The Frozen River

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

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Themes

Puritan Shame Culture and Gender Oppression

Throughout The Frozen River, Lawhon pays close attention to the systems of sexual shame, facilitated by Puritan culture, that oppress the women of Hallowell. Nearly all of the book’s female characters encounter threats of sexual shaming, censure or assault throughout the book: Martha marries Ephraim to save herself from social ruin after being raped; Rebecca Foster endures intense ostracization after coming forward with her accusations against North; Sarah White is openly mocked for having a baby out of wedlock, and both May Dawin and Sally Pierce hurry to marry their partners when they fall pregnant to avoid the same fate. Such profound fear of sexual shame has obvious negative emotional impacts, and as Lawhon outlines, it was a legally codified aspect of life in colonial New England:

The law, passed four years ago by the Massachusetts General Assembly, is bluntly titled ‘An Act for the Punishment of Fornication, and for the Maintenance of Bastard Children.’ It was designed to make sure that unwed mothers had a means of providing for their children, but in practice it is little more than a ritual of public shaming (66).

Lawhon’s novel implies that patriarchal institutions, such as the state court system, perpetuate a Puritanical culture of shame that dehumanizes and humiliates the book’s female characters. Many of Hallowell’s women find themselves complicit in the very culture that threatens them in an effort to protect themselves from it. In the general store, Clarissa Stone voices her disapproval of Sarah White only feet away from her, “Can you believe how brazen Sarah is? Flouncing around without that baby” (115). Clarissa’s behavior demonstrates the ways in which women not yet subject to sexual shaming attempt to self-protect their status by persecuting other women, making themselves complicit in their own oppression. As Ulrich writes, the religious conservatism of the community in Hallowell no doubt informed peoples’ responses to cases of sexual scandal (Ulrich 105). Though the community was not a strictly Puritan one, the restrictive religious ideologies of early colonial New England still exerted cultural influence over the early republic. For example, the use of the word fornication in “An Act for the Punishment of Fornication, and the Maintenance of Bastard Children” is imbued with Puritan significance, since the religious group persecuted the crime since their rise in English government in the 17th century. In The Frozen River, Martha navigates the practical fallout of this religious ideology, recognizing its injustice to women and drawing a distinction between it and her own conservative religious morals.

The Courtroom as a Theatrical Spectacle

Lawhon’s structure includes an important court date that punctuates each of the novel’s six parts as the Foster rape case moves up the rungs of the Massachusetts judicial system. In these scenes, Martha remains hyper aware of townspeople using the trial as a form of entertainment. During the first hearing in Hallowell, she observes “This is a formality. A show put on for the benefit of those present” (66). She understands that the high-stakes drama of people being accused, tried, and finally, convicted or acquitted is a form of theater sanctified by the institution of the court. All those present at the hearings participate in this theater, from the spectators in the gallery who respond to the court proceedings, to the judges at all levels of the system who perform their authority for the spectators.

Through Martha’s observations, Lawhon draws a parallel between judicial robes and theatrical costumes. When North presides as Judge over the first court hearing, Martha describes his attire: “He wears the required wig and red silk robe, buttoned to the top, and a ruffled collar that has turned yellow with age. It hangs against his throat like a limp rag” (65). Here, the ceremonial garb meant to impress onlookers does just the opposite; its poor fit and deteriorating quality belies the theatrical ruse of power and dominance that North wants to project. In contrast, Martha believes the state’s Supreme Court judges wear their attire effectively: “they will don their black silk robes and their powdered wigs and transform into symbols of power and authority” (313). Even Martha, skeptical of the court’s unimpeachable authority, recognizes the transformational power of official judges’ costumes to inspire awe similar to those of a theatrical performance.

The novel’s indictment of courtroom performativity goes hand-in-hand with its criticisms of the handling of the Foster rape case. From the beginning, Martha’s describes the court proceedings as a “show” put on for the townspeople, suggesting that just as the robes and the court is not as impartial of an institution as it claims to be. When the not-guilty verdict is handed to North, Martha identifies the misogyny and gender oppression inherent in the courts’ biases: “The jury acquitted every man tried of rape that day…But they fined a woman into poverty for spreading lies about a judge’s daughter” (334). Both the theatrics of court and its verdicts reify the town’s gender hierarchy: no matter the strength of a woman’s case against her attacker, the court is motivated to maintain patriarchal power by believing male defendants over female plaintiffs.

Familial Loyalty in the Face of Suspicion

The suspicion surround Martha’s son Cyrus as a suspect in Burgess’s murder places two of her most central values in conflict with one another: the pursuit of justice and familial loyalty. Even as her belief in Cyrus’s innocence threatens to undermine her credibility as a witness in court, Martha remains steadfast: “If I’ve learned anything about raising young men, it’s that some are liars and some are confessors. Cyrus is the latter. A confessor. In all the decades he’s lived under our roof, I’ve never had a reason to doubt him” (50).

Having characterized Martha as a person of intelligence and integrity, Lawhon invests her maternal instinct with a credibility that valorizes her familial loyalty—the guiding principle behind many of her actions. Martha views midwifery and motherhood as two of her greatest assets in uncovering the truth of Burgess’s murder. Her enemies, however, see them as a weaknesses, knowing that they can exploit Cyrus’s vulnerability to hurt Martha. When North implicates Cyrus in the murder, Martha recognizes his game immediately, thinking to herself, “Oh. It’s a threat… He knows I don’t want Cyrus’s name brought up in court regarding a murder investigation. He’s reminding me that he has a card to play” (135). Page takes a similar tactic, naming Cyrus as a suspect in court when his medical authority is challenged by Martha and Lambard. While the strength of Ballard family loyalty frames Martha’s love for Cyrus as a conflict of interest and thus a legal weakness, Martha channels her love for her family into her investigation to find Burgess’s true killer—an effort that ultimately proves successful and exonerates Cyrus.

Lawhon resolves the ostensible conflict between Martha’s familial loyalty and criminal justice by asserting that they were never in conflict to begin with. She validates Martha’s maternal instincts in her characterization of Cyrus as dependable and Jonathan as unpredictable when she learns that Cyrus is innocent and Jonathan was an accomplice to the Burgess murder. The institutional misogyny and gender oppression inherent in Hallowell’s justice system compel Martha to rely on her own moral compass and accept the extralegal punishment carried out by Sam and Jonathan against Burgess as retribution for the rapes of Rebecca Foster and May Dawin. Through the novel’s resolution, Lawhon explores when and how vigilante justice can be justified. Her decision to keep Jonathan’s involvement a secret on the grounds that justice couldn’t have been achieved through traditional legal in a corrupted system of power allows the Ballard family to remain intact—neither Cyrus nor Jonathan is convicted.