Burlington, Vt. — Standing in the room where Ethan Allen did his writing, I’m shuffling back and forth and rubbing my gloved hands together, doing my best to take in the home of Vermont’s founding father. It’s 17 degrees outside and not much warmer inside the old Allen homestead, which has been preserved to look and feel exactly as it did more than two centuries ago. Outside, the wind is howling across the snow-covered fields that Allen once worked. What was it about this unforgiving landscape that led Allen to leave civilization behind and devote his entire adult life to fighting for its independence — and what brought him back here after years of war and captivity? Allen’s pathological stubbornness was shaped by the climes of northern New England, and, thanks to the fame he won for his role in the American Revolution, he has since come to shape our national understanding of the flinty, frowning Yankee.
Cold climates mold their inhabitants in a very particular way. A hard edge tends to develop when one is faced, for nearly half the year, with the prospect of stinging pain on exposed skin anytime one leaves the house. Social science bears out what is obvious to anyone from the Northeast who’s ever visited Southern California. A study published in the journal Nature in 2017 found that people who grow up in mild climates, where the temperature hovers around 72 degrees, tend to display higher levels of extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness. Those who live in inclement climates congregate less frequently and therefore tend to be more introverted and less agreeable. An earlier study of regional differences identified significant variations in personality types. New Englanders, the researchers found, tend to be irritable, impulsive, and quarrelsome. The researchers classified the people who represent these traits as “Temperamental and Uninhibited.”
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