The Difficulty of Representing "Just Say No"

In class on Wednesday the 19th, we discussed the aesthetic challenge Milton faced regarding how to portray a "negative," having to write about Original Sin while simultaneously characterizing Eve and Adam's action as a grievous mistake.  In other words, how does an author portray sin without representing it enticingly?  This was a key question confronting authors of the early republic whose genre of choice was the seduction novel. 

An image from one of the many editions of Charlotte Temple

Two of the key bestsellers of the era were Susanna Haswell Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1794) and Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette (1797).  Both novels told essentially identical stories (spoiler alert!):  a virginal woman is seduced by a dashing army officer, fetched away from her friends and family, impregnated, and abandoned by her lover, eventually dying in childbirth, repenting her waywardness.  Both authors were writing in the tradition of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748), one of the most popular novels of the 18th century on both sides of the ocean.

The risk of the genre, acknowledged by advocates and critics alike, was the possibility that a young woman would sympathize so strongly with the heroines that she would see their sins not as horrid but as understandable, that the power of representation would dilute (or worse, reverse!) the intended message.  Authors often tried to undermine such anxieties by claiming their novel was "a tale of truth" (Charlotte) or "founded on fact" (Coquette).  Unlike Paradise Lost, the sinful actions in these novels take place offstage, and readers realize the deed has occurred when the heroine runs away with her lover (Charlotte) or is found weeping after a rendezvous (Coquette).  Although the authors do not figuratively draw back the bed curtains for their readers to observe the act of sinning, the novels' dashing officers are still alluring characters, and the life of adventure they offer remains appealing.  (Another way to confront the challenge of representing seduction and maintain the moral is to relegate seduction to a subplot and only portray the consequences of that seduction for the primary characters, as Sukey Vickery does in Emily Hamilton [1803].   Even this strategy of consequences, however, did not save The Scarlet Letter (1850) from being called a "dirty book" by one reviewer.)

Despite its popularity, the novel itself was a suspect genre.  According to one critic, fiction takes "Every opportunity . . . to frame an apology for suicide, adultery, prostitution, and the indulgence of every propensity for which a corrupt heart can plead an inclination."  Another commentator noted in "Novel Reading, a Cause of Female Depravity" that "Without the poison instilled [by novels] into the blood, females in ordinary life would never have been so much the slaves of vice . . . . It is no uncommon thing for a young lady who has attended her dearest friend to the altar, a few months after a marriage which, perhaps, but for her, had been a happy one, to fix her affections on her friend's husband, and by artful blandishments allure him to herself.  Be not staggered, moral reader, at the recital!  Such serpents are really in existence . . . . "  (Both quotes from Cathy N. Davidson's Revolution and the Word [1986].)

Such are the trials that try authors' souls.

Class Recap 10/12

"Raphael Warns Adam and Eve," William Blake, 1807.

We began with a presentation from Katlin, who explained a critical controversy, focusing on William Empson's Milton's God and Dennis Danielson's Milton's Good Good, about the nature of Milton's God. This led to a discussion about present-day Christian beliefs about the fall and the nature of God and the afterlife. 

Next, Briana discussed Milton's epistolary tract Of Education, explaining key elements of Milton's philosophy of education. She divided the class into groups and asked each group to look at a specific passage from Of Education and find passages in Paradise Lost that expressed similar themes and images. An important idea to come out of this discussion was Raphael's role as a teacher.

The class then continued to discuss Raphael's various roles: as teacher, messenger, minister, therapist, friend, and substitute narrator. We considered the special challenge that both Raphael and Milton have: representing "to human sense th' invisible exploits / Of warring spirits" (5.565-66).

Students had selected, as requested, passages in which they saw a tension between spiritual instruction and aesthetic pleasure. We only had time to focus on one of these, 5.540-5.444, suggested by Jason. The class did a wonderful close reading/poetic analysis here, seeing how the verse embodies the emotional intensity of Raphael's teaching/warning to Adam in that moment. Ben also pointed out that the part of the beauty of the passage is in the way it brings closure to a longer speech.

Other passages we didn't have time to talk about:

Two passages were suggested that had to do with representational issues we had discussed earlier in the class period; the challenge to Raphael (and Milton) is both to instruct and to work with the human imagination. 6.909-912 (suggested by Nick) and 6.296-303 (Christy) exemplify this well.

Several students pointed to passages where some sort of doctrine or scientific information is incorporated into the action or dialogue:  5.435-440 (Josh), 6.723-732 (Jonathan), 4.877-884 (Brandon), and 6.330-333, 344-353 (Cody). This last example is interesting in that Raphael/Milton’s explanation of angelic injury interrupts the battle scene just as the wound itself interrupts Satan.
Finally, quite a few students identified passages that contained a complex intertwining of aesthetics and instruction: 4.159-171 (from Jennifer - we had a little time to discuss this one in class, remarking on the important role of both sensory imagery and simile in the passage); 5.275-279 (Ben, who noted the combination of pagan and Christian imagery; also notable about this passage is its status as a prayer and song); 7.449-504 (Jen, who pointed out that the passage combines instruction and poetic Biblical language, combining Genesis with the Song of Solomon); 8.79-99 (Sheridan); 8.500-520 (Karin; it's striking how many of these involve descriptions of nature - this one also refers to other kinds of pleasure besides aesthetic); 8.167-178 (Angela - this one is interesting in that it could be read as telling Adam to appreciate rather than to inquiry intellectually); and 9.1114-1118 (Jessica).

"A Woman of Ready Wit and Bold Spirit"

Anne Hutchinson, Boston, State House Grounds

Before the class moves too far away from the 1630s and 1640s, it is worth saying a few words about Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591-1643) and the Antinomian Crisis (1636-1638) in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Hutchinson was born in England, the daughter of an Anglican minister with strong Puritan leanings who was imprisoned and later placed under house arrest by the authorities.  He educated his daughter well beyond what the era offered other women.  After her marriage to William Hutchinson, she fell under the spell of a dynamic minister residing in nearby Boston, Lincolnshire, England.  Regularly, the Hutchinsons travelled over twenty miles to hear John Cotton preach each Sunday, and they deeply mourned his 1633 forced departure for New England.  Having given birth to her fourteenth child, Hutchinson and her family followed Cotton to the Bay Colony in 1634.

Having settled into her new home, Hutchinson resumed acting as midwife and spiritual advisor to local women.  Her activities eventually morphed into hosting religious gatherings at her home, collecting some 70 devoted followers.  At these events, she discussed theological matters, eventually reaching the conclusion that the concept of sanctification---the visible evidence that one might be of the elect---was a false doctrine and that ministers who preached it were leading saints astray in their religious devotions.  Among her devotees were her brother-in-law minister John Wheelwright (1592-1679) and Governor Henry Vane (1613-1662).  As Philip H. Round has argued, Hutchinson might have been drawing on an English tradition as a "prophetic woman," a custom that made her behavior aberrant in New England.

Tensions grew in the colony, reaching a tipping point in August, 1637, when a synod was convened and Hutchinson was brought before the authorities.  Among those who questioned her during her church and her civil trials were John Winthrop, who had just defeated Vane for the governorship; Thomas Dudley, Deputy Governor and Anne Bradstreet's father; John Eliot, apostle to the Indians; John Cotton, minister at Boston; Thomas Shepard, minister at Cambridge; Thomas Weld, minister at Roxbury; and Hugh Peters, minister at Salem.  These were the big intellectual guns of the Bay Colony, and as the transcripts make clear, Anne Hutchinson could not just hold her own during the back and forth over theological matters, she could actually talk them into silence.   Cotton himself came under scrutiny from his brethren, and he eventually turned on Hutchinson during the trial.

Unfortunately, perhaps weary from the questioning, Hutchinson slipped up:

Hutchinson: . . . I bless the Lord, he hath let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong.  Since that time I confess I have been more choice and he hath let me to distinguish between the voice of my beloved and the voice of Moses, the voice of John the Baptist and the voice of the antichrist, for all those voices are spoken of in scripture.  Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth I must commit myself unto the Lord.
Mr. Nowell: How do you know that that was the spirit?
Hutchinson: How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the sixth commandment?
Dep. Gov. Dudley: By an immediate voice.
Hutchinson: So to me by an immediate revelation.
Dudley: How!  an immediate revelation.
Hutchinson: by the voice of his own spirit to my soul.  I will give you another scripture, Jeremiah 46:27-28---out of which the Lord showed me what he would do for me and the rest of his servants. . . .

This spirit also forewarned Hutchinson that after she migrated to Massachusetts Bay she would be persecuted.  As far as the Puritans were concerned, direct revelation from God ended with Christ's apostles, so to embrace, as she did, an "immediate revelation" exposed her to charges of heresy.  As Winthrop recorded in his journal, though her errors were "clearly confuted, but yet she held her own." Hutchinson was admonished, then excommunicated, then banished from the Bay Colony.  Many of her followers examined and either returned to the fold or followed Hutchinson into exile.

The Antinomian Controversy spread through the colony, dividing towns, churches, even families.  It forced the Congregationalists to recognize that limits must be placed on individual belief, lest the colony disintegrate into factions.  As tensions rose, ordinances were passed ordering the seizure of any guns owned by Hutchinson's followers, the narrowly elected Governor Winthrop found himself denied an honor guard, and the Hutchinsonians apparently resisted waging the Pequot War.

Split Rock, Bronx, New York, near where the Hutchinsons died

Much to the authorities' dismay, after her banishment Hutchinson found refuge in the lately established colony of Rhode Island, founded by another Bay Colony banishee, Roger Williams.  There, Anne Hutchinson "was delivered of a monstrous birth," the remains of which were examined as evidence of her errors.  (None of the authorities seem to have taken notice that she was 47 years old at the time of her miscarriage.)  Governor Winthrop reports in his diary that an earthquake struck Rhode Island, and the Hutchinsonians, having been given over to "strange delusions," "boasted" that "the Holy Ghost did shake it [the house] in coming down upon them, as He did upon the apostles."  By 1643, Hutchinson was living with the Dutch in New Amsterdam (i.e., New York), where she and a number of family members (with the exception of the one daughter pictured with her above) were slaughtered by Indians.  Noting the event in his journal, Winthrop comments that "These people had cast off ordinances and churches, and now at last their own people. . . ."  One might consider the biblical implications of this statement.
Hutchinson's descendants include three presidents (FDR and the two Bushes), Lincoln senate opponent Stephen Douglas, Mitt Romney, two Supreme Court Justices, author Oliver Wendell Holmes, historian Mary Beth Norton, and royal governor during the American Revolution, Thomas Hutchinson.  In 1987, Governor Michael Dukakis officially revoked Governor Winthrop's order of banishment.

Three trial transcripts survive from the Antinomian Crisis; they and other documents have been collected by historian David D. Hall in The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History (2nd edition, 1990).  A detailed history of the crisis is Michel P. Winship's Making Heretics : Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (2002).  Hutchinson never published her beliefs, and thus her words were recorded by her adversaries and come down to us through the lens of their vision.  In spite of her persecutors' view of her, the transcripts reveal Hutchinson to have been a feisty woman with a deep biblical knowledge of her faith.

The Doctrine of the Ferment

The assigned chapter by John Rogers on the political science of Paradise Lost may need a little background. Rogers refers to several of Milton's prose works:

De Doctrina Christiana ["On Christian Doctrine"]: This is a theological treatise in Latin, probably written in the 1650s, as Rogers indicates. The manuscript was discovered only in the 19th century. This work is of great interest in that it expresses some heretical ideas not obviously present in Paradise Lost. Among these is the doctrine of monist materialism, the idea that the material universe is suffused with God's goodness and ultimately not separate from the divine. This idea is described by Rogers on 112-113.

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: This is a 1649 tract by Milton defending the right of the people to execute a king.

Defensio pro Populo Anglicano ["Defense of the English People"]: Milton wrote this in 1651 at the request of the Cromwell government; it defends the revolution and the regicide against published attacks by the French scholar Claudius Salmasius.

The Readie & Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth: Published in 1660 with the Restoration seeming inevitable, this was Milton's last attempt to persuade his countrymen to keep a republican government rather than a monarchy.

Rogers' thesis is that the "vitalist moment" - a brief period in the mid-seventeenth-century when some natural philosophers (what we now call scientists) held  that matter was not lifeless and mechanistic, but that body and soul were inseparable and, in the extreme formulation, that "all material substance was infused with the power of reason and self-motion" (1) - attracted some on the Puritan left as an analogy for revolutionary politics. In the chapter you are reading, he argues that Milton's apparent onetime interest in vitalism reappears in Paradise Lost as an alternative political image of the cosmos.

The Levellers (referred to on 107) were a political movement of the 1640s dedicated to popular sovereignty and equality.

The "Good Old Cause" (143) was that of Cromwell and the New Model Army - the Puritan/republican political cause.

Class Recap 10/5

We began with a presentation from Jason, who first considered the question of Milton's Puritanism, concluding that the answer depends on whether Puritanism is understood as primarily political or primarily theological. Jason then led a discussion about the representation of Satan in Paradise Lost, exploring the reasons that Satan might seem like a sympathetic or heroic figure. There followed a more general class discussion about Evans' Milton's Imperial Epic, with the class somewhat divided on the full validity of Evans' reading.

Next Ben gave a presentation on Milton's use of the Bible and on the sometimes difficult to determine line between interpretation and poetic creation. He discussed the Biblical origins of the phrase "darkness visible" (PL 1.63), Milton's Biblical analogues in Isaiah and Ezekiel for the depicting the cause of Satan's rebellion, and the book of Job as a model for the council scene in Book 2.

After the break we read aloud 3.1-55 and 4.32-113. (Keep both these passages in mind as the semester continues - we will come back to them as we read some of the American writings.) We discussed the former passage in terms of Milton's sense of narratorial involvement in Satan's story, and also considered the image of inward "planted eyes" as both a metaphorization and an internalization of vision. We talked about Satan's soliloquy as a version of Puritan self-examination. (This passage was also a topic of conversation during Jason's presentation on the portrayal of Satan.) We noted how these two passages parallel each other, both being addresses to light or the sun; Satan's "lower deeps" are a perversely reproductive version of the epic Bard's creative internal vision.

We also spent some time comparing Milton's portrayal of God with his portrayal of Satan. I suggested that an artistic problem for Milton is that God must be wholly disembodied, whereas Satan is not only embodied, but defined by his embodiment. ("Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.") Though I didn't note this at the time, the topic of Milton's artistic challenges and motivations returns to the issues Ben raised in his presentation: how does the poet allow the Bible to speak through him and create something new at the same time?

In the final ten minutes of class we considered the historical moment in which John Cotton (1584-1652) preached his sermon "God's Promise to His Plantations" (1630), clarified the sermon's message (i.e., its thesis), and examined how Cotton's sermon contained several intellectual and theological concepts found in Paradise Lost.

A Further Word on the Puritan Conversion Narrative

In the introduction to her 1983 book The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression, Patricia Caldwell maps out some significant differences between British and American conversion narratives.  According to her, the experience of conversion for English converts was often conveyed in very personal terms: women and men used childbirth and deliverance literally and figuratively to explain their new-found sense of godliness.  Further, when they described their experience, it was often expressed in terms of movement down into and out of the body and selfhood.  Dreams and visions also played a frequent role (recall that in Grace Abounding Bunyan records a dream he had).  These British narratives usually contained a sense of closure, an end to striving, their authors expressing a yearning for refuge, solace, and a happy ending (i.e., heavenly assurance).

American narratives, by contrast, omitted the language of childbirth and deliverance.  In place of the movement away from the body and the self, these narratives often referred to travel and migration; converts often recalled their actual experience of migration to New England as a central moment in their experience, and they often wrote and/or spoke in terms of a movement across physical and spiritual geography.  Unlike many of the British texts, American converts often closely tied their narratives to Scripture, with biblical verses often becoming structural elements of the narrative.  Lastly, after the literal and figurative movement experienced by the congregants, a feeling of discontent, dissatisfaction, and unfulfilled spiritual desire (i.e., no heavenly assurance) remained with them.  Thus, Thomas Shepard's constant doubts about his soul's status and Anne Bradstreet's perplexity over failing to feel a sense of "constant joy in my pilgrimage and refreshing which I supposed most of the servants of God have" (from "To My Dear Children") was common to many New England Puritans.

Caldwell reminds us that a genre which might on the surface appear to be homogeneous in reality contains diverse and complex elements.

Class Recap 9/28

Old Burying Ground, Cambridge, Massachusetts---Thomas
Shepard is believed to be buried here among his congregants

Class began with a brief discussion on conference presentations, and Jessica was kind enough to share her experiences as a first time presenter at a recent conference.  This talk about professionalization was followed by Cody's informative lecture on Puritan theology and terminology.

Before turning to Thomas Shepard and John Bunyan, the class returned to Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (1630-1650) and Thomas Morton's New English Canaan (1637).  When considering Shepard and his congregants, we took up issues such as the genesis of the private individual, selfhood and identity, self-determination and godly dependence, and Shepard as Puritan and Christian.  John Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666) raised questions about literary publication and manuscript culture, the rise of personal writings and issues of genre, the use of language and metaphor, and the expression of sincerity (and thus emotion in general) through the written word.

It is worth remembering that the 1994 edition of God's Plot: Puritan Spirituality in Thomas Shepard's Cambridge reprints an abridged version of the Journal and a selection of the Confessions.  Those wishing to investigate these texts in full should turn to the 1972 edition of God's Plot (for the Journal) and the original 1981 and 1991 publications of the Confessions.