Scarlet Letter Puritan Beliefs

     In Hawthorne's revered novel The Scarlet Letter, the use of Romanticism plays an important role in the development of his characters. He effectively demonstrates individualism in Hester to further our understanding of the difficulties of living in the stern, joyless world of Puritan New England.  It is all gloom and doom.  If the sun ever shines, one could hardly notice.  The entire place seems to be shrouded in black.  The people of this society were stern, and repressed natural human impulses and emotions than any society before or since.  But for this reason specifically, emotions began bubbling and eventually boiled over, passions a novelist

“Romanticism is a name given to those schools of thought that consider the rational inferior to the intuitive” (Geers). This time period of writing can be split into three major focuses: the forces of nature, imagination, and individual feelings. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne, as a representative of those three different aspects of Romanticism. Pearl lives peacefully in nature and sometimes believes she is connected with the brook and the animals, the primary idea of Romanticism. Similarly, Pearl shows a strong amount of imagination throughout her childhood, which Romantic writers commonly include. As well as her deep sense of individual feeling, Hawthorne represents her with unique personality. Pearl earns a reputation of selfishness and evil in the Puritan community, but her true personality shines through in elements of Romanticism that reveal her pure identity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the ideology of Puritan society in the novel the Scarlet Letter; however reader also get to witness his characters being an illustration of hypocrisy and victims to their own guilt. In the Scarlet Letter, as in many of Hawthorne’s shorter works, he makes profuse use of the Puritan past: its odd exclusionary belief, its harsh code of ruling, its concern with sex and witchcraft. The Scarlet Letter is a story that is embellished but yet simple. Many readers may view this novel as a soap opera due to the way Hawthorne conveys this Puritan society’s sense of strictness and inability to express true emotion along with the secrecy and how deceiving the characters are being. As the story unfolds the main character Hester Prynne is bounded in marriage at an early age. She engages in an adulterous affair with an unknown member of their small village. Hester soon becomes pregnant and with her husband’s absence the chances of this child belonging to her husband are slim. The towns’ people know that she has committed a sin and imprisons her for her crime.

In The Scarlet Letter, each of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s characters undergo internal challenges. When Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter concludes, many characters’ personal struggles have ended, either in their favor or resulting in their downfall. Hawthorne most notably fixates upon Pearl, Hester, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth and the challenges they face throughout his story. Although their challenges may differ explicitly, as a whole they reflect Hawthorne’s argument that happiness in life, and eventually salvation, stem from the rejection of false ideals in society.

It is difficult to draw parallels between the staunch beliefs of Puritan society in colonial America and the freedom experienced in the country today. The Puritans lived strict lives based on a literal interpretation in the Bible, and constantly emphasized a fear of God and a fear of sin. Modern society looks at this negative view of humanity as a whole as an out-dated opinion from the past, believing that, "Now people know better than that." However, faults in human nature can not be completely erased by the passing of time and the modernization of society. People still have emotions of love, compassion, envy, and pride; and many types of interpersonal relationships within their community. Puritan literature

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is often renowned as his best work. The novel tells about the rigid ideas of 19th century Puritan New England through the story of Hester Prynne, Minister Dimmesdale, and Pearl. Hawthorne points out that the Puritans are often more ready to judge, punish, and damn someone than to forgive them. He is very critical of this idea, and goes against it by ending the novel with Hester Prynne becoming a respected individual that other women often look to for advice, and by changing the perception many people have of the Scarlet Letter from, “Adultery” to “Able”. Throughout the novel Hawthorne refutes the harsh ideals of the Puritans through the

Throughout the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne develops compelling characters that are starkly different from the normal Puritan citizen. The novel mainly focuses on Hester, a Puritan woman living in New England, and the story of her affair and how it affects her life and the lives of those around her. Puritan citizens are illustrated as stern, dreary characters, but Hawthorne brings up sin, love, and hate even in the characters who are seemingly the most rigid when it comes to Puritan lifestyle. Chillingworth, Hester, and Pearl of the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne display complex character traits, including admiration, honesty, and loneliness.

Society handles difficulties that are given to them in different ways. Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet “A” as a symbol of shame because she has committed adultery while waiting on her her husband who is supposedly lost at sea. Hester's husband who shows up while she is being shunned wants to seek revenge on Hester's lover. In the end the Pearl who was seen as a sin her whole life comes back to the town she was born in and is this beautiful, independent, woman. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne the symbol of the letter “ A “ changes from adultery, to ability, to an angel, and to living persona of pearl.

Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne shows us the story of Hester Prynne, a woman who lives with The Scarlet Letter who commits adultery and as a result, is supposed to be punished. Then yet something beautiful came out from her sin, her daughter Pearl. To Hester, Pearl is both a sin and a gift. Pearl shows a complex character and an unusual depth of mind, coupled with a passion that Hester is incapable of controlling. Pearl shows a love of mischief and a disrespect for authority which causes her to be incapable of being bound by society.

Puritan Society in The Scarlet Letter appears to be just as subjective and vicious as any school cafeteria. If you miss a small step and spill your food or if you show up to school wearing the wrong brand of backpack, then you are an outcast with the name-calling and silent treatment to prove it. Alienation is a common theme in many books and it is portrayed in this book through the behavior and actions of Hester, Pearl, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale. Hester’s isolation affects her both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Although Hester is the main character, there are other important characters that are affected by isolation, such as, Dimmesdale, Pearl, and Chillingworth.

Romanticism was a vital part of literature throughout America in the 18th century. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was an author during this time period, utilizes numerous values of Romanticism within his writings, including his book, The Scarlet Letter. Corresponding with his fellow romantic author, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s, quote “Do not go where the path may lead; go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail” Hawthorne develops his characters with romanticism’s attributes. An example of this can be found in the character Pearl Prynne, the daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Pearl displays intuition and individuality, showcasing the morals of Romanticism and revealing the importance of being unique.

Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter was about an in look into Purantism (Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Historical Context of Scarlet Letter from The Scarlet Letter. EMC Corporation, 1998. Print). That mirrored on a lady by the name of Hester Prynne, who lived during the strict early Puritan Settlement. The settlement had a Utopia look on how settlers should carry on with life, with a clean soul as much as possible, and frowned upon those who had sin fallen short. She was caught cheating on her lost husband and was punished with prison time, public humiliation on the town’s scaffold, and bearing the Scarlet Letter “A” upon her bosom for a period of time. She raised her daughter from the affair, named Pearl. After seven years her husband comes back, whom she believed to be dead. Her husband, named Roger Chillingworth posed as a physician nursing the town’s young reverend, named Reverend

   Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne repeatedly portrays the Puritanical views of sin and evil.  The Puritans are constantly displayed as believing that evil comes from an unyielding bond being formed between love and hate.  For such reasons they looked towards Hester's commitment of adultery as an action of pure, condemned evil.  However, through the use of light and dark imagery, Hawthorne displays who truly holds evil in their hearts.  The one who is the embodiment of evil creates hypocrisy of Puritanical views towards sin and evil.  Hawthorne displays that those who expose sin to the public and the daylight are the most pure and those who conceal their sin under a

The Scarlet Letter is a modern classic of American literature written about controversy and published with controversy. The main topic of the book, adultery, is written in a dark and sad way, as Hawthorne describes injustice, fate or predetermination and conscience ( Van Doren, 1998) . No other American novel of the time has such a controversial theme as Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter. The setting of Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is the seventeenth century Puritan New England. But Hawthorne's writing for this book is heavily influenced by his own nineteenth century culture. Hawthorne strongly believed in Providence. Hawthorne was descended from the Puritan

In “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne presents the consequences of sin as an important aspect in the lives of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingsworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale. The sin committed, adultery, between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale had resulted in the birth of their innocent little girl, Pearl. This sin ruined the three main characters’ lives completely in different ways. With the sin committed, there were different ways the characters reacted to it: embracing the sin, concealing the sin, and becoming obsessed and consumed with it. With each reaction to the sin there were also different actions of redemption.