Jon Pahl abstract

Constructions of power in Christian history have frequently revealed patterns in which a subject is rendered vulnerable to violence as a result of a perceived or real failure to conform to conventional gender differentiations. Often, as Girard accurately has perceived, these crises of differentiation have less to do with individual choices than with social causes that are embedded in complex networks of symbols and institutionsnotably theologies and economies, including family systems. And yet, despite Girards attention to the role of these networks at the nexus of religion and violence, Girardian scholars have not generally articulated in discrete circumstances and contexts how theologically-informed gender constructs have operated to fuel mimetic desire, scapegoating, and sacrifice, or have assisted in creating conditions for reconciliation, peacemaking, and conflict-reduction. In this case study of an early American example of domestic violence, The Memoirs of Abigail Abbot Bailey, both aspects of the relation between God, gender, and vulnerability will be explored.

The Memoirs of Abigail Abbot Bailey was first published in 1815, but describes a series of events that took place in New England from 1767, when Abigail Abbot married Major Asa Bailey, to 1793, when she secured a divorce from him. In between, Asa committed adultery, was accused of rape, and then, for nearly two yearsfrom 1788-1790, violated by sexual assault his sixteen-year old daughter, Phebewho was one of 14 children to whom Abigail gave birth during the twenty-six years of her marriage to Asa Bailey. Abigail Abbot finally secured a divorce from Bailey in 1793, after a harrowing experience of being kidnapped by her husband and removed from her children to the New York frontier in an effort by him to secure the proceeds of their common property.

These complicated domestic developments are not, however, described by Abigail Abbot in the context of the usual events that dominate histories of these years in Americanamely the American Revolution or the founding of the Republic. Instead, Abigail narrates how her deep religious faithprayers, Bible-reading, and church-going, connected to these events. According to Abbots primary scholarly interpreter, Ann Taves, Abigail gained her freedom from Asa when she changed her mindset from "dependence upon Asa to dependence on God." This assertion is not inaccurate, but it hides as much as it reveals. Abigails trust in God was perhaps the one steady factor throughout her ordeal. What changed, as she put it, was to recognize that "trusting in God implies the due use of all proper means." The Memoirs of Abigail Abbot Bailey thus describe less a change in the object of her dependence, than a change in the operation of her agency in relation to that object. In brief, she moved from a mimetic assumption of God's power as power-over her and all others, associated with various forms of innocent male privilege, to a conviction that God's power was power-with the natural and social world--including her own language, social networks, communities, and the institutions of society. Gods power was contained in vulnerable vessels, but this did not warrant abuse at the hands of a vindictive and scheming man, and in fact warranted claims to shared material and social power over and against violence.

SITEMAP Girard Studiekring

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