The original dominant American culture, established by the white settlers who arrived in New England, reflected the tenets of Calvinism, a religion in which heaven existed, but only for those predestined for it. Hell was a terrifying place, abundant descriptions of which gave many children chronic nightmares. The doctrine of predestination meant that there wasn’t much you could do to escape your assignment of either heaven or hell. But what you could do was show, by virtue of your ceaseless labor, that you were destined for the former. To do this, you had to till the land, clean the kitchen,
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