…[V]aliant to fight, and sober to toil, and pious to pray”: The Physical Danger of Capitalism and Colonial Power in “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” Anonymous College

…[V]aliant to fight, and sober to toil, and pious to pray”:

The Physical Danger of Capitalism and Colonial Power in “The May-Pole of Merry Mount”

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” most critics claim, is an allegory of the struggle between secularism and Puritanism in colonial America. It tells the story of a heated encounter between a group of “votaries of the May-Pole” and a “band of Puritans” bent on bringing the revelry under control (Hawthorne 362). While the consensus among critics is certainly valid—the struggle between strict religious censure and personal freedom and enjoyment is obvious—these critics completely ignore the colonial and Marxist ideologies at play in the short story. The figure of John Endicott represents both capitalistic greed and colonial oppression while the figures of the maypole dancers represent a pre-capitalist native population. By the end of the story, readers realize that the greed represented by Endicott is not merely a lust for resources or labor; instead, it is a hunger for control of the very bodies and reproductive rights of the native people. This hunger stems from both the capitalistic drive to dominate the quintessential natural resource—human beings—and the colonial...