In Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson cautions her readers that the constructs of “truths” are created to confine the normality of identity based on dominant norms in order to question and change these norms into those fitting of a society based on freedom and equality. Winterson illustrates that such concepts as the constraints of traditional gender roles, the hierarchy of religion and the involvement of primal events contribute to the danger of these supposed “inherent truths” that create what we consider “normality.” By revealing this Nietzschean idea that inherent truths do not exist, Winterson calls for her audience to criticize, analyze and question how these standards of certain social and political expectations construct society …show more content…
The Puritans in London think of themselves as righteous and worthy before God because of their “pure” ways of living. They view other humans that are not in their order vile, unclean, and incapable of God’s true love, even though one message of Christianity states that everyone is God’s children. One instance of this disdain and superiority is when a Puritan makes the statement to the Dog-Woman, “‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness,’” obviously noting her lack of wealth and access to hygienic products; to this she replies, “‘God looks on the heart, not a poor woman’s dress’… but there was no stopping his little sermon, which he gave with his eyes rolled back as piously as a rabbit’s” (Winterson 15). The Dog-Woman reveals to the audience that she is a sinner in her mind, but she still believes that everyone has a chance of being saved by God if they truly wish it. This particular event emphasizing cleanliness and purity, as well as a statement from the Dog-Woman that Preacher Scroggs “makes love to [his wife] through a hole in the sheet… ‘for fear of lust’” (Winterson 22), strongly contradicts the actions that take place in the brothel. For the importance of faithfulness and abstinence from lust, Preacher Scroggs and Neighbor Firebrace commit acts of homosexuality with each other. For the emphasis on cleanliness, they are creative with each other’s bodily fluids in their sexual acts. For the prominence of being faithful to God and having familial love with their fellow men, they burn down the Dog-Woman’s house in the name of Jesus and Oliver Cromwell. In an act of justice for herself and for the death of the king, the Dog-Women sets forth her own means of execution for Preacher Scroggs and Neighbor Firebrace, interrupting their affair and applying her own method of normalizing
In the late 1600’s, literature is dissimilar from today’s, such as focusing on being sent into the fiery pits of hell only because one hasn’t converted to Puritanism. There are also different types of writing to display the righteousness and positives of being a converted and loyal to the Puritan culture. Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards are two popular Puritan authors who project different messages and portray a varying energy through a slim number of their pieces. The poems, “To My Dear and Loving Husband” or “Upon the Burning of Our House” by Anne Bradstreet or “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards are fit examples of the Puritan age and what Puritans belive to be religiously
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...
The world of Puritan New England, like the world of today, was filled with many evil influences. Many people were able to withstand temptation, but some fell victim to the dark side. Such offences against God, in thought, word, deed, desire or neglect, are what we define as sin (Gerber 14).
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.
The Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices. Anyone who defied Puritanism, would be severely punished by The Puritans. The, “light”, in the text represents the Puritan devotion to religion. Some Puritans, such as John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse, took a hanging because they refused to admit to the crime of witchcraft. They believed that they should die with a good name, and not lie to save their lives. They committed a brave act, instead of backing out and lying out of cowardliness. Their devotion to Puritanism had to have been remarkable for them to choose death over lying about committing a vast sin to save their lives. This shows that they are very faithful and chose to die in the best way possible, standing for what they believe
...ty men and women had been accused of being witches. Of those, nineteen of them plead innocent and were hung. One man refused to acknowledge the accusation and refused to enter a plea. He was legally crushed to death. Of the ones who plead guilty and were sent to jail, many contracted illnesses and later died. The outbreak of hysteria caused many to suffer and die, families to break apart, and a society to succumb to the whims of children. In the Puritans quest to create a perfect society based on pure beliefs only created a society ripped apart by tension, anxiety and fear.
The stark expectations surrounding gender and sex of today’s society stem largely from a need to seek use of exclusionary language. Jacques Derrida, one of the many source contributors from which Judith Butler sought out to formulate Queer Theory as we know it today, pegged the idea that language is exclusionary in and of itself. His most commonly used example is that of “chair” versus “not chair”; how do you define a chair? If you were to look at a bench, a couch, a table, a swing, a bed- these things are “not chair”. Similar to this example is the situation that society forces every individual born into it to face- “male” and “not male”, or “female” and “not female”. Fausto-Sterling approaches this issue from a unique perspective that utilizes both her knowledge as biologist (looking towards the cellular basis of “sex”) paired with her self-proclaimed feminist perspective. Her perspective on a more sensible system of sex was initial...
The gender binary of Western culture dichotomizes disgendered females and males, categorizing women and men as opposing beings and excluding all other people. Former professor of Gender Studies Walter Lee Williams argues that gender binarism “ignores the great diversity of human existence,” (191) and is “an artifact of our society’s rigid sex-roles” (197). This social structure has proved detrimental to a plethora of people who fall outside the Western gender dichotomy. And while this gender-exclusive system is an unyielding element of present day North American culture, it only came to be upon European arrival to the Americas. As explained by Judith Lorber in her essay “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”, “gender is so pervasive in our society we assume it is bred into our genes” (356). Lorber goes on to explain that gender, like culture, is a human production that requires constant participation (358).
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
In the provocative article, Were the Puritans Puritanical?, Carl Degler seeks to clarify the many misconceptions surrounding the Puritan lifestyle. He reveals his opinions on this seventeenth century living style, arguing that the Puritans were not dull and ultra-conservative, but rather enjoyed things in moderation. They had pleasures, but not in excess. The Puritans could engage in many pleasurable and leisurely activities so long as they did not lead to sin. According to the article, the Puritans believed that too much of anything is a sin. Degler writes about the misconceptions of Puritan dress, saying that it was the “opposite of severe”, and describing it as rather the English Renaissance style. Not all members of Puritan society
Throughout the ages, the story of the original sin is used to explain the struggles of women and why they are inferior to man. Eve “took of [the forbidden tree’s] fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6), and as punishment, God made it so “[her husband] shall rule over her” (3:16). As an important text during the lifetime of the characters who tell the collection of stories that compose the Canterbury Tales, most of the pilgrims were familiar with this scripture and believed that the Bible’s word was law. For that reason, the popular belief of the time was that women were inferior to their male counterparts. However, a couple of characters in the tales challenge this viewpoint and show that women were also capable of making their own choices. As the pilgrims struggle with the issue of where women belong, their view of Eve in the story of original sin is altered as well. From mild indifference to intimate involvement, each pilgrim has a different attachment to the story of the Eve, and their views on women in society are reflected in their connection to the story.
In the 1700’s the Puritans left England for the fear of being persecuted. They moved to America for religious freedom. The Puritans lived from God’s laws. They did not depend as much on material things, and they had a simpler and conservative life. More than a hundred years later, the Puritan’s belief toward their church started to fade away. Some Puritans were not able to recognize their religion any longer, they felt that their congregations had grown too self-satisfied. They left their congregations, and their devotion to God gradually faded away. To rekindle the fervor that the early Puritans had, Jonathan Edwards and other Puritan ministers led a religious revival through New England. Edwards preached intense sermons that awakened his congregation to an awareness of their sins. With Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” he persuades the Puritans to convert back to Puritanism, by utilizing rhetorical strategies such as, imagery, loaded diction, and a threatening and fearful tone.
The Puritans believed that to be justified, one must let go of his worldly dependence and strive to live a life free of sin (Soler), making the story an allegory “in its treatment of the nature and consequences of the Puritan belief in the total depravity of man” (Waggoner 250). This would have had an impact on the development of the psyche, as the ego struggled to repress certain instincts that the superego deemed as sinful based on Puritanical beliefs.
...h these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes.
Therefore, it is my belief that the religious setting of this novel in the Puritan society allowed further emphasis of the profound differences between the character’s gender roles, thereby creating deeper contrast and revealing the flaws of the Puritan’s preconceived notions of patriarchal societal norms.