Scarlett Letter Essay

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.

The Scarlet Letter Introduction The Scarlet Letter is a classic tale of sin, punishment, and revenge. It was written in 1850 by the famous American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It documents the lives of three tragic characters, each of whom suffer greatly because of his or her sins. Shot Plot The story begins with Hester Prynne, a resident of a small Puritan community, being led from the town jailhouse to a public scaffold where she must stand for three hours as punishment for adultery. She must also wear a scarlet A on her dress for the rest of her life as part of her punishment. As she is led to the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd complain that

A common theme throughout literature is religion and how the author feels about his or her faith. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses rhetorical devices to draw comparisons between characters and events in The Scarlet Letter and Biblical figures and accounts. A few of the devices found in this novel that connect it to the Bible are symbolism, paradox, allusions, and characterization. It is important to first look at the characters and how they are described through characterization.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (originally spelled “Hathorne';) was born to Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne and Nathaniel Hathorne in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804. He was the second child and the only son of the Hathornes’ three children. When Nathaniel was four, his father came down with yellow fever and died in Surinam, Dutch Guiana. After his father’s death, Mrs. Hathorne moved her family into her parents’ house in Salem (Shepherd iv). At the age of nine, Nathaniel Hathorne suffered an injury to his legs that kept him from attending school for about two years. This injury was a blessing in disguise. During his recovery, Nathaniel read many books and developed an appreciation for the English classics. Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress and Spenser’s Faerie Queene seem to have been his favorite books because he had two cats named Beelzebub and Apollyon, characters from Bunyan (Martin 17). “Hawthorne later named his first child Una, after Spenser’s heroine'; (Martin 17).

The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the nephew of John Hathorne. During the Salem Witch Trials, the only judge that did not apologize for the remorseless and cruel acts that were put upon many men and women was in fact John Hathorne. Nathaniel changed his last name from Hathorne to Hawthorne in an attempt to disassociate himself from his uncle. John Hathorne is the reason why Nathaniel Hawthorne is obsessed with the puritan times. Hawthorne lived in the 1800s, but the setting of the novel is based before the Salem Witch Trials were held in the 1600s. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the scarlet letter, Dimmesdale, and burrs to contribute to the overall theme of guilt.

Thanks to his uncles, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine. His uncles paid for his college tuition there. He attended the college when he was 17 years old and spent 4 years there. “At the college, he met and made friends with Franklin Piece and Henry Wadsworth (Biography)”. “While he was attending college, Hawthorne missed his family so much and returned home to Salem after graduation (Biography)”. He stayed in Salem for 12 years. He came back to Salem not only to spend time with his family, but to spend time studying puritan history and develop his writing skills.“During his 12 year stay in Salem, Hawthorne wrote a few books. He wrote a novel called

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the most contemporary American writers of all time, was the great nephew of Judge Hathorne. Who was one of the prime judges of the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. Although Nathaniel hated his uncle for his efforts during the horrific trials, he became obsessed with his ideals of puritanism. Through these ideals he became a anti-transcendentalist; someone who believes that naturally we are born evil and society is the only thing that keeps us from provoking chaos. Therefore, Hawthorne’s novels, The Minister’s Black Veil and The Scarlet Letter were both set in puritan towns in the 1600’s, even though he was alive in the 18th century. The Scarlet Letter, which Hawthorne is best known for, is a fictional story

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 and died in 1864. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His father died young and he lived in with his strict mother while he was a child. His great-great grandfather was a strict judge in the Salem Witch Trials. The family felt they had been cursed by their connection to this sad event. It also happens that his family had been a very wealthy/ influential family during Puritan times and was still well-off, so he was the beneficiary of these Puritan wrongs. Therefore, much of Hawthorne’s writing deals with his shame over his connection to the Puritans. It was hard for him to make money, so he had many government-related jobs. He hated Salem but he had to stay because he had to make money. He

Adultery was a moral wrongdoing and transgression in 1850. Hawthorne captured the essence of the events that could occur in any Puritan woman’s life after committing this sin from his own perspective of the topic, Hawthorne did this within a writing of his. The Scarlet Letter was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The Scarlet Letter is about the life of Hester Prynne and the other characters after she played a part in committing the sin of Adultery. Hester partakes in moral trials throughout the novel too, some even concerning her daughter Pearl. The Scarlet Letter reflects on the toll that secrets can play of a person, through Dimmesdale and the effects of a person 's decisions on others around them. The novel also speaks of how

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man who was both plagued and absorbed by the legacy of the Puritans in New England. He was related to John Hathorne, a Puritan judge during the infamous Salem Witch trials of 1692. In The Scarlet Letter, his fictional account of mid-17th century Boston presents an opportunity to examine different themes commonly associated with Puritans. Particularly the nature of sin, personal identity and the repression of natural urges are themes that appear repeatedly through the novel. While his account of this time period may not be completely historically accurate, it is indicative of the persistent thematic influence of Puritan culture on American and New England society.

The Scarlett Letter happened during a time period in the seventeenth-century called Puritanism. Puritanism was a strict religious culture. Hester Prynne was punished by the Puritans for committing adultery. The Puritans made Hester wear a Scarlett letter “A”. This was to shame Hester for her sin and mock her in front of all of the townspeople.

Middle class women in the early nineteenth century became known only for their “passionless” sexuality and the ability to bear children (Myers-Shirk). While married men had the option to impregnate any woman they chose, women had the primary responsibility of raising the children while remaining faithful. During this era, common practice dictated that only women would face prosecution for infidelity or else face charges of a serious crime (Mawa). Society’s frame of mind during this time served to place men at the top of the “gender hierarchy” until, later in the century (Myers-Shirk). The notion that women received unjust treatment as compared to men also existed in the literature of that era. The Scarlett Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates the disparity of equality at the time. In this book, the author writes of a woman, Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and bore a child out of wedlock. Hester 's punishment handed down by the church resulted in incarceration followed by parading her through the town in an effort to shame her for her misdeeds (Hawthorne).

The Scarlett Letter is a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, (but taking place in the mid-1600s), in which he exposes the ideas of legalism as well as the effects of sin in Puritan Boston, Massachusetts. The novel is based around the life of protagonist, Hester Prynne, a woman found guilty of adultery. This act of adultery ended in pregnancy and in order to shame her, a red letter “A” is placed on her clothing so that everyone knows of the sin she committed. While being shamed Hester is wheedled into confessing the identity of the father of her child, which she refuses to do.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American writer known for his part in the transcendentalist literary movement. Born July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne Sr and Elizabeth Manning, he later chose to alter his last name in an attempt to distinguish himself from the history his family held in the Salem witch trials. His father died at a very young age, so Nathaniel was raised solely by his mother. In a quote kept from his adolescent years, Hawthorne states, “I do not want to be a doctor and live by men 's diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So, I don 't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author." However, in 1825, Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College, earning a degree in a non-literature field of study. In 1838, he became acquainted with a Miss Sophia Peabody. They were both solitary characters and fell madly in love into a mildly reclusive life. In 1841, Hawthorne resigned from his position at Boston Custom House to participate in the transcendentalist movement’s experimental Brook Farm. He joined in hopes to make enough money to marry Sophia. After a year, Hawthorne dropped it and went on to be wed in the home of Sophia’s parents. Soon after, the two moved to Concord, Massachusetts to begin their lives together. As a member of the American transcendentalists, Hawthorne became close friends with authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville. Although both Nathaniel and Sophia