The Scarlet Letter Essay

Puritanical Mores in The Scarlet Letter In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a young, female adulterer residing in a 17th century Puritan community faces public shame for her sin by wearing a scarlet letter A on her chest, leading her to support herself and her daughter single handedly, which reflects the inability of the various Catholic followers to escape their social expectations and follow individual will. Pearl, Hester’s daughter, metaphorically represents the purity from the…

Born and raised in Massachusetts, author Nathaniel Hawthorne formulates The Scarlet Letter through the comfort and familiarity of his childhood home. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in the seventeenth-century, Hawthorne unravels the themes of corruption and sin in humanity through the character of Hester Prynne, otherwise known as the town adulterer. After conceiving her daughter, Pearl, through a forbidden affair, society alienates Hester as she brawls to conquer her…

Ambiguity of The Scarlet Letter,” he suggests that The Scarlet Letter is ambiguous and unclear, drawing upon the duality of Hawthorne's life and writing to defend this. He also argues that the novel bears both a feministic theme and an anti-feministic Puritan theme. Lastly, he states that the novel serves as an allegory to Puritan society and to the Mechanistic struggle, which is the fight for dominance between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil. Chase argues that The Scarlet Letter is like a…

his time such as Edgar Allan Poe, Joyce Carol Oates, and many others. He has wrote many different pieces, however his most famous one is The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlet Letter remains popular today, it is taught in several different schools across the United States. There are even movies, such as “Easy A: that use the concept of adultery and the scarlet letter, based off of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, to make a comedy. However, today adultery is much more widely accepted in society than it was…

A prominent theme, not only in The Scarlet Letter, but also Society would be innocence and sin. “A pure hand needs no glove to cover it” (Hawthorne 143,) while a guilty man cowards in the shadows, fearful of the impending consequences. Hester is notoriously known around town as an adulteress…

the power of personal desire and the power of a community are both mighty, near the closure of the novel Hawthorne confesses that the power of a Puritan community can not be bested by the power of personal desire. Even at the beginning of The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne makes it obvious that Hester is undergoing a battle between the Puritan community and her personal desire. In Chapter two, for the sin that Hester had previously committed, she is given an infant, another human being, as one of her…

Many authors use symbolism to portray themes throughout a novel. This occurred in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlet Letter. The book took place during the Puritan time period which lasted from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. The Scarlet Letter is about the main character, Hester Prynne, who commited the crime of adultery. She was publicly shame punished by the community for the felony which she was involved in. The symbols used in this novel were crucial in reinforcing the central…

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her clothing in order to broadcast to the community that she has sinned. Throughout the novel the letter’s meaning begins to change. While it originally stood for “Adulterer”, it has begun to stand for “Able” instead, due to Hester’s acceptance of her sin and talent in embroidery. In the beginning of the novel after Hester is convicted and forced to wear the “A”, she is entirely shunned and scorned…

puritan world view is taken up and treated by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter? The Scarlet Letter is an indictment on the follies of the puritans featuring the rigid values and beliefs of the society. Hawthorne criticizes various aspects of the puritan confraternity through the lives of the characters and the punishsment one is made to undergo because of the sin committed. Hawthorne took the puritan view seriously in the scarlet letter by depicting the gender inequality, hypocrisy of government…

What Makes Pearl a Symbol A symbol is something that stands for something else, something real that stands for or suggests another thing that cannot itself be pictured. Set in a seventeenth century Puritan settlement in Boston, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, introduces the reader to a symbol embodied in the character Pearl. Hawthorne’s story is about a woman named Hester Prynne, the protagonist who has committed and was punished for adultery, which resulted in the birth of her…