The Law of Self-Preservation: The Edwardses’ Defense of Divorce and Women in Eighteenth-Century New England

This article examines the shifting nature of gender relations in eighteenth-century New England by looking at the Edwards family’s shared views on marriage and divorce. Rooted in Puritan and Reformed notions, the Edwards family shared an ideology that challenged patriarchal double standards surrounding gender and sexuality. The article looks at writings and private correspondences from the Edwardses to bring to light their vision of marriage as a covenant of companionship that coercion or abuse might dissolve. It particularly examines Hannah Edwards’s writings on gender, female–male relations, and what she termed the male tendency to “domination,” in order to reveal how an elite colonial woman challenged gender norms. The Edwards family fought to broaden the grounds for divorce and emphasized women’s agency rooted in the “law of self-preservation.” With the 1744 “Bad Book” affair and the 1746 Eleanor Gray divorce, the Edwardses resisted legal and social biases favoring men, while also contesting the patriarchal nature of eighteenth-century New England. By drawing on Reformed predecessors, the Edwardses preserved Puritan ideals of equal souls and unequal bodies while opposing the era’s increasingly patriarchal sexual politics.