I started thinking about this blog post on May Day, but life
(to be specific, knee replacement surgery) intervened. Now I’m finally getting it posted just under
the May wire.
The tradition of the maypole isn’t always associated
strictly with the month of May, however.
In some countries it is erected during mid-summer celebrations. And this short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
(published 1836) is based on such an occasion in the early American colony of
Mount Wollaston, a.k.a. Merry Mount, which was adjacent to the better known
Plymouth colony in the 1620s.
The rivalry between the two colonies, one Puritan and one
Anglican, and the historical incident in which John Endicott cut down the
maypole at Merry Mount are documented by historians from both colonies. William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation describes the Merry Mount colonists and
their ringleader Thomas Morton as “licentious,” “dissolute,” and
“profane.” Their maypole is an “idol,”
around which the merrymakers engage in drunken dancing, “inviting the Indian
women for their consorts…frisking together like so many fairies, or
furies…” Thomas Morton, in his New English Canaan, mocks the “precise
Seperatists” of Plymouth, who “make a great show of Religion but no humanity,”
and their leader Captain Miles Standish as “Captain Shrimp.”
In the preface to his story Hawthorne notes that the
historical facts “have wrought themselves, almost spontaneously, into a sort of
allegory.” “Jollity and gloom,” says the
narrator of the story, “were contending for an empire.”
In The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne offers two world views for comparison, using one to critique the
other, finding fault with both, and suggesting that each could learn from the
other. (See blog post Oct. 24, 2012). In “The Maypole of Merry Mount” Hawthorne
uses the nominally Anglican but actually more secular/commercial colony of
Merry Mount to invoke pre-Christian paganism, referencing not only the maypole
itself and the American Indians, but also the “Golden Age,” “fairies and
nymphs,” “ancient fable,” and “Comus,” the Greek God of immoderate pleasure,
excess, revelry, and disorder. Similar
to The Scarlet Letter, 17th
century Puritanism is contrasted with excessive hedonism and untempered
pleasure seeking.
In this story the Puritans emerge victorious as they cut
down the maypole, punish the wrongdoers, and invite the newly married “Lord and
Lady of the May” into their more sober community. Yet the narrator, while acknowledging the
historical triumph of Plymouth over Merry Mount, does not spare the
Puritans. They are “dismal
wretches”—“grim,” “stern,” “darksome,” hard-hearted, and punitive. The whipping post is their maypole. If the merrymakers of Merry Mount indulge in
excessive pleasure seeking, the Puritans seem almost to take sadistic pleasure
in an excess of pain and punishment.
More than an historical allegory, the story represents a
process of maturation from a child-like view of the world as playground to the
inevitable encounter with evil and suffering that accompanies a “coming of age.” Yet, the story seems to question whether the
Puritan view of the world as a crucible of suffering, a “vale of tears,” is
really superior.
The newly married couple who join the Puritan community
offer some hope of a healthier outlook.
Even before the Puritans arrive to cast their shadow over the mirth and
merriment of Merry Mount, the young couple has a “presentiment” of future “care
and sorrow and troubled joy,” thus chastening the youthful exuberance and
carefree quality of their wedding celebration.
Later, their devotion to each other and their willingness to suffer,
each for the other, in the face of Puritan judgment and punishment, softens the
“iron man,” Endicott, who lifts a wreath of roses from the ruined maypole and throws
it over their heads, thereby holding open the possibility that flowers and
sunshine may mix and mingle with Puritan gloom.
As Hawthorne says elsewhere, “Life is made up of marble and
mud.” Neither youthful hedonism nor
age-worn cynicism captures its complexity.
Wisdom, truth, and healthy human community lie somewhere between the
two extremes.
