A Look at Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing and Married/Involved Women Today

by Nicolette Westfall

Well, I did it: I got through all 578 pages of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s The Minister’s Wooing. I survived the flowery 19th century language and constant satirical jabs at puritanical bible-beating of the religion Stowe grew up with—Calvinism. It’s a significant work of American literature that offers a romantic contrast (and poor comparison) to The Scarlet Letter. What kept me reading the 1859 novel to the last page was Stowe’s humorous portrayal of a clueless but pure girl, Mary Scudder, and how she deals with the Puritanical pressures of 18th century days in Newport, New England. Like any “good woman” of her time (or any time), she is expected to survive a marriage made for communal advantage without getting too depressed or developing things like the sinful habit of cheating on a drab hubby with someone she’s actually attracted to—for better or worse.

The book itself, a hardback edition printed in 1887, was pretty fragile; if I wasn’t careful, the pages tended to rip with the motion of turning. I guess their state reflected that of woman’s identity. Mary’s friend, Madame Virginie Frontignac, notes that men already rule the world, so they need to stop manipulating and scheming women out of the only thing left to them to possess (their own hearts). Knowing that Frontignac is addicted to manipulative Col. Aaron Burr, Mary keeps Burr from her.

Stowe offers many such time-worn insights into human nature, which still ring true today. When Mary finds out that her lover-to-be is dead, she does the right thing by her family and the community, agreeing to marry Dr. Hopkins, the much older, bland, naïve preacher—his redeeming quality is that he is anti-slavery and isn’t afraid of arguing it in the face of slave owners who fuel the town’s economy. Sure, in the end, he presents as admirable, but he’s just not the man Mary loves.

Comparing the 18th century protagonist to modern women, I see a little bit of Mary in the martyrdom of some women I know. Of course, men can be just as guilty of puritanical self-punishment when it comes to marrying and staying with women they truly don’t like or love, but this blog is about the “weaker” sex, and since we’re considered such, we need all the help we can get. So if you’re looking for analysis on men in Stowe’s work and solutions to male-specific marital woes, please look elsewhere.

You’ll have to forgive me, I’ve gotten a bit long-winded—I suppose it’s just residue from reading Stowe’s overly descriptive and detailed story about women who either do or don’t marry men that they’re ill-suited for, like the female characters in a Jane Austen novel. It’s all that family pressure—or persuasion— and fear of not pleasing the guy who asked for your hand when you weren’t interested that has me questioning a society of women who settle with the wrong person for seemingly all the right reasons.

The wrong marital choice today often comes from the dread of being alone or fear of financial instability. It also continues to stem from the heavy conditioning women have undergone throughout the ages that brainwashes them into believing they must please men first, children second, and if there is any energy left over, the household. (That’s right, taking care of ourselves isn’t even on the list.)

I know a career woman who is married to a man out of duty. To note, she is in love with another man, but since she’s been with this boring fellow so long, she felt obligated, and besides, her real soul mate/lover doesn’t have a secure job with benefits! It’s the same thing that happened to Stowe’s other sympathetic female character, Madame Frontignac, who married for economic reasons; she’s so “hard up”, she desperately falls for Burr’s slimy advances.

Another woman I know is with a less than honorable man. He’s taken to dictating to her that she can only listen to music that he likes, and she’s slowly losing her right to hang out with the girls and so on. According to this man, an isolated woman on a short leash makes for a better wife. Marital abuses aside, if the dysfunctional couple stopped bickering at home, in the car, out in public, and at events, they’d probably stop speaking, because they’d have nothing to talk about. But hey, the bills are paid and she can afford a regularly booked manicure! It’s the mindset she was dutifully raised in, like so many women during the time in which The Minister’s Wooing occurs—and now.

According to Stowe, these women’s relationships with men are not healthy, for many reasons, including failure of staying faithful to their Nature. Likewise, Mary, at the mere thought of never seeing her dead lover again, becomes quite subdued and depressed, despite dutifully accepting her role as the good preacher’s wife to be. The local seamstress Miss Prissy Diamond, and freed slave Candace, come to the rescue, saving Mary from her self-inflected martyrdom. Stowe provides a happy ending in the book for all—unless you count the “well-bred” womanizer, Burr, who loses terribly in return for his amoral treatment of the women he preys upon.

I’m not sure if the women I know will break free from the abuses arising on both sides as a result of the inequity in relationships. Reason doesn’t play into it. Women today often don’t have the tight knit female support networks they did back in Mary’s time. We just don’t need the wisdom or support of other women like Virginie, Prissy, and Candace, because with it, we might think more carefully about our choices in life partners and consider avoiding the grim future unhappy ones make.