SOURCE: Porterfield, Amanda. “Bridal Passion and New England Puritanism.” In Feminine Spirituality in America: From Sarah Edwards to Martha Graham, pp. 19–50. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Porterfield examines the connection between femininity and Puritan spirituality by looking at Edwards's life in relation to her husband's theology.

For New England Puritans, religious life was more than a conceptual enterprise; it was the personal experience of spiritual events that composed the glory of God. In this kind of religious life, moments of ecstasy were actually and acutely sensational, as were moments of despair. God could enjoy as well as criticize his fleshly creation and, correspondingly, human responsiveness could find expression in physical joy as well as in worldly denial. Although many Puritan devotions were as gloomy and tortured as hell, experiences of ecstasy characterize an essential, vitalizing element in the tradition of American Puritanism.

Ecstasy announced itself...