The Scarlet Letter Transcendentalism

| -This rose-bush represents Pearl afterwards in Hester’s life. The prison reflects on the image of Hester where Pearl gives joy and comfort to Hester to bear the weight of the sin in her soul.

Hawthorne describes the door of the jail, as well as the rose bush to the side of it. I feel as if this is supposed to represent what Hester is about the experience: the harsh Puritan judgment, or the old door, along with the acceptance of certain people along her path, as represented by the rose bush.

One of the most important characteristics of the American Transcendentalist Movement is self-reliance. Due to the movement’s embrace of Romanticism, the importance of individuality and self-reliance are central to the transcendentalist belief system. This notion of self-reliance and individualism outweighing custom and tradition is seen many times throughout Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester asserts her independence as evidenced in the following description of her decision to make her punishment more bearable: “On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done…that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore…” (Hawthorne 47). Hester’s audacious decision to pardon the strict societal norms of the Puritan community that surrounded her and to embellish the epitome of her sin marks the beginning to her lifelong journey of self-acceptance. At the conclusion of her journey, the narrator comments on Hester’s decision to remain in her hometown: “But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too” (Hawthorne 258). As

In the first scene that is set by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the Scarlet Letter, there is a piece of land that is shared by a cemetery and a jail. Growing by the side of the prison is a wild rosebush. “It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.” The rosebush foreshadows the coming of trial, but also the goodness that can bloom from it. (Chptr 1)

Not only symbolism but imagery too, has a critical role in the Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne is successfully able to describe in detail the prison when it is first described in the beginning of the novel. From the door that is “heavily timbered with oak” to the building with a “beetle-browed and gloomy front,” Hawthorne successfully describes the place of darkness and sin. Oddly enough, in front of the prison, there is a rose bush. The rose bush can be used to describe a concept of peace or

Hester was once a transcendentalist, but has failed to transcend upon being shamed. She fails to transcend due to her conforming to the Puritan tradition, her lack of simplicity, and her lack of self-reliance, basic aspects of transcendentalism. Though she seems like a transcendentalist for similar reasons, such as the A being a symbol of her individualism or the fact that she lives alone in a cottage makes her self-reliant. But she wouldn’t be doing these things if she had choice. She would’ve loved to have been free of the letter A, and actually move into a house with Dimmesdale, but she didn’t have a choice.

On September 6, 1992, a group of moose-hunters discovered the remains of Chris McCandless’ body, which, through abject starvation, had withered and decayed in the unforgiving Alaskan bush. Upon discovery, Chris’ corpse became a symbol of misguided passions and misinterpreted values and inspired many to explore and document his story of demise. In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, the story of Chris, attempting to achieve ultimate freedom and independence is told. On this journey, it is evident that Chris McCandless’ shunning of society was unjustified because he took the transcendentalist ideas expressed in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance and radically misinterpreted them. Because of his analytical error, McCandless was unable to attain freedom and independence, despite his support for these values; egotism overcame individualism, and McCandless’ hubris and extreme risk-taking resulted in foolish isolationism and rendered his journey useless.

She would often seclude Pearl from the world outside of their backyard. Immediately, one can associate Pearl with the rosebush in nature because of the comfort she tries to provide her mother. Pearl was also referred to as a flittering young bird. A reader can interpret this image as Hester seeing Pearl's freedom. Hester realizes that she will never regain her freedom.

While the exploration or exploitation—take your pick—of the American west was just beginning to flourish, two more of our Past Environmental Heroes—Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau—were sitting, thinking, and writing in the newly-formed Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As the original transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau believed that there was much more to life than working feverishly and accruing wealth. Their thoughts and words were the first "cries in the wilderness" about living simply and compatibly with the natural world and their words are still inspiring millions of people around the planet who want to make peace

The highly religious philosophy of Transcendentalism developed as the response of a group of people who felt that it was unnecessary to practice a religion (and live a life) that was based on fear. The first Transcendentalists set out to create a more liberal way of life that allowed for personal growth, justice and freedom. To truly understand the implications of Transcendentalism and why Transcendentalists believed what they did, one must first look at the root of Transcendentalism, Unitarianism.

“This world is but a canvas for our imagination.” This quote from Henry Thoreau, writer of Walden, is just a glimpse in the possibility of what we can do with our lives. In the Dead Poets Society, many of the students exert certain traits of transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is the progressive ideology that divinity fuses into nature and humanity, and that to progress we need this moral divinity inside ourselves and to find that purity. Dead Poets Society demonstrates Nonconformity, Spark of Divinity, and Respect for Nature, which all are traits of transcendentalism.

"Those who before had known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped" (39).  Hester, who is being openly condemned for her sins, Hawthorne describes ironically.  To the Puritans, Hester should be dim and obscure, surrounded by darkness and evil.  However, Hawthorne instead describes her shining beauty and the godliness she makes out of her sin and shame by exposing it to the public.  The Puritans condemn Hester for her sin and look towards her as evil, yet she is exposing her sin to the sunshine, to the public, something that Hawthorne praises in the novel.  "A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!  Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!" (40).  The Puritans feel that they are hurting Hester Prynne by exposing her sin, yet it is only making her stronger and making her grow.

The first chapter of Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne describes a rose-bush in front of an old wooden prison door. Telling the reader that the rose symbolize some sweet moral blossom to the condemned. I can surmise that the author is foreshadowing the events that will take place throughout the story. The second chapter begins with women gossiping about a young lady named Hester Prynne and the consequence the magistrates decided on. The woman calls her a hussy, another women declares that the magistrates should have put a brand on her forehead, believing that having her wear the A on the bodice of her gown wouldn’t be enough. The woman’s crudity towards Hester was suprising, knowing these same women probably talked to her before she perpetrated her crime,

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

Although Puritanism, Romanticism and Transcendentalism do not coexist peacefully, these almost worldview kind of people groups are deeply embedded into three fictional characters from the book, The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This enthralling and rich classic which takes place in Boston Massachusetts during the time of Puritanism gives the reader not only a taste of the Puritans and their staunch attitude, but also of a less common way of thinking and behaving which is expressed through a certain character in the book. The three main characters in this book are all diversely different but are bound tightly together by a long kept secret and discovering their methods of thinking and acting upon