Monica Fitzgerald's work, Puritans Behaving Badly, is a thorough examination of how church disciplinary actions affected gender roles in early New England. The genius of Puritans Behaving Badly is threefold.

First, it spans three generations of New England Puritans. This breadth of analysis illuminates the fluidity and development of a complex, gendered society that became the established norm in early New England. Using hundreds of documents from over ten archives to gather her evidence, Fitzgerald found that Puritans coded their language and developed their society in a gendered way. Surprisingly, however, this occurred in a circuitous manner that showed uncertainty with its development. Fitzgerald finds that the first generation of New England clergy preached communal obligation and individual piety to both men and women. First generation sermons held women and men to the idea of spiritual equality and expected everyone to have a “feminized” spirituality (10). They encouraged internal soul searching and individual piety along with civic duty. Nonetheless, numerous confessions made by laymen demonstrated how they rejected these feminized directives in public. Women embraced the use of feminized language and were more likely to be forgiven for their sins because they used what the clergy considered acceptable confessional language that focused on their soul and individual bodily sinfulness. Male confessors used masculine language that focused on how they were negligent because they disrespected the community and their civic duty. Because of this lack of focus on internal piety, men had to confess multiple times and were excommunicated more often than women. An interesting addition that Fitzgerald found, when examining the private journals of Puritan men, was their use of feminized language, which they used to describe their religiosity in private but not in public. Importantly, Fitzgerald finds evidence of gender differences in what crimes women and men were charged with: women were often charged with sins against the body, while men were charged with crimes against the community. Fitzgerald reveals that this “feminized spirituality had the potential to undermine patriarchal authority and gender roles,” but this moment passes without coming to fruition (10). Evidence shows that the clergy of the second and third generations emphasized communal responsibility for men and individual piety for women. Fitzgerald articulates how “Puritans judged women on their individual spirituality, while they judged men on their performance of their communal obligations” (65). This had a profound impact on how Puritan society established its social norms and attempted to keep social order. These actions led to the creation a gendered society.

The second genius of Fitzgerald's work is that it enters into three different historiographical discussions about Puritans in early America. Fitzgerald provides evidence that Puritans varied their interpretations of religious practices; they were not of one Puritan mind. Developments and changes occurred as generations defined their interpretation of what it meant to be a Puritan. Contributions are also made to the current scholarship about men and women residing in separate spheres. Fitzgerald found important evidence about how first-generation clergy focused on spiritual equality for men and women, which supported the idea that both men and women should have similar and individualized roles in both the private and public church world. Individualism was encouraged for both men and women. Astute analysis of church records shows a slow change toward encouraging women to focus on individual piety and men on civic duty. The Puritan use of censure created a “gendered lived religion” (10) that contributed to the creation of the separate spheres for men and women: men dominating the public sphere and women the private sphere. This leads to another contribution made to declension theory scholarship. Fitzgerald provides evidence that church membership changed; it did not decline during the eighteenth century. Fewer men joined the church, but more women enlisted. In addition, the power of the church shifted from the public realm to the private realm along with the role of women. It was the clergy who pushed men out of the ranks and pulled women into the pews.

The third brilliance of Fitzgerald's work is the actual stories told. Fitzgerald is a magnificent storyteller. She is able to draw in the reader with the story of the past and then apply her analysis of why the details are significant. This style piques the interest of the reader and makes Puritans Behaving Badly a captivating read. Records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are oftentimes challenging because of various voids, many blanks, and lost information. Fitzgerald uses her scrupulous research skills peppered with empathy and imagination to fill in the gaps and provide intriguing stories about people of the past.

Overall, Fitzgerald's work should be required reading for courses on early America because of its scope, complex insights, and nuanced analysis of how gendered society developed. A fascinating addition would be more information about how Quakers in early New England entered into this gendered world. Perhaps this could be the subject of her next book.