Theme Of Romanticism In The Scarlet Letter

Individualism, emotion and the purity and simplicity of nature are at the foundation of American Romanticism. Essays such as Thoreau’s Walden and Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” call on humans to look inward and avoid conformity in order to find meaning and purpose in life. Nathaniel Hawthorne is also sympathetic to these ideals, but in The Scarlet Letter, he conveys them in the format of a novel where one of his main characters, Hester Prynne, is surrounded by rigid and unforgiving Puritanism in seventeenth century Boston. Through Hester’s struggles, Hawthorne paints a human and personal perspective of Romanticism, but, rather than using The Scarlet Letter simply to echo Thoreau and Emerson, Hawthorne also uses Hester’s story to condemn Puritanism as heartless, unreasonable and unnatural.

Romanticism is categorized as “a preference for simplicity and naturalness, a love of plain feelings and truth to common place reality, especially as found in natural scenes”. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an anti-transcendentalist and believed in the dark side of man, hence his dark romantic novel The Scarlet Letter. This allegorical novel depends heavily on symbol and character. The novel is chock full of symbolic dimension of images, characters, and descriptions. The Scarlet Letter defines the American Romanticist movement while using symbolic characters and places that give the book seemingly two different stories. The first story denotes the story going on in the book, including the characters. The other story has symbols that speak on

The scarlet letter can be interpreted in many ways. Seven years have passed since Hester’s sin and a lot has changed in her life. The scarlet letter upon her chest has evolved as well. As time has gone on, townsfolk “said that it meant ‘Able’” (Hawthorne, 158) Furthermore, they look at Hester as a woman of good deeds, a woman who is able to do good things for other people. She has helped out the community in many ways and their harsh views have decreased. They even look at her as a person. “who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comforting to the afflicted!” (Hawthorne, 159). The people in the town have looked at Hester in a more positive light and have shown that time has healed wounds. However, Hester’s views of herself have

With a “tall…figure of perfect elegance…and dark and abundant hair,” Hester has but one fault about her: the “scarlet letter…upon her bosom” (Hawthorne 44). Destined to wear the letter A on her chest for the rest of her natural life, Hester recognizes that this is not only her punishment, but also a reminder to every one of her adulterous actions. With the act of adultery being Hester’s only known sin, thus far, the reader is left wondering just how deeply it will affect her. Coming with a larger price than she could have ever imagined, Hester’s sin essentially makes her an outcast and “in all her intercourse with society…there [is] nothing that [makes] her feel as if she belong[s]” (Hawthorne 67). After her sinful act is brought into the open, Hester is isolated within her own realm, with only her young daughter to accompany her. This sense of isolation builds a metaphorical barrier between the people of Hester’s community and herself, despite her attempts to integrate back into their sphere. Following seven long years of this lifestyle, it seems that Hester finally is accepted by her community, and shockingly enough, “many people refuse to interpret the scarlet letter A by its original signification [, and instead,] they sa[y] that it

     In Hawthorne's revered novel The Scarlet Letter, the use of Romanticism plays an important role in the development of his characters. He effectively demonstrates individualism in Hester to further our understanding of the difficulties of living in the stern, joyless world of Puritan New England.  It is all gloom and doom.  If the sun ever shines, one could hardly notice.  The entire place seems to be shrouded in black.  The people of this society were stern, and repressed natural human impulses and emotions than any society before or since.  But for this reason specifically, emotions began bubbling and eventually boiled over, passions a novelist

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a great piece of literature. It explores problems in society that still occur today. It is fascinating to see how the Puritans punished adultery then and the lack of punishment of adultery in our society now. It shows how all the characters affect Hester and what everyone does in the community. It shows that no one is exempt from any type of crime in that town. In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, he analyzes the characters of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Pearl.

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne consist of many hidden literary aspects and devices to help convey a multitude of themes. Hawthorne introduces the lives of Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale as they find themselves in difficult situations full of right and wrong decisions. Hester, an adulterous forever marked with the scarlet letter ‘A’, is married to Chillingworth who makes it his duty to find and torture the man responsible for his wife’s infidelity, while Dimmesdale, the town's minister, has trouble revealing his own sin. Through the use of the literary devices diction and tone, Hawthorne presents the theme that the choices you make today, shape your life tomorrow in only either a positive or negative angle.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne captures the conflict Hester Prynne faces as she struggles to cope with the various forms of guilt and the challenges that life presents her with. At the beginning of chapter five, Hester Prynne is out of jail and is contemplating deeply about her past and present. This deep contemplation marks the beginning of a ‘new’ Hester—one who is thinking critically about the choices she must make in life in order to survive as a ‘pure’ soul in an otherwise rigid society of Puritans. Through the author’s diction, symbolism and literary devices such as juxtaposition, personification, anaphora, visual imagery and irony, readers begin to explore the conflict in Hester’s mind and the message that amidst conflict,

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’s The Scarlet Letter explores how the human condition and sin clash. Placing the characters in Puritan Boston, Hawthorne reveals the hypocrisy of a theocratic government, especially when it comes to punishment. Hester Prynne has committed adultery, a hideous sin which coincides as a malicious crime in such a government. The punishment consists of public humiliation branded on her chest until she dies. This type of government would lead anyone to despair, however, Hester does not allow society to decide her identity. The punishment of wearing the scarlet letter affects Hester Prynne’s personality and physical appearance, allowing her to grow as an individual, even though the people of Boston considered her to be an

The Scarlet Letter is a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne during the nineteenth century. The novel is set in the seventeenth century Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Scarlet Letter tells the story of Hester Prynne who has an affair. Prynne is awarded a scarlet letter “A” to show the public she committed adultery. In the novel, Nathaniel Hawthorne presents us with Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, characters who possess sinful characteristics throughout the novel; yet during the time the novel is set (1600’s), each of the characters have experienced punishments appropriate for the time.

The Scarlet Letter, a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a didactic tale of one woman who defies the rules of early Puritan society along with the struggles she endured. Hester Prynne, a woman who had an affair with Reverend Dimmesdale and as a result conceives Pearl, was chastised because of the affair and is then made in outcast in society. Hester was seen as a sinner and in result reprimanded for this with imprisonment and then the letter being made an outcast by being forced to stitch a scarlet letter A into her clothing, and forced to live outside of town in the woods completely secluded. As the novel develops Hawthorne explores the sin and hypocrisy of the Puritan lifestyle, and uses symbolism to demonstrate the isolation of Hester and Pearl.

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne stands as one of the most famous works in the history of American literature. Set in Puritan Boston during the mid-1600’s, the renowned tale presents the story of a young, beautiful woman, Hester Prynne, who commits adultery against her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who was presumed dead. Due to her pregnancy, Hester is forced to admit her sin. After giving birth to a daughter, named Pearl, Hester is forced to stand on a scaffold in the center of town for three hours and endure heckling from the townspeople. Furthermore, she must wear a scarlet letter “A” that stands for “Adulteress” for the rest of her life. In the events to follow each major character shows glimpses of an evil nature that drives their stories. In The Scarlet Letter author Nathaniel Hawthorne weaves the theme of evil into the lives of Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Pearl Prynne.

A Puritans FollyNever forget that only dead fish swim with the stream. -Malcolm Muggeridge. This famous quote justifies that to be an individual, one must break from society and think for himself, and only when he has done this, is he truly alive. Nathaniel Hawthornes novel The Scarlet Letter is about a courageous woman, Hester Prynne, and her struggle to split from society in order to live the loving life she has always wanted. By the use of symbolism, Hawthorne is effectively able to portray the forest, which promotes individuality, and the town, which rewards conformity. The clothes portrayed by the Puritans, the town, are dull and plain whereas those expressed by the Romantics, the forest, are vivid and eccentric. Also, the various

Romanticism is a style of art and literature that was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where the main focal points are on imagination and emotion. There is an emphasis on beauty and the individual. This style of writing is reflected in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The purpose of the introductory chapter is to introduce the narrator of the rest of the story. It shows the narrator's value in cultures and family history. This chapter also provides the reader with background history of the narrator. As for the connection between Hawthorne’s family history and his attitude toward The Custom House, Hawthorne expresses that he believes that his Puritan background is both a positive and a negative thing. He states that