Sarah Churchwell

The thrill of the chaste

Sarah Churchwell says the American craze for Amish romance novels — ‘bonnet-rippers’ — is just one part of a strange new fashion for conservatism and abstinence

issue 07 November 2009

Sarah Churchwell says the American craze for Amish romance novels — ‘bonnet-rippers’ — is just one part of a strange new fashion for conservatism and abstinence

It has been 25 years since Peter Weir’s hit film Witness, in which Harrison Ford plays a policeman who falls in love with an Amish woman while investigating a murder. In America the Amish existence has a romantic appeal, it’s a return to a simpler way of life, and Witness exemplified this in its most famous scene, when the detective and the Amish woman dance to Sam Cooke’s 1960 classic oldie ‘Wonderful World,’ a song that begins, appropriately enough, ‘Don’t know much about history’.

Millions were seduced by Witness — it was one of the top 10 US films of 1985 — but since then, modern America’s flirtation with the Amish has blossomed into a true romance.

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