Print

Thomas, John D.

History

2004

M.A.

Between 1895 and 1900, Flora Gould of Brookside, Vermont practiced meditative silence as part of her daily program of self-improvement, a program that also included physical exercise and academic study. Meditative silence was the center of her other pursuits. It strengthened her spirit and helped her transition into the new opportunities available to women at the end of the nineteenth century. Flora's cultivation of meditative silence was a late nineteenth-century version of a tradition practiced by Puritan women in New England since the seventeenth century. Their pursuit of God through 'sacred' silence and inner exploration was based on Biblical scripture and directly rooted in the seventeenth-century European Pietist Movement that influenced most religious groups that settled in colonial North America. This essay examines the mutation of the Puritan meditative tradition in nineteenth century New England as reflected in private writings and mid-nineteenth-century popular literature.
The tradition evolved parallel to and possibly driven by the sweeping economic, social, and environmental changes caused by urban-industrial growth. The records of Flora Gould suggest that the meditative tradition was adapted to new conditions in order to remain viable with each generation.