ring, “Beatrice could well have killed the smaller pigs herself, holding their ‘hinder parts between her legs’…” Elias Wear of York, Maine unlike Beatrice Plummer could not afford the necessities. Elias Wear lived in poverty resulting in the “blurred distinctions between the work of a husband and the work of his wife.” Traditional roles were not as rigidly defined when the survival of the family relied on mutual contributions of every member. One aspect of life that Puritan women of the seventeenth century did have full domination of was birthing, male doctors did not interfere with the actual birth or any of the traditional rituals associated with birthing. Also Puritan women occasionally acted as deputy husbands where they would speak on behalf of their husbands when necessary. The men of Puritan society did not view this as an encroachment into their public sphere but rather as simply another expectation of “their” women. In terms of church governance, too, women played little or no role except on rare and anomalous occasions. Women who strayed from their roles threatening the establishment of the church were quickly put down. Anne Hutchinson a well-educated Puritan in the mid-seventeenth century strayed from the traditional orthodox Calvinist theology. She denounced the belief of the fierce Puritan God who saved only a few church-going souls. Hutchinson was guilty of political treason for disagreeing with orthodox religious ideas and the fact that she was a woman added fuel to the fire. The male leaders were highly offended not only because of her crime but also because of her masculine sureness of mind that provoked other women to denounce their roles. The close of the seventeenth century in New England and specifically Salem marks a low for colonial women. The witch trails that plagued Salem in 1692-1693 focused on women. Women had always been viewed as more susceptible to...
