Holidays In The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter takes place in a town inhabited by Puritans in the seventeenth century. These Puritans were known to be strictly religious, basing their laws solely on spiritual values. However, they seemed to have slightly strayed from their religious principles when it came to holidays. The reader can see this clearly in the novel’s second chapter, where the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, describes the whole Puritan community setting aside a day solely to punish one of their neighbors because she had committed a sin. The act of setting aside a time for most of the town to come and look down upon one of their fellow sinners is already a curious one, but for a town whose law is based on a religion that encourages forgiveness, this scene is made all the more interesting. Because of this scene and others like it in Hawthorne’s novel, we can …show more content…
To confirm this assumption, one must first realize that the holidays in The Scarlet Letter are un-holy in manner. Throughout the novel, the Puritans hold two of their own holidays. The first would be the initial punishment of Hester Prynne, where she was forced to stand before a crowd of disapproving Puritans that had all