Research and Describe New England Society and Culture (Essay Sample)

Name:
Professor:
Course:
Date:
Culture is a common way of life that is shared by a society or a group of people. A society is a group of people who share common way of life. The colonies of New England society had their own way of doing things. Professor Cornelia Hughes talks about their culture in her book; The William and Mary Quarterly. This book is based on events that happened in the 17th century in the village of Pomfret which is located on the hills of north eastern Connecticut.
According to Dayton, abortion was carried out by a ‘manual operation’, this involved taking of sevin or pennyroyal. These are the compounds used in modern day insecticides, however, in those times they were used as herbal arbotifacients. It should be noted that consumption of these two compounds is lethal to human body and can lead to severe consequences such as sickness and can also lead to death. Sara Grosvenor and Amanda Sessions were involved in a liaison that led to Sara being pregnant. Amanda Sessions decided that Sara should take an arbotifacient in order to terminate the pregnancy. The administration of the arbotifacients was done by John Hallowell who is a self-proclaimed ‘practitioner of physic’. He gave Sara a white powder and directions on how to take it. However, it was not successful because the herbs administered were not effective and Mr. Hallowell had to physically terminate the pregnancy through puncturing the fetus and after two days Sara had a miscarriage but after ten days she fell ill from fever, she was attended to by various physicians but unfortunately died. It can be therefore concluded that abortions were not conducted in a safe manner as shown in Sara’s case.
Another aspect in New England’s culture is that a lot of young men had a habit of abandoning their pregnant lovers; this is usually done so as to prolong their bachelor years or to marry someone else. This can also be attributed to fear of the lover’s parents or an ill-timed marriage can threaten a young man’s inheritance plans. This could be the reason why Sessions decided that his lover, Sara should procure an abortion. In conclusion, this shows that many young men were not ready to take responsibility if their lovers became pregnant. (Dayton 33)
The law of New England was not just and fair. This is because Hallowell has been involved in many crimes such as counterfeiting, fathering an illegitimate child and conducting an abortion which led to the death of Sara but he escaped punishment by the law. Even though Hallowell was arrested at last, he was never convicted of the crimes he committed because he was able to manipulate the judges with the help of his friends who were very powerful people. This also shows that many men who made crimes against women were able to get away with their crimes more easily.
Gender had an effect on how people viewed things in the society. In Sara’s case, gender affected how the conspiring young adults responded to her death and weighed the blame. The wom...