Of course all Virginia in its feminine element was not made up of the cream bubbles of society. There was the lower stratum as well; there were even strata, diminishing in numbers as in importance as one neared the bottom of the pail. There were in Virginia, as in New England, laws which show that the Virginia woman was not always a lady or at least did not always "demean herself as such." We find, for instance, that there is an enactment which determines that "women causing scandalous suits" are to be ducked; and for the furtherance of this penalty there shall be set up "neere the court house in every county," besides a pillory, stocks, and a whipping post--a ducking-stool. This same ducking-stool, which was an importation from England and not an American innovation, consisted of a pole, with a rude chair fastened to the end, hanging over a pond or stream, the pole being so balanced that anyone seated in the chair, and secured there, might be lowered into the water, held therein until drowning was imminent, and then again hoisted to air and life. This weapon of an offended justice was, in Virginia as in New England, made the penalty for divers offences, and the language of one act is amusing in its evidently masculine origin, where it condemns to the ducking-stool "brabling women who often slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often brought into chargeable and vexatious suits and cast in great damages." That "poor" is significant of experience and consequent wrath.
Yet, while these and similar precautions against feminine dominance by force prove the existence, if we did not know of them otherwise, of degrees in Virginia feminine station, the representative Virginia woman was of more pampered and easier existence than was her sister of the North. In New England as well there were toward the end of the early colonial period well defined strata of society; but they were neither so far separated nor so marked as were those of Virginia. The New England dame was called "Goody" or "Mistress" according to her social standing, the latter title being for long reserved for the spouse of a knight; the "Goodies" were not only enormously in the majority, but they were types of the popular existence. The Virginia woman was softly nurtured and clad in purple and fine linen,--the latter literally after a time; the New England woman was expected to do her duties to her husband as he to her, and her garb was homespun.