Scarlet Letter Essay: Conformity And Society

There is not one of us who has not experienced, after some fashion, the constraints imposed upon us by this entity that in reality is us, but we dub society. We are expected to be a certain way, to act in a way that preserves the status quo. To do this, however, to act in a way that pleases ‘society’, we must each put on a patina of conformity, concealing our individual differences in order to attain the goal of a more stable and permanent civilization. And in so doing, we indeed become society’s enforcers. We expect of others this same faux authenticity, this same conformity. And lo, civility and society has transformed man from a reasoning and thoughtful agent of his own desires to an unthinking hypocrite of the highest order. In the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses the central protagonist, Hester Prynne, as an example of one who has decided to shed off this second skin of societal conformity, and leads a life that is truer as a result. In this way, Hawthorne conveys the message that while pursuing individuality might, or does, lead to a life of ostracization and deprivation of …show more content…
It is said that she is a ‘malefactress’, deserving of ‘a hot iron [to the] forehead.’(78) When she first exits the prison she was held in for her crime of adultery, we see her ‘¬¬¬¬¬clasp the infant closely to her bosom’(80) so that the symbol of her malfeasance, the scarlet letter she wears upon her chest, would be obscured and she would fit into the Puritanical paradigm of normal. However, she ceases trying to conform and wears her A as a badge of her individuality, and simultaneously Hawthorne elevates her above the populace of the town by placing her on a scaffold. In this way, Hawthorne insinuates that her assertion of individuality leads to her transcendence, both literally and figuratively, to a station above that of the rest of