Female Piety in Puritan Ne England The Emergence of Religious Humanism [Hardcover]

A synthesis of literary critical and historical methods, Porterfield's book combines insightful analysis of Puritan theological writings with detailed examinations of historical records showing the changing patterns of church membership and domestic life. She finds that by conflating marriage as a trope of grace with marriage as a social construct, Puritan ministers invested relationships between husbands and wives with religious meaning. Images of female piety represented the humility that Puritans believed led all Christians to self-control and, ultimately, to love. But while images of female piety were important for men primarily as aids to controlling aggression and ambition, they were primarily attractive to women as aids to exercising indirect influence over men and obtaining public recognition and status.

An excellent brief...interdisciplinary study. --American Studies

Well-researched and very readable. The inclusion of biographical narrative enlivens the era for the reader. --Rosalie Beck,Baylor University

Makes for absorbing reading. --ADRIS Newsletter

Porterfield provides some interesting readings of texts by major New England authors....[She] examines some compelling issues. --Journal of American History

Will be of interest to specialists in Puritanism, spirituality, and women's religious experience. Especially impressive is Porterfield's ability to treat 17th-century Puritan experience as part of a larger story. --Choice

Bursting with insight and...elegantly rendered in prose....An excellent example of how scholarship that is attentive to gender can reveal a new world even in the well-charted history of seventeenth-century Puritanism. --Church History

This study is well worth reading--and thinking about--especially for students of American Puritanism. --Christianity & Literature

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