The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 10 (1999)

The Puritan Origins of American Taboo
Naoki ONISHIINTRODUCTION“Taboo in American Society” was the title of one of the sessions of
the 32nd annual conference of the Japanese Association for American
Studies, held at Chiba University in June 1998. Under this broad title,
three papers were read concerning organized responses to the sociallyproblematic issues of drinking (Temperance Movement), smoking(Anti-Smoking Movement) and homosexuality (Gay Rights Movement). On the whole, the discussion at the session seemed to be focusedupon the process of taboo-enforcing (in cases of drinking and smoking)and taboo-breaking (homosexuality). Listening to the various papers anddiscussions of the issues, I found myself asking several basic questions.
Firstly, does “taboo” provide us with a useful perspective from which toview American culture? Secondly, is it really correct to discuss topics
such as alcohol consumption and the Temperance Movement as issuesof taboo? Finally, and most basically, what is “taboo”? Faced with thetask of writing on the taboo of the 17th century Puritans for this issue ofthe journal, I thought, while listening to this conference session, thatsome kind of clariﬁcation of the term would be unavoidable before I
could proceed to any detailed discussion of my assigned topic.
ANTHROPOLOGY AND TABOO
Obviously enough, the word “taboo” is not native to the English
tongue: it has a Polynesian origin and remains as a borrowed foreign
word in the English language. First used in the ﬁeld of anthropology, it
Copyright © 1999 Naoki Onishi. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.
33

34

NAOKI ONISHI

signiﬁes, broadly speaking, a cultural or religious inhibition characteristic of some primitive society. In other words, anthropologists used theterm to analyze the traditional inhibitions of “other,” “different” andusually “uncivilized” cultures, but not their own. It is no wonder, therefore, that a nation like the United States of America, with its modern origins, lacks the cultural circumstance within which taboo functions in its
original sense. Taboo is not associated by Americans with their own culture because it is presumed that taboo is concerned with “primitive society” and not with civilized modern society like the American one. This
seems to be the reason why the word and the concept were not academically applied to American studies. After some initial research, it became
clear to me, to my surprise, that the word “taboo” appear only very rarelyin the title and index lists of books on American Studies. Contrary to mypresumption, the word and the concept of ‘taboo’ do not seem to havebeen of overt interest nor a strong subject area within American studies
in the USA. Even if America retains some kind of taboo brought in from
more traditional and “different” societies, it can be said that American
culture, based upon an Enlightenment Constitution with its emphasis on
freedom of speech and the equality of human right has been trying toabolish taboo, in principle, by rationalizing its irrationality. Or, is it simply a taboo itself, to talk about American taboo?
Even in its original ﬁeld of study, i.e., anthropology, the term “taboo”
does not appear these days almost at all. Current anthropology has
dropped “taboo” as a concept of interest for academic research. Chris
Knight in The Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology has
the following to say under the “taboo” entry: “The term ‘taboo’ is nolonger fashionable among anthropologists. In many modern textbooks
and treatises, it is missing from the index.” 1 As for the reason for thisdisappearance, he continues: “Abandonment of the old vocabulary has
recently seemed a safe way to maintain political correctness, helping toemphasize that traditionally organized peoples are not ‘different’ but inreality ‘just like us.’” 2 Indeed, a keen and careful attention is now being
paid to the fact that in differentiating other “primitive” cultures in termsof taboo some kind of cultural superiority complex has crept in. Philip
Thody has pointed out this in a recent book: Don’t Do It: A Dictionaryof the Forbidden: “By forbidding certain actions in which other people
too readily indulge, we show that we are not as others are. By refusing
to eat foods which they too willingly consume, we demonstrate how
superior we are to them through the fastidious nature of our tastes. By

THE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

35

not using certain words, we show that we are a class above some of our
fellows, as well as in a class apart.” 3 It is not too difﬁcult to see from his
remarks, how taboo functions to clarify the difference among races,classes and genders. Moreover, he points out that taboo does not simply
differentiate but also sustains the stance of cultural superiority embedded in its uses. “The word ‘taboo,’ retaining as it does something of thedisparaging self-conﬁdence with which nineteenth-century Europeans
described cultures different from their own, is a classic example of thetendency” 4 Certainly, what should be noted in the introduction of theword into the English language and its subsequent uses is the unconscious stance, or unintended attitude of the “Westerners.” In other words,
it has been used as a tool to differentiate other non-Western cultures from
Western ones. Taboo was a term, therefore, to signify some primitive
custom of other culture, which looks irrational and strange from the view
point of a civilized standard. Thus, the word taboo smells strongly ofcolonialism, to say the least.
An interesting and reverse example of colonialism embedded in theconcept of taboo might be found in Ruth Benedict’s analysis of Japanese
Culture. In her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, she writes,“The strong Western attitude against masturbation, even stronger in mostof Europe than in the United States, is deeply imprinted on our consciousness before we are grown up. . . . Perhaps she (mother) told him(child) God would punish him. Japanese babies and Japanese children
do not have these experiences and as adults they cannot therefore reproduce our attitudes. Autoeroticism is a pleasure about which they feel noguilt. . . . ” 5 In other words, although she avoids using the term taboo
here to describe masturbation, she points out the lack of that prohibitionin Japanese society as a deeply problematic point of the culture. And, if
she intentionally avoids applying the word taboo to masturbation in
American society, the refusal to use it also shows her cultural stance.
That is to say, even while she asserts here that masturbation is prohibited for religious reasons in America, it does not occur to her to call it ataboo. This is because, it can be assumed, that to her the word should
only be used in its original anthropological signiﬁcance, but not to be
applied to a modern culture such as that of America. Probably, the word
taboo sounds too pejorative to be applied to an American cultural phenomenon. In such ways, in her anthropological stance, the sense of cultural superiority of the West when it looks upon the East is latent but
obvious.

36

NAOKI ONISHIETYMOLOGICAL ORIGIN AND USE OF THE WORD, “ TABOO”
The word, “taboo,” and the concept to which it refers were initiallyintroduced into the English speaking world in 1777 by Captain James
Cook. During his third round-the-world voyage he encountered on a
Polynesian island a peculiar native custom called “taboo” in the native
tongue. In his description of the cultural phenomenon the word appeared
for the ﬁrst time.6 As introduced by his writings, the word signiﬁes something sacred or profane that prohibits the direct access of ordinary people, especially in many cases, of women to touch. If this interdiction isbroken, a severe penalty, such as the death penalty, is inﬂicted. Ever
since, the deﬁnition of the word has become one of the central issues ofsocial anthropology, and thus been constantly examined and discussed
in the representative works of anthropology such as James Frazer’s The
Golden Bough, Franz Steiner’s Taboo, Emil Durkheim’s Incest andMary Douglas’s Purity and Danger.7
The Oxford English Dictionary shows us anthropological Micronesianand Melanesian origins and quotes from the reports by Captain James
Cook’s Voyage as the ﬁrst appearance of the word in English language.
In America, Webster’s Dictionary ﬁrst published in 1828 has the following as its entry for “taboo”: “n. In the isles of the Paciﬁc, a word
denoting prohibition or religious interdict, which is of great force among
the inhabitants.” 8 It is interesting to note here that the word is speciﬁcally used to denote foreign culture in the Paciﬁc. Worcester’s Dictionary, published in 1864, quotes Herman Melville’s use of the word in verb
form.9 As a matter of fact, Melville’s presentation of Marquesas island,
especially as described in Typee, provides us with the cultural circumstance in which the original signiﬁcance of taboo existed. Herman
Melville seems to be the ﬁrst American to have encountered and written
about the issues of taboo. In his voyage to Marquesas island in 1842, hecame across various irrational local traditions in the valley of Typee,
which he tried to analyze by using the word, taboo, or tapu. In this sense,
Typee “was at one and the same time his ﬁrst book and the ﬁrst book topresent the phenomenon of taboo to the American reading public.” 10 Let
me quote a passage from Chapter Twelve;
Here were situated the Taboo groves of the valley—the scene of many a prolonged feast, or many a horrid rite. Beneath the dark shadows of the consecrated bread-fruit trees there reigned a solemn twilight—a cathedral likegloom. The frightful genius of pagan worship seemed to brood in silence overTHE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

37

the place, breathing its spell upon every object around. . . . This holiest of
spots was defended from profanation by the strictest edicts of the all-pervading ‘taboo,’ which condemned to instant death the sacrilegious female
who should enter or touch its sacred precincts, or even so much as press withher feet the ground made holy by the shadows that it cast.” 11

In another passage, Melville emphasized the irrationality of the taboo:“So strange and complex in its arrangements is this remarkable system(taboo), that I have in several cases met with individuals who, after residing for years among the islands in the Paciﬁc, and acquiring a considerable knowledge of the language, have nevertheless been altogether
unable to give any satisfactory account of its operations. . . . The savage, in short, lives in the continual observance of its dictates, which guideand control every action of his being.” 12 As is clear in these passages,“taboo” was understood by Melville to be the hidden principle of the wayof life of “the savage.” In light of Typee’s wide acceptance and successat the time of its publication in 1846, it is not difﬁcult to imagine that thenovel has contributed deeply to the circulation of the word “taboo”
among American reading public. In Moby-Dick, however, the word
“taboo” does not occur even once. However, the native harpooneer
Queequeg’s object of devotion, “yojo,” is described with heavy association with Polynesian culture. The representation of the sacred object ofnative religion gives us a context in which the taboo described in Typeemust have functioned.
FREUDIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND TABOO
Both the word and the concept of taboo were thus introduced into andtook root in America in the mid-nineteenth century. But in order to see
any wide circulation of the word we have to wait until the early 20th century, when Sigmund Freud’s works began to be translated and publishedin English. Most particularly, with the publication of Totem and Taboo,
the word taboo set the trend of the era. In Europe as Franz Steiner
explains, it was often with Freudian context that people ﬁrst came acrossthe word “taboo”.13 When the translation of the book was published in
New York in 1918, it was widely accepted and remained highly inﬂuential among intellectuals throughout 1920’s. One of the book’s central
contentions regarding the universal presence of an “incest taboo,” caught
the attention of the reading public and this led to a journalistically sensationalized use of the word “taboo,” characterized by strongly sexual

38

NAOKI ONISHI

associations. As a matter of fact, the Freudian boom of the early 20th
century contributed greatly to the wide circulation of various neuropsychoanalytic words such as “suppression,” “libido” and “ﬁxation.”“Suppression is bad” was, simply speaking, the most commonly disseminated concept which the public accepted rather arbitrarily from
Freudian psychology. Taboo was closely related with those ideas. The
general spirit of the era was that “Suppression has to be stopped” and“taboos should be broken.”What is remarkable about this book can be said Freud’s stance or his
point of view. Where anthropology had conventionally located “taboo,”in primitive, or “savage” cultures, Freud proclaimed and then demonstrated the presence of taboo within “us”: “It may begin to dawn on usthat the taboos of the savage Polynesians are after all not so remote fromus as we were inclined to think at ﬁrst, that the moral and conventional
prohibitions by which we ourselves are governed may have some essential relationship with these primitive taboos and that an explanation oftaboo might throw a light upon the obscure origin of our own ‘categorical imperative.’” 14
Indeed, even in “civilized” society there are various “conventional
prohibitions” or “don’t”s, which, without any explicit and reasonable
explanation, everyone takes it to be mandatory to obey. What should be
noted here, though, is a change in the meaning of “taboo” as it is deﬁned
by Freud. Whereas, in its original anthropological usage, the term relies
on religious consensus, here it does not matter whether the object concerned is profane or sacred. Prohibition itself becomes the central andmain factor of taboo. The OED shows the changed signiﬁcance of tabooin this deﬁnition: “Prohibition or interdiction generally of the use or practice of anything, or of social intercourse; Ostracism.” In this broadest
sense, we can count diverse prohibitions in different sectors or ﬁelds ofsociety as “taboos.” Applied to American society, various phenomena
could be regarded as taboos. Among numerous other things, the mostobvious are those related to sex or sexual mores. In the 1920’s, inﬂuenced and propelled by the impact of Freudian ideas, wide socio-cultural trends grouped together by Lynn Dumenil under the term Modern
Temper 15 occurred. Various social customs and mores which have survived from the Victorian era came to be understood as taboos under the
Freudian liberal inﬂuence, and as a result became targets to be attacked.
For example, various new fashions and forms of behavior characteristicof young women during the so-called Jazz Age, such as the short skirt,

THE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

39

or bobbed hair, were considered to be taboo-breaking. Even in the musicscene various taboos had to be broken. For instance, the performance of
Jazz music at prestigious concert-halls, which had until that time been
exclusively devoted to the traditional classical music was considered to
be one of the conspicuous cases. In particular, the concert produced by
Paul Whiteman entitled “An Experiment in Modern Music” at Aeolian
Hall in New York in 1924 was sensational. It is because this concert,where “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin was performed for theﬁrst time, broke certain prohibitions so far conﬁned Jazz music. The useof saxophone in such a place or more broadly in a classical music performance, for example, was one of the taboos broken by this concert.
AMERICAN LITERATURE AND TABOO
It can be argued that the signiﬁcant scenes of a wide range of so-called“classic” American literature reach their narrative peak in a moment oftaboo breaking. Taboo, in this sense, will give us an interesting as wellas eye-opening angle from to consider the distinctive features ofAmerican culture. In addition to such “classic” examples as Huckleberry
Finn’s, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell,” and Daisy Miller’s,” I don’t care
whether I will have a Roman fever or not,” there are many morememorable lines in which a main character intentionally tries to breakthrough the barriers of legalistic understanding or accepted mores. Edith
Wharton’s novels, in particular, Ethan Frome, Kate Chopin’s Awakening and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio can, for example, beread as taboo-breaking novels. In fact, the list of prohibited publication
can be identically represented as that of taboo issues in some sense orother.
The Scarlet Letter is probably the most obvious literary representationof the issues of taboo. That famous phrase of Hester Prynne, “What we
did has a consecration of its own” from Chapter XVII of the novel, is
one of the most arresting moments of taboo-breaking in American literature. Nathaniel Hawthorne, setting the issue of adultery case in Boston
in 1642 through 1649, discusses the nature of the sin, adultery. Since thebook was published in 1850, it has not only acquired a wide reading public, but has also contributed signiﬁcantly to the formation a Puritan mythand image, and it has been decisive in solidifying the image of the
Puritans. Ever since, it has been widely taken as a vivid and accurate presentation of colonial New England where Puritanism dominated the

40

NAOKI ONISHI

social life of the people imposing strict rules and regulations based upon
their religion. The novel vividly imprinted a gloomy and dark image of
Puritan culture upon the popular imagination. A specialist in the law ofearly New England, Douglas Greenberg, writes: “The colonies of New
England play a central role in all courses in early American history andthey are, as well, the subjects of a considerable mythology in American
culture. The popular image of dour Puritan magistrates and ministers
humiliating transgressors and imposing essentially religious deﬁnitionsof crime and a retributive system of justice upon a coward and intimidated population has been reinforced for 150 years by Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter. . . . ” 16
But looking at the novel from the angle of taboo, we ﬁnd thatHawthorne was trying to demonstrate by the symbolic letter “A” the factthat the sin of adultery had some connection to the concept of a taboo inthe sense of its arbitrariness. Symbolized by the letter “A,” the sin was
publicly speciﬁed. At the same time it acquired a space for different arbitrary interpretations because of the semiotic nature of the letter. As in
the case of taboo in certain “primitive” societies, the reason behind thetaboo in the novel becomes ambiguous and blurred. Or, at least, it canbe said that the relationship between the nature of the sin and its representation in the letter is dissociated.
Whether or not Hawthorne’s presentation of early New England culture was correct, the novel has caught the keen attention of generationsof readers, and rich studies have been conducted ever since. Very probably, The Scarlet Letter is the most densely studied single work of literature in the whole ﬁeld of American literature. Nonetheless, the novel
raises several still unanswered questions. Why, for instance, is no explanation given in the novel as to Hester Prynne was not whipped? Thinking
of Hawthorne’s deep interest in and thorough knowledge of New
England criminology acquired from his omnivorous reading of early
New England histories, it is peculiar that he omitted the whipping penalty in the case of the punishment of Hester’s adultery. Or, more historically speaking, who started those presentation of crimes and wearing its
symbols such as “Ad” or “ T” or “D” and the like as a form of punishment. Bearing those unanswered questions in mind, I would like to consider the problem of taboo in 17th century Puritan society, i.e., the originof American taboo issues.

THE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

41

ORIGIN OF AMERICAN TABOO IN PURITAN SOCIETY
With its strong connotation of sexual purity, the word “Puritan” andthe age associated with the term are generally considered to represent astrict society in terms of sexual morality. Puritans have been understoodas moral paragons, extremely ascetic and very squeamish about sexual
matters. Their community, too, has been understood to be tightly restrictive, where people are strongly moralistically oriented. Indeed, calls fora morally based society and enforcement were a constant feature of early
New England, forming the basis of so-called American Jeremiad tradition. However, repeated outcries for law enforcement to reestablish
social morality, such as materialized in the case of the Reforming Synodof 1679, can actually be taken as counter evidence in this regard of social
problems. The fact is that it is not difﬁcult to demonstrate how prevalentsexual crimes really were in Puritan society. For instance, in the list complied in Massachusetts Bay Colony, Court of Assistant Record, numerous cases of sexual crimes and deviancies are listed page after page.17
Edmund Morgan has made it clear as early as 1942 that sexual crimes
could be commonly found in Puritan New England: “The impression
which one gets from reading the records of seventeenth-century New
England courts is that illicit sexual intercourse was fairly common. The
testimony given in cases of fornication and adultery—by far the mostnumerous class of criminal cases in the records,—suggests that many ofthe early New Englanders possessed a high degree of virility and very
few inhibition.” 18 Fifty-some years later, Roger Thompson, using thesame law documents of Middlesex County, reached the conclusion that
the Puritans were not especially ascetic, but just as sexually active as,
and so not particularly different from, other ordinary peoples.19
If so, how did New Englanders of early period try to deal with themoral problems of their society? To think about this point, it is necessary to go back to the germinal stage of the New England Colonies,
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay and others, where the colonists had toencounter these issues by establishing new legal systems. In other words,
what is characteristic is not so much the people but the law that they
introduced soon after their settlement in New England. The so-called
Blue Laws,20 that regulated religiously oriented moral standards for thecommunity, are certainly one of the characteristic features of New
England Puritan law culture.

42

NAOKI ONISHILAW ENFORCEMENT IN NEW ENGLAND
In what way, then, did those colonies introduce a new system of law
enforcement? To grasp the process of legalization in the New Englandcolonies, we have to go back to the initial stage, in particular, soon after
the period of settlement. When British colonies began to settle in New
England as communities after 1607, their governmental structure was
not a new invention but a vicarious use of the trading business corporate
system under which the plantation business had been carried out. First,
the Virginia Company utilized the corporate system of the plantationcompany as the governing structure of the colony. Then the Plymouth
Plantation and Massachusetts Bay Colony followed the Virginian model.
Under such circumstances of their arrival in the New England area, thecorporate system was transformed by the colonists into a government,
including both its legal capacity and authority. Under the British plantation company system, the General Court functioned originally four seasonal meetings of Magistrates and Freemen, that is, stockholders, todiscuss the business and ﬁnancial condition of the company. But, after
it acquired its governmental capacity in New England, its functions
included the judicial capacity to make judgement on various social
crimes and conﬂicts. The colonists introduced a system of law independent of the Common Law of England. In such a way, the General Court,
which dealt with various social matters and problems, became thesupreme legal authority in the plantation.
The ways in which this new legal system, for instance, of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, was original and different from English legal
practice was mentioned by George Francis Dow: “When complaints
were made, the court, upon a hearing, determined whether the conductof the accused had been such as in their opinion to deserve punishment,
and if it had been then what punishment should be inﬂicted. This wasdone without any regard to English precedents. There was no deﬁned
criminal code, and what constituted a crime and what its punishment,
was entirely within the discretion of the court.” 21In other words, all laws, including criminal and non-criminal, weregenerally put under the Magistrates’ discretion. Magistrates (Governor,
Deputy-Governor, and Assistants) decided the punishment appropriate
for each crime, such as imprisonment, ﬁnes, public whipping, bondage
on the stock or pillory, or banishment. Occasionally, the offender wasTHE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

43

forced to have a rope around his or her neck while being publicly punished on the stocks or in the pillory. This was meant to signify that theoffender deserved the death penalty.
However, Magistrates themselves were not sure about their legal
authority. Especially in the case of serious crimes which required thedeath penalty, the nature of punishment was a matter of serious discussion. One of the earliest cases of adultery brought into the Court, on
September 6th, 1631, shows their uncertainty clearly. In the Record of
Massachusetts Bay Colony, Court Record, we ﬁnd the following; “John
Dawe shalbe severely whipped for enticing an Indian woman to lye withhim. Upon this occasion it is propounded wither adultery, either withEnglish or Indian, shall not be punished with death. Referred to the next
Court to be considered of.” 22 Then in 1631, the Court Record has the following entry: “It is ordered, that if any man shall have carnall copulation: With another man’s wife, they both shalbe punished by death.” 23John Winthrop, the Governor, maintained lenient stance constantly andtried to handle these cases by the wisdom of magistracy. Recording theprocess of the formation of the Body of Liberties, he put down his feelings in his journal, “All punishments, except such as are made certain in
the law of God, or are not subject to variation by merit of circumstances,
ought to be left arbitrary to the wisdom of the judges.” 24 But, under thepressure of Deputies and some Magistrates, he had to yield eventually.
In Plymouth, a similar case of uncertainty can be found recorded inGovernor William Bradford’s memoir, Of Plymouth Plantation: “As it
seems to us, in the case even of wilful murder, that though a man didsmite or would another with a full purpose or desire to kill him (which
is murder in a high degree before God), yet if he did not die, the magistrate was not to take away the other’s life. So by proportion in other grossand foul sins, though high attempts and near approaches to the same be
made, and such as in the sight and account of God may be as ill as theaccomplishment of the foulest acts of that sin, yet we doubt whether it
may be safe for the magistrate to proceed to death; we think, upon theformer grounds, rather he may not. As, for instance, in the case of adultery. If it be admitted that it is to be punished with death, which to someof us is not clear; if the body be not actually deﬁled, then death is not to
be inﬂicted. So in sodomy and bestiality, if there be not penetration. Yet,
we confess foulness of circumstances, and frequency in the same, dothmake us remain in the dark and desire further light from you, or any as

44

NAOKI ONISHI

God shall give.” 25 (emphasis mine) Clearly, hesitancy to inﬂict capital
punishment or uncertainty about its execution was felt in the discretionary judgements taken by the Magistracy.
BODY OF LIBERTIESIn 1635 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, represented by William
Hauthorne, the freemen who had felt uneasy about the unfair arbitrariness of the Magistrates’ discretion demanded a code of laws. Responding
to the demand, a committee was formed and the code drafted by the hardliner Rev. Nathaniel Ward. A list of twelve kinds of crime compiled with
Biblical references was approved and promulgated as the “Body ofLiberties” in 1641. The twelve crimes listed in the Code include:
Idolatry, Witchcraft, Blasphemy, Murder, Manslaughter, Poisoning,
Bestiality, Sodomy, Adultery, Man-stealing, False Witness in Capital
Cases, Conspiracy and Rebellion. This process of forming the Code is
known as the Bay Colony’s law reform. Edwin Powers points out thatthe Biblical code was, in some sense, anachronistic and farfetched: “Theresult of the acceptance of this code by the Colony in 1641 was that acitizen of Boston was, at least in theory and in respect to these twelve
laws, under the same peril of death at the hands of the government as a
citizen of Israel had been some thirty two centuries earlier in a land someﬁve thousand miles away.” 26 Indeed, even from the contemporaneous
European standpoint, the dependency on Biblical law of this code wasanachronistically reactionary. But, for the New Englanders, it was thebasis of the Biblical Commonwealth which they have intended to create. John Winthrop, however, felt strong hesitancy in deciding various
kinds of punishment according to the crimes, especially in the case of
adultery. Responding to the proposal of “Body of Liberties,” he wrote
in his diary, “As upon the law of adultery, it may be a question whether
Bathsheba ought to die by that law, in regard to the great temptation, andthe command and power of the kings of Israel.” 27 In spite of the negative stance of John Winthrop, the code was approved with the strong support of freemen.
Other colonies besides the Massachusetts Bay Colony went throughthe similar processes. Plymouth had a topical code in 1636, even earlier than Massachusetts. The Massachusetts code was approved in 1641
and developed in 1648 with its arrangement of the lists made according
to alphabetical order. Rhode Island adopted its code in 1647, Connecticut

THE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

45

in 1650,28 and New Haven in 1655. New Hampshire’s code adopted in
1679, is a modiﬁed version of the Massachusetts code.
Massachusetts, the name of each sin in the code is referred to particular Old Testament passages. Enhanced by Biblical authority, the senseof taboo in breaking each crime had been enforced. What should benoticed about this legal practice is that those sexual crimes which wereconsidered to be taboos and thus in England covertly dealt with inChurches or in other judicial functions, were clearly speciﬁed in the code,
openly discussed and publicly punished in the Courts of New Englandcolonies. The detailed investigations of those crimes, such as adultly,
rape, buggery, recorded in the Court Records are similarly as explicit as
those recently circulated in the Starr Report concerning “inappropriate”
sexual misconducts of President.
The Biblical law drastically introduced in these ways were strictly
enforced, for instance, in such serious crimes as the buggery case whichhappened at Plymouth Plantation in 1642. Thomas Granger, a servant ofLove Brewster, was indicted for buggery and after a due process of persecution and conviction, sentenced to death. He was executed on the 8thof September, 1642. William Bradford’s candid record of the execution
reads as follows, “For ﬁrst the mare and the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx,
15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great
and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made ofany part of them,” 29 In addition to this, we can ﬁnd similar cases in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony. According to John Winthrop’s journal entry,
there were similar cases. One of them has a peculiar reference to theresemblance of “one eye” between a sow and the person concerned.30“At New Haven there was a sow, which among other pigs had one without hair, and some other human resemblances, it had also one eye blemished, just like on eye of a loose fellow in the town, which occasioned
him to be suspected, and being examined before the magistrates, he confessed the fact, for which, after they had written to us, and some otherplaces for advice, they put him to death.” 31 In such ways, the case of buggery was strictly judged and punished according to the Code.
STRICT LAW AND LENIENT PUNISHMENT
However, in other less serious cases, such as those involving fornication and adultery, the Court began to show some kind of room for lenien-

46

NAOKI ONISHI

cy in punishment. It is certain that in early period of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, the death penalty was handed down to those convicted ofadultery and that the accused were really executed. For instance in 1644,
a couple was executed for adultery. John Winthrop left this record in his
Journal: “They were both executed, they both died very penitently,
especially the woman, who had some comfortable hope of pardon of hersin, . . .” 32 The dour and serious attitude of the Magistracy in following
the Code of 1641 can be felt in this execution of the death penalty.
It has to be pointed out, however, that in spite of numerous cases ofadultery, the death penalty was not carried out again. Even in the discussion among the Magistrates held in the case of adultery in 1644, there
was a strong opinion which doubted the Biblical authority of death penalty. Moreover, just before the adoption of the Code in 1641, the General
Court handled the case of adultery without imposing the death penalty.
Captain John Underhill, after a dramatic confession of adultery and amoving appeal for forgiveness, was pardoned.33 In short, although it had
been conﬁrmed twice in 1631 and 1638, and was clearly stated in theCode, the death penalty for adultery remained a controversial issue andthe judgement varied in each case. As a matter of fact, division among
the Magistrates, especially opposition to John Winthrop, was broughtout by the difference of opinion over the issue of whether the death sentence was appropriate or not.34 This division of opinion created a gap
between sentence and punishment.
In the similar manner in Plymouth Plantation, in spite of the fact thatthe earliest laws and ordinance of the Colony “adultery” was listed as a
“Capitall Offence lyable to death” together with “Sodomy, rapes, buggery,” but it was differently speciﬁed “to be punished.” Furthermore, thiswas altered later as follows; “Addultery fornication and other uncleane
carriages to be punished at the discretion of the Magistrates according
to the nature thereof.” 35 In other words, adultery in Plymouth Plantation
was considered to be a capital crime, but was not necessarily handed out
with the death penalty even from its beginning.
Furthermore, in 1645 as a discretionary measure to deal with adultery,
the Magistracy of Plymouth introduced a new method of punishment,that is, the enforced wearing of a symbolic letter. It seems that the wellknown symbolic representation of crimes, such as “A” or “AD” for
Adultery, “ I ” for Incest, and “D” for Drunkenness and the like, wereintroduced under the same kind of Magistrates’ discretion, to replace thebranding criminals. The introduction of the symbolic letters to replaceTHE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

47

branding can therefore be seen as a lenient invention of the New Englandcolonies. Let me quote the ﬁrst occurrence of this case from Plymouth
Plantation: “Whosoever shall comitt Adultery shalbee severely punishedby whipping two severall times; viz. One whiles the Court is being att
which they are convicted of the act, and the second time as the Court
shall order; and likewise to weare two Capital letters viz AD cut out incloth and sewed on theire uppermost Garments on their arme or back;and if att any time they shalbee taken without the said letters whiles they
are in the Govrment soe worn to bee forthwith taken and publicly
whipt.” 36 A similar speciﬁcation of the symbol and its use replacing
branding is found in Salem, too.37 What should be taken notice of in thisrespect is the length of time that the punishment lasts and the accusedhas to keep wearing the letter symbolic of the crime. In the ﬁctional caseof Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, she is forced to wear it all her
life. Certainly, as stated in The Annals of Salem, one has to put Letter“A” “forever after.” But in reality, it was often shortened in the courseof time, presumably at the discretion of the Magistrates case by case.
Andrew McFarland Davis in his article of 1895,38 which can be considered the earliest investigation on the law of adultery and punishment in
New England Colonies, clearly mentioned that in the Josselyn’s“Account of Two Voyages to New England,” one ﬁnds the period of thepunishment for Adultery 12 months.39
As with punishment of bondage in the stocks, while wearing a noose,this form of penalty was intended to heighten the sense of humiliationand shame in order to prevent the recurrence of the same crime by theconvicted as well as the on-lookers. The Old Testament’s severe laws
were effective in this sense in intensifying the psychological pressure.
Peter Hoffer, however, has clariﬁed the gap between the ofﬁcial punishments based upon the Old Testament and the real punishment handed out: “The Puritans mitigated punishment for most of their Old
Testament crimes because the laws were not meant to function in a literal way. The borrowing of Old Testament injunctions was a solemn
public warning to those at the edges of the Puritan community against
violation of the deeper social mores that held the Puritan towns in thewilderness together. The purpose of severity in the book law was as muchto get the attention of potential wrongdoers as it was to punish actual
wrongdoers. . . . ” 40Thus, just like Magistrates’ hesitancy in imposing capital punishment
for adultery that existed before the establishment of the Code, the ten-

48

NAOKI ONISHI

dency toward lenient stance in judging sexual crimes gradually developed, especially when the person involved showed penitence and apologized. In other words, contrary to our presuppositions, New England’s
punishments were physically less cruel than those inﬂicted in Englandat that time. This point has been made by Edwin Powers in his book,
Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts: 1620–1692, “The criminal laws were taken principally from the Mosaic code and althoughmany of them may seem harsh and cruel yet, as a whole, they were much
milder than the criminal laws of England at that time. No reference wasmade to the common law of England.” 41 This solid tendency to leniency is the most important feature of New England Puritan law for us, when
thinking about the problem of taboo. Because, accommodating the“wilderness” situation of New England, the strict forbidding power oftaboo, in the case of sexual crime, gradually loses its power. In spite of
their initial insistent attempt to follow God’s ordinance, in particular, theTen Commandments of Moses, the code was observed but with fair margin of leniency.
Thus, although the punishments on paper look very severe and cruelto our modern sensibility, the fact is that they were leniently enforced,
with sufﬁcient room for Magisterial discretion. Concerning sexual
crimes, in particular, only a very small number of death penalty werereally carried out. Edmund Morgan explains: “In face of the wholesale
violation of the sexual codes to which all these cases give testimony, thePuritans could not maintain the severe penalties which their laws provided.” 42 As a matter of fact, the basic condition of the colonies, with its
shortage of population and working power, and its tremendous spacial
freedom, inevitably necessitated the leniency of the punishments. The
circumstances of the “Wilderness” can be considered to have forced the
Puritans to take this stance. As Morgan said here, the Puritans simply“could not” literally follow the Code they had made.
In these ways, Puritan punishments were quite often remitted, mainly
because in reality the colony could not carry out the prescribed punishments. To require monetary penalty the Colony had yet to develop thesolid system for money economy, and it also lacked the man-power topolice potential criminals. Furthermore, as is mentioned by G. B.
Warden, there was always the safety valve of banishment: “Massachusetts, at least, made banishment a capital punishment (as a symbolic
decapitation” from the body politic), thus mitigating the severity of the
new remaining capital crimes. The New Englander did extend capitalTHE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

49

punishment to such biblical crimes as adultery and imposed more severe
sanctions on gambling, races, duels, bigamy, and other diversions,but . . . the records indicate that judges and juries rarely inﬂicted thestated penalty for major crimes.” 43
Roger Thompson, too, pointing out the lenience of colonial punishment, emphasizes the reclamation and reintegration of the repented criminals into society: “Except for heinous or persistent sinners, punishments
were relatively light: the short sharp shock of a public whipping or amodest ﬁne. Commutations were fairly easily obtained by the contrite.
Much of the punishment consisted in the shame of presentment, examination, court appearance, and sentence. In certain adversarial cases,
defamation, for instance, public apology was offered as an alternative todamages. In criminal cases, notably premarital fornication, confession
was encouraged. Thus was reclamation and reintegration begun.” 44
CONCLUSION
Summing up these processes of legalization and the lenient handlingof punishments in the early colonial period of America, what can be saidin terms of taboo issues? Let me give an overview of the process surrounding “taboo.” First, in principle, New England Puritans aimed at
establishing a so-called Bible Commonwealth where crimes whould be
suppressed as much as possible. In order to achieve this, they invented
the Codes, which speciﬁed initially the twelve sins of Adultery,
Blasphemy and so forth. Brought into the light, sexual crimes in New
England were speciﬁcally and openly dealt with in legalistic terms. By
this speciﬁcation of the sins, the sexual taboos of England were madeinto publicly discussed issues. In other words, in England there weretaboos in the sense that no written code was necessary to deal with thosecrimes, whereas in New England the way of handling those crimes had
to be stated speciﬁcally according to a Code based upon Biblical law.
The candid descriptions of sexual crimes recorded in the Law Files ofMiddlesex County, for instance, are good examples of this. Speciﬁed as
crimes, and examined by legal process, those taboos were brought into
the light of public attention and scrutiny. In this process of legalized speciﬁcation, taboos became verbalized and judged as crimes. However,
because of the labor shortage, criminals were not put into prison forlengthy period, nor, because of the shortage of currency, was penalty
money often imposed especially in the early stage of the colonies.

50

NAOKI ONISHI

Instead, whipping and other public punishments were introduced and put
into practice. Since the New England Colonies did not have police power
to control society, crimes had to be handled severely to discourage recurrence. Therefore, punishments were inﬂicted in order to shame the convicted and by doing so enhance the sense of social morality. Emblematic
symbols replacing the death penalty, or branding, were thus used toenhance the sense of shame. However, these symbols created the circumstance peculiar to taboo in the sense that the person wearing the symbol became almost an untouchable being with the sense of ostracism.
Then presumably, after going through a period of punishment by livingon the outskirts or outside the community as an ostracized being, thosecriminals were readmitted to the society, or if they chose, allowed to relocate to another place. Meanwhile, the letter itself, the signiﬁer, became
dissociated from the content of the sin, the signiﬁed. This is the basis onwhich Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the novel, The Scarlet Letter, where
the original sense of “A” can signify, not only adultery but many things,
including Arthur, Able, Angel and so forth. Thus, while showing thenature of the sin itself, the symbol, at the same time, demonstrates thefact that the taboo is a semiotic matter.
If we take the widest and most ﬂexible signiﬁcance of the word, taboo,it can be pointed out and applied to various American socio-politicalissues. MaCarthism, the Free Speech Movement, or just recently, theheated discussion surrounding political correctness, all dealt with the
problem of a prohibition enforced with unstated and/or stated suppression or agreement. Or, that ﬂamboyantly controversial issue, “ﬂag burning,” can be considered as a strong case of taboo issue. Whether or not
people retain the right, based upon the freedom of expression, to burnthe sacred symbol of the nation can be considered as an issue of conﬂict
between taboo and the freedom of speech.
In such ways, the USA, as a country of liberty and freedom, deals constantly with involving suppressions and prohibitions embedded in traditional mores. Taboo issues of religion (blasphemy, anti-abortion), raceand ethnicity (miscegenation, racial discrimination), sex and gender,
media (political correctness) and other daily customs and manners (tablemanners) are all cultural spheres where uniquely American conﬂicts orsolutions have been made. In other words, the USA is a country where
the process or tendency of taboo-breaking or taboo-enforcing has been
always present. In fact, the history of America can be considered as aconstant battle against various taken-for-granted taboos based in tradi-

THE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

51

tional cultures. To put it another way, this constant battle itself can becalled, to borrow Perry Miller’s phrase, the process of Americanization.
The process is also the one in which what was considered to be otherness in other races and cultures, or classes, or gender is to be found notout there but in the framework of one’s own mind.

NOTES
1Alan Bernard, Jonathan Spencer, eds., Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural
Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1996), 543.
2
Ibid.
3
Philip Thody, Don’t Do It: A Dictionary of the Forbidden (London: The Athlone
Press, 1997), 10.
4
Ibid., 5. Thody quotes from Talala Asad’s book, Anthropology and the Colonial
Encounter (1973): “Ever since the Renaissance, the West has sought both to subordinate and devalue other societies, and at the same time to ﬁnd in them clues to its own
humanity.”
5
Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton and Mifﬂin
Company, 1946), 188
6
Captain James Cook, A Voyage to the Paciﬁc Ocean (London: W. and A. Strahan,1784), vol. 3, 40.
7James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, Part II, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul (London:
Macmillan, 1911); Franz Steiner, Taboo (London: Cohen & West, 1956); Emil
Durkheim, Incest: The Nature and Origin of the Taboo (New York: L. Stuart, 1963);
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966).
8
Noah Webster, American Dictionary of English (New York: S. Converse, 1828).
9
Joseph E. Worcester, American Dictionary of the English Language (Boston:
Brewer & Tileston, 1864), 1470.
10
Philip Thody, Don’t Do It: A Dictionary of the Forbidden, 245.
11
Herman Melville, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, The Writings of Herman
Melville, vol. 1 (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 91.
12
Ibid., 221
13Franz Steiner, Taboo, “Many middle-aged people, both English and Continental
extraction, however, ﬁrst heard taboo as part of the Freudian vocabulary,” 28.
14
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950), 22.
15
For detailed thorough discussion on 20’s culture, see Lynn Dumenil, Modern
Temper (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995).
16
Douglas Greenberg, “Crime, Law Enforcement, and Social Control in Colonial
America,” in Crime & Justice in American History, The Colonies and Early Republic(London: 1991) edited by Eric H. Monkkonen, 235.
17
See the item “Crime” in “Index” of Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colonyof the Massachusetts Bay: 1630–1692, Volume I-III (Boston: County of Suffork, 1928;
repr. New York: AMS Press, 1973).
18
Edmund Morgan, “The Puritans and Sex,” NEQ, 15 (1942), 699.

52

NAOKI ONISHI

19
Roger Thompson, Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County,
1649–1699 (Amherst, Mass.: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 195
20
For instance, The Code of 1650; Being a Compilation of the Earliest Laws andOrders of the General Court of Connecticut (Hartford: Silas Andrus, 1825) includes theBlue Laws.
21
George Francis Dow, Everyday Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Boston: The
Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1935; repr. New York: Dover
Publication, Inc., 1988), 199.
22
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the
Massachusetts Bay, vol. 1 (Boston: The Press of William White, 1853; repr. New York:AMS Press, 1968), 91
23
Ibid., 91, 92.
24
Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John
Winthrop, 1630–1649 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 381.
25
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1970),
Samuel E. Morison, ed., 319.
26
Edwin Powers, Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts: 1620–1692 (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1966), 254.
27
The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, 381.
28
The Code of 1650; Being a Compilation of the Earliest Laws and Orders of theGeneral Court of Connecticut (Hartford, Conn.: 1825).
29
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 320–21.
30
The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, 385, “George Spencer was the ‘loose
fellow’ executed at New Haven: his trial is reported in Charles J, Hoadley, ed., Roundsof the Colony and Plantation’ . . . Spencer was the third New Englander to be put todeath for buggery, the others being William Hatchet of Salem and Thomas Granger of
Plymouth.”31
Ibid., Also, the development of the case of bestiality in New Haven is discussed inJohn M. Murrin, “Magistrates, Sinners, and a Precarious Liberty: Trial by Jury inSeventeenth-Century New England,” in Saints and Revolutionaries, Essays on Early
American History, edited by David D. Hall and others (New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 1984), 177–178.
32
The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, 501.
33
Ibid., 334–36.
34
For more detailed discussion on this matter, see John M. Murrin, “Trial by Jury inSeventeenth-Century New England,” in Saints & Revolutionaries: Essays on Early
American History, 191–197.
35
David Pulsifer, ed, Records of the Colony of New Plymouth, volume 2 (Boston: W.
White, 1861; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1968), 12.
36
Ibid., 95.
37
Joseph B. Felt, ed., The Annals of Salem (Salem, Mass.: W. & S. B. Ives, 1827),
317, May 5th, 1694, “A memorial was received, signed by many clergymen, desiring
the Legislature to enact laws against prevailing iniquities. Among such law, passed bythis session, were two against Adultery and Polygamy. Those guilty of the ﬁrst crimewere to sit an hour on the gallows, with ropes about their necks— be severely whipt notabove 40 stripes; and forever after wear a capital A, two inches long, cut out of clothcoloured differently from their clothes, and sewed on the arms, or back parts of theirgarments so as always to be seen when they were about. The other crime, stated withsuitable exceptions, was punishable with death.”THE PURITAN ORIGINS OF AMERICAN TABOO

53

38
Andrew McFarland Davis, “The Last of Adultery and Ignominious Punishments—
With Especial Reference to the Penalty of Wearing a Letter Afﬁxed to the Clothing,”
American Antiquarian Society, 10 (1895), 114.
39
Paul J. Lindholdt, ed, John Josselyn, Colonial Traveler: A Critical Edition of Two
Voyages to New-England (Hanover, NH.: University Press of New England, 1988), 124,
“An English woman suffering an Indian to have carnal knowledge of her, had an Indiancut out exactly in red cloth sewed upon her right Arm, and injoyned to wear it twelve
moneths.”
40
Peter Charles Hoffer, Law and People in Colonial America (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1992), 20.
41
George Francis Dow, Everyday Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 200.
42
Edmund Morgan, “Puritans and Sex,” NEQ, 15 (1942), 602.
43
G. B. Warden, “Law Reform in England and New England,” WMQ, 35 (1978), 680.
44
Roger Thompson, Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County,
1649–1699, 198.