Inner Fire

The Mary Dyer statue in front of the State House seemed to loom over me yesterday, massive and blocky. Hands on lap, head becapped and bowed, the message seems to be submissiveness, but is not really.

Last night after I got home from the tour, I read an account of her conflict with the Massachusetts authorities, how they, in authoritarian defensiveness, were exasperated by this Quaker woman who would not shut up, would not stay away, and claimed at both of her executions to be experiencing more spiritual bliss than they in their puckered-up state could ever hope to experience, ever even conceive.

The sculptor, Sylvia Shaw Judson, herself a Quaker, gave Mary Dyer a heroic feel like the larger-than-life mid-century figures we see, on the march, flag in hand, pointing the way forward, yet Dyer is immobile, contained, not suggesting in the grey stone the fire inside. 

These Puritan women, I think here also of Anne Bradstreet, had vivid inner lives that belied their somber dress and sober behavior. Dyer was snarked for holding hands with the two young condemned Quaker men who marched with her to the gallows the first time she went. What petty piety you practice, she sniffed, compared to the holy transports I am experiencing now.

Her husband and son, in roles I recognize, tried to save her, pleaded with her to the end to give up martyrdom for something more feminine, all in vain.

Massachusetts recognizes two of the women it expelled with statues in front of the State House. Ignore it, suppress it as we may, the fire will out. Aggravating and awe-inspiring at the same time.