Puritanism In The Scarlet Letter, By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne depicts the social repression of the society in the 17th Century, which involved the use of psychic repression to ensure control over the subjects. The law prohibited things that were perfectly fictitious about people’s instincts and desire in order to persuade them into believing that they had intentions consistent with the restricted fiction. As a result, the law is able to achieve the intention to make the unconscious guilty. An example of psychic repression is the casual plot of Hester‘s disobedience and obedience between the transcendental law of erotic aspirations and the law of marriage with its own sanctification. Further, Hawthorne suggests that sin was one of the fundamental issues of Puritanism. It was a social aspect that

In the novel, Hawthorne criticizes the “Puritan allegorization of experience” that considers all sins to be equal, and denies the sufficient evaluation of the specifics of moral behavior. In addition, the notion of knowledge is socialized through this method, as evidenced by the “A” in Scarlet, which is the principal illustration of Puritan signification, and seemingly allegorizes Hester‘s being. Hawthorne significantly incorporates the interpretations of the “A” in the novel, which unsettles the allegorical vehicle as well as meaning rather than degenerates into meaningless perspectivism. This undermines the Puritan autocracy‘s symbolic equation of “A” with adultery, therefore, humanizing and de-allegorizing Hester‘s being as well as moral complexity. Throughout the novel, the meaning of “A” continually become clear with the representation of several positive senses helping the reader to understand characters, especially Hester (Imene

It distinguishes the progressive development of the community that result from individual resistance and questioning of society authority. Hester’s speculation about the society seems to give a new meaning to the implications of the society-defined rules. In addition, Hawthorne criticizes the Puritan morality that characterized the society in which he lived. In the novel, Hawthorne identifies the limitations that religion and society set against self-reliance and actualization through moral and social codes that defined people’s expectations (Imene