Mention the subject of the puritans and sex and the image that likely
comes to mind is that of Hester Prynne, walking from the Boston prison to the
marketplace where she would stand on the pillory with the letter “A” pinned to
her chest, signifying her guilt as an adulteress. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s vivid description of
the event in The Scarlett Letter and
his portrayal of Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth and others perhaps did
more than anything else to lay the foundation for the image of puritans as censorious,
prudish, repressive, and joyless.
But if Hawthorne’s novel
did much to advance this portrayal of puritanism and the puritans, it was the
early twentieth century Baltimore Maryland social critic H. L. Menken who most
firmly implanted in popular culture the image of the puritans as steeple
hatted, sour-faced, repressive, killjoys.
Many of you have undoubtedly heard the Mencken quote that puritanism was
the “fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” But it was also Mencken, conflating what he
called the “New Puritanism” of his time with the puritanism of New England, who
wrote that puritanism "assum[es] that every human act must be either right
or wrong, and that ninety-nine percent of them are wrong." Statements that the puritans were hostile to
sexuality is the particular myth that I hope to dispel today. Of course, much of what I will argue is not
new. Over the past decades numerous
historians such as Edmund Morgan and Richard Godbeer have worked to dispel
these myths. But other scholars have
bought into the myths. Lyle Koehler
claimed that the puritans had a “moral distaste for sensual pleasure.” And Lawrence Stone asserted that English
Protestants all believed that “sensuality itself was evil.”
And the myth still persists in popular
culture. Just a few years ago a piece in
the Huffington Post claimed that the
puritans departed England not because of disenchantment with the Church of
England but “unease (and maybe too much temptation) at the general
licentiousness of English life,” and that the communities they established were
“colonies with dictatorial repression of daily life, mostly of sexual behavior.” “What the Pilgrims and other Puritans were
all about,” according to this, “was sexual obsession.” And look up the word “puritanical” in a
dictionary and you will find that synonyms are “prim,” “priggish,”
“moralistic,” and “stuffy.” Used as an
adjective “puritan” is defined as” having or displaying censorious moral
beliefs, especially about pleasure and sex.”
So, where to
begin? A good starting place is the history of Christian attitudes towards sex,
though I want you to realize that I am highlighting certain views for the sake
of making my argument; I am not implying that all who were members of a
particular faith community subscribed to the views set forth, merely that they
were positions that might be seen as “official.”
Suspicion of
sexuality within the Christian tradition starts with St. Paul. As translated in the King James version (the
one most puritans used) Paul writes “It is good for a man not to touch a
woman. Nevertheless, to avoid
fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own
husband. Let the husband render unto the
wife due benevolence; and likewise also the wife unto the husband.” While Paul recognizes marriage and the
expression of due benevolence – sexual affection – as a curb on fornication,
his starting point is that sex is not good.
Lust was not only one of the seven deadly sins, it was in many ways the
most pervasive and dangerous temptation.
Over time various Christian leaders identified as Fathers of the Church
asserted that celibacy – the state that we were born in, according to St.
Ambrose – was a spiritually superior and desirable state. Origen went so far to insure his celibacy by
castrating himself; Ambrose and Tertullian believed that the extinction of
mankind was preferable to furthering the human race through sexual
intercourse. As early as the Council of
Elvira in 306 the Catholic Church required clergy to abstain from sexual
intercourse. In 1139 the Second Lateran
Council reasserted the spiritual superiority of celibacy by forbidding priests
from marrying. Vows of celibacy were
required of women entering religious orders.
As late as the mid-sixteenth century the Council of Trent declared that
the view that marriage is superior to celibacy was anathema. Marriage was accepted for those incapable of
living celibate lives but was portrayed by most church leaders as spiritually
inferior.
Identified with
lust and sin, sex but was acceptable within marriage, allowed for the purpose
of procreation, the church having concluded that the birth of future generations
of Christians justified marital sex. But
suspicion of the sexual impulse was still present. The purpose of sex in marriage was
procreation; inability to produce children was (and remains) the only automatic
grounds for annulment of a marriage.
Contraception to frustrate the legitimate purpose of the act was
sinful. Of course there is ample
evidence that from the crudest parish to the corridors of the Vatican the
prohibition of celibacy was frequently violated, but presumably with an
awareness that this was a sin needing to be confessed.
A major blow
against this view was struck by Martin Luther, who asserted that married life
was not inferior to the celibate state, and who put an exclamation point on his
position by marrying the former nun Katharina von Bora. In England clerical marriage was still
forbidden during the reign of Henry VIII (despite the fact that Archbishop
Thomas Cranmer had secretly taken a wife), but the prohibition was officially
lifted after Edward VI came to the throne in 1547. The dissolution of monasteries and houses of
female religious eliminated some of the last bastions of mandatory celibacy.
Which brings us to
the shaping of puritan attitudes.
Over the course of
the latter sixteenth and the seventeenth century puritans were among those
Protestants who developed a view of marriage that emphasized its companionate
features and lessened the importance of procreation. As Lori Stokes discussed in a talk at the
Boston Public Library last month, puritans emphasized love as the foundation of
marriage. Let me reinforce that point
with a few examples. The English puritan
preacher William Whately described love as the “Life and soul of marriage,
without which it differs as much from itself as a rotten apple from a sound,
and as a carcass from a living body.” And,
he preached, like a well-tuned instrument makes “sweet music whose harmony doth
enravish the ear,” so “when the golden strings of true affection” mark a
marriage, the partners “harmonize to the comfort of each other.” Thomas Hooker wrote that “the man whose heart
is endeared to the woman he loves, he dreams of her in the night, hath her in
his eye an apprehension when he awakes, museth on her as he sits at table,
walks with her when he travels, and parlies with her in each place where he
comes…. She lies in his bosom, and his heart trusts in her, which forceth all
to confess, that the stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with
full tide and strength.”
Whatley and the
other architects of this position viewed sexuality as a gift from God to
strengthen the relationship between a husband and wife. Returning to the seventh chapter of Paul’s
first letter to the Corinthians, they pointed to the third through fifth verses,
where the apostle instructed husband and wife in their right to “due
benevolence” – a way in which they referred to sexual intercourse – from each
other and the duty of each to provide that benevolence to the partner. Speaking of sexual intercourse, the
Elizabethan puritan clergyman Henry Smith saw in Paul’s instructions “a
commandment to yield this duty; that which is commanded is lawful; and not to
do it is a breach of the commandment.”
The English puritan William Gouge referred to intercourse as “one of the
most proper and essential acts of marriage.”
It “must be performed,” he preached, “with good will and delight,
willingly, readily, and cheerfully.” “As
the man must be satisfied at all times in his wife,” he wrote, “and even
ravished with her love; so must the woman.” Whately similarly wrote that in intercourse
the partners must not “yield themselves with grudging, … but readily, and with
all demonstrations of hearty affection.”
Perhaps nothing indicates the puritan emphasis on companionship over
procreation than Gouge’s argument that a barren man could fulfill his
responsibilities as a husband but an impotent man could not.
The first pastor
of this church in which we are gathered (the building is not the original), Thomas
Thatcher, indicated that a successful marriage was one characterized by “deep
affection, singular contentment, delight in each other … and the mutual
acknowledgment of each person’s power [over] each other’s body in conjugal
communion.” And his successor here, Samuel
Willard, explained that “conjugal love should be demonstrated through conjugal
union, by which [husband and wife] become one flesh.” An anonymous popular manual of the time, not
necessarily written by a puritan but one reflecting the point of view we have
been discussing stated that “when the husband comes into the wife’s chamber, he
must entertain her with all kind of dalliance, wanton behavior, and
allurements.”
Seeking
to justify their position, puritans often advanced their celebration of sexual
intercourse between spouses by references to scripture. Quoting Proverbs 5: 15, the puritan clergyman
William Gataker urged husbands to “Joy and delight in her. ‘Rejoice in the wife of thy youth: let her be
unto thee as a loving hind, and the pleasant roe: let her breasts or her bosom
content thee at all times.’” The Song
of Solomon was a frequent source of inspiration, its erotic passages drawn on
both to celebrate sex between partners but also to describe an eroticized view
of the relationships Christ and his church and Christ and the individual
believer.
Indeed, this use
of the same images to depict the love between husband and wife and that between
Christ and the individual saint is one of the striking things about puritan
discussions of sexuality. Puritans viewed
the soul as feminine and spousal metaphors depicted all believers are
prospective brides of Christ. John
Cotton talked to his congregants of how they should desire to meet Christ “in
the bed of loves … and … to have the seeds of his grace shared in your
hearts.” Old South’s pastor Samuel
Willard preached that while on earth the saints received grace from God “like a
Kiss from him, … better than wine, [so that] their hearts were ravished with
it,” but that in heaven “there shall be that intimacy that there is between the
most loving husband and most beloved wife…. They will not be interrupted
caresses which they shall have from him…. The delights which they shall enjoy
shall be both full and uninterrupted….
The reciprocal ardors of affection between him and us shall break over
all banks and bounds.” Also evoking the
emotions that were experienced in marriage, Samuel Whiting told his
congregation that in heaven the saints would be the recipients of Christ’s “sweet
embraces … the that Celestial Bride Chamber and Bed of Love.”
What I’ve
described as the puritan viewpoint on sex is a reflection of what many clergy
wrote and preached. But did this
actually shape the behavior of individuals?
Certainly not in all
cases. Not all puritans found it easy to
buy into these relatively new notions.
Just as those of us who are members of faith communities today can
likely identify fellow believers who have differing views on sexuality, so too
was this the case in seventeenth century New England. And at a time of transition many likely clung
to older views that were more suspicious of sexuality. Anyone who has read the diary of Michael
Wigglesworth has been exposed to someone who was deeply troubled by his sexual
impulses, praying on one occasion that God would “mortify [his] lusts,” and
give him “a heart to savor the things of God above all other things.” The London craftsman Nehemiah Wallington
fought against the temptation of adultery, confessing in his diary that he “had
an exceedingly burning desire” for another woman, but “I did consider that God
did see me though no other did see me.”
Yet
there is compelling evidence that “ravishing affection” was what many puritans
experienced both in their marriages and in their relationship to Christ. A few months before his marriage in September
1674, the puritan pastor Edward Taylor sent a letter to his intended in which
he wrote that the “love within my breast is so large that my heart is not
sufficient to contain it,” and with a more erotic tinge, stated that there was
“no fitter comparison to set out my love by, than to compare it to a golden
ball of pure fire rolling up and down my breast, from which there flies, now
and then a spark like a glorious beam from the body of the flaming sun.”
There are numerous
expressions of such love to be found in the letters between John and Margaret
Winthrop, many with sexual overtones. On
one occasion, when John was away in London, Margaret wrote that she longed “for
that happy hour when I shall see you and enjoy my sweet and dear husband.” John, preparing for bed when away from
Groton, wrote that he made less haste to go to bed in the absence of his “sweet
wife.”
Similar eroticism
is to be found in the poems Anne Bradstreet addressed to her husband when he
was absent in England on colony business.
When she was with him, she wrote of his “loving mouth” and said she felt
neither storms nor frost because “his warmth such frigid colds did cause to
melt,” and, lest there be a misunderstanding of this reference to sexual heat,
she referred to their children as “those fruits which through thy heat I bore.”
Perusing letters
and diaries we find numerous examples comparing the love of a spouse to that of
Christ. Edward Taylor, whom we previously
saw writing to his intended spouse of his great love, wrote similarly of
anticipating Christ’s love. His heart
was like a “feather bed … with gospel pillows, sheets and sweet perfume,” and
hoped that Christ might, “with thy holy oil” make his spiritual fancy “slick
till like a flash of lightening it grow quick.”
In early January 1612 John Winthrop recorded a dream in which he found
himself with Christ and “was so ravished with his love towards me, far
exceeding the affection of the kindest husband, that being awakened it had made
so deep an impression in my heart, as I was forced to unmeasurable weeping for
a great while, & had a more lively feeling of the love of Christ than ever
before.”
The
fact that puritans viewed intercourse as an essential element in marriage is also
indicated in a number of cases that were dealt with in both the church and
civic realms. In 1640 the First Church
in Boston excommunicated James Mattock for having “denied conjugal fellowship
unto his wife for the space of two years.”
{Think of this – the failure of an individual to have intercourse with
his wife brought to the attention of their pastor, and when his advice was
unheeded, brought before and discussed by their congregation!!] And this is not the only such example. Twenty-five years later the Plymouth civil
authorities summoned John Williams to answer the charge that he had been guilty
of “his sequestration of himself from the marriage bed” and “refusing to
perform marriage duty towards her [his wife] according to the law of God and
man.” In 1656 William Clements, Jr., of
Cambridge petitioned the Middlesex County Court for a divorce on the grounds
that” for several years [she] hath refused marriage fellowship.” And in 1666 that same court heard a complaint
from the widowed Edward Pinson about “false reports that broke his wife’s heart
with grief that he would be absent from her three weeks together when he was at
home.” In 1658 the New Haven town
magistrates hauled three young men before them for having taken up and spread a
“slanderous report” that the wife of William Wilmot “did refuse to lie with her
husband.” That colony’s laws specifically provided that if any husband or wife
refused matrimonial society – intercourse --
to their spouse the offended party could be granted a divorce.
Court
proceedings also reveal the other side of the puritan attitudes towards sex,
the one that feeds the myth. Puritans
believed that all of God’s creation was initially and necessarily good, and
this involved men and women’s sexual organs and drives. The divine plan was that these be used to
bring men and women together to love and support one another – as Adam and Eve before the Fall. Intercourse was a means of forming and
strengthening a loving marital relationship through intercourse. Any other expression of that sexuality was
deemed a defilement of marriage, a misuse of God’s gift and a sin. And sexual sins were punished in early New
England, examples of this providing what critics argue is evidence of puritan
hostility to sex.
New
England colonists passed laws that allowed the death penalty to be imposed on
those who committed adultery, rape, incest, sodomy, and bestiality, though it
was rare for that verdict to be imposed, largely because their judicial process
required either confession or the testimony of two witnesses to find an
individual guilty. Thus, to cite two
well-known examples from the New Haven records, the aptly named Thomas Hogg was
not convicted of illicit intercourse with a sow, but William Potter, having
been discovered by his son in the act of bestiality, because he confessed to
wickedness with two sows, two heifers, an adult cow, three sheep and an old
mare was hanged. While Hogg could not be
convicted of bestiality, he was found guilty of other various forms of
lewdness, including walking around town with his penis hanging out (for which
there were numerous witnesses) and whipped.
Puritan
churches were often lenient in dealing with illicit sex between unmarried men
and women, especially if they had agreed to marry. In the Second Church Boston Cotton Mather
argued that public acknowledgement of such an offense before the congregation
should be sufficient. The Dorchester
congregation generally did not even censure such individuals if they “acknowledged
the sin of fornication before marriage.”
A case that reveals both the fact that no one was above temptation and
that there were limits to congregational tolerance was that of John Cotton Jr.,
the son of the revered Boston clergyman.
He was excommunicated from the First Church Boston in 1664 “for
lascivious unclean practices with three women and his horrid lying to hide his
sin,” though on his confessing and doing penance a month later he was readmitted
to the communion. There were, of course,
other offenders who, when excommunicated, refused to repent and were not
readmitted.
Just
as standing up to acknowledge an offense before the church was a form of
shaming ritual, so too were some of the ways in which civil authorities
punished sexual offenses. In 1639 John
Davies was whipped for “gross offences and attempting lewdness with diverse
women” and was ordered to wear the letter “U” – for unclean – on his shirtfront
for six months. Another offender, in
1676, was made to stand on a block in the Boston marketplace with a sign
hanging around his next proclaiming that it was “For Lascivious Carriages
Towards Young Women.” We can see where
Nathaniel Hawthorne got his inspiration.
I
could give a whole talk on sexual offenses in early New England, but that isn’t
what we are here for. To return to the
theme of puritans as advocates for “ravishing affection” between husbands and
wives, I want to close with some observations about its significance. If these ideas merely explained relations
between men and women almost four hundred years ago it would be of some
interest, but only if it could be shown that their views influenced the
evolution of American culture. That
could be argued, but I want to suggest a greater significance.
As
John Winthrop and those who were to accompany him in the so-called “Winthrop
fleet” in 1630 prepared to depart, Winthrop addressed them about their mission
and how they should comport themselves in the New World. They should live exemplary lives, he urged
them, so that they might become as a “city upon a hill” demonstrating the
Christian Charity enjoined on them by God in a way that others would seek to
emulate. In the course of this lay
sermon he set forth his vision of a godly society, one in which all individuals
were as members of a single body, knit together by Christian love, so that
“they must partake of each other’s strength and infirmity, joy and sorrow, weal
and woe.” “Sensibleness and sympathy of
each other’s condition will necessarily infuse into each part a native desire
and endeavor to strengthen, defend, preserve, and comfort the other.” There was, he argued, a “near bond of
marriage” between the colonists and their God. And in expounding on this he
drew upon his experience of marital love and his marriage-like relationship
with Christ.
Enriching
his social philosophy by reference to the love between husband and wife,
Winthrop referred to Adam and Eve as the prototype of a married couple. United with Adam, he discussed how Eve saw
him as “flesh of my flesh, … and bone of my bone.” “She conceives a great delight” in him, and
desires “nearness and familiarity” with him.
If, as a wife, she hears her love “groan, she is with [him] presently;
if she finds [him] sad and disconsolate, she sighs and mourns with [him]. She hath no such joy as to see her beloved
merry and thriving” and sets no bounds on her affections. The care of others which he called for – “we
delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn
together, labor and suffer together” – was not to be undertaken simply through
a sense of obligation. Rather, they were
to “love one another with a pure heart, fervently,” just as they responded
fervently to their spouses and to Christ himself. Christian charity – love – made puritans
passionate about their God, their spouse, and also the fellow members of their
community.