The strong willed child was alive and well in Puritan New England:

Her mother, while Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl was a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage-floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to rush towards the child,–to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began,–to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,–not so much from overflowing love, as to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Pearl’s laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than before. The Scarlet Letter, Chapter 6

I have seen this exact look in my child’s eyes. I daresay all parents have seen it. My mom used to call it a “look of mischief” or say I was acting like a “pill.” I really think all children have a stroke of mischief in them, a strong will that shows itself in different children in different ways. Even the most compliant children sometimes get that “certain peculiar look.”