Spiritual Equality, Social Hierarchy: Gender and the Construction of Quaker Identity in The Early Anglo-American World

Abstract

This thesis is a study of how early Quaker doctrines and religious ideas influenced Quaker gender identity in the Anglo-American colonies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, mostly between 1660 and 1720. The Quaker concept of the Inner Light undermined the spiritual hierarchy that informed the worldly social structures of early modern England and New England. This was true both within and outside of Quaker communities. Quaker women found vastly expanded social roles through the Inner Light, including preaching, publishing, and itinerant ministry but maintained a strong sense of physical and mental gender difference. Quaker men redefined masculinity to better reflect their view of Christ-like manhood while still retaining social patriarchal structures. Quakers largely welcomed the social changes that came with spiritual equality, but New England Puritans were threatened by its radicalism and worried that the Inner Light undermined their power over the new colony. The flexibility of Quakerism in its earliest years allowed for a redefinition of gender identities, but seventeenth century Anglo-American patriarchy was not so flexible that Quakers rejected or considered rejecting gender norms completely.