The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England

Huddled on dank ships and tossed about in the waves of the Atlantic, English Puritans envisioned a new society predicated on the values of individual and communal humility. Pride, a pervasive sin, jeopardized their very survival and incited God’s wrath. The first generation of New England settlers, deeply affected by the miseries of their migration experience, crafted New England society on the dichotomy of pride and humility.

Embracing demonstrative suffering as essential, Puritans embraced perpetual martyrdom, often taking great pride in the extent of their humiliation. This ideology affected self-perceptions and informed legal codes, theology, and community values. Anxieties around pride resulted in violent efforts to eradicate “proud” individuals, but also whole communities as demonstrated by the Pequot War (1636-37). The dichotomy of pride and humility permeated all aspects of New England Puritanism.

Sandra Slater is an Associate Professor of History at the College of Charleston in South Carolina where she also serves as an affiliate faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies, African American Studies, and is the Director of the Carolina Lowcountry in the Atlantic World Program. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2009 and completed a dissertation on comparative seventeenth century Atlantic masculine identities in New France, New Spain, and New England. Her publications include a collection of essays co-edited with Dr. Fay Yarbrough, Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850, and a variety of articles appearing in the Historic Journal of Massachusetts, Church History, and the Journal of Early American History. Most recently her article, “The Erotics of Early America” was published in the Cambridge Companion to Early American Literature. Dr. Slater is currently working on a book project analyzing sexualities in seventeenth century New England through the lens of spatial theory.