Stock Characters with Stiff-Brimmed Bonnets

This chapter examines continuity and change in representations of women Friends by non-Quakers in the first 150 years of Quakerism’s existence. Unsurprisingly, given their active role, including the unusual position of female travelling preachers, a large amount of attention, often negative, was paid to Quaker women by male non-Quakers. Analysis of such depictions reveals that stereotyping of female Friends served a number of different ends: it sought to titillate non-Quaker men with depictions of young Quaker women, and to reinforce non-Quaker men’s self-appointed role as moral guardians with religious, moral, and gendered superiority over Quaker women. The chapter considers how such responses were likely driven by anxious hegemonic masculinity, identified by several scholars as central to mainstream male identity, which led Quaker women to initially be viewed as a potent threat and later as stock figures, created to belittle female Friends’ growing moral and political influence.