Puritans

1. Puritans Who were they? How did they live? The Scarlet Letter

2. PURITAN LIFE AND RELIGION The Puritans were an English religious group who went to the United States to practise their religion without interference from the Church of England. The Puritans were pilgrims, but not all pilgrims were Puritans. Most Puritans settled in towns in coastal Massachusetts just slightly north of Boston. The Puritans had their own unique community and cultural practices, most of them based on their religious beliefs. It is important for us to understand the Puritan customs and culture before we can begin reading The Scarlet Letter, which takes place in one of these Puritan communities: Boston, Massachusetts.

3. The Puritan Way In the 18th Century, following the teaching of the English philosopher John Locke, emerges the influence of a group known as Puritans. Puritans rejected the rituals and extravagant buildings of the major denominations* in Europe. Puritans emphasized individual conscience before God, and rejected the dogmas of organized religion. They wanted to “purify” the church. *denomination; A Christian denomination is an identifiable religious body under a common name, structure, and doctrine within Christianity. Puritans, sometimes called Separatists, are those who reject the organized denominations' claims of authority. Church of England Separatists made up one small group, which began breaking away as early as the 16th Century. By far the largest group of Puritans came out of the Presbyterian Church, while the second largest group came from the Baptists. In a time when hatred and persecution existed between many denominations, every denomination in Europe hated and persecuted the Puritans. One small group after another boarded ships and went to America.

4. Religion played an important role in Puritan life. The Puritans felt that they were chosen by God for a special purpose and that they must live every moment in a God-fearing manner. Every man, woman, and child was expected to attend the meeting on the Sabbath without question. Puritans were required to read the Bible, which showed their religious discipline. If they did not read the Bible, it was thought that they were worshiping the devil. Preparations for the Sabbath began the day before. All of the food had to be cooked and clothes ready. No labor, not even sewing, could be done on the Sabbath. The Sabbath began at sundown the night before, and the evening was spent in prayer and Bible study. The Puritan Way

5. Strict Order in the Church The church was usually a small bare building. Upon entering people would take their appropriate places. The men sat on one side, the women sat on the other, and the boys did not sit with their parents, but sat together in a designated pew where they were expected to sit in complete silence. The deacons sat in the front row just below the pulpit because everyone agreed the first pew was the one of highest dignity. The servants and slaves crowded near the door, into a loft, or a balcony. The service began with a prayer given by the minister that usually lasted around an hour. Puritans did not like music in their services. They also felt that music and celebrating were not appropriate in the church meeting house. It was many years before any musical instruments were allowed in the church.

6. Strict Order in the Church After the prayer, the minister would continue with an emotional sermon. The minister's sermon would last for two, three, even four hours at a time without restroom breaks or intermissions. The Puritans listened intently to the terrible warnings of sin and punishment. Church Deacons kept strict order in the church. Using a "staff," deacons would poke anyone misbehaving in church. In this illustration, the boy is being punished for turning around to talk to his friend.

7. Strict Order in the Church • Churches were unheated and for many months of the year and in the winter were unbearably cold. Women carried small foot-stoves from home full of hot coals which were used to warm their feet during the church service.

8. Puritan intolerance • Although the intolerance of the major denominations toward Puritans was undeniable, we must also admit that Puritans have, at times, also shown intolerance for others, particularly toward the denominations that persecuted them. • Puritan life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was harsh. Actions mattered, since outward behavior reflected inward religious faith. With that in mind, woe unto anyone who ran afoul of the community's standards. Such a person could easily, and quickly, end up in the pillory! • In this respect, one of the best-known episodes concerning Puritan intolerance was the Trial of the Witches of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. http://www.awesomestories.com/religion/the-puritans/puritans-and-religious-intolerance

9. Salem, Massachusetts and the History of Witchcraft • The events which led to the witch trials in Salem actually occurred in what is now the town of Danvers, then a parish of Salem Town, known as Salem Village. • Launching the hysteria was the bizarre, seemingly inexplicable behavior of two young girls; the daughter, Betty, and the niece, Abigail Williams, of the Salem Village minister, Reverend Samuel Parris. • However, it seems that the Salem witch trials were not typical of Puritan life. In more than 400 years of Puritan history there were only two such incidents. In Europe such trials were common.

10. The Scarlet Letter • The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1750, also deals with Puritan intolerance. Salem, which was home to the infamous witch trials of the 17th century, was also home to Nathaniel Hawthorne when he wrote The Scarlet Letter. • According to some critics, perhaps he was influenced by the town's history when he penned his tale of Puritan pride and punishment. Or maybe he wrote the story to examine the skeletons of his own past, his great-great-grandfather (John Hathorne) having been one of three Salem judges who determined people were witches and condemned them to death. • The theory also exists that he took a custom that existed in Spain and an incident which took place in Spain, translated them into a Puritan setting, and created a story that was entirely fictitious. His book is filled with misrepresentations about Puritan beliefs.

11. http://www.shmoop.com/scarlet-letter/summary.html

12. The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter follows the public shaming and punishment of a young woman named Hester Prynne in mid-17th century Boston (a.k.a. the Massachusetts Bay Colony). When Hester becomes pregnant, everyone believes her to be guilty of adultery: she has been separated from her husband for two full years, and the baby cannot be his. The magistrates (local law enforcers) and ministers order her to wear a scarlet letter "A" on the bodice of her dress, so that everyone can know about her adultery. The Scarlet Letter begins when Hester is briefly released from prison so that she can be paraded through town, displaying her scarlet "A" while standing on top of the town scaffold (a public stage). She carries her baby daughter, Pearl, in her arms. Pearl was born in prison. Hester steadfastly refuses to reveal the name of Pearl’s father, so that he might be saved from punishment.

13. The Scarlet LetterChapter 1 A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the Vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel.

14. Certain it is that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-hush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

15. This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is far authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.