It interested me how the puritans view love. I at first stereotyped them as uncapable of feeling or expressing any emotion. When the puritans hear the word love, or use it, they do not think of hearts and romantic gestures, or feeling a spark between two people. Instead they are in love with God. Winthrop describes how God created man in his image and so thus he loves humans, and humans should in turn love God. He writes, "love is the bond of perfection". This bond of perfection is not a bond between two people who share love for eachother, instead it is the love of reaching purity. Perfection to the puritans is reaching purity of oneself and allowing God to be pleased with ones perfections. Also, the perfection of God is shown in Winthrops writing. "Christ and his church make one body", he is saying that the unity between church and Christ and those wishing to reach this mecca is important. It's also important to understand that the church and Christ are a "bond of perfection".
I found it interesting that when Winthrop described love he described it between a man and a man (brotherhood) and a woman and her child (offspring). Never did it stem into other components. What about the love of a woman and a man? or a man and his child? Maybe these are implied in aspects of their society, but they seem to be very gender biased, especially in love. Im not sure if he is saying that this can never happen, or doesn't happen, but it's not prominent in his writing. The way I'm seeing it is that he's saying: everyone should love God. We were made in God's image so we should love him to reach perfection. Secondly he's saying to love thy neighbor, brother, etc. All more than likely masculine figures. He's speaking of unity between a society. If they all love eachother then God will seem them as righteous and will be pleased. On the other half though is the idea of only a woman loving her child.
I'm questioning whether or not the puritans see women as loving anything other than just their child. I'm not capturing it in this piece of writing. To me Winthrop is saying that because women have maternal instinct they automatically love their children. However there is no mention of them being capable of loving other elements, perhaps even God. Is anyone else seeing this?
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I agree that in A Modell of Christian Charity John Winthrop focuses strongly on male relationships, but I don’t think that Winthrop encapsulates all relationships of the Puritans. The text displays the only relationship a woman can have is between her and a child while men form strong bonds with other men. There is no mention of the relationship between a man and a woman, but just because the relationship isn’t mentioned doesn’t mean it isn’t there. As I read your post I thought of Thomas Shepard, who cared a great deal for his first wife and was clearly distraught after she died. I also thought of Edward Taylor who in the poem Upon Wedlock, & Death of Children mourns for the death of his children. Love relationships between a man and a woman and a man and a child do exist, but Winthrop just leaves them out of A Modell of Christian Charity.
ReplyDeleteIt’s very easy to think that the Puritans are incapable of expressing emotion because there aren’t any plays or love poems to read, and poems that we have read are about faith in God. At the same time we have to remember that the Puritans are human beings and not robots, so they are capable of human emotions and loving one another.
I agree when you said “it’s also important to understand that the church and Christ is a ‘bond of perfection’.” According to Ephesians 5:25-33 Christ is married to the church, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” God is showing the commitment a Christian must have if they want to follow in His footsteps. Winthrop mentioned how “Christ and the church make one body…” this could also be seen as the unity Christ would like to see in congregations. He wants us to view the church like a body, the Pastor is the head and the congregation is the body. We must work as one to glorify Christ, “if one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honour, all rejoice with it.” Love is the key to unity.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that the Puritans do seek to love god as their overall life objective, but this doesn't mean that a Puritan is only after loving god. In-order for one to love god, he or she must love all human beings and always seek out what is right. And when Winthrop speaks of seeking perfection, I believe he means being perfect by imitating Jesus, and trying to follow all of his teachings. In this way, one is reaching perfection and loving god.
ReplyDeleteWhen Winthrop speaks of love for your brotherhood, I don't believe brotherhood means only man and man, but it means all humanity(brotherhood meaning not divine like Jesus or God himself, but for fellow humans). Winthrop is saying that people must love all humans as if their own.
Winthrop's telling of the love of a women and her baby is just an example of how we should all feel towards other people. We should feel like we are almost that person and love them as we love ourselves. I don't believe Winthrop was only saying that women can only love their children. I believe it was read to literally, but I could also be wrong.
Good reading and thanks for pointing this out.
I think this is a great idea that you brought up. After reading the selections, I felt the same way, confused, more or less, about the idea of the puritans loving. It came to me as the same way it was written, that the women seem to only know the love of that between her and her child, while men seem to know the love between two men, a brotherhood, etc. It is very much leaning and noticing men much more than women, and I think that is due to the fact that true friendship was only viewed to be only possible to be between men. What it seems to me is that marital love is only allowed to be based up what God commands, which never changes. The idea that is presented in both pieces of work seem as if marriage between a man and a woman isn’t that big of an issue, nor is it important. However, I don’t feel that that’s really the case. I believe that marriage was an important part of the Puritan society, but in the marriage the men had more control over the women. The women would support their husbands on account that they believe that that’s what God would want. I like the fact that they bring up the idea of the mother love to a child. I think that’s a love that people don’t think about when the word itself gets brought up, so I’m glad that was noticed.
ReplyDeleteI got the impression from the reading that Winthrop avoided the love of a man and woman, because he saw it as less important or irrelevant when it came to "Christian Charity." I don't know a ton about the Puritans, but it seemed to me like marriage was more of a chance to increase the population, then to fall in love. (I could be wrong.) I think Winthrop didn't address the marriage side of love, because that is a lustful kind of love at times. He seemed to only address the platonic sides of love; i.e. the non-physical kind. Although you could make an argument that mother/ child has some physicality to it. Though this physicality is not sexual.
ReplyDeleteIf the Puritans did believe, as Winthrop said and Caitlin quoted, that “love is the bond of perfection” then one would have to believe there is no other love for Puritans besides the love for God. Dan's point is well-taken; that Puritans are not robots and do feel human emotions like love but what I argue is that while the Puritans may indeed feel what we consider to be love, it should not technically be considered love in Winthrop's definition. If love is a bond of perfection and the only true bond of perfection is with God, then the only true love can be with God, in the Puritan mindset. This is why I found the text to be somewhat contradictory. How is it that love can only be considered “the bond of perfection” which is only achieved through God yet an imperfect man can love another man or an imperfect woman can love her child. I do agree with Dan that love does exist between Puritan men and women and their children but would they really consider it love? Or is it just what we consider love? Because, after all, a bond between two people can never be perfect as people are not perfect and thus there is no “love” but God is supposedly perfect and therefore that bond between person and God may be perfect and therefore there is “love”.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the portion of your blog where you talked about the ways in which people could show love. It is funny how it is so set in stone back in the day on which ways love could go. I feel as though Winthrop discusses woman as only a child bearing object, only capable of loving her child. Another part from your blog that I looked further into is when you put that the church and Christ are a "bond of perfection." Alot of the time i feel that these writers feel that men are so much more superior and capable of more things because they refer to Christ as a man. When really Christ is a representation for all of God's children which include all races and genders.
ReplyDeleteI don't get the feeling that he is saying that women are incapable of some type of familial love that men are. I think he uses the term men to talk about everyone present. I think that it is implied that everyone in the community was bonded together by a ligament in the body of Christ, whether they be man, woman or child. The use of the stereotyped images though as the woman loving her child, and referring to other types of love as brotherhood is more a sign of the times than anything I feel.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Pat Kiely, that Winthrop avoids the concept of marriage or generally the relationship between men and women. I think Winthrop could avoid the topic for a couple of reasons. As you mentioned, one reason is marriage can be lusty, which is a topic that is wildly inappropriate for a contemporary church, let alone a Puritan one. Another reason is that I believe Winthrop is trying to stress the importance of having a tight knit society, which reminded me of something Ivan said a handful of weeks ago: that if the Puritans did not stress the importance of society and togetherness they would have perished. While I think marriage was important, it didn’t follow the theme Winthrop tries to establish.
ReplyDeleteI too found the relationships that Winthrop described as interesting. You mad a good point about how most of this “love” is towards masculine figures. I believe the the Puritans were gender biased to an extreme. One reason being that they may feel this way is that in the Garden of Eden, Eve is one of the major causes of the fall of Eden. Womyn are seen, in a sense, of creating the downfall of societies and they should not really be fair participants in them. Womyn are needed for procreation and to the Puritans, there does not need to be any love involved, it is human nature, or in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, Natural Law.
ReplyDeleteI do find that it is peculiar that they are searching for this perfection in God and yearning for his love. I wonder if womyn felt the same way because they had to or because they wanted to.
I like the way the Dan Gallagher brought in the issue of there not being any poems or plays that express Puritan love if you will.
I thought your point on this was very interesting and i was a little confused reading it as well. I feel like Winthrop wrote this as a guideline for this new society to flourish. He brings up love alot in this piece and i think it has more to do with love in the community than love between persons. He wanted this new community to have strong bonds between its members because it would be benificial to its sucess and longevity. A love between two men might lead one to help the other in his desperate time of need. While the love between a mother and child might guide the child into becoming a prosperous member of the society. While love is a necessity to a christian congregation, it can also help greatly in bonding a community and Winthrop knew that.
ReplyDeleteI agree that love between a man and a woman would have been kept out of the conversation because of a puritan "purity". I also get the feeling that matters of the family would have been kept quiet and between the family alone. However, i think a major reason physical love would have been left out is based on the religious nature of the work. Winthrop is addressing a love of god, christian chartiy, and community bonding. I dont feel like this would have been the place to address that sort of physical love.
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