How Does Nathaniel Hawthorne Use Religion In The Scarlet Letter

In the 1850’s, America was undergoing a massive internal changes via the industrial revolution. With this new era, American culture was drastically changed as women started to take a more prominent role in American society. In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempts to stimulate this change by illustrating the positive influence of a strong female character in a Puritanical society through his heroine, Hester Prynne, by putting her in a scandalous situation capable of drawing out the worst in people.

English Protestants created a large group of people in the 16th and 17th centuries called the Puritans. These people advocated strict religious discipline along with a strong beliefs and worshipping. The Scarlet Letter reflected on Puritan Society in several ways, from religion to discipline and punishment. Religion seemed to control everyone, the reverend was the person that everyone looked up to, and the community, as a whole, believed in fate and destiny. Puritan relationships were very restricted, therefore making adultery a terrible sin in the eyes of the community. In the 17th century, Boston was extremely strict and the laws were strongly enforced, making Hester’s sin a great

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.

Undoubtedly, religion causes tension between characters in The Scarlet Letter. Notably, tensions arise between Hester and the townspeople due to her infidelity to her husband. The novel takes place in the 17th century in a Puritan community in Boston. The Puritans left England in order to practice their faith but also despised The Church of England for including similar practices as those of Catholicism. During this time it was also commonly known that if one does not conform to the thoughts and beliefs of the Puritans then they are not welcomed in their community. This was most definitely the case for Hester Prynne. In fact, a few of the towns women believe that the magistrates "should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead"

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, is a compassionate yet riveting piece of English literature that supports the movement for equality of suppressed women during a most tumultuous time during the 1800’s. Hawthorne’s use of emotional diction and imagery throughout his novel employs a deplorable tone upon the story. It serves as a stark representation of an imaginative yet realistic example of the indifference of men and women during these changing times. Deeply held Puritanical beliefs led countless of people to believe that individuals, especially women, who committed sins of any type would never reach heaven upon their passing. Men, on the other hand, were judged less severely if accused of a crime. Hester Prynne, the

Throughout, “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne is able to enhance the plot by intricately incorporating symbols which represent a deeper meaning. One of which, is the infamous, and ambiguous, scarlet letter that lays upon the bosom of Hester Prynne. In the beginning of the book, the audience is immediately introduced to the scarlet letter as a symbol of shame and adultery. The narrator describes the Puritan society as very judgemental and harsh. Comments like, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die,” creates this negative and unwelcoming atmosphere which surrounds Hester for a majority of the book. From then on, the Puritans constantly refer to the

Nathaniel Hawthorne is the author of the classic novel the Scarlet Letter based on the Puritan Era in Massachusetts. D.H Lawrence a British writer critiques the novel and gives his opinions on the piece in a persuasive argumentative manner. He believes that the heroine of the novel is not the beloved, marvelous character we all believe she is.He uses confident literary techniques like powerful tone, abrupt syntax and classic biblical allusions to convince people that the beloved character Hester Prynne is truly a conniving adulteress who thrives off of stealing one's purity.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written amidst the 1800’s. Hawthorne was a famous American author during that time frame. He is a relative to a judge from the Salem Witch Trials, which was his Great-Great Grandfather John Hathorne. Hathorne was the only judge who did not express atonement for his crimes, which led people to dislike all the Hathorne’s. This sparked Nathaniel Hawthorne's interest in the Puritan times, which resulted in the Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne delineates Puritan standards religiously and culturally in an outstanding way. He was also an Anti-Transcendentalist which means that he believed that all humans were evil. In his novel, the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbols of the scarlet letter, Reverend Dimmesdale, and burrs to add onto the overall theme of guilt.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" is set in the early days of Puritan America. Hester Prynne, a seamstress, comes to the New World before her husband in order to prepare a place for them. During his absence, she develops a relationship with Arthur Dimmesdale, a rising minister in the newly founded Puritan community. Hester becomes pregnant. The novel is widely viewed to be a story about her trials and tribulations; however, critic Randall Steward argues that, "…Hester is not the protagonist, the chief actor, and the tragedy of the novel is not her tragedy but Arthur's. He is the persecuted one, the tempted one. He it was whom the sorrows of death encompassed…His public confession is one of

The Puritans believe that it is their job, as well as the job of the communities in which they live, to glorify God in everything they do by living holy lives. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is a novel about the struggles that Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale, have to face living in a Puritan society. Throughout the novel these three characters are faced with isolation and secret guilt. All three have to face their sins both internally and externally.

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne was set during the 1600s in a New England town during what is now known as the Puritan past of America. In the novel, the Puritan religion was not only observed but criticized as well. During this time, the Puritans were an extremely religious group of Protestants that were known for their intolerance of other religions and their strict guidelines for a righteous lifestyle that often lead to violence or cruel forms of punishment. Nathaniel Hawthorne is a perfect portrayal of a Puritan historian because he himself was born as a Puritan and witnessed first-hand the extreme pressures associated with the Puritan religion to include arguments about the Puritan society and the treatment endured within the religion. Although The Scarlet Letter was set in the 1600s, the novel was written in the 1840s and dealt with issues during the Antebellum Era specifically when it came to the Women’s Movement and the Second Great Awakening.

   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

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer in the 1800s, an anti-transcendentalist, and the great-nephew of John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne is obsessed with Puritanism and, due to being obsessed, bases all his writings on Puritan towns. All of his stories take place in New England in the 1600s, before the Salem Witch Trials; The Scarlet Letter is one of these stories. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the Wild Rosebush, Hester’s Cabin, and the sunlight and the forest to contribute to the overall theme of imperfection.

In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the narrator is critical of the citizens of Boston for blindly following religious ideology—due to the absence of separation of church and state—and harshly persecuting Hester as a result. A woman cries, “[Hester] has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute book,” emphasizes the woman’s harsh disapproval of Hester and her desire that Hester should be executed because she betrayed religious law (49). The use of words “scripture” and “statute book” implies the intimate relationship between the Bible and the government law (the statute book), suggesting that both the Bible and law determine how people should

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