A Lamentable Spectacle

"The Maypole of Merrymount" is based on an actual historical event--the dispute between the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a man named Thomas Morton, who was neither a Puritan nor lived in the colony.  You have, in fact, the advantage of having access to two different tellings of the original story, each from a different point of view.  You can find William Bradford's take on this in ch. XIX of Of Plymouth Plantation, and then get another point of view of the events from Morton himself, beginning in ch. 7 of New England Canaan.  (Both of these are in your text.)

The fact that the Puritans would care about what someone was doing somewhere else gives further evidence of just how profoundly they valued community--profoundly enough that they felt perfectly justified in expelling Morton.

Destroying the Maypole at Merrymount

This confrontation between the community and the individual makes this story a natural for Hawthorne.  Of course, he makes some significant changes to the original story, moving the focus away from the Bradford/Morton smackdown (Bradford: "You mindless hedonist," Morton: "You self-righteous prig") and towards a confrontation between the sacred and the profane, civic duty and self-centeredness, age and youth, the spiritual and the carnal.  You can almost see Hawthorne drooling at the opportunity to sink his teeth into this one.

Generally the kinds of events that Hawthorne describes are historically accurate (though historical accuracy was not uppermost in Hawthorne's mind).  Let's not forget that the settlers originally came from England, and so naturally carried some English traditions with them, including that of the maypole.  But what Hawthorne was primarily interested in was the symbolic implications of the maypole (and maypole dancing) and how they would play out in a land in which the Puritans were major players rather than a minor sideshow.  The ritual of the maypole is highly charged with sexual symbolism.  (All you need to keep in mind is the Freudian phallic imagery of something that's longer than it is wide.)  Because of the sexual context of the maypole, naturally churches tended to look askance at the ritual.  (And just to dispel some more common misperceptions of the Puritans, no, they were not anti-sex.  As with most societies, sex was a normal part of their lives, and the kinds of problems that extended from that--adultery, unwanted pregnancies, teen sex, sex outside of the bounds of marriage, etc.--were hardly unknown to the Puritans.)

A Maypole Dance

You also may remember that in my post on Hawthorne I mentioned that he sometimes had an off-color sense of humor.  You're seeing an example of that in this story--specifically the title.  The actual place he's describing was called "Mar-e-mont" ("Sea and mountain," loosely translated), which eventually came to be known as Merrymount.  Well, break the word into two, and think about the different connotations for the second part....

Of course, Hawthorne didn't write this story to indulge in any burlesque fantasies.  Fundamentally, sexuality is about self-indulgence.  As you read and think about this story, think about it in terms of under what conditions can sexuality can be construed as a "threat" to the community.

A Tale of a Shrewd Young Man

There are two key elements to keep in mind when reading "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux."  First, always remember that Robin is a very young man, who is visiting the big city (so to speak) for the first time.  It's worthwhile also just to think of the implications of his name--"Robin."  Hawthorne frequently chooses the names of his characters for their symbolic implications, and such is the case for Robin.  So one way to get a handle on this story is to think about the associations we make with that word.

Second, more than once in the story Robin is referred to as "shrewd."  While a meaning of that may immediately leap to all of our minds, --no doubt the word is quite familiar to all of us--we may not completely know the full possibilities of what that word means (and I can pretty much guarantee you that Hawthorne would--he is one of our more careful writers).  So here's a link that will take you to a definition of the word--make sure you note all of the possible meanings, as well as the origins of the word:

Definition of "shrewd"

Generally, Hawthorne is using a common narrative model for this story--a coming-of-age tale.  At its simplest, "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux" is a tale about a young man gaining knowledge about the world, and in the process losing his innocence.  It's a type of story that has been told thousands of times in the history of literature (and the history of culture), which can tell you how significant that process is to human beings and human culture.  It is as old as the Adam and Eve story (in the Western Christian tradition), as familiar as To Kill a Mockingbird, and as current (and odd) as The 40-Year Old Virgin.  (No, forty is not typical of coming-of-age tales.  But as one critic of the movie pointed out, the main character may be chronologically 40, but about 15 mentally.)

So what Hawthorne is doing here is neither new nor unfamiliar.

 

Boston Harbor in the 1700s

                                                  

Furthermore, the "direction" of Robin's movementa are also common to this type of story: moving from a country/rural setting to an urban/city setting.  In our imaginations the city has long stood as a place to gain knowledge--of many different sorts (which is what can make the city so problematic for many, as is the case in American literature and culture.  In looking ahead a bit, don't lose sight of the fact that "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is set in the city.)

Another aspect of this story to keep in mind, and again something common to Hawthorne, is the setting of the story in the historical past (i.e., Hawthorne's historical past).  In this case, the story is set in pre-Revolutionary America, roughly in the 1730s.  So one thing to think about is why choose this particular time frame?  Certainly Hawthorne was capable of writing a coming-of-age tale that would be contemporary to his readers.

Tar and Feathering in Colonial America

By choosing this setting, Hawthorne is choosing a time close to a mythic cultural event--the Revolutionary War (and here by "mythic" I mean culturally iconic, not false), an event with which his readers would be quite familiar.  (Keep in mind that for his readers, the Revolutionary War was still relatively fresh.)  He and his readers would know that what's coming, in the time frame of the story, was an event that fundamentally turned us into a democracy and distributed power into the hands of the people.  (At least, that was the ideal.)  Thus, one way to think about this story is to see it as a democratic parable, in which Robin represents the new nation (or what would be the new nation) embarking into the world of self-governance.

But nothing is ever straighforward with Hawthorne.    You need to think about the "new democracy" we see towards the end of the story, we need to think about Robin's purposes in coming to the big city, and most importantly, we need to think about Robin's reaction to seeing his kinsman Major Molineux and most especially, the final comment by the gentleman at the very end of the story.

A Stern, A Sad, A Darkly Meditative....

Few writers in our history have been as interested in the dynamics of the community as Nathaniel Hawthorne.  With few exceptions, his literature has almost always featured a confrontation between an individual and a community.  And so it is with our next two stories, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and "The Maypole of Merrymount."  In future blogs I'll provide some background into those particular stories.  Here I simply want to provide some background to Hawthorne himself.

                                                                                      Nathaniel Hawthorne

Probably for many of us, our most common experience with Hawthorne has been The Scarlet Letter, and since we're often required to read it, the experience can be unpleasant.  Let's face it, in the 21st century (and 20th), novels as steeped in issues of morality and guilt, topped off with a grim Puritan setting, aren't usually going to climb to the top of a must-read list.  And in Hawthorne's works generally, there is no shortage of guilt and morality.  Consequently Hawthorne tends to be perceived as a stern, grim narrator of every weakness and failure a human being can encounter.  In short,  not a lot of chuckles in Hawthorne.  It hasn't helped that he had (as a writer) little interest in social or political issues, and in our own time his reputation as a person has suffered a hit from his comment about his contemporary women writers.  (He called them "damned female scribblers," resulting in his being tagged as a typical dead white male author.  Though he wasn't dead at the time he wrote that.)

This, of course, is an unfair reading of the man.  For one thing, if we believe that the apparent grimness and obsessiveness of his work reflect the man, then we would be wrong.  Hawthorne himself was a private, kind and gentle man, by all reports a loving husband and father, with, yes, a sense of humor, even an off-color sense of humor (that does, in fact, show up in his writing).  In other words, he wasn't anything like the moral obsessives he frequently wrote about.  Even his circle of friends, which included some of the greatest writers and thinkers in American history, were more than a bit--idiosyncratic: Thoreau, Melville, and Emerson, to name a few.  Even his choice for his wife--Sophia--showed Hawthorne's resistance to doing what he was "supposed" to do (a common theme in his literature).  Sophia was not, to use modern terminology, a catch, in the sense that she had health problems and so was something of a project.  As you can probably tell from the image, Hawthorne was also considered quite handsome, so he had many options for relationships and marriage (unlike his friend Thoreau, who was considered ghastly looking).  His own family opposed his relationship with Sophia.  But Sophia was who he wanted, and Sophia was who he married.  And his remark about women writers?  That had everything to do with Hawthorne's resentment of the popularity of the writers of sentimental romantic novels, who were making it difficult for him to make a living as a writer.  His resentment had more to do with economics than gender.

                                                                                          Sophia Hawthorne

Nonetheless, guilt, morality, communal obligations vs. individual needs, etc., are central to his work.  Much of that had to do with the changes that had occurred in our country and culture by the time Hawthorne was crafting his stories.  I'll speak about the Age of Reason and the era of the American Revolution in a later blog.  For our purposes here, it's sufficient to know that the concept of individualism that we know and revere was a product of the revolutionary movements of the 18th century.  By the time Hawthorne was writing in the early to mid 19th century, we had developed a culture within which the moral rigidity and profound community values of the Puritans, the values that anchored our beginnings, were struggling with the values of individualism that had come roaring to the front during the Age of Reason.  Romanticism--the literary term used to describe the kind of writing Hawthorne and his contemporaries were doing--has nothing to do with love or courtship.  Romanticist literature focuses on the internal feelings and thoughts of its characters, and re-defines "truth" as a function of individual perceptions.  (We'll really see this in Poe.)

A Plaine Stile

In a previous post, a number of you commented about and wondered about the possibility that Bradford (and perhaps by extension, other Puritan writers) embellished the facts he was presenting to his readers.  In particular, the episode about the arrogant sailor seems too ... contrived, too convenient for Bradford's purposes.  So perhaps this is a good opportunity for me to talk a little bit about how Puritans perceived the function of writing.

First, did Bradford embellish?  Perhaps, though it's highly unlikely he did so with full awareness that he was doing so.  It's more likely that the event he described did happen, but Bradford grabbed the story and ran with it as a cautionary tale.  He didn't create facts--he interpreted them in light of his (and other Puritans) beliefs in God's active presence in this world.

                                                                        The Bay Psalm Book - America's First Book

Second, we sometimes assume that because of the moral rigidity of the Puritans that they somehow would refuse to read anything secular or intellectually challenging.  In fact, the Puritans were extremely literate--far more literate than virtually any other group in America--and placed a great deal of value in the ability to read and write.  (The literacy rates of their children still exceed those of our children in 2009.)  The primary reason for this was simple--if they or their children could not read, then they could not read the Bible.  However, they were also generally well read, and did not shy away from reading challenging secular texts.  Cotton Mather, for example, was and is still one of the most extraordinarily well read men in our history, and a formidable intellect.

But Puritans believed that the purpose of writing was, simply, to illuminate God's presence in this world.  The writer focused entirely upon that.  Consequently they developed what they called a "plaine stile" of writing.  As the term implies, the writing lacked much of what we would regard as necessary to good writing; the writing tends to be bland, unexciting, often repetitive and personality-less--on purpose.  You see, a writer who writes with an "embellished" style calls attention to himself--and distracts the reader from focusing on God.  A writer who embellishes is an arrogant writer, a narcissistic writer, and as you can tell from Bradford, God likes to take down those who are arrogant.  A  plain style puts the writer where he belongs--in the background.  Way in the background.

In All Times Some Must Be Rich Some Poore

For this post, I want to give you a little background into Winthrop and his sermon (since that's what it actually was) on Christian charity, and offer a bit more information about the tenets of Puritan faith.

While Winthrop himself was a Puritan, he was not a Separatist along the lines of Bradford and other, more extreme, Puritans.  That is, Winthrop believed that the rift within Puritanism that led to the "separation" and voyage to the new land could and should be healed.  So Winthrop's message is one of reconciliation and unity.

As I mention above, "A Modell of Christian Charity" was originally delivered as a sermon by Winthrop to the passengers on the ship Alma, which was bringing more Puritan settlers to the new world.  What's crucial to note here is Winthrop's motivation.  In part he was simply reminding this "congregation" of their responsibilities as Christians.  But Winthrop was also distressed at what he saw as the increasing self-centeredness of the settlers, and the growing gap between the values that the settlers professed and how they acted upon those values.  So Winthrop's sermon is a pointed reminder to the settlers about how they were supposed to live their lives.

Puritanism itself was basically a modified form of Calvinism.  So one of the key precepts of Puritanism--and one of the main reasons why we often tend to see Puritans as a dark and unhappy people--is a belief in the fundamental depravity and weakness of human beings.  The more comtemporary notion that people are basically good would fly in the face of the Puritans.  To a Puritan, we are all innately corrupted (by virtue of the original sins of Adam and Eve), and faith in Christ was the only path to salvation.  However, what we tend to ignore (and what Winthrop was trying to remind his listeners about) is that for the Puritans faith alone was not sufficient, and that one had moral obligations towards one's fellow human beings.  If, as a Christian, one was supposed to model one's life after the life of Christ (exemplum)--and one was--then compassion and good works were an essential part of one's life.

However, it nonetheless is true that in the strict Puritan/Calvinist doctrine, good works did nothing for one's possibility for salvation.  You see, Puritans also believed in predestination.  The Puritans believed that God was the author of history--past, present and future--and as such history was already written.  So the "fact' was that God knew perfectly well who would be saved and who would be damned before humans even first crawled on this planet.  And there wasn't a thing you could do about it.  You could be the most giving and generous individual in creation, but if God had not elected you (the "elect" is the term the Puritans used to refer to those chosen by God to be saved), well, you were screwed.  And free will?  In your dreams.

Not surprisingly, then, this can lead us to wonder why anyone in his or her right mind would invest faith and energy in such a belief system.  To understand that, you have to stop thinking like someone living in the early 21st century.  The Puritans who came here left a continent that they believed was sinking into moral chaos, and came to a dangerous and deadly land, much populated by the minions of Satan.  Predestination actually offered comfort, because if nothing else, predestination uncompromisingly asserts that God is in control, and that everything, no matter what or how bad, had a purpose.  So in spite of what we might suspect, the Puritans were not given to despair--how could they, since they absolutely knew that God was in control.

To begin discussing Winthrop (and Bradford), go to the Discussion Blogs in our Blackboard component.

A Civil Body Politick

First, for those who are interested, the link below will take you to a web page where you can see a copy of the original Mayflower Compact, and listen to a reading of the Compact in “period dialect” (meaning you’ll hear how the settlers sounded when they spoke).

Mayflower Compact

(Note that your machine will need Quicktime loaded on it in order to listen to the reading.  If you don’t have Quicktime, it’s a free download from Apple.)

I’m not going to say much specific about the Mayflower Compact right now, since we’re going to discuss it next week, but I wanted to expand a bit on a comment I made at the end of my last post, when I called the Mayflower Compact a Creation Story—in this case, a Creation Story of what we would come to call America.

All cultures have creation stories, stories of their origins.  The one most of us are likely most familiar with would be the Genesis story.  Creation stories are told over and over again, and what’s important to keep in mind is that they are told to people who have no direct experience with the events being narrated.  To put it more simply, no one who tells or hears the story was ever actually there to witness it.  So the factuality of the story isn’t really what’s important—what’s important is that the story continues to remind those who hear it why they are here, what values brought them into being, what their relationship is to their higher power.  A creation story reminds a people why they matter.

The Mayflower Compact

And thus it is with the Mayflower Compact.  Now, there are a couple of differences to note here.  First, while Bradford and others fully believed that the Mayflower Compact served God’s wishes, the Compact is a sociopolitical document, not a sacred document.  It is about defining the purpose of a human community and the obligations of the members of that community to each other.  Its sense of community would be central in developing our sense of this thing we call America.

Second, while Bradford is addressing those who were not there for the sealing of the Mayflower Compact, Bradford himself was there.  So this particular creation story is also history that the author witnessed.  But the function of the creation story here is similar to that of other creation stories—to remind readers (in this case) who they are, why they are, and what their purpose is in this new land.

Next week we’ll start to talk about the Mayflower Compact, and I’ll give you some specific things to think about.  I’ll also provide some background to Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity.”

The Price of Being Haughty

In my last post, I tried to indicate how significant a cohesive community was to the early settlers.  Such a community was necessary to their survival.  Any threats to that community, whether from outside forces or from members of the community itself, were taken very seriously.  Such threats were not simply annoyances; they could be the difference between living and dying.  At one point in Of Plymouth Plantation, his record of the voyage to and settling of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Bradford wrote the following:

SEPTR : 6. These troubls being blowne over, and now all being compacte togeather in one shipe,they put to sea againe with a prosperus winde, which continued diverce days togeather, which was some incouragmente unto them; yet according to the, usuall maner many were alicted with seasicknes. And I may not omite hear a spetiall worke of Gods providente. Ther was a proud and very profane yonge man, one of the sea-men, of a lustie, able body, which made him the more hauty; he would allway be contemning the poore people in their sicknes, and cursing them dayly with greevous execrations, and did not let to tell them, that he hoped to help to cast halfe of them over board before they came to their jurneys end, and to make mery with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would curse and swear rnost bitterly. But it plased God before they came halfe seas over, to smite this yong man with a greeveous disease, of which he dyed in a desperate maner, and so was him selfe the first that was throwne overbord. Thus his curses light on his owne head; and it was an astonishmente to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon him.

You can find this passage transliterated into modern English in your book on p. 327.  What you want to keep in mind here is that Bradford’s readers are those who were not part of the Mayflower voyage or the initial settlement of the colony.  His readers were those who followed after.  Bradford’s purpose here was common to writers of this time:  he’s writing to instruct, not entertain.  He is trying to teach his readers a lesson about God, the world, and the place of human beings in that world.  Here is a tale about a man who has set himself apart and above everyone else on the ship—and the consequences of that arrogance.  Note too that in Bradford’s world, God directly takes a hand in imparting those consequences.  This can also begin to tell you something about the religious beliefs prevalent at the time.

Here’s another little fact that will tell you something about the importance of a cohesive community to the settlers.  The initial settlers did something quite rare for “immigrant” cultures.  When others followed the initial settlers, they were not automatically welcomed and assimilated into the colony.  In fact, the colonists screened potential members of the community.  If one were considered an asset to the community, one was welcomed; if not, one was sent away.  No doubt this sound harsh, but again, always keep in mind—their very survival was at stake.

Thus the Mayflower Compact—the subject of my next post—was a critical event.  It was what I would call a Creation Story of what would become America.