Anne Hutchinson Importance Of Shame

Shame Shaming is a very effective tool but it can produce dangerous and undesirable results, and therefore should not be used commonly in our modern developed society, although it may still apply in some situations.

While shaming is an effective tool, it should not be used because it can yield unpredictable, undesirable, and even dangerous results. Anne Hutchinson, a Puritan woman who lived in colonial times, publicly questioned and challenged mainstream Puritan ideals. During this time a great societal importance was placed on religion and the establishment of the church as a governing force, and therefore any attempts to undermine Puritanism were taken very seriously. As punishment for her outspoken disagreement with the church Hutchinson was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and shamed

Anne Hutchinson thereafter served as an example of why the church shouldn’t be doubted, effectively preventing further incidents in the community. In essence, the importance of the community’s wellbeing greatly outweighed the importance of Hutchinson’s individual wellbeing. Hutchinson was allowed to move away from Massachusetts without further punishment, but this was not the case for Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s shame-focused novel, “The Scarlet Letter”. In this famous story Prynne is forced to wear an embroidered “A” on her clothing as punishment for committing adultery. As a result she is estranged by her entire community and seemingly doomed to a live a life of grief and solitude. Similar to Hutchinson, Hester Prynne served as a warning against sin, however in Prynne’s situation this came at the much greater cost of her very livelihood. To put the topic of shame into a more modern context, a girl was recently shamed through social media by her own father. An article by David Perry details the incident and goes on to state that the girl, “flung herself off a bridge onto a