That’s what I tell my mother. (Facetiously, of course!) After all, both of her parents’ long-ago ancestors stepped off the Mayflower. And those Pilgrim/Puritans were a piece of work.
We see their legacy in the disturbances of our current culture–the both censorious and fetishized attitude toward sex that’s born of repression and guilt, the zealotry of religious intolerance.
Global violence is OK, but marital infidelity is a scandal worth impeaching a president for. (And don’t tell me it was actually about perjury. You think this country could care less about perjury? Hogwash. If the country cared about lying, GW Bush and his entire crew would be under lock and key. But wait a minute–I forgot–their lies led to global conflagration and carnage. So, really what’s the big deal?)
It’s absolutely fascinating to read about my ancestors in the fictionalized accounts of a writer as great as Hawthorne–not so exhilarating to confront the ideological legacy they left.