By analysing various works set in seventeenth-century Puritan New England, stemming from different periods, this thesis demonstrates that this historical period proves to be a fruitful allegorical...Show moreBy analysing various works set in seventeenth-century Puritan New England, stemming from different periods, this thesis demonstrates that this historical period proves to be a fruitful allegorical vehicle to critically reflect upon contemporary concerns of authoritarianism, and elements of inclusion and exclusion, such as the scapegoating and general position of marginalised groups within American society. It is foregrounded that Robert Eggers’ film The Witch (2015) builds on and continues a tradition in American Gothic fiction by revealing its close intertextual relations to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Gentle Boy” (1832), “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” (1832), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), and The Scarlet Letter (1850), Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), and Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba (1986). What decisively links these texts together is the centrality of the woods in each narrative as a space outside the restrictions of society, both in the Puritan period and contemporary times.Show less
The political, social and ecclesiastical anxiety and fragility of colonial New England was manipulated by two opposing groups‒the Radicals and the Conservatives‒both of whom helped cause, and...Show moreThe political, social and ecclesiastical anxiety and fragility of colonial New England was manipulated by two opposing groups‒the Radicals and the Conservatives‒both of whom helped cause, and exploited, the 1692 witchcraft crisis in Salem, Massachusetts. I identify the “Radicals” as a group of mostly young, female and poor individuals both instigating and reveling in the breakdown of an oppressive community. They were experimenting with a world turned upside-down, a grand social experiment both echoing and inverting the Puritan experiment Salem was built upon. The very society that oppressed them, Puritan New England, had set a precedent for dissent and the formation of a new, radical, society. I will argue the opposing group, the “Conservatives,” consisted of older, mostly male figures trying desperately to maintain the establishment. I will argue that their interpretation of the actions of the possessed was proposed with specific intent and was formative in the continuation of the crisis. The crisis was, therefore, not an inadvertent consequence of their fractured society, but a fulfilment of the desires of each group.Show less
This thesis looks at the effects of two Protestant Missionaries in 17th Century New England and their effects on the indigenous population and how the indigenous population reacted to them.
