Scarlett Letter Essay

In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work , at the same time however, parallels can be drawn between the characters of The Scarlet Letter and of today’s society.

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.

The Puritans despised Hester and her symbol for her sin, and shunned her for many years even after her prison sentence. Hester could have just lived a depressed, lonely life in seclusion with her daughter Pearl, but she decided to accept her sin and wrong doing to become a mentally stronger woman. During the many years of Hester being in prison and being rejected when she was released, she practiced needlework to provide food for her and her daughter. As the people in Salem recognized her talent of her embroidery and garments, they began respecting her talent, and so the scarlet “A” that stood for “adulterer” slowly began to stand for “able.” Hester started to supply apparel for babies, ceremonies, inaugurations, and funerals. Furthermore, the Scarlet letter has another symbolic meaning. When Pearl went to the seashore, she made a green letter “A” out of seaweed – nature’s color. This was symbolic for Pearl’s sinless life so far because she hasn’t truly been introduced to sin; she still is “green” and “pure”. As for Hester, her scarlet “A” is symbolic of her many sins, for no one can avoid sin as they grow older.

The burden that the scarlet letter places on Hester shows her everlasting battle with sin in the Puritan society. Yet, the Puritans seemed to be more fascinated with on its striking qualities rather than the true representation of the letter. The scarlet letter is supposed to represent shame, but as Hester evolves the symbol of the letter becomes an emblem of strength. One writer criticizes Hester's transformation by saying, “Hester’s rise takes her from low on the line of moral value, a ‘scarlet woman’ guilty of a sin black in the eyes of the Puritans, as she becomes a sister of mercy and light” (Waggoner

The very scarlet letter from which the novel’s name is derived from is a symbol of sinning; the scarlet letter represents how Puritan society views sinning as unforgivable and something for public speculation. Hester is punished by wearing hers out for the world to see. The letter is “so fantastically embroidered” that one townswoman argues that its intricacy and design defeat the entire purpose of wearing it. The scarlet letter serves as an

First of all, the scarlet letter stands for Hester's sin. By forcing Hester to wear the letter A on her bosom, the Puritan community not only punishes this weak young woman for her adultery but labels her identity as an adulteress and immoral human being as well. "Thus the young and the pure would be taught to look at her, with the letter flaming on her chest", also "as the figure, the body and the reality of sin." And the day Hester began to wear the scarlet A on her bosom is the opening of her darkness. From that moment, people, who look at her, must notice the letter A manifest itself in the red color covering not only her bosom, but her own character. The Puritans now only see the letter A, the representation of sin, scorn and hate

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

The Scarlett letter is A thought provoking, heart wrenching book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne about human sin and judging. The setting is in Boston, Massachusetts when the colonists first started our country. The book starts out talking about A pretty woman holding a baby with a scarlet “A” on her bosom walking up to the scaffold. She has committed adultery, the book later tells us, and they are telling her to tell them who committed adultery with her; but she would not tell.

Frederick William Robertson once said, “There are three things in the world that deserve -- no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.” Ushering in the Romantic era in literature, this quote stood as the foundation for many transcendental pessimists; Nathaniel Hawthorne was no exception. As described in The Custom House, the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne heavily disapproves of his own extreme Puritan past and, in fact, heavily critiques it throughout the entire novel. However, while not directly, Hawthorne criticizes Puritan culture and ideals by exposing their sin in the community. He does this in a number of ways, but readers can plainly see that he chastises the Puritans by portraying them as religious extremists, intelligently

The Truth Behind the Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author who strives to incorporate similar aspects and ideals of the puritan society into the development of his novel, The Scarlet Letter. This style that Hawthorne uses helps me as the reader understand the feminist ideals present throughout the novel. After reading the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I started to search for feminist ideas and behaviors present leading me deeper into the meaning of The Scarlet Letter as a whole. The Scarlet Letter is a novel in which a women suffers through the feminist ideals and behaviors of society in her everyday life. Several feminist examples in The Scarlet Letter that prove that feminist ideals are present are how Hester

The novel “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in the 1850s, and takes place in the Boston, Massachusetts area during the 17th Century when Puritans were the main population. Hester Prynne, is accused of committing adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet A against her chest and care for Pearl, Her daughter who is born from the tryst. In the beginning of the novel, both Pearl and the Letter are introduced at the same time aspressed against Hester’s chest. Though she chooses to hold the child close to her and the Letter is thrust upon her, Hawthorne shows the reader how determined she is to take these symbols of sin and integrate them into her life and create her own identity.

In Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter, the Puritan society is portrayed as an inwardly and outwardly ugly group of people that followed a set of their own rules. In the very first scene, you can see how their religion and harsh attitudes start to develop. When Hester Prynne is presented in front of the whole town, the community’s reactions and comments towards her gives us a sense of what kind of people they are. Hester’s first reaction to the taunting and yelling of the crowd is the immediate instinct to hide the scarlet letter. Considering she hides the “A” by holding her “sin borne child” to her chest and covering it up, she does not do a very good job. The crowd continues to yell and taunt by telling her that they all know what she did, and she cannot hide from it. When Hester realizes that she cannot hide her sin with another sin, she turns a new direction and, instead, stands proud. Later in the punishment, the crowd begins to try and convince her to say who the father is. She is very reluctant to do so, and will clearly not give up the name, but the crowd keeps trying. The women are even more brutal than the men. They shout things like “this is not enough...put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne 's forehead...she should be put to death!” The endless shaming by the townspeople is an example of the Puritans’ seeming lack of empathy, or sympathy, towards someone who sins. Hester is not the only one who is being

First, The Scarlet Letter is an example of how society’s impossible moral codes negatively affect the people and cause them to lash out and be viewed as beasts. The Puritan society expects too much in people. For example, everyone is expected to be completely pure, but no one, not even the ministers, can live up to the standards. When Hester

The scarlet letter could also be looked as a quality of Hester's character. This quality defined the views of the townspeople regarding Hester, and in time also changed in meaning. It was at the beginning of the book that the letter embroidered on her bosom only stood for adultery, and the common consensus of the people, in respects to Hester's actions, was "this woman has shamed us all and ought to die" (50). In time, and through the actions of Hester Prynne, the letter 'A' upon her chest was understood to be something different, and "many people refused to interpret the