1. Home: Massachusetts Time Period: 1600s
Puritans

2. Religion in 1600s Believed good and evil spirits around at all times.
Martin Luther: “Pestilence, fever and other severe diseases are naught else than the Devil’s work.”
Believed God was sovereign over Satan.
There was an over emphasis on the supernatural because religion had been becoming too rational.

3. European Witch Trials
Witches had been executed in Europe for over 300 years.
Torture was used to gain confessions
Thousands were executed
Most burned at the stake.
In England witches were hanged as they were in Salem
Bible:
Christ cast out demons
Exodus “Do not allow a witch to live.”

4. What do you know about the Puritans based on this picture?

9. What do you know about Puritans based on this picture?

10. What do you know about Puritans based on this picture?

11. How would you describe their clothes?

12. What do you notice about Puritans in this picture?

13. What can you infer about the Puritans from this picture?

14. This is a picture of Salem Village around 1692
This is a picture of Salem Village around What conclusions can you draw based on what you see in this picture?

15. Puritan View of God and the Bible
Mysterious
Distant
Not understandable
Book of Law
Infallible

16. Five Basic Beliefs Man is sinful Man can’t save himself
God chooses people to be saved
God’s grace saves – not their actions
Once saved – always saved

17. Strict Moral Code Sabbath (Sunday):
A day of prayer & worship – no work
Levity – no laughing, silliness, life is serious
Gambling – forbidden, dishonest; a waste of time Drinking: no drunkenness
Idleness: Doing nothing was against the law
Death Penalty: adultery, murder, rebellion, witchcraft
Dancing not allowed
a waste of time - evil

18. Clothing Long sleeves Long skirts No jewelry No lace No ribbon
No fur hats
Women are considered “of the devil” or the “devil’s tool”

19. Worship Service and Building
Barren
Well lit
No musical instruments
Separate seating of sexes
1-3 hour service
How does this fit with the ideas of Puritanism?

20. Church Government Only property owners could be a church member
Women couldn’t vote
Theocracy (church & state are one)
Pastor was the head of the community
Male head of house was part of the general court.
They made laws about the moral issues and collected taxes.

21. View of Nature
The Puritans who arrived in America in 1620 held vastly different attitudes toward the natural world than we do today
Feared the American wilderness for some very practical reasons:
1. Most Puritans came from an area in England that
was not densely forested.
2. They were also afraid of the wild animals that inhabited the
American wilderness. They were not accustomed to seeing mountain
lions and bears, for example.
3. They were also afraid of the Native Americans who inhabited the wilderness.
Nature is the “unknown.” It is where the Devil is housed.
Nature is a place of spiritual temptation. (Where was Christ tempted?)

22. Attitudes Toward Others
Very Intolerant
“The Puritan community thought that heretics should have only the liberty to leave.”

23. Have we learned from the Puritans?
Plain living (basics)
High thinking
Work ethic
Morality
Democracy (Roger Williams)

24. Nathaniel hawthorne
Was born Nathaniel Hathorne Added the “w” to distance himself from Puritan relatives Part of the Romantic/Gothic movement in literature ( ) The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850

25. -Hawthorne, after finishing the novel
“The Scarlet Letter is powerfully written but my writings do not, nor ever will, appeal to the broadest class of sympathies, and therefore will not obtain a very wide popularity.”
-Hawthorne, after finishing the novel
4,000 copies of The Scarlet Letter sold in the first 10 days

26. Romanticism
From
It was definitely and even defiantly American
Writers struggled to understand what "American" could possibly mean, especially in terms of a literature which was distinctively American and not British.

27. Romanticism A good time in American History for it
Possible to make a living as a writer
Not constantly worried about survival
Politically: ideals of democracy regardless of class
Clash between the ideals and the reality caused writers to take extremes

28. Economically: Religion: Wealthiest the US had been
People had time and funds to read
Religion:
Second Great Awakening
Looking for new spiritual roots

29. Trying to revolt against classicalism
Sought to create an “American Literary Voice”

30. Visual Arts: Examples
Romantic Art
Neoclassical Art

31. Characteristics of American Romanticism
Values feeling and intuition over reason.
Place faith in inner experience and the power of imagination.
Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature.
Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication.
Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual.
Reflects on nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development.
Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress.
Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm and the inner world of the imagination.
Sees poetry as the highest expression of imagination.
Finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folklore.

32. Romantic Hero
The romantic hero was one of the most important products of the early American novel.
The rational hero, like Ben Franklin, was worldly, educated, sophisticated, and bent on making a place for himself in civilization.
The typical hero in American Romantic fiction was youthful, innocent, intuitive, and close to nature.

33. Characteristics of the American Romantic Hero
Young or possesses youthful qualities.
Innocent and pure of purpose.
Has a sense of honor based not on society’s rules but on some higher principle.
Has a knowledge of people and life based on deep, intuitive understanding, not on formal learning.
Loves nature and avoids town life.
Quests for some higher truth in the natural world.

34. Gothic Literature
SUBDIVISION OF ROMANTICISM: the “dark romantics”( ) -use of supernatural -motif of double (both good and evil in characters; sin and evil does exist) -depression, dark forests -Poe, Hawthorne, Melville -emphasis on symbolism (which we will discuss later)

35. Definition of a witch: A person possessed and controlled by the Devil
or one of his demons.

37. Facts of the Salem Trials Salem, Massachusetts
Lasted from May to Sept (less than 6 mos.)
There had been three separate instances before this in other communities in New England where witches were hanged.
If a witch confessed to being a witch, he (she) would NOT die.
Salem pastor was
Rev. Samuel Parris
He had a daughter (age 9) Betty (Elizabeth)
And a niece (age 11) Abigail
She is 17 in the play

38. More Facts
Abigail Williams led the girls
The girls listened to stories of witchcraft and magic told by a West Indian slave named Tituba.
They were found dancing in the woods at a séance.
The girls blamed the slave to escape punishment.
No one was free from accusation.
Even the wife of the governor of Massachusetts was accused.
Signs of the girls’ fits: Couldn’t talk; choking; acted like animals – barking; being pinched; falling into fits.

39. Physicians
could find
nothing wrong
with the girls.

40. Effects of Witch Trials
About 200 were imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft
19 were hanged
1 was pressed to death
Giles Corey years old
55 confessed to being witches and avoided death.
Other accused witches died in prison: Sarah Osborn Roger Toothaker Lyndia Dustin Ann Foster (As many as thirteen** others may have died in prison.) **sources conflict as to the exact number of prison deaths

41. 19 Were Hanged
Bridget Bishop Martha Carrier Martha Corey Mary Easty Sarah Good Elizabeth Howe George Jacobs, Sr. Susannah Martin Rebecca Nurse Alice Parker Mary Parker John Proctor Ann Pudeator Wilmott Redd Margaret Scott Samuel Wardwell Sara Wildes John Willard
George Burroughs

42. Massachusetts Bay Colony
John Winthrop
Concerned about persecution & depression
Charter from King Charles to establish a colony in New England
Created a refuge for Puritans in America
163011 ships with 900 settlers
“We shall be like a City upon a Hill; the eyes of all people are upon us.”
By ,000 settlers

43. Colonial Government
People owning company stock=“freemen” & male heads of households
All freemen=General Court
Made laws
Elected the governor
John Winthrop 1st governor

44. Society Subsistence farming
Wheat
Grains, vegetables, apple orchards, dairy cattle, sheep, and pigs
Fishing and whaling=most important industries
Harbors
Lumber
Shipbuilding
Social Life is centered around the towns

45. Education
In 1642 law was passed requiring pastors and parents to teach children to read.
1647 Law
50 families= elementary
100 families=secondary

46. Bridgette Bishop Hanging

47. Important People in History and in the Play
Abigail Williams
John Proctor
Elizabeth Proctor
Marry Warren
Betty Parris
Rev. Parris
Judge Danforth
Rev. Hale

48. Arthur Miller

49. His Life Born – N.Y. City – wealthy family
Father suffered heavy losses during stock market crash of 1929
High School dropout
Worked as a shipping clerk
1934 – U. of Michigan accepted him
Married Marilyn Monroe (divorced)
Began to write in college
All My Sons – 1947
Death of a Salesman – 1949
Won the Pulitzer Prize
The Crucible – 1953

50. Themes in the Play Greed Betrayal Individual’s responsibility
to himself/herself and to
society

51. Why
did
Arthur Miller
write
The Crucible?

52. McCarthyism
McCarthyism

53. McCarthy Hearings
The McCarthy Hearings were being condemned by Miller as a witch hunt like that in Salem.
Many were accused of association with Communists in McCarthy Hearings.
People were found guilty with little or no evidence – guilt by association
Many lives and reputations were ruined by the Hearings.
Miller was not a Communist party member but advocated equality of classes.
He was disillusioned by Communism in the Soviet Union.
Arthur Miller himself was called before the U.S. Senate House Committee on Un-American Activities because of this play.