“My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is set in Boston in the 1730s, when Boston was still part of the British-controlled Massachusetts Bay Colony. Despite taking place decades before the American Revolution, the revolutionary spirit is still present in the story, as seen in the way that the townspeople capture, tar, feather, and parade Major Molineux (who, as a military leader, represents Britain’s colonial rule).
In setting the scene of the story on the first page, the narrator offers the following important (and accurate) historical context:
The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors, in the space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II., two were imprisoned by a popular insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson inclines to believe, was driven from the province by the whizzing of a musket ball; a fourth, in the opinion of the same historian, was hastened to his grave by continual bickerings with the House of Representatives; and the remaining two, as well as their successors, till the Revolution, were favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway.
Here, the narrator establishes at the start of the story that the American colonists in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (which included the important port town of Boston) did not accept Britain-backed local leaders easily. In fact, six governors put in place by the king were, over the course of forty years, “imprisoned by a popular insurrection,” “driven from the province by the whizzing of a musket ball,” “hastened to his grave by continual bickerings with the House of Representatives,” and “favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway.”
Though the narrator uses a lighthearted and ironic tone here, they are describing the very real way in which colonists consistently attacked and harassed representatives of the British Crown. Because, at this time in history, they did not have say in who led them, the Massachusetts Bay colonists resorted to mob rule, leading up to the eventual American Revolution in the 1760s. While some readers may expect Hawthorne—as an American writing in the 1830s—to respect the revolutionary zeal of the colonists, he ultimately presents them as unnecessarily vengeful in this story, implying that the pandemonium of civil discontent is not the same as civilized self-governance.
