The ABCs of the New England Primer, the most popular textbook in 18th century America. It followed Puritan ideals - stressing rote memorization without creativity, a strict and unforgiving Christianity, and the idea that children were born sinners who had to reach salvation through baptism and learning [x].
In the 2015 film The Witch, a Puritan man named William packs up his family and moves them into the unknown. The year is 1630 - still the early days of Puritan settlement in New England - and William has decided that the way they do things in the newly established town is not good enough for him. He refuses to be judged by those he sees as unworthy of judgement so (in, no doubt, the same spirit that led him to move across an ocean) he decides they will live separate of the settlement, out on the edge of the wilderness in order to be closer to God. Not in the heathen forest, mind you, just in the orderly meadow just before it. The whole family seems to be accepting of this decision except for the eldest child, Thomasin, a girl just entering her teenage years who sees everything she once knew receding in the distance.
It’s decorative gourd season and The Witch is on (U.S.) Netflix as of today so I thought I’d dust this one off for the ol’ reblog.
(This blog isn’t dead, I’m just unsure where to go from here because the behind the scenes drama of American Gods kinda killed that show for me before I even really got going.)
Having gone to a more liberal school, I got “The Puritans came to America to escape religious persecution and then found out they actually quite liked religious persecution when they were the persecutors.”
