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The puritans in american literature
Puritan society values
The puritans in american literature
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The Truth to the Puritanism Lifestyle in American Literature
There are many suspicions about weather Puritanism is accurately depicted in books. This should clear things up a bit. The depiction of the puritan life style in American Literature is in some ways inaccurate but it is mostly accurate. The Puritans' were very religious but their family and social traditions were vaguely addressed. In literature such as The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", "The Devil and Tom Walker", the Puritan lifestyle is mostly accurately depicted even though some things were left out. These accurate depictions and mostly reflected in crime and punishment, good and evil in society, religious influence, and family and social traditions.
In literature, such as The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, crime and punishment were depicted as harsh and unusual, and they were in some cases but, in many cases the punishments were suitable to the crime committed. There is however truth to the stories, there were public confessions, and public punishments. Crimes were not as heavily judged by biblical standards as The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible lead the reader to believe. Judges were not quite as amiss as the stories elude them to be.
Good and evil in society was also ill addressed. The puritans know that good and evil was amongst them but it did not run there lives as it was portrayed in the stories. In the Scarlet Letter the characters Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale were the epitome of good and evil. Roger was often referred to as the devil and Arthur was a man of God. In The Crucible witches were everywhere they believed that witches were terrible beings and yet everyone was susceptible to being over ...
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...y depicted in the Scarlet Letter but in the book there were not as many sermons or lectures as there were on the true Puritan Election Days.
In a nut shell the Puritans? way of life, in American Literature, was portrayed in a slightly harsher manner then the reality of it, but all in all the books were surprisingly accurate. There were certain aspects of puritan life style that were scarcely mentioned and some that were not mentioned at all. There is a great deal to learn about the Puritans and American Literature can only teach a brief synopsize about it.
Works Cited
Helicon. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." A Sermon by Jonathon Edwards. 2007. Cambridge. 11 Nov 2003 .
Stille, Darlene. Anne Hutchinson. Minneapolis: Julie Gassman, 2006.
Wilson, George. Literature and its Times. U.S.: Jeff Hill, 1997.
In America, the period of Romanticism brought up many depictions of society that held their place in America many decades ago. This society was made up of Puritans who held a strong belief system and was even their form of governing. Romantic authors like Washington Irving, who wrote “The Devil and Tom Walker”, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter included Puritans in their stories to convey a message. In both works, the authors focus on Puritans in their stories to convey an image of who Puritans were and what they did, though not in a positive light through the use of the devil and the setting of a forest. This is because of how Romanticism generally satirized Puritans and tried to portray them as completely contradictory
Miller Edwards,Hawthorne and korning each show how religion was a sin in puritan cultures and affected many people’s lives that punishment will come when you have disgraced your religion that good is against the devil there is a strict form of puritan. Puritans were dedicated to work to save themselves from the sins in the world. Guilt was a great force in the puritans belief. The people in the story are Puritans a religion often depicted because of its rules and severe punishments to those who sin. The puritans left england to avoid religious persecution they established a society in America founded upon religion intolerance, Up surprising result the church dominates the Puritan culture.
The Crucible was a rather strong book, it had battles both internal and external, there were also betrayals and vendettas… but a few stuck strong to their morals of what was wrong, and what was right. After the girl’s acts were, undoubtedly, in the eyes of the law, seen as entirely real, people who would not otherwise have been accused of witchcraft were now eligible to be under Satan’s spell. One John Proctor, saw himself above the nonsense, that witches could not exist in Salem, his wife, his children nor him; But, when Mary Warren said to the court that he used his spirit to drag her into court to testify against the girls, the judges deemed her word more truthful than his. After actively and repeatedly denying the claims, he was sentenced to death, for only a witch could lie in the face of god.
Evil is portrayed as one or the other. In Puritan society, only good and bad exists among the townspeople. For example, if a person is not with the Lord, they are with the devil. In The Crucible, when Mary Warren is accused of witchcraft, she finds herself in a life or death situation and confesses her love to God in order to save her own life. " No, I love God; I go your way no more. I love God, I bless God," she exclaims to Danforth (Miller 226). Her desperate manner exhibits that only good and evil exists in this life and death situation, and she cannot choose to be neither. Hester's daughter Pearl who had been conceived from sin displays no love for the Lord or the Devil. When Pearl is asked the question 'who made you?' she announces "that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door" (Hawthorne 102). This answer separates Pearl from the rest of the community for not believing that God made her. This symbolizes the theme that only good and evil remains in Puritan
18th century’s perception of the Puritan Society was that Puritans were a zealous community of people that lived with strict moral standards which allowed them to live in perfect harmony. However, the truth is Puritans were overly zealous whose values created paranoia and intolerance for other views. Through the characters Dimmesdale and Chillingworth who are also falsely perceived, Hawthorne suggest they are representative of the dour living of Puritan society that is hidden by the puritan’s tranquil and utopian outlook.
by the Puritans result in a fit of outrage by Pearl. One reason that the
Edmund S. Morgan's The Puritan Family displays a multifaceted view of the various aspects of Puritan life. In this book, we, the audience, see into the Puritans' lives and are thereby forced to reflect upon our own. The Puritan beliefs and practices were complicated and rather "snobbish," as seen in The Puritan Family.
Tulley, Stephen Richard. “Awakened to the Holy.” Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God! In
The Puritans were English Protestants that came to America around 1630. John Winthrop led the Puritans to America in hopes of creating a pure Christian society separate from the authority of the State and the Church of England. They followed the beliefs of John Calvin who preached predestination. Under Calvinism each individual is born being chosen by God either for eternal salvation or damnation. The Puritans modeled their lives, both personal and within their communities, after the New Testament. They created strong, functional, and for some time successful societies in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the town of Boston. The Puritans taught mainly reading as writing and math skills were not felt to be important. Establishing the first schools for children, they also founded the first American College, Harvard.
The Puritan religion had a surprisingly strong claim for the men and women who are hypersensitive to the disturbing forces that transform England in the middle of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Marriages remain far longer in their lives also the Puritan’s family in the beginning of the seventeenth century New England was more stabilized, adapted, and connected unit also the young Puritans was taught in mixture of constructive parts and the girls was taught as a housewife just like their mothers their lives were complicated.
Puritan life is probably one of the biggest paradoxes known to man theoretically. In practice is doesn’t seem like such an absurd notion. There are certain things that may lead someone into confusion over the way that Puritan life was conducted. One of these things is the object of holiness. This means that only certain members are allowed into the Puritan life after proving themselves holy. Another object that may cause confusion is the idea of enjoying oneself in Puritan life. Recreation did occur in Puritan life, but the definition of Puritan recreation is differently defined. One more object of confusion in Puritan life is the type of Puritan in which you are stereotyped into depending of your actions regarding your religion. Although this might sound complicated it is not as intricate as it is written. For Puritan’s this was a way of life. This tells us that, in practice, all of these social theories are probably more plausible than they sound. Winthrop did encounter all of these problems in his journey from England to Massachusetts, and them encountered some of these while he was in control of the society there.
Puritans were very religious and strict on many things, like with government, what jobs were for which gender, and politics. A good quote that kind of explains a puritan life is this, "Puritan women, though they didn’t receive a college education, were generally literate and often well-read. The only respectable female vocation in Puritan America was managing a household. But that “household”
Puritans are generally viewed as religious extremists. Their religious beliefs were extended to all areas of life, and were zealously enforced. This is true for the most part, especially the way they conducted themselves publicly. They believed in public piety to the extent that once, “a young married couple was fined twenty shillings for the crime of kissing in public” (Kennedy, 45). This couple was already married, so one can imagine the people would come to feel that rules like this served no purpose. As Albion’s Seed reads, Puritans “believed that costume should not be a form of sensual display” (140). Their finickiness even included their refrain from wearing the color black because it was too stylish for anyone but the elect. It would be difficult to see how this relates to any scriptural laws of God, therefore, one can imagine how people would grow tired of such pointless restrictions on every trivial choice and action.
This Study aims to bring forward the Puritanical aspects in the great novel of Hawthorne “The Scarlet Letter”. The study is an attempt to highlight the basic ideology of Nathaniel Hawthorne on Puritan codes and conduct. In the effort of establishing my viewpoints on Puritanism, I have been basically guided by Hawthorne’s rejection of Puritanism as being particularly biased and discriminative. Other indications include Hawthorne’s deep Knowledge of his Puritan ancestors, which have provided the strong basic points in the study. The study makes it clear that Hawthorne describes him as having ‘all the Puritanical traits, both good and evil’, because the author uses the word ‘evil’ to describe them, every reader automatically think of them as bad guys in the story; although since he does say they have ‘good’ traits as well readers don’t go as far as despising them. Hawthorne also describes his ancestors as ‘a bitter persecutor’ that is remembered by the Quakers as having ‘hard severity towards a women of their sect which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many’. Clearly Hawthorne wanted to stress that the Puritans were not altogether evil; however they were certainly last people with whom anyone would want to hang around. The Puritanical environment in the novel also helps me in forming my argument. Therefore I have used the traditional approach to investigate Hawthorne’s experience with Puritanism by analyzing the religious conflicts and finally his unyielding stand on Puritanism. The study reveals that Hawthorne repeats again and again throughout the novel the cruelty, ...
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God , "The God that holds you over the