Representation of Women in Colonial North American Literature and Culture

Abstract

The paper deals with various practices of representation of women in literature and culture of colonial America, rooted in the power relations of the era. Examples of such practices of representing both European and non-European women and their metaphorical implications are found and analyzed in fictional and non-fictional literature of the period of exploration and discovery, as well as in the literature and culture of North American colonies. The special focus of the analysis is on the functions and the original purpose of the texts, be it propaganda or sustaining the dominant religious and political narratives. We argue that the existing power relations as well as the cultural and historical contexts determined and shaped patterns of representation of women, mostly relying on their alleged passivity, helplessness, fickleness and lack of both intellectual and moral strength. The illustration for this argument is provided in the numerous examples from literature and culture of colonial America, in which gender metaphors are used to link the trope of the fertile virgin to the newly-discovered continent, or to express the prescribed gender roles of a lady or a housewife, or to stereotype women’s (in)appropriate behavior as indicators of the general state of (im)morality in the colonies.