"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. [1] It first appeared in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir in 1836. It was later included in Twice-Told Tales , a collection of Hawthorne's short stories, in 1837. [2] It tells the story of the Merrymount Colony (aka Mount Wollaston), a 17th-century British colony located in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts.
The people of Merry Mount, whom Hawthorne calls the "crew of Comus", celebrate the marriage of a youth and a maiden (Edgar and Edith). They dance around a may-pole and are described as resembling forest creatures. Their festivities are interrupted by the arrival of John Endicott and his Puritan followers. Endicott cuts down the may-pole and orders that the people of Merry Mount be whipped. Stricken by the newlyweds, he spares them but orders they put on more conservative clothing. He also orders that Edgar cut his hair in the "pumpkin shell" style in order to reflect the Puritans' strictness.
"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" was first published in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir for 1836, credited only as "by the author of The Gentle Boy". The same issue included Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil" and "The Wedding Knell". [3] It was later included in the compilation Twice-Told Tales .
 |
Endicott and his Puritan followers suppress freedom and individuality, a common theme for Hawthorne. At the beginning of the story "jollity" and "gloom" are said to be contending for an empire, the Merry Mount colonists personifying jollity or mirth and the Puritans being the emblems of gloom and doom. Hawthorne satirizes both parties, though there is a particular gloomy foreshadowing mentioned early on in the story presaging the arrival of the puritans in the story, suggesting dark consequences. The youth and maiden go from being Merry Mounters to, presumably, becoming members of the Puritan community. In this sense it is not clear whether Hawthorne actually sides with the Puritans or the Merry Mount people, or if he is trying to find some middle ground.
It is not too difficult to see the Merry Mounters as the precursors of hippies (Beats, or, perhaps, more accurately free thinkers) or the Puritans as the archetype of the establishment. Hawthorne goes against the tradition of casting America as a promised land where people came to act out their dreams or to possess it by portraying both the Puritans and the Merry Mounters as a persecuted minority who sought refuge in the new land.
Being a descendant of the earliest arrivals who were seeking freedom over 200 years before, Hawthorne must have known well the stories that typically lie behind official tales, such as those that we find from William Bradford, John Endicott, John Winthrop, and others. His insight about the interplay of personal freedom and family, or civic, responsibility continues to resonate today. As Nathaniel knew then, these matters of choice, such as whether 'strong watter' leads, by necessity, to debauchery or not, are perpetual issues readdressed with each generation.
The American poet Robert Lowell adapted this story into one of the three plays in his trilogy The Old Glory, first produced by the American Place Theatre in New York City in 1964. Lowell's version combines parts of this story with another Hawthorne short story, "Endicott and the Red Cross," and with sections from the early American colonist Thomas Morton's book New Canaan.
Howard Hanson's opera Merry Mount is loosely based on the story.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
A maypole is a tall wooden pole erected as a part of various European folk festivals, around which a maypole dance often takes place.
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A'. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin and guilt.
The Winthrop Fleet was a group of 11 ships led by John Winthrop out of a total of 16 funded by the Massachusetts Bay Company which together carried between 700 and 1,000 Puritans plus livestock and provisions from England to New England over the summer of 1630, during the first period of the Great Migration.
The Boston Brahmins, or Boston elite, are members of Boston's historic upper class. From the late 19th century through the mid-20th century, they were often associated with a cultivated New England accent, Harvard University, Anglicanism, and traditional British-American customs and clothing. Descendants of the earliest English colonists are typically considered to be the most representative of the Boston Brahmins. They are considered White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).
John Endecott, regarded as one of the Fathers of New England, was the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which became the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He served a total of 16 years, including most of the last 15 years of his life. When not serving as governor, he was involved in other elected and appointed positions from 1628 to 1665 except for the single year of 1634.
"Young Goodman Brown" is a short story published in 1835 by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story takes place in 17th-century Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that all of humanity exists in a state of depravity, but that God has destined some to unconditional election through unmerited grace. Hawthorne frequently focuses on the tensions within Puritan culture, yet steeps his stories in the Puritan sense of sin. In a symbolic fashion, the story follows Young Goodman Brown's journey into self-scrutiny, which results in his loss of virtue and belief.
"The Minister's Black Veil" is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was first published in the 1836 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, edited by Samuel Goodrich. It later appeared in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Hawthorne published in 1837.
Twice-Told Tales is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first volume was published in the spring of 1837 and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence the name.
Thomas Morton was an early colonist in North America from Devon, England. He was a lawyer, writer, and social reformer known for studying American Indian culture, and he founded the colony of Merrymount, located in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is the author of New English Canaan, an anti-Puritan work that was the first book banned the present-day United States.
Merry Mount is an opera in three acts by American composer Howard Hanson; its libretto, by Richard Stokes, is loosely based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The May-Pole of Merry Mount", taken from his Twice Told Tales. Hanson's only opera, it was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is a short story written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1831. It first appeared in the 1832 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, published by Samuel Goodrich. It later appeared in The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Hawthorne published in 1852 by Ticknor, Reed & Fields. The story exemplifies the darkest times of American development.
"The Man of Adamant" is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was first published in the 1837 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, edited by Samuel Griswold Goodrich. It later appeared in Hawthorne's final collection of short stories The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales, published in 1852 by Ticknor, Reed & Fields.
Merrymount is a primarily residential neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts, USA, located between the neighborhoods of Quincy Center and Adams Shore. Although it was the site of Quincy's initial settlement, Merrymount was not substantially developed for residential use until the first half of the 20th century, and most of the neighborhood's houses date from that period.
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it.
American gothic fiction is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality versus the irrational, puritanism, guilt, the uncanny, ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.
"The Haunted Mind" is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was first published in The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, 1835. It was later included in Volume Two of Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Hawthorne published in 1837.
The Old Glory is a play written by the American poet Robert Lowell that was first performed in 1964. It consists of three pieces that were meant to be performed together as a trilogy. The first two pieces, "Endecott and the Red Cross" and "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" were stage adaptations of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the third piece, "Benito Cereno," was a stage adaptation of the novella by Herman Melville.
"The Gray Champion" is a short story published in 1835 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Merrymount Colony, originally Mount Wollaston, was a short-lived English colony in New England founded by Richard Wollaston on the present site of Quincy, Massachusetts. After Wollaston died on a trip to Virginia, Thomas Morton led a rebellion, taking over the colony with the promise to share the profits equally. It was founded in 1624 and lasted six years until its destruction by the Puritans of the neighboring Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony.
