The Puritan Family The Puritans' concept of covenant helps to explain their understanding of the family and the role and rights of women within the family and society. The Puritans rejected the Catholic idea—also shared by the Church of England and most Protestants—that marriage was a sacrament, but morality had a firm place in their concept of marriage. For the Puritans, marriage was a contract and a set of mutual obligations and responsibilities, and the home—which included extended family, servants, and others who lived with it—was a symbol in miniature of their idea of community. In Connecticut and Plymouth, Massachusetts, it was illegal for any single person to live alone, and if anyone was found doing so, he or she would be assigned to a family in the community. Hierarchy also existed within Puritan families and is reflected in the Puritan custom that parents and children would not eat together. Children whose parents could not control them would be removed to other families that could.Although women were the majority among those admitted to church congregations in Puritan New England and were regarded as equally capable of holiness and salvation, the ministry was restricted to men only. Men and women were punished equally for the same crimes, as court records from the period reveal, and communities were intolerant of domestic quarrels, often stepping in to intervene. Disciplining children, often through public humiliation, was also an essential part of Puritan culture. Again, these attitudes all reflect the Puritan concern with covenant—that the behavior of individuals in the community affects their collective relationship before God. Civil authorities in early New England passed laws forbidding blasphemy, drunkenness, gambling, and violating the sanctity of the Sabbath through inappropriate behavior. Rooting out ungodly behavior among the citizenry was an important concern if the community as a whole was going to keep its communal covenant with God.
Puritans are often represented in illustrations as wearing only black and gray, but in reality they seldom wore black, and instead preferred what they called "sadd" colors. This included green, rust, orange, purple, brown, and other colors. In the 17th century, black was the color of formal garments and thought to be inappropriate to the simplicity preferred by the Puritans. The Puritans, unlike their Quaker neighbors who arrived to the south in Pennsylvania during the 1680s, used clothing as a marker of social status. Black was appropriate to the leaders of the colony, including ministers, who often added lace and other indicators of privilege to their costumes. Sumptuary laws (don't know? look it up!)were even passed by the leaders of the colony, specifically banning the wearing of gold and silver or silk lace, or of certain other popular fashions from Europe. Eventually, these sumptuary laws forbade those of the lower social classes to wear clothing inappropriate to their station. In general, Puritans emphasized simplicity and modesty in their clothing, though these standards shifted during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
This ideal of simplicity extended beyond clothing to architectural styles and to the decoration—or rather, lack of it—in Puritan churches, which included no artwork and were built in the most severe, plain form possible. An unusual exception to this prohibition against religious art, which was seen as an excess deriving from Catholicism, was tombstone art, which is one of the most interesting and distinctive Puritan cultural contributions. Primitive-looking angel faces or skulls—sometimes with wings attached—were often carved into tombstones in Puritan cemeteries, many of which can still be seen today.
Puritan conceptions of time and work also help illustrate the values that were most important to them. The government of the Massachusetts Bay colony went so far as to make time wasting illegal in 1633 and prosecuted several persons for this crime over the next few years. Time was a commodity to Puritans, who placed much emphasis on material success in this life, which they believed to be a sign of God's favor. Another important time-related value was "improving the time," which was quite distinctive among the Puritans. Life was clearly marked by minutes, hours, days, and seasons. The most important among these periods of time was the Sabbath, the violation of which was punishable by law.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter is accurate at least in its depiction of the fictional character Hester Prynne, who is forced to wear a letter "A" as a punishment for her crime of adultery. Those convicted of committing such sins were regularly forced to wear such badges: a D for drunkenness, a B for blasphemy, and so on. Punishment often included being locked in the stockades, a device located in a public place that locked the head, hands, and feet while townspeople heaped humiliation on the criminal. Whipping, scarring, and maiming—including the cutting off of ears or other mutilations of the face—were also forms of punishment handed down by Puritan authorities, who used hanging as the most extreme form of punishment. Heresy, blasphemy, and witchcraft were among the crimes that received capital punishment.
MLA:
"the Puritan family." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2011. Web. 17 Apr. 2011.
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