Puritanism

What changes has the Puritan doctrine undergone throughout the course of history' What similarities and differences can be found between the Puritan thought and the views of writers of subsequent literary periods until the nineteenth-century symbolism' The importance of these questions is closely related to the very significant influence that the doctrine of the founders of the first New England colony has had on the way North American literary tradition, work ethic and mentality of the American society shaped. My analysis is based on the works of Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. In my opinion their works fully convey the key ideas of Puritan ideology and clearly prove that its traces are to be found in works written in subsequent literary periods. In this essay I am going to present renowned literary critics’ theories, concerning the importance of Puritanism in terms of the further social, economic and literary development of the United States, as well as basic principles of the Puritan doctrine in order to demonstrate similarities and differences between them in the works of mentioned writers. I shall also demonstrate, on the example of the selected literary works, changes that Puritan doctrine has undergone throughout the course of history, proving the scope of its influence to be exceptionally wide and multidimensional. Having examined a considerable number of works and analyses, I found opinions of the following critics to be the most accurate: Perry Miller’s, the master of American intellectual history, an author of The American Puritans; their Prose and Poetry, considered to be the authority on the American Puritanism studies and claimed to have revived the interest in the works of J. Edwards among scholars; Francis Otto Matthiessen’s, an influential literary critic related to New Criticism, devoted to American Renaissance studies (American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman) and Dr. Paweł Jędrzejko’s , who is said to be “the author of the first full Polish analyses on Herman Melville” (Płynność i egzystencja. Doświadczenie lądu i morza, a myśl Hermana Melville’a). Matthiessen in American Renaissance claims, using the works of Hawthorne and Melville as an example, that the nineteenth-century symbolism has grown on the Puritan imagination, focused on searching for hidden symbols, meanings and signs from God in nature and daily events. Other renowned Puritan literature theorist, Kenneth Murdock (Literature and Theology in Colonial New England), believes that a tendency for introspection and contemplating the world of inner experiences has strongly influenced the works of the nineteenth-century writers like Hawthorne. Van Wyck Brooks in America’s Coming of Age claims that in the American mind there have always been two opposing tendencies: transcendentalism, rooted deeply in the Puritan tradition, with Edwards and Emerson as its representatives; and “money grubbing”, based on the Puritan pragmatism, usefulness, growing in wealth through hard work, cherished by Benjamin Franklin. As Daniel Bell observed in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Puritan ethic with its affirmation of hard work for the glory of God, moderation, conscientiousness, discipline, frugality and growing in wealth as a sign of God’s favor has played a significant role in economic development and creation of the industrial civilization in the United States. The strict Puritanism of the first settlers in New England has been based on the works of Calvin. His most controversial theory was the doctrine of Total Depravity, seeing man as a weak, miserable being, contaminated with evil as a result of the original sin. He saw the whole world as a battlefield between God and Satan. According to Unconditional Selection, only few people are predestined by God for salvation and grace. This is where the crucial role of introspection (as a deep self-analysis meant for finding proofs of one’s predestination and providences – signs indicating God’s anger or favor) has originated from. The Holy Book, Bible, was irreplaceable in analyzing God’s signs. That is why such a large number of Bible associations and tendency to imitate the biblical transparency by eliminating any sophisticated metaphors and unnecessary embellishments are considered to be typical of the Puritan style. The Puritan literature, didactic and moralizing, was to serve social aims, utilizing metaphors concerning work and everyday life events; Thomas Shepard’s The Sincere Convert being a good example: “Thy clothes may warm thee, but they can not feed thee; thy meat may feed thee, but can not heal thee . . . thy money may maintain thee, but can not comfort thee when distresses of conscience and anguish of heart come upon thee.  This God is joy in sadness, light in darkness, life in death, heaven in hell.” Despite their dislike for poetry, which dangerously aroused one’s senses, and their fondness of science, Puritans did write poems, simple in style, which focused on religious matters. It was Anne Bradstreet who broke that convention, writing poems about family life events, such as births, deaths or misfortunes like house fires. In this way Anne Bradstreet’s poetry can be compared with poems written in the nineteenth century by Emily Dickinson. In her Contemplations, though, Bradstreet remains within the Puritan tradition, with biblical references (the story of Cain and Abel) and criticism of people as creatures overwhelmed by their sins and suffering, who put their trust in worthless earthly goods. However, Contemplations can be at the same time seen as an affirmation of life and admiration of Nature that reflects God’s beauty and perfection. In the Age of Enlightenment, as a result of common stabilization and prosperity as well as development of agriculture and trade, a shift from contemplating the ultimate matters to affirmation of life has been observed. People were no longer afraid of hell and damnation. Financial prosperity ceased to be perceived as a sign of God’s grace, but as a consequence of one’s own actions and abilities. Such a liberalization of Puritan doctrine has resulted in changing the attitude among the clergymen. The Reverend Benjamin Colman, for instance, especially valued aesthetical and psychological aspects of religious experiences. Unitarianism, which rejected the idea of predestination and the original sin and replaced them with belief that every human being had been made in the image of God, has kept growing more and more popular. Benjamin Franklin’s deism was similar, yet still with some differences, to Puritanism, with its rejection of the idea of God as an unpredictable, ominous force determining every aspect of human lives. Franklin believed in financial success, accomplished thanks to hard and honest work, promoting thirteen virtues, out of which frugality, industry, justice and humility have to be seen as the most Puritan. On the other end of the spectrum, there were works of Jonathan Edwards, the greatest representative of the Great Awakening, a religious movement that spread between 1735 and 1750 and was supposed to be the answer to the asceticism of the official Puritan church and laicization that has been growing more and more popular in the colonies. Edward’s philosophy was a characteristic mixture of the Puritan ideology and Enlightenment. In The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, he supported the idea of Total Depravity, rejecting at the same time a rational approach towards religion and adopting mysticism and inferential knowledge, providing a basis for the nineteenth-century transcendentalism. His sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in the form of a traditional Puritan sermon, reflected the Puritan view on people as well. A man was seen as a depraved creature evoking nothing more than disgust in the eyes of strict, but just God who can send him to hell anytime He wishes to. In abovementioned sermon, a man is presented as a spider hanging above the eternal fire, vulnerable to God’s whims. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, conservative New England society, still being class-divided, remained under strong influence of Puritan doctrine. At the same time, the Unitarian Church opposing to Puritanism has become very influential. Unitarianism has opened a road for transcendentalism, a social and religious movement developing in the beginning of the nineteenth century with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as its representatives. Its name derived from the idea of surpassing (transcending) the cognitive borders of mind and senses. Transcendentalists claimed that world, with a man as its most perfect part, represented God’s beauty. Transcendentalists also borrowed from Puritanism the idea of perceiving nature in a symbolic way. However Emily Dickinson disagreed with orthodox New England Puritanism she had been raised in, in her poetry many elements characteristic for Puritanism can be found. Strong individualism, visible in separating from the world and putting a stress on the individual relations with God, not necessarily maintained by attending Masses (poem 324 Some keep the Sabbath going to Church). Puritans believed that they maintained a special, personal relation with the Lord. For Dickinson, however, God is not a vicious angry creature. In her poem Papa Above, she addresses Him jokingly, almost familiarly; in the way people usually address their friends and relatives. The Holy Book remained the source of inspiration for her; however, she had her own attitude towards it. At first, she saw it as “an antique Volume written by faded Man”; later it became a source of wisdom and comfort for her. The nineteenth-century symbolism of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne is deeply rooted in the tradition of Puritan culture. Hawthorne harshly criticized the grim, pragmatic and materialistic society of New England, aiming at – as Clayton C. Revee states – fulfilling his emotional and artistic needs, yet he often made the history of Puritan settlement in his homeland a plot of his stories. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne describes a seventeenth-century Boston Puritan society and their ostracism towards Hester, an adulteress. As a symbolist, Hawthorne dealt with the dark side of the soul of every man; he did not, however, condemn them, and added a multidimensional and symbolic meaning to his storylines and characters. Tragedy of his characters lied in the fight between good and evil, their decline and guilt. Hester is torn between a desire to liberate herself from the Puritan morality norms ,demanding that she stayed with her husband she did not love ,and a strong feeling that her desire is sinful. A significantly symbolic meaning is to be found in the scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her dress – a sign of adultery and sin, but also spiritual enrichment that she obtains through her suffering. Describing Hester’s decline, Hawthorne manifests his disbelief in human ability to overcome their imperfections, at the same time indicating that being excluded from society, which was considered by Puritans as the most successful way to save sinners, leads only to further decline. To Hawthorne, the only solution is to provide understanding, compassion and support. The Puritan ideology has strongly influenced a pessimistic view of the world of other great symbolist, Herman Melville. Melville utilized in his works many symbols believing that, according to Schlegel, the most important ideas can be conveyed only by symbols. One of his greatest works, Moby Dick, is very symbolic. For Puritans reality was dual, with good and evil being in a constant fight, and so it is for Ismail – for every thesis there is an antithesis. For Captain Ahab, who strives for perfection just as a Puritan would do, the chase after the whale is an attempt to understand the world and to learn the truth unknown to mortals. Ahab can be also seen as a noble rebel opposing to cruel, malicious God, symbolized by the eponymous whale, in the novel referred to as a fish (the symbol of Christianity). The idea of the nature symbolized by the sea – hostile, unfathomable, taking revenge on weak humans for violating its rules (the chase after the whale ends in the ship being sunk) – is also very Puritan. Having analyzed the Puritan doctrine throughout the course of history, it can be said that it has undergone serious transformations: from strict Calvinism of the first settlers that devoted their whole lives to religion, through the Great Awakening with its mysticism and religious passion, through Emerson’s transcendentalism, interpreting every phenomenon in a symbolic way, to the secular, bourgeois tradition after the Civil War, which cultivated the Puritan work ethic and was characterized by parochialism and prudishness. Abovementioned works, in which elements typical of Puritan philosophy and literature can be found, prove that the literary tradition of that doctrine, with its tendency for introspections and symbolic interpretation of daily phenomena, has strongly influenced the North American literature of subsequent literary periods, shaping at the same time the mentality of American society. The only differences can be found in the issue of approach towards the sin, human nature and the image of God. -------------------------------------------- [ 2 ]. Paweł Jędrzejko, http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paweł_Jędrzejko, own translation from Polish. [ 3 ]. Thomas Shepard, The Sincere Convert, http://www.thomasshepard.org/sincereconvert.shtml. [ 4 ]. Emily Dickinson, „1545. The Bible is an antique Volume” in W.W.Norton&Company, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 4th ed., vol. 1 (New York,London,1994),2476