Hypocrisy of the Puritan Era
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The Puritan era in American history left a rich and complex legacy that continues to this day. The Puritan ethic included a provision regarding hard work as a way of life and as proof of dedication to God that has been seen as one of the primary reasons for American business success, and the term is still used today to refer to the work ethic which infuses manufacturing, business, and other sectors in the American economy. The other arm of Puritanism that had great power was a form of asceticism and prudishness supposedly embodied in the New England idea of "banned in Boston," for instance. The legacy of Puritanism also crated a good deal of guilt over sins real and imagined, and the excesses of the Puritans, seen in the Salem witch trials, would become an important literary theme in writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Puritanism also involved a good deal of hypocrisy and self-righteousness against which the new American society would rebel. An examination of Hawthorne's romance The Scarlet Letter and the autobiography of one-time slave Frederick Douglass will demonstrate the nature of the hypocrisy of the Puritan era. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass shows the dynamics of slavery and the ways in which the master-slave relationship can be equated with the father-son relationship. This is more than merely a convenient way of representing the slave relationship, for as Douglass shows, children grew up needing a parental fig
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her own slavery.
Puritanism was a religious strain that had more power in New England than elsewhere in the developing nation, but it did leave a certain national legacy in terms of the dedication to hard work as proof of devotion to God--to so-called Protestant work ethic that infuses American society to this day. Puritanism also had a strain of prudishness that persisted in the American psyche as well. Slavery was not practiced in New England, but it was tolerated in the states of the South until tensions between North and South erupted in the Civil War. Such tolerance of the institution of slavery was itself a hypocritical act, and slavery itself in a democratic country seems to define hypocrisy. Slaveowners like the colonel enjoyed their freedoms in a country that promised freedom, but at the same time they sought to turn their slaves against the idea of freedom in order to keep them enslaved. They valued education and refinement, but they fought hard to keep their slaves from gaining an education because that would make them dissatisfied with their lot. At every turn, the slaveowners showed that they had one set of values for themselves and quite another for their slaves and for their dealings with slaves.
Their dedi
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Approximate Word count = 2837
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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