What Does the Term Goodwife Mean?

Those familiar with The Crucible, the Salem Witch Trials, or even life in Colonial America have heard the term Goody, short for Goodwife. The term Goody was meant in a similar way as Mrs. today since Goody indicated a married woman. In Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Goody didn’t refer to every married woman; instead, it was a way to distinguish social classes.

If a woman was Goody Whateverherlastnamewas, she was from the lower classes, perhaps a farmer’s wife. The wives of more prominent men were known as Mistress. Farmers were known as Goodman and merchants, lawyers, and others of the wealthier classes were known as Mister.

What Was Life For Women Like in Colonial America?

As I researched Down Salem Way, I became fascinated by the daily lives of women in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What I discovered, which is what one often discovers when researching history, is that there is no simple answer to what life was like at any point in time.

A woman’s lifestyle in seventeenth-century Colonial America was influenced by many factors, from the family she was born into, to the man she married, to whether or not she married, to how much money she had, or to her social status.

The ideal of how colonial women lived is often at odds with the reality of what really happened. We have this present-day idea that women only started working recently, growing in numbers and opportunities mainly since World War II. The truth is, women have always worked—working-class women, at least. Yes, it’s true, wealthier women didn’t work, as though their husband’s social status could be confirmed by how little their wives had to do.

The title “goodwife” shouts the importance of marriage for seventeenth-century women. Colonial society expected women to marry, raise children, and manage a household while being model wives, obedient to their menfolk. According to Abramovitz (2017), “…to be proper helpmeets, women each had to acquire a husband and a family and had to take up homemaking in her own home” (p. 40).

Women Were Financially Dependent on Men

Women were dependent on men for financial support. Widowed and divorced women were expected to remarry, and bachelors and spinsters were expected to live in an established household—one run by a married couple (Abramovitz, 2017). As Abramovitz said, “Unmarried women, in addition, faced social disapproval as dependent girls and incomplete women…newspapers and town gossips often characterized single females as unattractive, disagreeable ‘old virgins’ who were unable to catch a man” (p. 41).

Scholars such as Karlsen (1998) argue that it was the number of unmarried women in Salem in 1692 that lit the flame that spread the madness of the witch accusations. While some of the accusers, such as Elizabeth Putnam, were middle-aged, others such as Abigail Williams and Mary Warren were young women in their late teens or early twenties who, according to colonial society, should have already had establishments of their own.

Since these young women were still single, working as servants for others, and possibly frustrated with their lives, the witch accusations gave them an excuse to begin acting out. Instead of being seen as old virgins who couldn’t catch a man, they were listened to and respected by the magistrates who believed their cries of invisible specters harming them in the night. While such a theory can never be proven, it’s an interesting one to consider.

Colonial Women Had No Legal Rights

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, women had no religious rights and no legal rights, which were one and the same in a Puritan society. Women’s legal identities were taken over by their husbands when they married. Married women couldn’t enter into legal contracts by themselves. Wives handed over control of their property or anything else they brought to the marriage as their dowries to their husbands (Meyers, 2003).

Men didn’t believe that women were capable of handling their own matters. Women’s smaller statures were believed to be the result of frailer constitutions. Women’s smaller heads were believed to be the result of a less developed brain. Emotional outbursts from women were signs of a moral weakness that might prove problematic for any men under their spell (Meyers, 2003).

Men believed that women must be watched, and closely. Women must be under a man’s control since women were sinful by nature—hadn’t the Bible told them so? Puritan and other Christian theologians argued that Eve caused the Fall. She couldn’t avoid temptation from one measly snake, after all.

Women were believed to be more susceptible to poor choices and blinding passions, so merely by proximity, they endangered their men’s very souls (Meyers, 2003). According to Meyers, such ideas about the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of women, the thought that women could not resist evil, played an important role in fueling the witchcraft hysteria in Europe and Colonial America. Women were the majority of those called out as witches since it was believed that women were more corruptible by the Devil (Barstow, 1994).

Women were believed to be weak creatures, so they weren’t supposed to speak out on their own behalf. During the Salem witch hunts, if a woman wanted to accuse someone of witchcraft, she had to send a man to do so on her behalf. A poor example, perhaps, but it is an interesting one. While the women’s accusations were believed by the magistrates and their word was accepted as evidence, the women’s accusations were not heard until a man went to court to register the complaint.

Poorer Women Suffered the Burdens

In colonial days the less wealthy women who didn’t have servants to do their every bidding, had plenty to do, mainly tending to chores around the house with cooking, cleaning, sewing, and mending, as well as birthing and caring for the children (Smith, 2008).

A goodwife was “expected to provide her mate with material, spiritual, emotional, and sexual comforts. She was expected to obey her husband, but…affection and mutual respect tempered obedience into support” (Volo & Volo, 2006, p. 178).

Strict guidelines existed about “men’s work” and “women’s work,” but there were times when women helped their husbands in their trade (Volo & Volo, 2006). It would not have been unusual to find a woman serving patrons in her husband’s public house, especially if her husband were ill, away, or otherwise unable to work.

Farmer’s wives might work the fields during planting or harvesting seasons. According to Volo & Volo (2006), Salem court records show wives farming corn, branding steers, and tending cattle whenever necessary.

According to Smith (2008):

Despite restrictions and prohibitions, some women did step outside of their usual roles to publish their work, to express religious beliefs, and to initiate court suits. Yet within their typical roles as wives and mothers, women were also important, as the early Chesapeake settlers found when there were few women in the settlement to cook, mend, and do laundry. The phrase ‘‘women’s roles’’ is somewhat misleading because it implies fixed positions and responsibilities for women, when, in fact, women’s roles in the seventeenth century were fluid and overlapping (p. 24).

The Poet Anne Bradstreet Was an Unusual Colonial Woman

Anne Bradstreet is one example of a woman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony who stepped outside her usual role to publish her work. Bradstreet’s poetry is still taught in American literature classes today. Fans of the Loving Husband Trilogy know how much I admire Bradstreet.

I found the title for Her Dear & Loving Husband from one of Bradstreet’s poems. She stays true to her Puritan faith while still admitting to her earthly love for her husband and children. She is spiritual in her love for God and personal in her love for her family. For more information about Anne Bradstreet, read this post.

Yes, women in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as throughout the American Colonies, as throughout Europe, had many restrictions on their lives based on false beliefs about women’s abilities. Despite the difficulties, women in Colonial America helped to create a society that, while far from perfect, did prosper.

References

Abramovitz, M. (2017). Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy From Colonial Times to the Present. New York, NY: Routledge.

Barstow, A. L. (1994). Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Karlsen, C. F. (1998). The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: The Witch in Seventeenth-Century New England. New York, NY: Norton.

Meyers, D. A. (2003). Common Whores, Vertuous Women, and Loveing Wives: Free Will Christian Women in Colonial Maryland. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Smith, M. D. (2008). Women’s Roles in Seventeenth-Century America. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Volo, J. M. & Volo, D. D. (2006). Family Life in 17th-and 18th-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

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Down Salem Way, the prequel to the Loving Husband Trilogy, is set during the Salem Witch Trials. 

How would you deal with the madness of the Salem witch hunts? 

In 1690, James Wentworth arrives in Salem in the Massachusetts Bay Colony with his father, John, hoping to continue the success of John’s mercantile business. While in Salem, James falls in love with Elizabeth Jones, a farmer’s daughter. Though they are virtually strangers when they marry, the love between James and Elizabeth grows quickly into a passion that will transcend time.

But something evil lurks down Salem way. Soon many in Salem, town and village, are accused of practicing witchcraft and sending their shapes to harm others. Despite the madness surrounding them, James and Elizabeth are determined to continue the peaceful, loving life they have created together. Will their love for one another carry them through the most difficult challenge of all?