ABSTRACT
The colonies of Virginia and New England traditionally have been thought of as very different sorts of enterprises in their aims, political and social constitutions, and historical trajectories. Jamestown is remembered primarily as an example of dysfunction and disarray, wracked by pestilence and famine, populated by leisure-seeking gentry unwilling to work for themselves, and governed by military men who enforced strict discipline among the colonists and threatened violence against the indigenous Algonquians. The Pequots paid the ransom only to have the Dutch return the sachem's corpse, an act which significantly reduced their trust of Europeans and greatly increased tension in the region. Vincent represents English violence, in contrast to the choleric cruelty of the Pequots, as acts of disciplined and just punishment. Masculine valor is promoted not by rejecting a feminized position of victimhood characterized by naivete, vulnerability, passivity, and forbearance in the face of humiliation, but rather by embracing it.
