Visions of America Quotes

How we cite our quotes:

Quote #4

The town! Kit stared, too aghast to realize her own tactlessness. There was not a single stone building or shop in sight. The Meeting House stood in the center of the clearing, a square unpainted wooden structure, topped by a small turret. As they crossed the clearing Kit recoiled at the objects that stood between her and the Meeting House; a pillory, a whipping post and stocks. (5.8)

Kit is surprised by the barren town, but she is also aghast at the forms of public punishment in the town. The pillory and the stocks would have been used in New England to denounce and punish criminals.

Quote #5

The long rows of onions looked endless, their sharp green shoots already half hidden by encroaching weeds. Judith plumped matter-of-factly to her knees and began to pull vigorously. Kit could never get over her amazement at her cousin. Judith, so proud and uppity, so vain of the curls that fell just so on her shoulder, so finicky about the snowy linen collar that was the only vanity allowed her, kneeling in the dirt doing work that a high-class slave in Barbados would rebel at. What a strange country this was! (8.19)

Kit finds it difficult to reconcile Judith’s prim appearance with the hard work that she does in the fields. Kit contrasts the behavior of people in this “strange country” to slavery in Barbados.

Quote #6

“Quakers cause trouble wherever they go. They speak out against our faith. Of course, we don’t torment them here in Connecticut. In Boston I’ve heard they even hanged some Quakers. This Hannah Tupper and her husband were branded and driven out of Massachusetts. They were thankful enough just to be let alone here in Wethersfield.” (10.18)

Religious intolerance, we learn, is a part of the early American experience.