RELIGION AND GENDER ROLES CONTINUED

Similarly, Protestants supported ministers—who were males—marrying. They argued marriage had been in existence since Adam and Eve, viewed celibacy as leading to whoredom, and believed the priest could purify a woman's sinful body.5 Crawford argues that such beliefs “closed off one mode of religious expression for women” and further justified a woman's subordination to a man within the household. Using The Bible as the authority both Catholicism and Protestantism solidified rigid gender roles in which the man was considered “the bishop of the house” and flourished within religious, public roles while the woman was linked to restrictive, domestic duties. A prime example of a woman's stringently defined gender role is evident in Protestant reformer John Knox's “The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women.”6 Knox thunders that women should not rule a nation due to Eve's role in the Fall of Man, declares women have inordinate appetites, and maintains that women should remain silent. He writes that a woman “in her greatest perfection, was made to serue and obey man, not to rule and command him.”7 Like many people of the time, Knox viewed women's bodies as “weaker vessels” which were more easily prone to sin.

Even with such harsh views of women, scholars such as Keith Wrightson caution against describing the marriage relationship amongst all men and women as an unequal sharing of power. Citing diaries and wills, Wrightson proposes that the man was the public head of the household while privately there existed “a strong complementary and compassionate ethos.”8 In other words, the strong, male household leader was a performance that attempted to hide the true nature of domestic relationships. Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury is a source that supports such a viewpoint.

Knox's reference to women's insatiable appetites concerning items such as food and sex was a view widely held by society. For instance, it was assumed that if a woman lost her virginity, she became sexually rapacious.9 Knox's commentary elucidates two important factors: the voracious woman and the woman as servant for the man. Ben Jonson's play Bartholomew Fair serves as an ironic conceit when analyzing this viewpoint. In the play it is the overzealous religious figure, Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, who portrays the womanly characteristics Knox rails against. He devours cold turkey pie, white bread, and drink within Dame Purecraft's home (I.vi.35-38) yet still manages to greedily eats pigs from Ursula, the pig woman's, stand. Ursula comments, “And a stone-puritan with a sorrel head and beard—good mouthed gluttons. Two to a pig” (III.iii.120-123). While Busy's gorging upon food is sinful enough, the fact that he partakes in the domestic activity of eating a meal within a brothel, which Ursula's stand doubles as, alludes to organized religion's close connection with prostitution. Secondly, Knox's comment concerning the woman as man's servant can be expanded when analyzing religion's intersection with prostitution.

Back to Religion and Gender Roles 2

Back to Renaissance Religion