huge ruff and high-heeled shoes, with mincing gait and some pretty little affectations of speech and bearing, and we are not disappointed in the expectation.

There is another very important influence in the result of Southern culture as discriminated from that of the North,--the existence of slavery. Though in some of the Northern colonies there was Indian slave labor, there was but little of pure menial service in the household itself. The New England woman, as we shall see more clearly in the next chapter, was her own servant; she was the worker as well as the lady of the house. It was not so in Virginia. From the day--ill-omened in many respects, but powerful in formative effect upon the culture it modified--when the Dutchman left behind him his twenty negro slaves, the conditions of servitude in the Virginia plantations were altered; and when the plantations had become a colony, slavery was well established. It was still held in disfavor by many, at home and abroad; but it had come to remain for years and even centuries. The consequence of the importation and constant increase of slave labor was felt in many ways, but in none so strongly as in the conditions of the household. The Virginia lady had her troops of servants--not so many at first, but still in sufficient numbers to save her any need of personal labor, while her sister of the North was compelled, because of circumstances if not of choice, to do with her own hands the daily tasks that arise in the well-ordered household. True, this difference was not so marked at the time which we are immediately considering as it became soon afterward. It is stated that in 1649 there were in Virginia but three hundred negro slaves; and, though the strict accuracy of such computation may be doubted, it may be admitted as substantially correct. But there was rapid and constant increase, and long before the end of the early colonial period slavery had become an established institution and had produced the effects upon Virginia society which were later to take such emphasized shape. The Virginia lady of the colonial period was teaching as a mistress of the manor rather than as a housewife. She was less notable in her accomplishments of "huswifery" than were the women of New England; but she had charms which they lacked, the charms that come from opportunity to indulge the impulse of refinement.

Of course all Virginia in its feminine element was not made up of the cream bubbles of society. There was the lower stratum as well; there were even strata, diminishing in numbers as in importance as one neared the bottom of the pail. There were in Virginia, as in New England, laws which show that the Virginia woman was not always a lady or at least did not always "demean herself as such." We find, for instance, that there is an enactment which determines that "women causing scandalous suits" are to be ducked; and for the furtherance of this penalty there shall be set up "neere the court house in every county," besides a pillory, stocks, and a whipping post--a ducking-stool. This same ducking-stool, which was an importation from England and not an American innovation, consisted of a pole, with a rude chair fastened to the end, hanging over a pond or stream, the pole being so balanced that anyone seated in the chair, and secured there, might be lowered into the water, held therein until drowning was imminent, and then again hoisted to air and life. This weapon of an offended justice was, in Virginia as in New England, made the penalty for divers offences, and the language of one act is amusing in its evidently masculine origin, where it condemns to the ducking-stool "brabling women who often slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages." That "poor" is significant of experience and consequent wrath.

Yet, while these and similar precautions against feminine dominance by force prove the existence, if we did not know of them otherwise, of degrees in Virginia feminine station, the representative Virginia woman was of more pampered and easier existence than was her sister of the North. In New England as well there were toward the end of the early colonial period well defined strata of society; but they were neither so far separated nor so marked as were those of Virginia. The New England dame was called "Goody" or "Mistress" according to her social standing, the latter title being for long reserved for the spouse of a knight; the "Goodies" were not only enormously in the majority, but they were types of the popular existence. The Virginia woman was softly nurtured and clad in purple and fine linen,--the latter literally after a time; the New England woman was expected to do her duties to her husband as he to her, and her garb was homespun.

Even the conditions of ordinary life were different in the two great colonies. New England existence was from the first a segregation; there was a constant tendency to draw together in towns. In Virginia, on the other hand, there was a tendency to differentiation of residence; beginning as a chain of plantations the colony continued in this character. The consequence was a number of small feudalities in outward aspect and the assumption by the Virginia lady of the position of the châtelaine. Each of the great ladies was a little queen, ruling over a certain number of acres and subjects; and this attribute of the colony, at first accidental and of small scope, grew into a condition. Now, this existence, and the tendencies that brought it about, were far more English than were the conditions of the northern colonies; and so it is that in early Virginia we find far less individuality of femininity than we find in early New England. England held her influence in Virginia,--the England of the royal court; for it must be remembered that Virginia was strongly loyal. She never accepted the rule of the Roundhead; and the influx of the Cavaliers, some of their own wills and some on compulsion as political convicts, not only confirmed Virginian politics but Virginian manners. More English than England itself, these eager Carolists never acknowledged a hiatus in the rule of the Stuarts, and the Restoration found them entirely in accord with its returning theories and the majority of its practices. But not all, for Virginia had some morals left her even after the coming of the Cavaliers.

An incident in connection with "Bacon's Rebellion" will indicate the esteem and place in which women were held in the days when Berkeley ruled Virginia as its nominal governor and real emperor,--the culminating days of the period with which we have to do. The stalwart rebel, being in danger of attack before he was ready, sent into the surrounding country and gathered in the wives of several of the prominent gentlemen who were themselves in the camp of his antagonist, the autocratic Berkeley. We are told that it is probable that these ladies were brought to the stronghold of the rebel in their carriages, which shows in itself the advance of Virginian luxury beyond that of New England, where a pillion was all that could be expected by any but the most modish people; for Bacon rebelled in 1676, and coaches were not general in New England until nearly two decades later, though we are told that John Winthrop had one in 1685. The ladies were brought to Bacon's camp at "Greenspring," whether afoot, on pillions, or in carriages, but assuredly "sorely against their wills." There have been handed down to us the names of four of these ladies: "Madame Bray, Madame Page, Madame Ballard and Madame Bacon,"--the latter a connection of the rebel himself. They were treated courteously enough in some ways, but they were informed that they would be held as hostages for the forbearance of Sir William until preparations had been made for his reception; and still greater precautions were taken against attack, as will be seen.