Throughout history, women have faced punishment that has ranged from mild to extreme. History maintained more rigid rules than we might recognize today for women's behavior and roles, and a step out of line might call for a cruel punishment to remind women of their positions in society.
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Women accused of witchcraft threatened the orderliness of Christian societies, prostitutes or adulterers threatened the sanctity of marriage, and a woman deemed too loud might just be heard more than a man. Although many of the reasons for gendered punishment remained consistent—witchcraft, promiscuity, general unruly conduct—the instruments of punishment and torture throughout history varied.
Although scolding today may seem to be punishment enough, in 16th- and 17th-century England and Scotland a scold was a woman who disrupted the quiet of her neighborhood with gossip and slander. To tame the scold, an instrument of punishment was born.
The scold's bridle, also sometimes referred to as branks, was a punishment for women deemed too loud or rambunctious for societal norms. The scold's bridle was as painful as it was humiliating. A masklike device often outfitted with horns and a mask with unsettling features, the scold's bridle forced its wearer to have a sharp metal gag that would hold the tongue, literally silencing the wearer's voice.
The term shrew gained popularity in 16th- and 17th-century England, even loaning its name to William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. A shrew, not unlike a scold, was a boisterous and dominating woman who would not relegate herself to the roles society assigned to her.
In medieval Germany and Austria, if a shrew dared to fall out of line, she might be met with the shrew's fiddle. Though like a fiddle in its shape, the shrew's fiddle's resemblance to the vibrant-sounding instrument stopped there. With a large opening for the neck and two smaller openings for the wrists, the shrew's fiddle locked its wearer's head in place and restrained and immobilized her arms, which were essentially handcuffed in front of her face. Different variations of the shrew's fiddle, not necessarily reserved for women, have been attested in Denmark, Japan, and Iran, and a Roman version was found in Germany.
The cucking and ducking stools made their appearance in English circles of punishment in the 13th century and 17th century, respectively. Although not reserved exclusively for women, these stools were most famously used as torture instruments for women accused of witchcraft, prostitution, and disorderly conduct in general.
The cucking stool was a public instrument of torture that very closely resembled a toilet. His wearer was forced to sit by restraint on the cucking stool and was paraded through town. As uncomfortable and humiliating as the cucking stool was, it paled in comparison to the life-threatening ducking stool. The person punished by the ducking stool was forced to sit restrained, but this chair had an increased risk: it was attached to a wooden beam that could be lowered into water. The ducking stool sometimes caused drownings, with a not-so-bright side: a person who drowned from the ducking was thus proven innocent of witchcraft and absolved of the crime.