PURITANICAL INFLUENCE ON THE CONSTRUCTION OF FEMININE IDENTITY IN COLONIAL AMERICA: FROM A SANCTIFIED BEING TO AN OSTRACIZED ONE

Abstract

The research focuses on the discussion related to the arrival of white women from Europe and specifically the British Isles to Colonial America. The manner in which settlement for women was incentivised is discussed, along with the peculiar momentum of Puritan communities and the feminine roles thus developed in them. Settler women developed the democratic agrarian mythos while simultaneously being rebuffed for visibility beyond men. The essay engages with the repressive ideology of traditional inferiority, stating examples of Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, and finally the Salem Witch Trials, along with few other mentions of women prosecuted for heresy and witchcraft. The impact of variant settlements in terms of agency is then discussed in the context of slavery, with a critical assessment on how subsumed identities and submission might have led to morally compromised agency development in the colonial white women. The essay concludes with a tentative assertion that the Puritanical impact on how women perceived morality, both in dissension and in tacit agreement shaped the character of Colonial American women.