Love, Early American Style

       What’s the last thing you’d expect to turn up on a sex and relationships blog? What seems like the opposite of sex? Is it death? Bowling? Garfield?

       Nope. It’s Puritans. The above examples might be quite sexless but they’ve got nothing on our national ancestors who often feel like the human embodiment of the cold shower. What with the buckle hats, the Bible-thumping, and the distance and image we have of them, it’s hard to imagine how they ever begat any little Puritans.

       The engaging, pop culture history book "The Wordy Shipmates" by author and frequent NPR contributor Sarah Vowell (which I listened to on audio book), humanizes our black-clad founders and gives them some most of us may never think of them as having. Vowell doesn’t look away from their tragic history or flawed perceptions but she does make them seem more like people with varied ideas, hopes, sorrows and noble aspirations than the monolithic zealots of “The Crucible.” 

       And nothing brings warmth and depth to a people more than their desire for sex. No, Vowell doesn’t reveal that there was a Puritan Plato’s retreat, but at time she does show that the Puritans weren’t the bonneted icebergs they might seem. My favorite of these, because it’s so unexpected, is where Vowel describes some feisty Puritan women who took action when they weren’t getting any action:

       “The United States is often called a Puritan Nation, which is a lazy way of saying Americans are sexually repressed…but the Puritans were actually quite gung-ho about sexual intercourse for married couples because they believed God came up with it. In fact, a handful of Colonial New England women successfully sued for divorce on the grounds of impotence, including Ann Lane of Massachusetts Bay who accused her husband, in 1658, of ‘failing to perform the duties of a husband,’ a detail not disputed by Mr. Lane.”

       Mr. Lane may have had his reasons, but nonetheless, it puts a new spin on the image of the Puritan woman and makes her – of all things – a woman. And while the specification “for married couples,” obviously straight ones, may rankle us today, it’s a nice thought that within their own context our God-fearing foremoms could be demanding, healthy, horny little devils.