'Mayflower Bastard'

Paper Summary:

In this essay, the writer looks at David Lindsay's "Mayflower Bastard", that is a speculative work of historical nonfiction that tells the tale of one of the author's ancestors. The writer describes that the work openly spins creative, fictional scenes that dramatize likely dialogue, emotions, and motivations of its primary protagonist. The writer continues that the work creates a view of history that may or may not be true but elucidates the often shady moral origins behind the enforced immigration of some of the early Puritans, and the actual morality that governed Puritan society. The writer points out that the author evidently hopes that by chronicling incidents from the origin, indentured servitude, and final days of his ancestor Richard More, the 'Mayflower Bastard' of the title, the reader will gain a more morally complex and less judgmental view of the founding of the New England colonies.

From the Paper:

"These colonies, Lindsay suggests, were made up of both saints and sinners, and many of the early inhabitants were not motivated to immigrate to the New World because of religious intolerance in England, rather they were forced to by circumstances beyond their control. For example, Lindsay's ancestor is an apparently illegitimate man named Richard More. More became one of the oldest living residents of the Plymouth Colony in Colonial Massachusetts, partly because he was one of the youngest passengers on the voyage of the Mayflower. Although much of the true nature of More's life has been lost, David Lindsay uses the details that do survive regarding Richard More's existence to demonstrate his more comprehensive thesis that life in Puritan New England was far less sanitized than might be evident in the common conception of a stringent, repressed society that has been passed down to us through images of Salem or even Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Lindsay, David. Mayflower Bastard: A Stranger Among the Pilgrims. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002.

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• Comparison Essay # 130919 : "The 'Mayflower Compact' and The 'Arbella Covenant'"
• Research Paper # 96895 : "The Mayflower Compact" and "Of Plymouth Plantation"
• Research Paper # 93836 : "'Bastard Pop'"

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