Often when I do a book talk and share about my Shaker books, people, usually women, say how they can’t imagine why anyone would be a Shaker. I have some of the same feelings as they do because I can’t imagine giving up my individual family to live in such a group where all are to act and live as sisters and brothers. Your husband would become your brother. You would be told to have no more feeling for him than for any of the other brethren in the village. Perhaps even more difficult would be letting your children go to the Children’s House to live away from you, again as your sister or brother instead of your child. That child would grown up calling you sister, not mother.
Such feels like an impossible choice to me and others in this more comfortable world for women and mothers than the 1800s or earlier world was for women and children. Perhaps some men may have struggled with some of the same choices and also the decision to surrender individual ownership of things or property to the community.
But the reason I’m thinking more about the women than the men was because in that time, the men would have been who decided to go to the Shakers if they had a family. A husband not interested in becoming a Shaker would likely not be swayed by his wife. On the other hand, if a wife refused to go with him, she generally lost the guardianship of her children. Plus, she would have little way to support herself as women could not own property and had almost no opportunities to earn a living.
Yet many women did go to the Shakers and sign the Covenant to live the Shaker way. And the question many of us ask as modern women is why.
I believe some women did go with their husbands with belief and acceptance of the Shaker way. They might have even encouraged their husbands to choose to go to the Shakers. Some might have chosen that life for their children because of how hard things were for some in those days. They had no relief organizations. If a mother or father didn’t have a way to put food on the table for their children, those children went hungry. Some families came to the villages for that food, for the chance to work, for their children to go to school and learn skills. I imagine women with no husband, father, brother to help them had an easy time deciding to be a Shaker.
In my books, my characters are often those in need of a place. They were the needy ones instead of the Shaker converts that brought in land and stock to bolster the financial strength of the villages. They were the ones with only had their hands ready to work in exchange for a roof over their heads and food to eat.
That wasn’t true for my book The Refuge. Darcy and her husband never aimed to stay with the Shakers for long. Just until the cholera epidemic had run its course in the area, but when Darcy becomes a widow, she has no choice but to stay since she had no family to go to.
In that story, I wanted to show how the women in the village surely became sisters in more than name as they bonded through work and friendship. Most of my characters never went past the novitiate stage to become true Shakers who signed the Covenant, but in the actual history of the Shaker villages, many women did. Perhaps that was due to the necessities of life. Perhaps they came with their husbands or fathers because they had no other choice. Perhaps they joined because they truly believed in the Shaker way and liked how the Shakers considered women equal to men in intellect and leadership abilities. Perhaps they came as children and never desired any other life. Whatever the reason, they signed the Shaker Covenant when they committed to the Shaker way.
Young people couldn’t sign the Covenant until they were twenty-one. Many young people raised in Shaker villages never became covenant signed members of the sect. Of the children the Shakers took in, nine out of ten left when they became old enough to make their way in the world.
But before that they were taught many of the saying I shared in my last post here on One Writer’s Journal. They could have carried the Shakers’ good advice for living away with them. In the comments of Wednesday’s post, readers liked the one about a place for everything and everything in its place. You didn’t have to be a Shaker to have that saying echo in your ears. Many parents repeat that to their children.
And the Winner Is —
I picked the winner of my book The Refuge. That winner is Rhonda. I sent you an email, Rhonda. Check it out and let me know your mailing address and I’ll get your book in the mail.
Not many entries for this giveaway, but many thanks to those of you who did comment on my posts. I’ve concentrated on Shaker stories in these posts and also about the Hidden Springs mysteries that are on e-book sale right now for 99 cents each at many internet book sites.
Do you think it’s easy for women who work or go to church together to become sisters of the heart?