Repression In The Scarlet Letter

Despite the isolation, Hester supports herself and Pearl with nothing but her inner strength. She is able to deal with the negativity from the townspeople and the local government, and is even able to be honest and compassionate in ways such as acknowledging her sin, keeping the identity of her

In the novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth face the burden of making paramount decisions. Each character chooses to make bold choices with substantial effects which determine how the story plays out. First, Hester chooses to not expose Pearl’s father. Second, Dimmesdale refrains from revealing himself. Lastly, Chillingworth chooses to hide his true identity as Hester’s husband. The end results of the antecedent decisions influence the shape and structure of the novel.

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne exhibits how three very unique characters are evidently brought together by the sins that they have perpetrated and how they manage to perform acts of atonement in the puritanical Boston society. Hester Prynne sins by committing the shocking transgression of adultery. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who as well engages in adultery with Hester, abandons her and their daugher because of his own cowardice and hypocrisy. Roger Chillingworth grows to become a maleficent being who tries to corrupt the very soul of Reverend Dimmesdale. Although Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale do sin greatly, it is Roger Chillingworth who sins to the most ferocious degree.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in 1849. This novel won him much fame and a good reputation as a writer. In writing The Scarlet Letter, Hawethorne was creating a form of fiction he called the psychological romance. A psychological romance is a story that contains all of the conventional trappings of a typical romance, but deeply portrays humans in conflict with themselves. The Scarlet Letter won Hawthorne great critical acclaim, and even today the book remains on the best seller list. The Scarlet Letter is so popular maybe because generations of readers can interpret it and see subtle meanings that somewhat reflect their own lives. Each of us, has

Historically, Puritanism was a popular way of life, playing a major role in English history during the first half of the 17th century. Back in that time a man named Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was a well known writer, had a history of creating stories about Puritan society. Although he wrote about the Puritans, he most certainly did not favor them, and this has become obvious throughout the storyline. In the uptight and dismal culture that Hawthorne paints for us in The Scarlet Letter, his distaste, annoyance, and utter hostility towards the Puritans in this time exemplify Hawthorne’s use of diction and symbols to persuade readers to dislike Puritans and their culture.

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a novel set in an early 17th century American Puritanical colony, highlights the struggle between societal conformation and moral independence. Matthieson quite accurately contends that Hawthorne intentionally conveyed the novel’s fundamental themes through their association with distinct locations around the Massachusetts Bay Colony; expression of such themes are most evident in places such as the marketplace, the scaffold, and the forest. The marketplace and the scaffold are similar in that they both often serve as focal points of Puritanical pressures, but the forest provides reprieve from these tensions. The forest symbolizes freedom that is forbidden by society due to the fact that it is described

The scarlet letter is a symbolic figure which significantly contributes to the development of the theme sin results in knowledge by transforming the characters Hester and Dimmesdale. The scarlet letter, which represents the adultery the sin committed by her and Dimmesdale and serves as a ignominy contributes to the theme development, for the reason being Hester and Dimmesdale obtain knowledge through suffering and alienation brought by the sin. Furthermore, as a result of the scarlet letter it led to Hester acquiring knowledge that she is confident in her identity and that being human means to be confident about oneself. In addition, the symbolic figure of the scarlet letter led to the transformation of Dimmesdale, which resulted in the development

The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era, adultery was taken as a very serious sin, and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin, their lives change, Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery, and she is constantly being tortured and is thought of as less than a person. Dimmesdale walks around with his sin kept as secret, because he never admits his sin, his mental state is changing, and the sin degrades his well-being. Chillingworth

He wishes he could speak a sermon that would express to the community that “I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!”(189). He struggles to do so, and whenever he gives a sermon, he cannot push himself to tell the truth. He is too frightened of what the community’s reaction would be, and what would happen to him to be able to say the truth. When Dimmesdale finally attempts to reveal his sins, at the same scaffold at which Hester did, he is joined by Hester and Pearl. By standing there in the middle of the night, he will not have to explain to anyone why he is associating with Hester and Pearl, and Pearl brings this to his attention, asking him “Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?” (195) Which he responds to by saying “Nay; not so, my little Pearl!” (195). Even though he finally accepts that he should be part of Hester and Pearl’s life and, feels “a tumultuous rush of new life, other than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart” (195) when up on the scaffold with them, he refuses to act on the love he receives from them, forcing himself to suffer

Hawthorne’s work takes America’s Puritan past as its subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses the material to the greatest effect. The Puritans were

In the stories of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the antagonist characters display parallel story lines through their searches for the enemy. Roger Chillingworth, the former husband of Hester Prynne and the antagonist of The Scarlet Letter, works against his wife in order to find her untold second lover. Frankenstein is a contrasting story in which an unnamed monster is the antagonist towards his human creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Yet despite quite different story lines, the two characters possess traits that exibit parallels between them. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth displays the startling passionate characteristics of an unwavering drive to seek out his foe, madness as his focus on his search takes over his entire being, and terrible anguish when his task is unexpectedly over, all of which are reflected in the daemon created at the hand of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein.

In the Puritan society the outlandish mindset of the leaders caused more harm than good with the witch trials in Salem to the events mentioned in The Scarlet Letter. Sin and evil the new world cloud the vision of the citizens, yet they are two separate actions and have different definitions. Hawthorne explains the difference between the two in the novel and also shows off his famous skill of questioning a society’s rules, regulations, and social structure. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his writing style of ambiguity, and ornate word choice to relay his opinion of the puritan society. Characters, quotes, and symbols give us a snapshot of the time and thoughts on events and ideas during the era. Hawthorne’s characters are a

In The Scarlet Letter, the perception of sin deviates from person to person. The deviation occurs on the severity of the sin that was committed and who committed the sin. Focusing on Hester and Dimmesdale, it is easy to compare the consequences of coping with the perception of their sins, on a private and a public level. The outcome of dealing with their sin is extremely different. The theme of morality affects Hester and Dimmesdale as well. They have varying levels of morality and this changes during the course of the novel.

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