Note for Everyone from Lee
Hi everyone,
I’m in transit from sunny Florida today so I’ve decided to write a general response to all of you for now. I’m excited about our discussion for tomorrow’s class, given the great posts. I can see that the Foucauldian perspective is taking hold in certain ways, especially in light of Godbeer’s essay, which provides good examples of that point of view while also qualifying it in certain instances—for example around the idea that identity per se had not yet become the norm but that “trade” was a way of describing a lifelong practice of same sex desire and activity.
Remember what I said at the end of our last class about keeping in mind that the Puritans of the colonial era were not the same as Hawthorne in the mid-19th century? And he, in turn, may be distinguished from our own time. With that distinction in mind, try aligning your analyses with the terms that most speak to the frame of mind of each of these periods. Natural versus Unnatural and Licit versus Illicit for the Puritans who have a theocratic society in which the Bible—especially the Old Testament—is the Law. Human beings are all born into sin. As they put it, ‘In Adams Fall, We Sinned All.” Our concept of a norm is just not present in the same way. The Law is given by God for them to obey. So breaking it is against Nature and against God and is sinful. Predestination takes away any concept of free will. And yet, precisely because of that innate fallen character, sins were expected to happen.
Hawthorne, by contrast, explores the “human heart” in far more psychological ways. He is not a Calvinist or Puritan and indeed lives in the emerging process of seeing things in terms of the Normal versus the Abnormal. But he is also not fully in that moment, but in the transition—so look for those scenes in which there is kind of blend of the Unnatural (against Nature) and the Abnormal. He uses many of the terms of the Puritan period—he is after all writing an historical novel—but that doesn’t mean they carry the same meaning for him as for William Bradford, for example. He is far more a man of the Victorian era.
Each of you has raised a number of themes that we will explore fully in class, especially around the intricacies of power relations and sexuality—so be ready to both elaborate on your key points and ask for clarifications about why the Puritans thought the way they did (since this is pretty removed from the way we think today).
