Puritan Society

2098 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: the puritans and salem witch trials

Puritan Society It is difficult to draw parallels between the staunch beliefs of Puritan society in colonial America and the freedom experienced in the country today. The Puritans lived strict lives based on a literal interpretation in the Bible, and constantly emphasized a fear of God and a fear of sin. Modern society looks at this negative view of humanity as a whole as an out-dated opinion from the past, believing that, "Now people know better than that." However, faults in human nature can not be completely erased by the passing of time and the modernization of society. People still have emotions of love, compassion, envy, and pride; and many types of interpersonal relationships within their community. Puritan literature focuses on all people's instinct to protect their best interest and the lengths they will go to keep blame from themselves. Society emphasizes the sins of others rather than facing the faults in itself as seen through Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter and The Minister's Black Veil, and Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible. The authors criticize society's use of punishment, intolerance, and hypocrisy in dealing with sin. Puritanism viewed religion and law as almost identical, making Puritan societies strict theocracies with clergy exclusively controlling people's lives. Puritanism was also based on a somewhat fatalistic view of the human race, as seen in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. The founders of Boston were said to, "have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another as the site of a prison" (33). Puritans believed that people were basically sinful and should be mercilessly punished for strayi... ... middle of paper ... ...with the components of punishment executed by modern authorities. Defense lawyers, probation, and the phrase, "Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law," have replaced public humiliation and social isolation. Unalienable rights are now mapped out by the constitution as well as other components of a democratic government. In The Scarlet Letter, a townsman said, "It must gladden your heart…to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people" (Hawthorne, 43). Look at the current events, scandals, and crimes, and this statement could apply to descriptions of many justice situations today. Has society really surpassed the criticized methods of the Puritan era's justice, or is it that the underlying principals remain the same? Bibliography: The Crucible The Scarlet Letter

Show More
Related

  • The Puritan Family

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Hysteria In The Crucible

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine how hard it would be to live in a Puritan society. This means that one could never skip a day of going to church, and would have to maintain a good reputation. This was the reality of society in The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The story was set in Salem, Massachusetts, where the government was based greatly on religion. Anybody who had been accused of witchcraft would either be hung or sentenced to jail. Several girls in Salem faked illness, and pretended to be bewitched. The town went into hysteria when these girls started accusing others of witchcraft and summoning the devil. The hysteria was a result of the town’s puritan belief system in which everybody was very religious and concerned with keeping a good reputation. Abigail Williams,

    Read More

  • William Bradford

    416 Words  | 1 Pages

    The puritans were very religious. They wanted to show everyone what happens if you are good and believe in god and the heavens. If you do bad things you would be punished or be killed. If you do good things you can be hand chosen to go to heaven.

    Read More

  • The Life Style of the Puritans

    666 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Cults In Puritan Society

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cults can be anywhere, especially where you least expect them to be: from inside one of the first great American novels to the small town of Wells, Texas. According to The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Puritan society is essentially a cult.

    Read More

  • Life as a Puritan

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Puritans didn't have all the luxuries we have today. They were told many things by preachers such as Jonathon Edwards, who lit a candle of fear in their minds. If I was alive to hear Edwards preach, I'd certainly have to question myself. He preached that God holds us in his hands and he can make or break us. If God decides it so, he will let us go and we will fall from his hands to nothing but Hell. Certainly no one wants to go to Hell. So, the Puritans tried to better their lives, and go by rules or "resolutions." They believed if they followed these resolutions, even though their fate was predetermined by God, they could live a life of good and maybe prove they are meant to go to Heaven.

    Read More

  • Women And The Salem Witch Trials

    1678 Words  | 4 Pages

    The church and Christian beliefs had a very large impact on the Puritan religion and lifestyle. According to discovery education, “Church was the cornerstone of the mainly Puritan society of the 17th century.”( Douglas 4). Puritan laws were intensively rigid and people in society were expected to follow a moral strict code. And because of Puritans and their strict moral codes, any act that was considered to go against this code was considered a sin and deserved to be punished. In Puritan theology, God h...

    Read More

  • Puritans In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1626, the Puritans received a charter for the Massachusetts Bay Company, which later became known as the Massachusetts colony. The Puritan people sought freedom from religious persecution in England. They desired to reform the Church of England because they believed it had been corrupted by Catholic ideals. Puritan ideology in the reformation of the Church of England was criticised by many, including author Nathaniel Hawthorne. In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans are portrayed as a theocratic people filled with fear and misconduct, hypocritical of their own beliefs and practices.

    Read More

  • The Scarlet Letter

    583 Words  | 2 Pages

    Puritans believed in strict religious dedications, by trying to follow the holy commandment. “The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid kind than now.”(Hawthorne 9). They wanted to be considered the holiest of all people because they try to reflect a world of perfection in the sight of God. While they where trying to portray a holy life; however, they where also living a sinful life because they have been judgmental, slandering, uncompassionate, resentment, and forbearing, which are all sinful acts of the bible.

    Read More

  • Punishment of the Puritans

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    To this day, the word “puritan” connotes both rigidity and a generally narrow view on life. The dictionary definition of Puritan (the capital refers to the actual religious group) includes, "...demanding the simplification of doctrine and worship, and greater strictness in religious discipline” (Source A). Simplification of their religion would be an understatement of what the Puritans did. Basically, acts were separated into good or evil, approved by God or frowned upon. In this robotic fashion, with no gray area, cruel ignominy was shockingly popular, and used in unworthy situations. An example lies in Source B, a still from the movie adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s magnum opus, The Scarlet Letter. (Although classified as a fictional work the novel is known for it’s factual representations of the Puritans’ behavior.) For committing adultery, Hester Prynne is assigned a lone standing position on the town scaffold, essentially to be put on display and judged while nervously clutching her new baby. To add ridicule, she is enclosed by guards carrying swords and other various weapons. It makes one wonder just how much destruction a woman and her baby are capable of.

    Read More

  • The Crucible by Arthur Miller

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many years ago, the culture and atmosphere was amazingly different. The expectations of people and communities are extremely high. During the Puritan times, many laws and regulations existed pertaining to government, religion, and witchcraft. In the play, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, the one word that best describes the Puritan beliefs and the community structure is strict.

    Read More

  • Puritan Life

    1344 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Fear And Paranoia In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    Puritan societies usually don’t trust the world outside their own and back then they were quick to denounce the most imperceptibly different actions as being evil or having to deal with the Devil. Characters in “ The Crucible” showcase just how easy it is for a misunderstanding to spiral out of control, and how a person’s paranoia can be the undoing of a whole

    Read More

  • The Puritans

    1151 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Puritans first became a sect in England, where they became dissatisfied with the Church of England and sought reform. They led a civil war but their victory was short-lived and they came to North America to escape persecution. “The Puritans believed that the Bible was God’s true law and that it provided a plan for living.” They wanted to live according to this belief and that is what brought the separation between them and the Church of England. For the Puritans, God was to be the motivation of all their actions (Kizer, Kay). They believed in piousness, righteousness, and hard work. (Campbell, Douglas).

    Read More

  • Puritan Values in Today's Society

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    The past doesn’t necessarily just disappear instead modern society adopts a “corrected” version of the past. Some of the values held in the past were just as important in the past as today. Critics of the Puritan literature believe that Puritan values are non-existent and irrelevant in today’s society, however if one looks around he or she may find small but influential remnants of Puritan values in their day-to-day life. Although the Puritans lived in another time period, both modern society and Puritans share similar beliefs and hold certain values that are akin to one another. For example, both Puritans and modern society value strict moral codes. To give further insight, today’s society have held unspoken

    Read More

More about Puritan Society

Open Document