Sexing the Soul: Gender and the Rhetoric of Puritan Piety
Patriarchs at home, but brides of Christ in spirit: it is an intriguing fact that while puritan writers opposed any confusion of gender roles in everyday life, they were happy for men to adopt a feminine identity in spiritual experience. On one hand, seventeenth-century conduct books and sermons ham...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
1998
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| In: |
Studies in church history
Year: 1998, Volume: 34, Pages: 175-186 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Patriarchs at home, but brides of Christ in spirit: it is an intriguing fact that while puritan writers opposed any confusion of gender roles in everyday life, they were happy for men to adopt a feminine identity in spiritual experience. On one hand, seventeenth-century conduct books and sermons hammered home the divinely-ordained place of husbands and wives in marriage. William Whately (1583-1639) argued that wives should always have on their lips the refrain ‘Mine husband is my superior, my better’, and that as our Lord Jesus Christ is to his Church … so must [the husband] be to his wife an head and Saviour … the Lord in his Word hath intitled him by the name of head: wherefore hee must not stand lower than the shoulders…. That house is a … crump-shouldered or hutcht-backt house, where the husband hath made himself an underling to his wife, and given away his power to an inferior. |
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| ISSN: | 2059-0644 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Studies in church history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0424208400013656 |
