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Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699
"Thompson analyzes the court records of 17th century Middlesex County, searching for such sexually related crimes as fornication, breach of promise, sexual deviancy, and adultery. His findings help shatter the traditional historical caricature of New England Puritans as patriarchal, dour wife-beaters and child-abusers, a myth eloquently created by Perry Miller and most recently reinforced by Lawrence Stone. In the court records Thompson discovers Puritans who exhibited 'tolerance, mutual regard, affection, and prudent common sense' within the context of a popular Puritan piety. A well-written social history that places Puritanism in a human rather than an intellectual framework, Sex in Middlesex is recommended for all students of American history and the American family."-- Library Journal
- GenresHistory
272 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1986
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About the author
Roger Thompson
58 books1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 11, 2016
My 10th great grandparents seem to have been fined 5 pounds apiece, supposedly for fornication, in the late 17th C. Within days, they were married.
Who knew? This book says right about 1 bride in 5 married while pregnant back then. Hmmmm.... my mother told me that NEVER happened in the good old days. Lol. I wish she was still alive to give her a copy of this book!
Great book to fill in the gaps of social history which surround our ancestors.
Who knew? This book says right about 1 bride in 5 married while pregnant back then. Hmmmm.... my mother told me that NEVER happened in the good old days. Lol. I wish she was still alive to give her a copy of this book!
Great book to fill in the gaps of social history which surround our ancestors.
May 26, 2016
If I could give half stars, I would for this book--making my rating a 3.5 out of 5.
First, my positive impressions of the book. The book is very accessible, well-crafted, and smartly written. Although one of Thompson's main goals is to test an argument of Lawrence Stone about changes in family structure/life in the Anglo-Atlantic world, this is a small part of the book and one needs little knowledge of Stone's argument or the larger historiographical discussion Stone and Thompson are a part of to comprehend Thompson's work. The way Thompson structures the work, not just the order of chapters, but also the order of the parts in each chapter (as following the scientific method of asking a question and testing multiple hypotheses), also make the book and its arguments easily comprehendible.
Secondly, he balances the benefits and drawbacks of his sources: court records. These records are amazingly fruitful and Thompson is able to bring many stories of ordinary people to life because of them. The records provide much detail of the sexual relations of the Middlesex population as well as insight into how they (or at least court recorders) talked about sex.
One of his most important arguments throughout the book is that Middlesex, while certainly organized in "little commonwealths" or patriarchal-headed family units, these were not despotic in practice. Benevolence, compassion, mutual understanding, and the like were the common feelings among people; it was not a top-down, punitive community. This is true between husbands and wives, fathers and children, masters and servants, and neighbors. When an individual did make it to the court for an offense, the goal was not to banish to prison or outside the community, but to have confession and reform of the individual so that they could continue as part of the community.
What kept everyone in line? Thompson's answer is the strong religiosity of the population, their strong belief in Calvinistic principles that made them fear God, his power, and his ability to punish in this life or the next. Those who showed the least religiosity were often teenagers, a passing fad encouraged by the Puritan requirement of celibacy and resisting sexual desires during the hormonal years before marriage--or at least that is Thompson's explanation. Once they entered into marriage, something that many did with a pregnant wife, the men and women went back to the "Puritan Way." These marriages of pregnant women were "shotgun" weddings, not women's tries to hook a husband who did not want to marry her.
This idea of the teenage years as a transitional period in people's lives helps him argue that Puritan society was not becoming more depraved over time. Instead, the fears of Puritan leaders were just the common notion that the next generation never lives up to the expectations of the current one. Ratios of pre-marital pregnancies and the number of cases about sexual behavior/words remain mostly steady, if not decline over the city year period. However, I think Thompson is missing something here: a placement of these cases in the larger economic and political context during the final two decades of his study. These were decades of great political, military, and economic stress for the colony and there are many signs that things were changing. For example, he does not really interrogate why/if individuals stopped confessing for sexual crimes towards the end of the period or if there are other reasons for why sexual crime diminishes in the records at the end of the period.
I place my following negative comments with a word of caution that also applies to myself. One must remember (or imagine) the period of time this book was written during. Its connection to social history as a methodology/field very attached to social science, the scientific method of testing hypotheses, and to the field of psychology/psychohistory is very obvious. Also, as an early work to deal almost exclusively with sexual behavior and mores, it places itself primarily in the field of family history and community studies of everyday life. Thus, some of its faults come from being a pioneer work in the field of sexuality--of trying to make sense of sources and a topic few had written about as a serious or historical topic. Future works would (rightfully) move away from stressing sex as a biological and psychological topic and use it more as a way to understand the power structures and society around people.
It is very difficult, if not impossible to answer many of the questions he wants to ask. At the heart of the book is the question of why sexual acts came up so often in Puritan courts and whether these were all the cases of sexual conduct going on or if they represent the tip of the iceberg. To Thompson, the fear of God and the watchful eyes of all communities members means that the cases represent about all the sexual crime occurring in Middlesex. And yet, Thompson gives plenty of examples from case testimonies where individuals are having illicit relations and are not ending up in court, or they only end up in court for one offense.
This leads to the second problem, that he almost never questions the motives or beliefs of those in power--the judges, the jurors, etc. There is an assumption throughout much of the book that all of these men want to stamp out sexual deviance and will do anything in their power to do so. He attributes this to these men understanding that they are elected by the community and if they do not maintain moral order, they will be voted out. This neglects the many individuals in the community who had no voting power and while he does make some inroads in noting how men's and women's power differed, a stronger focus on gender is needed. To give one example, Thompson never asks why women may have been uneasy in bringing sexual assault/rape cases to the court, instead believing more strongly in the dominance of romantic relations among Middlesex individuals. Also, Thompson rarely interrogates the racial assumptions or differences white Puritans have. Partly this is because persons of color rarely appear in the court records, but it is significant when they do and the different outcomes for persons of color compared to whites. For a much better example of incorporating gender and race into all parts of a Puritan/New England legal system and community see Dayton's Women Before the Bar. See also Morris' Under Household Government which uses many of the same records as Thompson, but gives a much broader comprehension of family, kinship, and community when it came to sexual interactions/crimes.
Even with its limitations, Thompson's work is a quick and necessary read for any scholar of American sexual history, colonial America, or early modern English history. It is necessary not just for its content, but for understanding the growth and history of the field(s) it is a pioneer of.
First, my positive impressions of the book. The book is very accessible, well-crafted, and smartly written. Although one of Thompson's main goals is to test an argument of Lawrence Stone about changes in family structure/life in the Anglo-Atlantic world, this is a small part of the book and one needs little knowledge of Stone's argument or the larger historiographical discussion Stone and Thompson are a part of to comprehend Thompson's work. The way Thompson structures the work, not just the order of chapters, but also the order of the parts in each chapter (as following the scientific method of asking a question and testing multiple hypotheses), also make the book and its arguments easily comprehendible.
Secondly, he balances the benefits and drawbacks of his sources: court records. These records are amazingly fruitful and Thompson is able to bring many stories of ordinary people to life because of them. The records provide much detail of the sexual relations of the Middlesex population as well as insight into how they (or at least court recorders) talked about sex.
One of his most important arguments throughout the book is that Middlesex, while certainly organized in "little commonwealths" or patriarchal-headed family units, these were not despotic in practice. Benevolence, compassion, mutual understanding, and the like were the common feelings among people; it was not a top-down, punitive community. This is true between husbands and wives, fathers and children, masters and servants, and neighbors. When an individual did make it to the court for an offense, the goal was not to banish to prison or outside the community, but to have confession and reform of the individual so that they could continue as part of the community.
What kept everyone in line? Thompson's answer is the strong religiosity of the population, their strong belief in Calvinistic principles that made them fear God, his power, and his ability to punish in this life or the next. Those who showed the least religiosity were often teenagers, a passing fad encouraged by the Puritan requirement of celibacy and resisting sexual desires during the hormonal years before marriage--or at least that is Thompson's explanation. Once they entered into marriage, something that many did with a pregnant wife, the men and women went back to the "Puritan Way." These marriages of pregnant women were "shotgun" weddings, not women's tries to hook a husband who did not want to marry her.
This idea of the teenage years as a transitional period in people's lives helps him argue that Puritan society was not becoming more depraved over time. Instead, the fears of Puritan leaders were just the common notion that the next generation never lives up to the expectations of the current one. Ratios of pre-marital pregnancies and the number of cases about sexual behavior/words remain mostly steady, if not decline over the city year period. However, I think Thompson is missing something here: a placement of these cases in the larger economic and political context during the final two decades of his study. These were decades of great political, military, and economic stress for the colony and there are many signs that things were changing. For example, he does not really interrogate why/if individuals stopped confessing for sexual crimes towards the end of the period or if there are other reasons for why sexual crime diminishes in the records at the end of the period.
I place my following negative comments with a word of caution that also applies to myself. One must remember (or imagine) the period of time this book was written during. Its connection to social history as a methodology/field very attached to social science, the scientific method of testing hypotheses, and to the field of psychology/psychohistory is very obvious. Also, as an early work to deal almost exclusively with sexual behavior and mores, it places itself primarily in the field of family history and community studies of everyday life. Thus, some of its faults come from being a pioneer work in the field of sexuality--of trying to make sense of sources and a topic few had written about as a serious or historical topic. Future works would (rightfully) move away from stressing sex as a biological and psychological topic and use it more as a way to understand the power structures and society around people.
It is very difficult, if not impossible to answer many of the questions he wants to ask. At the heart of the book is the question of why sexual acts came up so often in Puritan courts and whether these were all the cases of sexual conduct going on or if they represent the tip of the iceberg. To Thompson, the fear of God and the watchful eyes of all communities members means that the cases represent about all the sexual crime occurring in Middlesex. And yet, Thompson gives plenty of examples from case testimonies where individuals are having illicit relations and are not ending up in court, or they only end up in court for one offense.
This leads to the second problem, that he almost never questions the motives or beliefs of those in power--the judges, the jurors, etc. There is an assumption throughout much of the book that all of these men want to stamp out sexual deviance and will do anything in their power to do so. He attributes this to these men understanding that they are elected by the community and if they do not maintain moral order, they will be voted out. This neglects the many individuals in the community who had no voting power and while he does make some inroads in noting how men's and women's power differed, a stronger focus on gender is needed. To give one example, Thompson never asks why women may have been uneasy in bringing sexual assault/rape cases to the court, instead believing more strongly in the dominance of romantic relations among Middlesex individuals. Also, Thompson rarely interrogates the racial assumptions or differences white Puritans have. Partly this is because persons of color rarely appear in the court records, but it is significant when they do and the different outcomes for persons of color compared to whites. For a much better example of incorporating gender and race into all parts of a Puritan/New England legal system and community see Dayton's Women Before the Bar. See also Morris' Under Household Government which uses many of the same records as Thompson, but gives a much broader comprehension of family, kinship, and community when it came to sexual interactions/crimes.
Even with its limitations, Thompson's work is a quick and necessary read for any scholar of American sexual history, colonial America, or early modern English history. It is necessary not just for its content, but for understanding the growth and history of the field(s) it is a pioneer of.
March 4, 2013
The author does not have the evidence necessary to back up his claims. Assumptions are made based on little more than wishful thinking. What could have been a great research project, if based on a wider area, is a disappointment.
Read
July 24, 2016prob bought 2010 there is a receipt in some tax year
subtitle: Popular mores in a MA county 1649-1699
subtitle: Popular mores in a MA county 1649-1699
February 20, 2013
Tends to be a bit tedious.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews