HIEU 164 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Cross-Dressing
HIEU 164 – Textbook Notes (Wiesner-Hanks) – Chapter 9: Gender in the Colonial World
• European society -> New World
• European men having children with native women
• Sexualized colonial language
o Colonizing/colonists masculine, colonized feminine
• Women as intermediaries in the growing mestizo culture
• Some men married native women and adopted practices from their culture, while their wives did
the same of European culture
• More men going to New World, so women forced to not marry, go into convents, marry late
• Women's role more as consumers rather than producers as manufactured goods were produced
• Widows and unmarried women as investors in trading companies
European Women in the Colonies
• Handful of women who accompanied men on early voyages as sexual partners, servants
o Referred to in documents as "ladies of games"/"women of love", focusing on sexual role
• Women cross-dressing to get to new world
• As colonies more established, government trying to regulate sexuality and married
o Spanish Crown forbidding single women from immigrating because they feared them being
prostitutes
• Promoting immigration of virtuous women to be wives of white men there, encourage investment
from dowries, and serve as role models for native women
o Spanish Crown stating that married men going to colonies had to bring their wives
• Governments bringing reformed prostitutes, orphans to colonies, giving them dowries, and forcing
them to marry white men in order to boost population
o Not a lot of women, since the women who wanted to leave were usually not the ones that
officials wanted to go to the colonies
• Sexual deviance common, even though Christian monogamy was official norm
o Wealthy Europeans having multiple wives, with one being the official and legitimate wife
and others being not so legitimate, and tending to choose members of extended families as
spouses
o Poorer Europeans not considering anything when it came to marriage, and often not getting
married at all
o Concubine and prostitution popular
• Catholic countries setting up recogimientos, meant to house women who had no place else to go
o Reformed prostitutes, women whose husbands were traveling, unmarried women, etc.
o Going there meant putting your virtuousness under question
• Mid-1500's first convents were opened
o Wealthier white women were nuns, laywomen were mixed race
o Popular in urban areas for unmarried women
o Hard for elite women to find a proper husband, so went to convent instead
• Would live normal lives just in nunnery, and bishops tried to control this with little
success
• Convent schools
New England
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Document Summary
Hieu 164 textbook notes (wiesner-hanks) chapter 9: gender in the colonial world: european society -> new world, european men having children with native women. Sexualized colonial language: colonizing/colonists masculine, colonized feminine, women as intermediaries in the growing mestizo culture. Successes: women on plantations took part in managing property, widows and single women investing in corporations, women preachers in methodism. Working class women: working in shops, cloth production, merchants, domestic servants, on small farms, hard labor, heavy clothing that was designed for colder european climate. If in rural area, produced everything they used. Lack of women = mixed-race children: mixed-race children hoping to "whiten" themselves to gain privilege, purchasing documents/changing name so they were "white" In areas where mixed-race marriage allowed, women lost european status when they married: worrying about racial contamination and women being tempted by black men, creation of the idea of "race"
