American Essay

University of Limerick English Department

‘New England Puritanism is as significant as a form of social control as it is as a form of religious doctrine.’ Discuss with reference to the work of at least two of the writers on the module.

Essay for the Lecture EH4145 American Literature Fall 2008 xxxxxxx

Submitted by: xxxxxxx Student ID xxxxxxx Erasmus Exchange Programme

The Puritans left England in the hope of escaping from the growing persecution and suppression of their faith. They thought of themselves as “a people of God” sent to cultivate what had hitherto been “the devil’s territories” (Mather 308) to establish God’s kingdom on earth. Furthermore, they believed that England was doomed anyway, since “the Old World would be destroyed by the eschatological and apocalyptic violence that would precede the millenium” (Zakai 23). John Winthrop, the future governor of the first Puritan colony in Massachusetts Bay, predicted that “God will bring some heavy affliction upon the land [England], and that speedily.” In this essay I will examine their hopes for their new lives in the Puritan colony and compare to the reality of how Puritanism affected various aspects of life, be it in the domestic or grander social sphere.

1 The Vision of the Puritan State The original vision of this community of Puritan settlers is perhaps best described in Winthrops’ Model of Christian Charity, a sermon he delivered to his fellow Puritan emigrants on board the ship that was to bring them to America. Here, Winthrop paints the picture of a brotherhood of Puritans, united through their faith: For this end we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make other’s conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. (Winthrop 157-58)

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He also stresses that theirs is a holy enterprise, undertaken to “improve our lives to do more service to the Lord” (Winthrop 156). This is a reference to the unfavorable conditions in which the Puritans exercised their faith in England, but also helps to build his vision of the perfect community of God’s chosen people in New England, who will practice in their daily lives what “most in their churches maintain as a truth in profession only” (Winthrop 156). In short, Winthrop wanted their colony to be a model of Christian charity, so that “men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘the Lord make it like that of of [sic] NEW ENGLAND.’ ” (Winthrop 158)

2 The Reality Winthrops’ vision of the Puritan settlement in Massachusetts Bay certainly was a noble one full of good intentions. It is a wholly other matter, however, how and to what extent his ideas of charity were put into practice in the newly founded colony.

2.1 Domestic Life To explore New England Puritanism as a means of social control, it will be useful to look at its impact on one of the smallest social groupings within a community - the family. A lot of the principles and values found within the family will also carry over to the larger body of the community and influence politics and social life in general. One important issue of Puritanism is the role of the two sexes in marriage. In his famous speech On Liberty in 1643, Winthrop also gives insight on the Puritan view on marriage: The woman’s own choice makes such a man her husband, yet being so chosen, he is her lord and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way of liberty, not of bondage, and a true wife accounts her subjection her honor and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free but in her subjection to her husband’s authority.

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(Winthrop 166) He asserts that there is a clear hierarchy in marriage, with the woman being subordinate to her husband and having to obey his decisions. These are also the findings of Levin Schücking in his study of The Puritan Family. Even though this study was conducted with source material from England, it mirrors Mathers conception of marriage and is relevant for understanding the Puritan doctrine in New England. In accordance with Winthrop, Schücking observes that the Puritans “insisted that the relation of man and woman in Christian marriage was the same as that between Christ and his Church” (Schücking 32) and that “the man, as St Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians clearly shows, was the head, the woman a member of the family”(33). Schücking also cites Tyndale, who equals the obedience of a wife to her husband with that of servants to their masters (33). This again echoes Winthrops’ account and shows that the idea of subservience of women was commonplace in Puritan society. As a whole, this is an example of social control through Puritan doctrine. The idea of the subservience of woman to man was introduced and justified by the Puritan creed, thus maintaining a certain social order.

2.2 Social Order and Puritanism Even though Winthrop conjures up the idea of a Puritan brotherhood, he makes it clear right from the beginning that this doesn’t mean equality. According to him, both rich and poor have their place in the grand scheme of things: God Almighty [...] has so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in subjection. Most importantly, though, he also argues that there is a mutual dependance of both rich and poor and that any kind of revolution would go against the will of God: “the rich and mighty

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should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against their superiors and shake off their yoke” (Winthrop 147). Here again we can see Puritanism being utilised to maintain an otherwise arbitrary world order. Winthrop comments in a similar vein on the relationship between authority and those governed by authority. Even though the magistrates of the colony were elected, he claims that “being called by you we have our authority from God in way of an ordinance” (Winthrop 147). This again reflects the Puritan influence on politics in that time.

2.3 Dissenters and Witches With a doctrine as radical as Puritanism it is not surprising that there were also critics of its worldview. One of the most prominent examples is Roger Williams, who later went on to found the first settlement on Rhode Island. Winthrop notes that Williams “disputes their [the English settlers] right to the land they possessed here [...] except they compounded with the natives” (Winthrop 159). As a consequence, and because he had preached this and other critical beliefs to other people, “it was agreed to send him into England” to get rid of him. Williams escaped, however, and founded the aforementioned settlement on Rhode Island. Witchcraft on the other hand was used as the Puritan scapegoat for all things that went wrong. As Mather explains, the devil “devised a horrible plot against this country by witchcraft” (309) and all witches are “engaged in his hellish design of bewitching and ruining our land” (ibid). What is astonishing is his subsequent assertion to “report matters not as an advocate but as a historian”(Mather 310). Having just offered quite a biased explanation of witchcraft, this claim should at least be doubted.

In the reported trial of Martha Carrier, said woman is

accused of being a witch. A man claims that she was angry with him ´´laying out some land near her husband’s” (Mather 311) and that she bewitched him so that he was “taken with a swelling in his foot and then with a pain in his side” (ibid). The day the woman was taken away, he began to get better. Also, she is blamed for “unaccountable calamities [that] befell his cattle; their death being such as they could guess no natural reason for” (ibid). Both of

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these accusations are highly unlikely. While she might have somehow poisoned their cattle out of spite, she certainly couldn’t have interfered with the wound healing process of the man. However, the trials did serve a social purpose in the Puritan society, however debatable, namely to channel the agressions of the inhabitants of the colony and direct them against personified evil in symbolic purification. Needless to say, this got out of hand and culminated in true witch hunting frenzy. Some of the colonists will also have seized the occasion to rid themselves of disagreeable neighbours. As a whole the witch trials are another example of the dangerous intermingling of church and state in the Massachusetts Bay colony, since all the trials were conducted by a court that was at once a worldly and ecclesiastical authority. So far I have examined various ways and various areas in which the puritan doctrine was used as a means of social control. On a small scale, it was used to justify the oppression of women in the domestic sphere. Similarly, Puritanism promoted a certain world order as Godgiven, with the rich as well as the ecclesiastic ruling the poor. Dissenters from this view were radically persecuted and more often than not expelled from the community. This evidence of Puritan reality makes it clear that Winthrops’ noble vision of the Puritan community as a caring brotherhood was in fact not much more than that - the vision of an utopia he strived for but never was able to realise.

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References Mather, Cotton. “The Wonders of the Invisible World.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. eds. Nina Baym, Wayne Franklin, Philip F. Gura, Arnold Krupat, and al., vol. A. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007, seventh ed. 308 – 313. Schücking, Levin L. The Puritan Family: A Social Study from the Literary Sources. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1969. Winthrop, John. “A Model of Christian Charity.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. eds. Nina Baym, Wayne Franklin, Philip F. Gura, Arnold Krupat, and al., vol. A. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007a, seventh ed. 147 – 158. ———. “On Liberty.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. eds. Nina Baym, Wayne Franklin, Philip F. Gura, Arnold Krupat, and al., vol. A. New York: W. W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007b, seventh ed. 164–166. Zakai, Avihu. “Theocracy in Massachusetts: The Puritan Universe of Sacred Imagination.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 27 (Spring 1994).1: 23 – 31. URL pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/ msavihu/AvihuZakai/SacredImagination.pdf

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