All 30 Uses of
Puritans
in
The House of the Seven Gables
- A natural spring of soft and pleasant water—a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the Puritan settlement was made—had early induced Matthew Maule to build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote from what was then the centre of the village.†
Chpt 1Puritan = an English Protestant who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- Without absolutely expressing a doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and integrity throughout the proceedings which have been sketched, they, nevertheless, hinted that he was about to build his house over an unquiet grave.†
Chpt 1
- But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to be turned aside from his well-considered scheme, either by dread of the wizard's ghost, or by flimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious.†
Chpt 1
- The impression of its actual state, at this distance of a hundred and sixty years, darkens inevitably through the picture which we would fain give of its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all the town to be his guests.†
Chpt 1
- The iron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed man was dead!†
Chpt 1
- The popular imagination, indeed, long kept itself busy with the affair of the old Puritan Pyncheon and the wizard Maule; the curse which the latter flung from his scaffold was remembered, with the very important addition, that it had become a part of the Pyncheon inheritance.†
Chpt 1
- In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality, and had won higher eminence in the world, than any of his race since the time of the original Puritan.†
Chpt 1
- At length she paused before the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her ancestor, and the founder of the house.
Chpt 4 *Puritan = one of the Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- It betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a New England trait,—the stern old stuff of Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.†
Chpt 5Puritanism = a religious movement of the 16th and 17th centuries to purify Protestant Christianity of rituals of the Catholic Church, and which stressed hard work above pleasure
- It is my Puritan ancestor, who hangs yonder in the parlor.†
Chpt 6Puritan = an English Protestant who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- But the Puritan's face scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his appetite.†
Chpt 7
- It might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one.†
Chpt 7
- The fantasy would not quit her, that the original Puritan, of whom she had heard so many sombre traditions,—the progenitor of the whole race of New England Pyncheons, the founder of the House of the Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely in it,—had now stept into the shop.†
Chpt 8
- On his arrival from the other world, he had merely found it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's, who had trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers, then, patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had exchanged his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under his chin, for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries ago steps forward as the Judge of the passing moment!†
Chpt 8
- If we mistake not, moreover, a certain quality of nervousness had become more or less manifest, even in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under discussion.†
Chpt 8
- For example: tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been greedy of wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show of liberal expenditure, was said to be as close-fisted as if his gripe were of iron.†
Chpt 8
- The Puritan—if not belied by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day, under the narrator's breath—had fallen into certain transgressions to which men of his great animal development, whatever their faith or principles, must continue liable, until they put off impurity, along with the gross earthly substance that involves it.†
Chpt 8
- The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his own household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation, had sent them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves.†
Chpt 8
- We shall only add, therefore, that the Puritan—so, at least, says chimney-corner tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous fidelity—was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty; laying his purposes deep, and following them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience; trampling on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the strong.†
Chpt 8
- Now, see: under those seven gables, at which we now look up,—and which old Colonel Pyncheon meant to be the house of his descendants, in prosperity and happiness, down to an epoch far beyond the present,—under that roof, through a portion of three centuries, there has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a constantly defeated hope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, a strange form of death, dark suspicion, unspeakable disgrace,—all, or most of which calamity I have the means of tracing to the old Puritan's inordinate desire to plant and endow a family.†
Chpt 12
- In the very act of running to climb Colonel Pyncheon's knee, the boy had discovered the old Puritan to be a corpse.†
Chpt 13
- The other was a portrait of a stern old man, in a Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and a remarkably strong expression of character.†
Chpt 13
- During the whole preceding discussion and subsequent formalities, the old Puritan's portrait seems to have persisted in its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without effect, except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass, he thought he beheld his grandfather frown.†
Chpt 13
- Mr. Pyncheon's long residence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and fashion,—courtiers, worldings, and free-thinkers,—had done much towards obliterating the grim Puritan superstitions, which no man of New England birth at that early period could entirely escape.†
Chpt 13
- The picture of the Puritan Colonel shivered on the wall.†
Chpt 15
- Is he ill?" exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm; for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he spoke.†
Chpt 15
- Hepzibah almost adopted the insane belief that it was her old Puritan ancestor, and not the modern Judge, on whom she had just been wreaking the bitterness of her heart.†
Chpt 15
- And what worthier candidate,—more wise and learned, more noted for philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by public trusts, more spotless in private character, with a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in the faith and practice of the Puritans,—what man can be presented for the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to the chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before us?†
Chpt 18Puritans = English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- However just the parallel drawn, in some of the preceding pages, between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it fails in this point.†
Chpt 18Puritan = an English Protestant who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- He would conceive the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day.†
Chpt 19
Definitions:
-
(1)
(Puritans) English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
(a Protestant is any of the Western Christian religious denominations that broke off from the Catholic Church. In the US, the best known are Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians.) -
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
As a common noun (not capitalized unless at the start of a sentence), puritan or puritanical can refer to someone who is very strict -- especially about religious principles or proper behavior.