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Blue: Sources and Analyses
Green: Visuals
Purple: Lit Analysis

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/14JFIGpokQ7ZWa22oJTCOlFZDU96BGoDUaxSzXdyzvmU/edit

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Marriage was also a property arrangement among two families. Men were expected to bring land to the marriage while women were expected to bring a dowry, or a payment to the groom’s family.

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When it came to divorce, both males and females could petition the courts for divorce. However, men had ownership over the children.

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For many, especially poorer puritans, marriage was an economic strategy used to:
1. Create children for child labor
2. Combine wealth for a betterment of the chances for survival.

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Puritan marriage was defined by what a family could gain from one of their members marrying into another, and was much less defined by religion as it was economics. It was often a “business transaction between a woman’s father and future husband”. This meant that love in Puritan relationships wasn’t often prioritized, and oftentimes married couples were not romantically invested in one another prior to marriage. We can see this in Hester and Chillingworth's former relationship, as they seem to hold no romantic nature towards one another. In contrast, Hester and Dimmesdale, who are not married and are technically forbidden to be together, are in love, showing how marriage in the Puritan world was often never centered around romantic feelings.

https://faculty.atu.edu/cbrucker/engl2013/Samples/Reed-RP.htm

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Introduction to America Literature 2013

June 19, 2012

Marriage in Puritan America

Between 1629 and 1640 an estimated 20,000 Puritans found themselves on American soil after fleeing from England due to religious persecution (Roe).Puritans felt the Church of England was the only true church, but was in desperate need of reform (Stuart).They were deep rooted in their faith, allowing it to have a major impact on most aspects of their life.However, in contrast to general assumptions, marriage was not mandated by religion in Puritan America, but instead it was viewed as a civic contract (Vandergriff).

Marriage in Puritan America was extremely important.98 percent of men and 94 percent of women chose to marry (Roe).The small group of people who opted to remain single were ostracized (Roe).The average age for men to marry was 26, while women typically married at 23 (Roe). The marriages, on average, lasted about 12 years due to a high mortality rate (Vandergriff). After the death of a spouse, most Puritans remarried (Vandergriff).

Puritan society was organized around the unquestioned principle of patriarchy, therefore fathers had a big hand in choosing partners for the offspring (Vandergriff).Potential suitors had to gain permission from a girls father before he could begin courting, or dating, her (Vandergriff).Fathers had the legal right to determine which men would be allowed to court his daughters (Vandergriff).However, marriage was considered a free act, meaning Puritan children had the right to refuse their parents choice for them (Vandergriff).Because fathers were able to dictate how and when their property was distributed among their offspring, children very rarely acted on the right to refuse and accepted their fathers pick whether it made them happy or not (Vandergriff).

In Puritan America, love was not a deciding factor for marriages.Marriage was a business transaction between a womans father and future husband.Fathers paid a dowry, the amount of money or property given from a brides family to the man she marries (Gormley).Often times couples married due to the forthcoming birth of a child.Almost half of the women married were already pregnant when saying their vows (Gardner).Once the marriage occurred, women, on average, gave birth to between six and eight children (Stuart).

Marriages in Puritan America were a two-way street.Both the male and female in a relationship had legal rights.Both men and women could petition the courts for a divorce (Stuart). Divorce was easily obtained if the grounds included adultery, long absence, or cruelty (Stuart).Women were protected from domestic violence.Men, if convicted of abuse, were punished by receiving a fine, a lashing, a public admonition, or supervision by a town-appointed guardian (Stuart).

Men and women served specific roles within a Puritan marriage.A man was focused on the area of war, politics, and business (Stuart).Women were focused more on the home.They handled basic accounting, overseeing of servants, child rearing, and sewing (Stuart).

Marriages in Puritan America were not religious based marriages, but instead on a practical, logic foundation in which their entire society was set upon.

Works Cited

Gardner, Andrew. Colonial Williamsburg. Courtship, Sex, and the Single Colonist: The

Web. 19 June 2012. http://www.genealogymagazine.com/coloandma.html .

Web. 19 June 2012. http://www.genealogytoday.com/columns/recipes/tip13a/html .

June 2012. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/colonialamericanmarriage.htm .

Campbell University, n.d. Web. 19 June 2012.

http://web.campbell.edu/faculty/vandergriffk/FamColonial.html .

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Gender roles were often at the center at Puritan marriages, with men taking care of war and politics, and women taking care of children and the home.

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One of the big differences between marriage today and marriage during Puritan society was the point at which marriage was proposed. In modern society, marriage is only recommended when/if you know your partner, both physically and emotionally, and decide that you would like the legal ramifications of marriage provided it was with them. However, during the time of the puritans and the time of the Scarlet Letter, marriage did not require as much. In Puritan society, marriage was not spurred on by a sense of “mutuality of tastes, companionship, trust, and shared interests”, rather by a series of courtship rituals that the man had to go through with the woman’s parents. In this way, we see modern love in Hester and Dimmesdale's interactions. They are not married, and therefore do not have a reason based on Puritan romance, to stay. However, they do, because they exhibit a more modern take on love, one of mutual respect and interest.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=71

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Digital History TOPIC ID 71

Late in the winter of 1708/9, Samuel Gerrish, a Boston bookseller, began to court Mary Sewall, the 18-year old daughter of Puritan magistrate Samuel Sewall. Judge Sewall was a conscientious father, and like many Puritan fathers believed that he had a right and duty to take an active role in his daughter's selection of a spouse. He had heard 'various and uncertain reports' that young Gerrish had previously courted other women and immediately dashed off a letter to Gerrish's father demanding 'the naked Truth.' Only after receiving a satisfactory reply did Judge Sewall permit the courtship to continue. In August, after a whirlwind six month courtship, the couple married, but the marriage was cut tragically short l5 months later when young Mary died in childbirth.

A hundred twenty-nine years later, in 1838, another couple began their courtship. Theodore Dwight Weld, a 39-year old abolitionist, wrote a letter to Angelina Grimke, the daughter of a wealthy, slaveholding South Carolina family who had turned against slavery, in which he disclosed 'that for a long time you have had my whole heart.' He had 'no expectation and almost no hope that [his] feelings are in any degree RECIPROCATED BY YOU.' Nevertheless, he asked her to reveal her true feelings.

Angelina replied by acknowledging her own love for him: 'I feel, my Theodore, that we are the two halves of one whole, a twain one, two bodies animated by one soul and that the Lord has given us to each other.'

Like many early nineteenth century couples, Theodore and Angelina devoted much of their courtship to disclosing their personal faults and dissecting their reasons for marriage. They considered romance and passion childish and unreliable motives for marriage and instead sought a love that was more tender and rational. In his love letters, Theodore listed his flaws and worried that he was not deserving of Angelina's love. He was a 'vile groveling selfish wretch' - reckless, impatient, careless in appearance, and poorly educated. Angelina responded by confessing her own faults - her temper, her pride, and the fact that she had once loved another man - and revealed her fear that the vast majority of men 'believe most seriously that women were made to gratify their animal appetites, expressly to minister to their pleasure.' Only after Theodore and Angelina were convinced that they were emotionally ready for 'the most important step of Life,' did they finally marry.

Between 1708/9, when Samuel Gerrish courted Mary Sewall, and 1835, when Theodore Weld courted Angelina Grimke, the rituals of courtship underwent profound changes. Parental influence and involvement in the selection of their children's marriage partner visibly declined. Young women and men were increasingly free to pick or reject a spouse with little parental interference. At the same time that courtship grew freer, however, marriage became an increasingly difficult transition point, particularly for women, and more and more women elected not to marry at all.

In seventeenth and early eighteenth century New England, courtship was not simply a personal, private matter. The law gave parents 'the care and power...for the disposing of their Children in Marriage' and it was expected that they would take an active role overseeing their child's choice of a spouse. A father in Puritan New England had a legal right to determine which men would be allowed to court his daughters and a legal responsibility to give or withhold his consent from a child's marriage. A young man who courted a woman without her father's permission might be sued for inveigling the woman's affections.

Parental involvement in courtship was expected because marriage was not merely an emotional relationship between individuals but also a property arrangement among families. A young man was expected to bring land or some other form of property to a marriage while a young woman was expected to bring a dowry worth about half as much.

In most cases, Puritan parents played little role in the actual selection of a spouse (although Judge Sewall did initiate the courtship between his son Joseph and a neighbor named Elizabeth Walley). Instead, they tended to influence the timing of marriage. Since Puritan children were expected to bring property to marriage, and Puritans fathers were permitted wide discretion in when they distributed property to their children, many sons and daughters remained economically dependent for years, delaying marriages until a relatively late age.

Today, love is considered the only legitimate reason for marriage. Puritan New Englanders, in sharp contrast, did not regard love as a necessary precondition for marriage. Indeed, they associated romantic love with immaturity and impermanence. True love, the Puritans believed, would appear following marriage. A proper marriage, in their view, was based not on love and affection, but on rational considerations of property, compatibility, and religious piety. Thus, it was considered acceptable for a young man to pursue "'a goodly lass with aboundation of money,' so long as he could eventually love his wife-to-be.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, parental influence over the choice of a spouse had sharply declined. One indication of a decline in parental control was a sudden upsurge in the mid-eighteenth century the number of brides who were pregnant when they got married. In the seventeenth century, fathers - supported by local churches and courts - exercised close control over their childrens' sexual behavior and kept sexual intercourse prior to marriage at extremely low levels. The percentage of women who bore a first child less than eight-and-a half months after marriage was below ten percent. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the figure had shot up to over forty percent.

Another indicator of a decline in paternal authority was an increase in children's discretion in deciding whom and when to marry. By the middle of the eighteenth century, well before the onset of the American Revolution, the ability of fathers to delay their sons' marriages until their late twenties had eroded.

Greater freedom in selection of a spouse was also apparent in a gradual breakdown in a seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century pattern in which the order of a son's birth was closely connected to the economic status of his future spouse. Although most families in early New England did not practice strict primogeniture - the right of inheritance belonging to the eldest son - many families did assign older sons a larger share of resources than younger children. Receiving larger inheritances themselves, eldest sons tended to marry daughters of wealthier families. By mid-century, a closed connection between birth order and a spouse's economic status had gradually declined.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, other signs of weakening parental control over marriage were visible. In seventeenth century Plymouth, the brothers and sisters of one family frequently married the sisters and brothers of another. After 1760 this pattern gave way to marriages based on individual choice. In one small Massachusetts town, greater freedom was evident in the growing ease with which younger daughters were able to wed before their older sisters.

As parental influence over courtship declined, a new romantic ideal of love arose. In the years just before the Revolution, a flood of advice books, philosophical treaties, and works of fiction helped to popularize revolutionary new ideas about courtship and marriage. Readers learned that love was superior to property as a basis for marriage and that marriage should be based on mutual sympathy, affection, and friendship. Rather than choosing spouses on economic grounds, young people were told to select their marriage partner on the more secure basis of love and compatibility. In a survey of all magazines published during the 30 years before the Revolution, one issue out of four contained a reference to romantic love as the proper basis of marriage; during the next twenty years the number of references to romantic love tripled.

The heightened emphasis attached to romantic love can be seen in in the proliferation of new kinds of love letters. Courtship letters changed by the nineteenth century from brief notes to longer, more effusive expositions of feelings and emotions. Seventeenth century Puritans tended to moderate expression of affection in love letters. A letter from a Westfield, Connecticut, minister to his sweetheart was not atypical. After describing his passion for her as 'a golden ball of pure fire,' he added that his affection 'must be kept within bounds too. For it must be subordinate to God's Glory.'

By the late eighteenth century, love letters, particularly those written by men, had grown more expansive and less formal. Instead of addressing their beloved in highly formalized terms, lovers began to use such terms of endearment as 'dearest' or 'my beloved.' In their love letters, couples described feelings of affection that were deeply romantic. In 1844, Alexander Rice, a study at Union College in Schnechtady, New York, described the feeling that overcame him when he first met his fiance, Augusta McKim. 'I felt...as I had never felt in the presence of a lady before and there seemed to be a kind of [direction] saying to me that I was now meeting her whom it was appointed should be my special object of affection and love.'

Yet even in deeply impassioned love letters such as this one, writers stressed that their love was not motivated solely by transient emotions, but by mutuality of tastes, companionship, trust, and shared interests. Alexander Rice made this point in typical terms: emotion alone would not have led him 'blindly forward had not I discovered in you those elements of character and those qualities of mind which my judgment approved.' The kind of love that early nineteenth century Americans sought was not transient passion, declared Henry Poor, a young Bangor, Maine, attorney, in a letter to his fiancé, but a higher kind of love, 'the kind that seeks its gratification in mutual sympathy.'

The most surprising fact disclosed in early nineteenth century love letters is that courting couples were less sexually restrained than the myth of Victorian sexual values would suggest. Although the colonial custom of bundling - according to which a courting couple shared a common bed without undressing - had fallen into disuse by 1800, physical displays of affection remained an important part of courtship. Seventeen-year old Lester Frank Ward, who would later become one of the foremost late nineteenth century American sociologists, recorded in his diary a visit to his fiancé's house: 'my beloved and I went down, made a fire, and sat down to talk and kiss and embrace and bathe in love.' Other surviving love letters also suggest that physical affection and sexual intimacy played an important role in many courtships. Mary Butterfield of Racine, Wisconsin, described her feelings after spending an evening with her fiancé in the Racine Hotel: "'I was so glad afterwards when you seemed so sincerely pleased & happy - so satisfied with me.' Still, her feelings were confused. '...It was a pleasure and yet women so naturally guard such treasures with jealousy & care, that it seems very 'strange' to yield them even to the 'best loved one' who has a claim to such kindnesses. So of course it seemed very 'strange' to me."'

Yet ironically at the same time that courting couples were often so open in their expression of their affection, young women, in particular, more openly disclosed their fears of marriage. 'There can be no medium in the wedded state,' noted one Massachusetts woman. 'It must either be happy or miserable.' While men were likely to stress the pleasures marriage would bring, women, in their correspondence, expressed fears about marriage. It was a 'sad, sour, sober beverage bringing 'some joys but many crosses.' In their courtship letters, women often associated marriage with the loss of their liberty - often linking marriage with loss of self - and forebodings about the dangers of childbearing - often omitting children from their fantasies of an ideal marriage.

Marriage was such an awesome step that few women in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries entered into the relationship lightly. After her husband died in 1767, Mary Fish, a Connecticut widow, remained unmarried for nine years despite at least three proposals of marriage. She finally remarried in 1776, but only after her future husband read a document Mary had composed describing the qualities she wanted in a spouse. Entitled 'Portrait of a Good Husband,' the document stated that he should 'gratify' her "'reasonable inclinations,' enter into her griefs and participate in her jobs, should not be jealous or abuse his wife or stepchildren, and should not mismanage or dissipate her inheritance.

To move from 'girlhood' to housewifery had become a rite of passage so difficult that many young women experienced a 'marriage trauma' before taking or failing to take the step. Many women wrote that they 'trembled' as their wedding day approached, that their 'spirits were much depressed,' and their minds were 'loaded with doubts and fears.' One woman, Sarah Williams, noted that she felt 'rather depressed than elevated' at her impending marriage and Catharine Beecher, a prominent educator, worried that after her betrothed got over the 'novelty' of marriage he would be 'so engrossed in science and study as to forget I existed.'

In colonial New England, marriage was regarded as a social obligation and an economic necessity, and virtually all adults married. But by the early nineteenth century, the number of unmarried women increased to an unprecedented 11 percent.

Marriage became a far more deliberate act than it had been in the past. Marriage was regarded by young women in a new way - as a closing off of freedoms enjoyed in girlhood. Between 1780 and 1820, young women between the ages of l4 and 27 enjoyed unprecedented opportunities to attend school and to earn cash income outside of their parents' home. Many prospective brides who did eventually marry hesitated to leave the relative independence they had enjoyed in girlhood.

At the same time that marriage become a more difficult transition point for young women, the rituals surrounding engagement and marriage radically changed. By the 1840s, a host of elaborate, formal new rituals had arisen, which helped young women and men maneuver the difficult steps toward marriage.

To signify their intention to marry, men and women began to give each other engagement rings. (Over time, it became more common for a man to present a ring to his fiancé). Families began to announce their children's engagement in letters to friends and family or formal newspaper announcements.

At the same time, marriage ceremonies increasingly became larger and more formal affairs, attended not simply by near kin (which had been the custom during the colonial period) but by a much larger number of family members and friends. Guests received printed invitations to the ceremony and were, in turn, expected to send wedding gifts.

It was during the 1840s that many of the rituals that still characterize wedding ceremonies today first became widespread, such as the custom that the bride wear a veil and a white dress and that she be assisted by formally costumed attendants, that the bridegroom present his bride with a wedding ring, and that the bride and groom and their guests eat a white wedding cake.

These rituals were intended to mark off marriage as an especially beautiful and solemn occasion, the supreme occurrence of life. The bride was dressed in white to signify her purity and virtue. At a time when civil marriage was becoming prevalent on the European continent, it was only in Britain and America, the twin archetypes of the emerging market economy that a sacramental conception of marriage triumphed.

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Hester and Dimmesdale are an unmarried couple, and act as a couple essentially against what many Puritan beliefs dictate about how romantic relationship should come about and how they should operate.

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How Did the Puritans Understand Marriage? | Tabletalk

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The religious side of marriage, however, meant it to be completely dependent on love. From a religious standpoint, married couples had to be “sympathetic to one another in times of distress, sickness, and weakness”, among other traits. Strangely, in The Scarlet Letter, love based in Puritan religious beliefs would be the love most closely resembling that of Hester and Dimmesdale, who seem to genuinely and fully care for one another, something that Hester is never shown to do for Chillingsworth, and him for her. This could come from Dimmesdale being a minister, or from the romantic undertones of the Scarlet Letter, as it would fit with romantic beliefs that Hester would find a spiritual love with someone who was not her husband, showing disregard for society expectations and generalizations.

https://tabletalkmagazine.com/posts/how-did-the-puritans-understand-marriage/

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This may come as a shock to twenty-first-century minds; not many people today would use "Puritan" and "love" in the same sentence. Though evangelicals have become much more aware of the positive heritage of the Puritans thanks to scholars such as J.I. Packer and the literature produced by publishing houses such as Banner of Truth Trust and Reformation Heritage Books, the common cultural perception of the Puritans remains negative, a perception informed only by what the Puritans opposed. One prominent dictionary defines the noun "Puritan" first as "a member of a Protestant group in England and New England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that opposed many customs of the Church of England," and second, "a person who follows strict moral rules and who believes that pleasure is wrong." We are quick to overlook that fact that perhaps the most well-known sentence ever written by the Puritans is "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever" (emphasis added).

The Puritan view of marital love was overwhelmingly positive because it was informed by the Bible, the written Word of the God who instituted marriage at the time of our creation and regulated it by His commandments. As Packer says, "They went to Genesis for its institution, to Ephesians for its full meaning, to Leviticus for its hygiene, to Proverbs for its management, to several New Testament books for its ethic, and to Esther, Ruth and the Song of Songs for illustrations and exhibitions of the ideal." They let the practices, duties, and ethics of marriage flow out of Scripture.

All duties of a married couple were to be performed devotedly, kindly, and cheerfully. In particular, the Puritans emphasized that love was the mutual duty of both husband and wife, indeed, the foundational duty of marriage. William Gouge (1575-1653) wrote, "A loving mutual affection must pass betwixt husband and wife, or else no duty will be well performed: this is the ground of all the rest." "As for love," said William Whately (1583-1639), who wrote two books on marriage, "it is the life, the soul of marriage, without which it is no more itself, than a carcass is a man; yea, it is uncomfortable, miserable, and a living death." Whately described marital love as "the king of the heart," so that when it prevails, marriage is "a pleasing combination of two persons into one home, one purse, one heart, and one flesh."

The Puritan view of marital love was overwhelmingly positive because it was informed by the Bible.

Whately observed, "Love is the life and soul of marriage, without which it differs as much from itself, as a rotten apple from a sound [one] and as a carcass from a living body; yea, verily it is a most miserable and uncomfortable society, and no better than a very living death." Likewise, Henry Smith (1560-91) declared, "Unless there be a joining of heart and a knitting of affections together, it is not marriage in deed, but in show and name, and they shall dwell in a house like two poisons in a stomach, and one shall ever be sick of another." "Without the union of hearts," George Swinnock (c. 1627-73) wrote, "the union of bodies will be no benefit." William Secker (d. c. 1681) quipped, "Two joined together without love, are but two tied together to make one another miserable." Henry Scudder (c. 1585-1652) therefore advised those who were married to "love each other as [their] own souls with a Christian, pure, tender, abundant, natural, and matrimonial love." To survey Puritan teachings on marital love, we will consider three basic emphases: love must be spiritual, superlative, and sexual.

Marital Love Must Be Spiritual

Marital love must be spiritual -that is, in Christ, and in accord with God's commandments. Love must be rooted in the experience of being equally yoked together spiritually as believers. It must be built on a Christ-centered foundation and cemented with mutual use of the means of grace. Richard Baxter (1615-91) said that husbands and wives have the responsibility "especially to be helpers of each other's salvation: to stir up each other to faith, love, and obedience, and good works: to warn and help each other against sin, and all temptations: to join in God's worship in the family, and in private: to prepare each other for the approach of death, and comfort each other in the hopes of life eternal." Isaac Ambrose (1604-64) wrote that they must pray for and with each other.

Although marriage is a universal institution ordained by God for the whole human race regardless of whether they are saved, marriage fulfills its deepest purpose and achieves its greatest stability only when grounded in Christian faith and the fear of God. If built on the sandy foundation of physical beauty or exceptional gifts and talents, it can easily be "blown down by some storm," Whately said, adding that "spiritual love, that looks upon God, rests upon his will, yields to his commandment, and resolves to obey it, cannot change itself, because the cause thereof is unchangeable."

Marital love should be profoundly spiritual because, as Gouge observed, Christian marriage should conform to the pattern of Christ and His church. As Christ loves His church, so the husband must love his wife. He is to love her absolutely (Eph. 5:25), purposefully (v. 26), realistically (v. 27), and sacrificially (vv. 28-29). He must exercise a "true, free, pure, exceeding, constant love" to his wife, nourishing and cherishing her as Christ does His gathered people (v. 29).

In a wedding sermon, Richard Greenham (c. 1542-94) charged the groom:

You, brother, must learn hereby so to love your wife, as Christ Jesus loved His spouse His church. That is to say, even as our Savior Christ is very patient towards it, and by little and little purges, washes, and cleanses away the corruption of it, so must you in like manner in all wisdom use the means (and with a patient mind wait for the amendment of any thing that you shall find to be amiss in your wife) that the graces of God's spirit may daily increase in her. Therefore, I charge you in the sight of God and his angels, and as you will answer unto me and the parents of this my sister, before the judgment seat of Christ, that as you receive her a virgin from her parents, so you neglect no duty whereby her salvation may be furthered, that you may present her pure and blameless, as much as in you lies, unto Jesus Christ when He shall call you to account.

Such Christlike love, Gouge said, will serve "as sugar to sweeten the duties of authority which appertain to a husband," and thereby enable his loving wife to submit more easily to him.

The love of both husband and wife must be ruled and energized by the fear of the Lord.

The love of both husband and wife must be ruled and energized by the fear of the Lord. Whately observed:

This is the fountain of most disorders in most families: where God is not feared, what can abound but profaneness and impiety in . . . the whole household; where people are not taught the knowledge and fear of God, how should they know or fear Him? Where these graces are absent, how should anything be found but rudeness, stubbornness, and undutifulness? Now therefore . . . let all husbands and wives that fear God be of one mind in the Lord, and let them not fail . . . [to establish] the exercises of religion in their houses.

Marital Love Must Be Superlative

Marital love must also be superlative. A husband and wife are to love each other so dearly that both are persuaded that the other is "the only fit and good match that could be found under the sun for them," Whately writes. Because of parental love, a godly parent would not trade his child for another parent's child, even if that child were better looking and had more ability or gifts; similarly, a godly husband and wife would not trade each other for a better-looking and more gifted spouse. Whately concludes, "Marriage-love admits of no equal, but placeth the yoke-fellow next of all to the soul of the party loving; it will know none dearer, none so dear."

Surely, a wife is a man's best companion and friend. Thomas Gataker (1574-1654) suggested that Adam was truly happy in Eden, but he was not fully happy until God had provided him with a wife, and he was joined to the woman as his closest friend and companion in all of life. Gataker said, "There is no society more near, more entire, more needful, more kindly, more delightful, more comfortable, more constant, more continual, than the society of man and wife." He was convinced that a house was "half unfurnished and unfinished, and not fully happy but half happy, though otherwise never so happy," until it was completed with a wife.

The Puritan ideal of superlative marital love appears in the poems that Anne Bradstreet (1612-72) wrote to express her longing for her husband when he traveled away from home. She wrote to him:

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man was lov'd by wife, then thee. . . .

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.

In another poetic letter, Bradstreet compared her longing for her husband to that of a deer racing through the woods with ears alert to the sound of her mate. She signed it, "Thy loving love and dearest dear."

Husband and wife are to love each other with a strong, fervent, and steady love, not with a love that waxes and wanes with the tide of beauty, dress, or riches or fluctuates with the emotions and lusts of the flesh. This love, Ambrose wrote, is "loving and tender-hearted pouring out of their hearts, with much affectionate dearness, into each other's bosoms." It is an entire love, a fulsome love, a love that pours itself out between spouses constantly and without reservation in a variety of expressions, gestures, looks, and actions. This love, Daniel Rogers (1573-1652) wrote, is not "raised suddenly in a pang of affection, ebbing and flowing . . . but a habitual and settled love planted in them by God, whereby in a constant, equal, and cheerful consent of spirit they carry themselves [towards] each other." Bolton therefore defined this duty of mutual love as "a drawing into action, and keeping in exercise, [the] habit of conjugal affection and matrimonial love." If this mutual love is eclipsed for but a day or even an hour, Baxter said, the husband and wife are "as a bone out of joint; there is no ease, no order, no work well done till they are restored and set in joint again."

Such love is nurtured by guarding each other's honor and reputation instead of complaining and grumbling against each other. Secker put it this way: "Who would trample upon a jewel because it is fallen in the dirt? Or throw away a heap of wheat for a little chaff? Or despise a golden wedge because it retains some dross? These roses [i.e., wives] have some prickles. Now husbands should spread a mantle of charity over their wives' infirmities."

A husband must do his best to see that no one know his wife's faults but himself and God. He should be unwilling to voice them to anyone but God, to pray that she may be pardoned for them and reformed from them. Likewise, a wife must do her best to keep her husband's struggles and sins to herself, as matters of prayer and not gossip. Neither spouse should be surprised by the sins of the other, for each of them is well aware of their own sins. Can it be helpful to uncover faults in public and fling mud in each other's faces? Will this help a husband reform or a wife to repent? And which is more displayed in such a case, the spouse's faults and weaknesses or the gossip's unkindness, indiscretion, backbiting, and folly? Does not the family dog behave better than this when it barks at strangers but not at members of the family?

Moreover, if ill speech behind the back of an enemy is a sin, how much more grievous is ill speech behind the back of a spouse, who should be to us as our own flesh? Whately said:

To hear a husband largely declaiming against his wife, and . . . aggravating her sins, as if he took delight in nothing so much as in branding her forehead with the black mark of infamy is a testimony of so much hatred, where there should be most love, and of so bitter unkindness, where nature itself requires most tender kindness, that no speeches almost can sound more harsh in the ears of wise men. So again for the woman to be clattering amongst her gossips what a foolish husband she has . . . and to be . . . making proclamation of his faults, as if she feared nothing but that they should not be known to people . . . is a most irksome and hateful folly and untrustworthiness.

Marital Love Must Be Sexual

Marital love must be sexual. Both marital partners should give themselves fully to each other with joy and exuberance in a healthy sexual relationship marked by fidelity. Reformers such as Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin reestablished this aspect of marriage by abandoning medieval Roman Catholic notions that marriage was inferior to celibacy, that all sexual contact between marital partners was only a necessary evil to propagate the human race, and that any procreative act that involved passion was inherently sinful. This negative view was rooted in the writings of ancient church fathers such as Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome, all of whom believed that sexual intercourse necessarily involved sin even within marriage. This attitude toward sex in marriage held sway among the church's leaders for more than ten centuries, and it inevitably led to the exaltation of virginity and celibacy. By the fifth century, deacons, priests, and bishops were prohibited from marrying. Two classes of Christians emerged: the "religious" (i.e., the spiritual clergy), which included monks and nuns who vowed to abstain from all sexual activity, and the "profane" (i.e., the secular laity), who, being unable to practice the exalted virtues of virginity or celibacy, were conceded the right to marry.

Puritan preachers taught that the Roman Catholic view was unbiblical, even satanic. They cited Paul, who said that prohibition of marriage is a "doctrine of devils" (1 Tim. 4:1-3). Puritan definitions of marriage implied the conjugal act. For example, William Perkins (1558-1602) defines marriage as "the lawful conjunction of the two married persons; that is, of one man and one woman into one flesh." The Puritans viewed sex within marriage as a gift of God and as an essential, enjoyable part of marriage. Gouge said that husbands and wives should cohabit "with good will and delight, willingly, readily, and cheerfully." "They do err," Perkins added, "who hold that the secret coming together of man and wife cannot be without sin unless it be done for the procreation of children."

Perkins goes on to say that marital sex is a "due debt" or "due benevolence" (1 Cor. 7:3) that married persons owe to their spouses. That debt must be paid, he says, "with a singular and entire affection one towards another" in three ways: "First, by the right and lawful use of their bodies or of the marriage bed." Such physical intimacy by "holy usage" should be "a holy and undefiled action (Heb. 13:4) . . . sanctified by the word and prayer (1 Tim. 4:3-4)." The fruits of God-honoring, enjoyable sex in marriage are the blessing of children, "the preservation of the body in cleanness," and the reflection of marriage as a type of the bond between Christ and His church. Second, married couples must "cherish one another" intimately (Eph. 5:29) rather than having sex in the impersonal way of an adulterer with a prostitute. Third, a couple should be intimate "by an holy kind of rejoicing and solacing themselves each with [the] other in a mutual declaration of the signs and tokens of love and kindness (Prov. 5:18-19; Song 1:1; Gen. 26:8; Isa. 62:7)." In this context, Perkins particularly mentions kissing.

Marital love must fill every room of the home and spill out into the world.

Rightfully so, the emphasis on finding romance within marriage (rather than in extramarital relations, as was common in the Middle Ages) has been attributed to the Puritans. Herbert W. Richardson writes that "the rise of romantic marriage and its validation by the Puritans represents a major innovation within the Christian tradition." And C.S. Lewis says, "The conversion of courtly love into romantic monogamous love was largely the work of . . . Puritan poets." Thus the Puritans emphasized that marital love, in addition to being spiritual love, must be sexual love. In this way, they embraced God's gift of marriage as the superlative or highest form of human love known on earth.

Conclusion

Though the Puritans honored the sexuality of marriage, they did not reduce marriage to sex. Rather, they maintained a view of marital love as broad as life itself. Whately and Gouge emphasized other mutual duties in marriage. A husband and wife must be faithful to each other and help each other in every possible way, including seeking each other's spiritual growth, healing each other's faults, and steering each other away from sin. They must pray for each other, compliment each other, appreciate each other, and together "keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." They must cultivate true friendship and take an interest in each other. They must be sympathetic to one another in times of distress, sickness, and weakness. They must each promote the other's reputation, never speaking ill of each other in the presence of others. They must be confidential, not revealing each other's secrets. They must be industrious in their callings, working diligently as a team for one another, for their family, and in hospitality to others, especially the poor. For these reasons, they must manage their money judiciously. Marital love must fill every room of the home and spill out into the world.

The true secret to living happily in marriage is to love-not the exercise of a mere feeling, but fulfilling a calling to follow Christ with all that we are and all that we have. Ezekiel Hopkins (1634-90) wrote, "It is love which ought at first to tie the marriage knot, and it is love alone which can afterwards make it easy."

Though the Puritans lived in a difficult age when plague, persecution, war, and the frequent deaths of children darkened their lives, they nevertheless marveled at the goodness of God in seasoning life with such a sweet spice as the love shared by husband and wife. In our own more prosperous but also more cynical age, we can learn much from them.

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How Did the Puritans Understand Marriage? | Tabletalk

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The writings of the Puritans are sprinkled with declarations of the sweetness of marital love. They delighted in the love of God and in every form of love commanded by God among mankind. In particular, they rejoiced in the love shared by husband and wife.