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Hypocrisy of the Puritan Era

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 figure. Douglass presents slavery very much as a perversion of normal and natural family life. Douglass had been a slave, but he had been freed. When he wrote this book, it was in part because many of those who listened to his highly polished speeches did not believe that he had been a slave, so here he gives a direct account of slave life as well as an analysis of the meaning of slavery and of the abolitionist position for why slavery should be eliminated. The ...

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Hypocrisy of the Puritan Era. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:11, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1702460.html