Setting In Scarlet Letter

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel “The Scarlet Letter”, setting is used to portrait characters and their role in the novel. Hawthorne’s uses of setting is extremely important to completely understand the characters and how their surroundings help model their personalities. He uses the woods on the outskirts of town to connect characters with nature and the feeling of rejuvenation. He uses the center of town and the scaffold to show who in the town has the power and order. The uses of the chapel and the surrounding gardens to show the good and evil inside of characters. In the novel sin is a very punishable concept and how the prison and graveyard are portrait they are a focal point of the puritan society. How Hawthorne describes the scaffold, center of town and the people who are involved is truly a piece of large importance.
As the book begins the prison is the opening point and is described by Hawthorne in great detail. Hawthorne states the the puritans first built this “Wooden edifice, the …show more content…
Often times when Hester is in the woods Pearl is interacting with the elements of nature either with animals or flowers or the water. On one journey of the woods Pearl “Took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's.”(155). Pearl is very strongly described here, she is shown as a pure child who is one with nature, nature in a puritan community is meant to display rebirth and pureness. Pearl creates an A on her own chest to mock her mother's Symbol, this shows she is innocent and doesn’t understand the reason behind the letter. even though Pearl is seen as pure and innocent the other children in the town see her as a devil baby, but throughout the book she starts to be seen as a normal child, not just one of sin. Hawthorne uses nature to portrait Pearl because she has many similarities with