ABSTRACT
Female piety, especially in the form of a “persistent spiritual extremism,” was clearly perceived to be a threat to gendered relations in the seventeenth-century English Atlantic world; lay and clerical authorities took actions to contain the threat. At first glance, the violence Joshua Verin directed against his wife, a devout and pious woman, appears to be a seventeenth century example of a domineering husband controlling an unruly wife, not atypical of a patriarchal English marriage in the pre-modern era. Many women, despite repeated exhortations to be submissive and accept their place in a male-dominated puritan order, underwent deeply emotional faith experiences that inspired them with a sense of spiritual or moral authority. Puritan women were socialized to be modest, submissive and obedient; and husbands were expected to conform to prescribed social norms as well. In addition to women’s religious activism, prophesying, an emotional and authoritative form of speech also became a point of dispute for puritan ministers in New England.
