Vile Transgressor of the Womb: Reading Rebekah Chamblitâs Silence

Jennifer White

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Vile Transgressor of the Womb: Reading Rebekah Chamblitâs Silence

In: The Evil Body

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Jennifer White

Jennifer White
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 171â179

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848880740_018

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In seventeenth and eighteenth-century Puritan New England, ministers used an infanticide conviction as an opportunity to address a womanâs sexual sin. Beginning with the language of the 1624 statute that allowed a âlewdâ woman to be convicted of infanticide, concealment of an infant corpse was enough evidence to punish a âlewd mother.â More importantly, evidence of her sexual experience created the link to womanâs historical and biblical connection to evil. Using the powerful jeremiad, ministers relied on this continued association of women to âoriginal sinâ and the âuncleanâ to not only censure other women but to create a metaphor of filth and pollution within her postpartum body. Delivered at an execution, jeremiads used powerful biblical metaphors to evoke images of evil. The biblical references to evil women and their power to seduce men created an atmosphere of contempt that enabled ministerâs to capitalize on infanticide executions. The enflamed language, potent metaphors, and the sight of a postpartum female at the gallows created a cultural phenomenon of âuncleanâ embodiment. Examining specifically the execution narrative of Rebekah Chamblit, this chapter seeks to remove the hegemonic framework that has historically characterized infanticide narratives to reveal how the ministerâs construction of her crime and Godâs just abandonment resulted in her disavowal from the community taking the pollution with her at execution. Forced into silence because of her shocking crime, Rebekah Chamblitâs narrative, read for meaning and subtext, allows us to renegotiate particular womenâs histories as representative of how society and culture intervened to mischaracterize them.

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The Evil Body

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848880740

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 15 Apr 2011

Subjects
- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies
  - Gender Studies

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Vile Transgressor of the Womb: Reading Rebekah Chamblitâs Silence

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The Evil Body

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Vile Transgressor of the Womb: Reading Rebekah Chamblitâs Silence