Puritanism+Prevails

=Does Puritanism Exist in America Today?= =//Untitled (Prayer)//= Marvelli Gallery, 2005** [|photo source]
 * by Angela Strassheim

=//The Scarlet Letter//:=

American prejudice in its earliest form
It may be that (those that bury their secrets) are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or, --can we not suppose it? --guilty as they maybe, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no ood can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow; while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.


 * //An excerpt by Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 116//**

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him! It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to rekon all things shadow-like, utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. Then, what was he?--a substance?--or the dimmest of all shadows? he longed to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full heigh of his vioce, and tell the pople what he was. "I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood, -- I who ascend the sacred desk and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to old communion, in your behalf, with the Most High Omniscience… I, who have laid the hand of baptism upon our children, --I who have breathed the parting prayer very your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted, --I your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!" //**An excerpt by Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 125**//

=Grooming for Perfection:=

American sons are expected to fit into a mold
=//Untitled (Father and Son)//= Marvelli Gallery, 2004** = = [|photo source]
 * by Angela Strassheim

=//Her Kind//:=

A Poem by Anne Sexton
I have gone out, a possessed witch haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disalign. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.

= = =**Jerry Falwell Singles Out Americans in a Truly Puritanical Way**=

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Puritanism Prevails Reflection Apathy in America Back to Social Inequalities in America