Barrators and Husband Beaters: Women's Violence in New York and Massachusetts, 1780-1820

Women’s engagement in physical and verbal assaults demonstrates they assertively staked out and defended their place in the early republic.  Some scholars, however, recently denoted the early republic as a time in which women’s political activism was reduced. Through an examination of print literature and legal records in rural and urban New York and Massachusetts, this paper reveals the gendered experiences of women violent offenders as they initiated acts of violence and were consequently prosecuted for those acts. Violent conflict initiated by women most often occurred in urban and less affluent neighborhoods, suggesting the culture of violence and urbanity fractured certain gendered proscriptions and offered opportunities for women.  Nevertheless, patriarchal ideals and views about women’s physical nature affected women’s experiences as violent offenders. Women chose victims in similar ways to men, most often targeting single women. Yet print literature and the criminal justice system responded more vociferously to women’s physical and verbal bellicosity when it threatened men’s authority. Women’s disorderly speech and abuse of their husbands was far more likely to result in guilty verdicts and prosecutions than similar acts by men.  In contrast, women’s assaults on other women were often handled in the same way as men’s same sex assaults.  The willingness on the part of women to engage in violence reveals that women were not passive bystanders to the events of their lives, and they acted against and in line with gendered expectations.