Puritan Female Experience in Colonial New England 3301-KA2506
The course will chart the period in Puritan female colonial American history from the earliest Puritan settlements in 17th century New England (Plymouth and Massachusetts), from 1620 to the American Revolution, 1776. The course will investigate a category of gender as one of the most significant factors contributing to the female experience in the patriarchal reality of the Puritan community. It will also rediscover and redefine the position of women in the contemporary world. The aim of the course is to trace the Puritan magnification of motherhood, the realization of conjugal love, and the elevation of female religiosity, clearly visible in 17th c. New England, and documented in their own writings. Significant evidence of female life could be investigated in diaries, letters, prose and verse. However, the archives contain no published female diaries written in the 17th c., and only few letters. The course will thus discuss the only published female works: Valedictory and Monitory Writing by Sarah Goodhue, and the verse narratives of Anne Bradstreet as very few women revealed their piety in publishable prose or verse. Marital state and conjugal love gained high approval in the Puritan community. Marriage was considered to be the highest relationship between humans, frequently compared to the union of Christ and His believers. The course will, accordingly, elaborate on Anne Bradstreet' harmonious marriage, known through her verse narratives which documented the combination of spirituality and sexuality in the consort's role. The course will also evidence the idealization of maternal love which received its fullest expression in Puritan motherhood, significantly elaborated both in Goodhue and Bradstreet who described an ideal Puritan motherhood focused upon tenderness, self-denial, and religious resignation, and elaborated on a progression from the intense nurturing of infants through the pious watchfulness of growing children to an old age. They both provided a rare, unique, and significant evidence of the female life in 17th c. New England. Puritan New England women frequently suffered humiliation and unjust accusations of alleged adultery, heresy, and witchcraft. Consequently, the course will evidence the testimonies of the tried and convicted females. It will also investigate the experiences of those females who challenged the existing model of the Puritan woman, and criticized the formal rules under which the New England Puritan Commonwealth was constructed (Anne Hutchinson). The course will discuss the Puritan conviction that the subordination of women to men was the result of the divinely ordained social order. The main exponents of this conviction (John Winthrop, Cotton Mather and John Cotton) preached in their sermons that the domination of male authority in the social life of the New England Puritans was part of God's ordinance.
The topics covered will include:
1) The origins and nature of Puritanism. The European Reformation: Lutheranism and Calvinism.
2) The Puritan settlement in New England (Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay). Puritan ethic as a social religion and civil theology. Main exponents: William Bradford, John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, John Cotton.
3) The Puritan Family in colonial New England, 1620-1776. The Puritan training of the soul, and the child-rearing.
4) The position and duties of the New England Puritan woman: marriage, conjugal love, motherhood, housekeeping.
5) Puritan female writing: Sarah Goodhue, Valedictory and Monitory Writing (1681); Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse (1650, 1678).
6) The female challenge of the Puritan values and social conviction: Anne Hutchinson.
Type of course
Mode
Prerequisites (description)
Learning outcomes
Knowledge
- The graduate will be able to identify on an advanced level the relation between American literature and historical as well as cultural processes.
- The graduate will be able to identify on an advanced level the multiplicity and complexity of cultures in the United States and also to recognize American cultural codes as well as structural and institutional background.
Abilities
- The graduate will be able to employ on an advanced level the terminology and methodological tools from Cultural and Literary Studies to analyze American culture and literature.
- K_U04 The graduate is able to analyze and synthesize on an advanced level American literary and cultural phenomena in the social, historical, and economic context.
Social competences
- K_K05 The graduate is ready to effectively fuction in social and cultural interactions through the ability to express oneself in a cohesive and lucid manner
- K_K06 The graduate is ready to value cultural heritage with respect for both community and individual diversity.
Assessment criteria
Final written in-class test (subject to change if the pandemic situation intensifies) made up of about 20 open questions.
Scores and grades according to the percentage criteria: 60%-67% -- satisfactory (3); 68%-75% -- satisfactory plus (3.5); 76%-83% -- good (4); 84%-91% -- good plus (4.5); 92%-100% -- very good (5).
Two absences allowed irrespective of their reasons and medical certificates.
Practical placement
No practical placement.
Bibliography
Chylińska, Bożenna, The Gospel of Work and Wealth in the Puritan Ethic. From John Calvin to Benjamin Franklin (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2012).
Baym, Nina, ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature , 3 vols. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1979), vol. 1.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
Emerson, Everett, ed., Letters from New England. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629-1638) (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976).
Gaustad, Edwin S., ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America, 3 vols. (Grand Rapid, Mich.: William B. Eardmans Publishing Company, 1982), vol. 1.
Heimert, Aland and Andrew Delbanco, eds., The Puritans in America. A Narrative Anthology (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
Miller, Perry, ed., The American Puritans. Their Prose and Poetry (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1956).
Miller, Perry, and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., The Puritans. A Sourcebook of Their Writings, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), vol. 1.
Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Family. Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth Century New England (New York: Harper and Row, 1966). Morgan, Edmund Sears, ed., Puritan Political Ideas. 1558-1794 (Indianapolis: the Bobbs-Merril Company, Inc., 1975).
Norton, Mary Beth, ed., Major Problems in American Women's History. Documents and Essays (Lexington, Ma.: Heath, 1989).
Walter, George M., ed., Puritanism in Early America (Lexington, Ma.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1973).
Ziff, Larzer, Puritanism in America. New Culture in a New World (New York: The Viking Press,1973).
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: