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I tried whenever I could to be historically accurate within the story. There are a few places where I knowingly diverged.
One is in names. The naming convention I have used is Virtue names for women and Biblical names for men. In fact, the Puritans used Virtue names for both men and women, but this gave me a more instant way for the reader to differentiate between male and female characters.
Also with names, the Puritans used first name/surname like we do currently in western countries. I liked the Ezekiel son of Samuel format because it gave more of an olde worlde feeling.
The obligations lists at the start of each chapter is all me, but it is based on Biblical tradition so it reflects the type of attitude the Puritans had.
The Puritan men also wore hats which I don't mention at all. The women covering their heads with bonnets is real.
The Puritans most often wore browns and indigos, as those dyes were cheap and readily available. They mostly wore wool or cotton clothing, but they also wore leather and furs.
I have described the villages as mostly farming communities but most of the Puritans in the 1660s relied as much on fishing and hunting for food as they did on farming. The climate in Massachusetts did not support complete reliance on farming. Potatoes weren't widespread until later.
The Puritans were monogamous and the men held all the power. The only way a woman could own anything in her own name was by becoming a widow. I don't think the Puritans practiced the approach of a brother or father taking in the widow of a dead kin as a second wife. That practice is described in the Bible and I have adopted it for the purpose of the story.
The houses out in the country were mostly how I described them.
The Puritans were highly literate. They were all taught to read so that they could read the Bible and try to live by its tenets.
Despite their reputation, the Puritans weren't completely austere. They enjoyed singing and dancing (though men and women wouldn't dance together) and drinking wine during celebrations. An active sex life was required between a married couple. There are examples of divorces being granted and men vilified for not being a 'proper' husband by having regular sex with his wife.
Hope you find all this interesting.
Hi all. I have posted a short story called The Choice, which is new here but was previously posted on a different site under a different pseudonym. If you haven't read it yet, please read it before you read the rest of this post.
A few people have asked for me to continue it as they feel it is unfinished. A good short story should have a beginning, a middle and an end but should leave the reader wanting more. Despite appearances, the story is not about the child, it is about how the parents handle this little bump in the road in the life of their child. The end is the mother giving their child a choice and the parents establishing that they will continue to love and support their child no matter which choice is made. As a result, what the child chooses is immaterial and the ending is supposed to emphasise that.
I hope you enjoyed my story. I have no intention of revisiting these characters in further stories.
Cheers, barbar
Congratulations to all of those authors who gained top billing in the recently announced Clitorides Awards. I'm familiar with most of the stories that won and they certainly deserve recognition. I am quite chuffed that my own story, Bec3, is included in that list so thanks to all who voted for it.
As I have commented to a few of you in response to your emails, I tend to write about broken people or different people and then put them in situations that exposes their broken-ness or their different-ness.
This means that they respond differently to the "normal" response that most people would have to those situations and this gives me an "ïn" to writing a story that is hopefully a bit different from other stories.
I love writing for SOL even though I don't think of myself as writing porn. The adults only nature of the site means that I can express sexuality a bit more openly and bluntly than I could if were writing for a general access site. Sex and sexuality are sufficiently "hot button" topics that they provide good situations for my characters to react to.
In the case of Experiment 36, Sally's parents have a number of issues. They are probably somewhere on the autism spectrum with lots of extra problems added on. Sally is probably a little bit that way as well. We might look at their lives and feel sad because of an apparent lack of emotion and their social awkwardness.
I'm not sure how successfully I managed to convey it but the parents and Sally have established a close and functioning family unit despite their limitations. Some quite functional people on the autism spectrum can end up isolated and alone once their own family is no longer around so the success of Sally's family is a triumph rather than a point of sadness.
Unfortunately, Sally is now at an age where she wants more so she is trying (mostly unconsciously) to break herself and her parents out of their carefully structured and organised lives. That is the source of E36 and any future stories about Sally. Without that conflict, I would only have a character study instead of a story.
Like with Bec, a lot of the humour in E36 is gentle and situational humour rather than in-your-face slapstick. But there are a couple of zingers in there that I am quite proud of. Overall, this was intended to be amusing rather than anything else.
barbar
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