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Hawthorne and puritanism
Sin in the the scarlet letter
Hawthorne and puritanism
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Nathaniel Hawthorne resisted the idea that humanity had divine potential and acknowledged the reality of evil. Hawthorne believed that every society needed to have a jail and grave yard, “ The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison” (2331). He thought that people are naturally evil and sin so a jail was needed to keep evil people and influence away from society. Hawthorne’s beliefs are seen in The Scarlet Letter. The reoccurring theme of “the power of blackness” and the uneven balance of transcendental and puritan views are apparent throughout the novel.
“The power of blackness” brings out the sin and the worst in all of us including the people we least expect to be evil. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and the minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, have secret meetings leading to an affair in the forest. As a result of their affair, a child is born. Since Hester is the mother, she cannot hide the fact that she is the mother of the child or that she has had an affair and is punished with jail time and a scarlet letter pinned to her bosom that she must wear for the rest of her life. However, the minister’s sin remains a secret. Although Hester and Dimmesdale’s love and passion are natural compared to the relationship of Hester and Chillingworth, an arranged marriage to a much older man, their love and affair is still a sin.
The sins of Hester and Dimmesdale bring out the darkness and evil in other people starting with Doctor Chillingworth. After Chillingworth learns about Hester’s affair with ...
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...y then did nature respond to her, “Such the sympathy of nature…filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world” (2413). If Hawthorne were a transcendentalist, Hester would have only had to go into nature to reach God. There wouldn’t have had to go through that process.
The Scarlet Letter portrays many of Hawthorne’s anti-transcendentalist views and ideas. His characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth represent the power of blackness and how everyone is naturally evil. These characters have brought the evil in each other. Hawthorne also shows an uneven balance between the views of a transcendentalist and the Puritan society.
Works Cited
Lauter, Paul, and Richard Yarborough. "The Scarlet Letter." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. Vol. B. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 2331-444. Print.
Hawthorne shows what actually happens behind closed doors. To the people of the town Hester Prynne was just a harlot with a bastard child, but to the readers she was a strong woman who was going to be more than just a harlot. Hawthorne showed that Hester Prynne, and her were actual people with thoughts and feelings and not just a sinner and the product of the sin as the town saw them. The people of the town saw Hester as a disgrace, but with all the torture they gave her was she really the one who was in the
Sewall, Richard B. "The Scarlet Letter: Criticism." Novels for Students. Ed. Diane Telgen. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 319-27.
The deep symbolism conveyed by certain aspects of nature helps the reader gain a deeper understanding of the plight and inner emotions of the characters in the novel. Hawthorne's moods or prevailing feelings during certain scenes are revealed to the reader through nature. For example, one of the first scenes in the book demonstrates this unique writing talent that Hawthorne uses to enrich his writing. He describes Hester Prynne and her child being released from the local prison into the light of day. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the vivid light of day; because its experience, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison (49).
In the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne displays a society filled with sinners who believe the are not the worst and that they deserve justice. Some of the them trampel over each other in seeking justice how Chillingsworth tries to destroy Dimmsdale in a way of seeking justice for himself. Hester tries to escape a whole continet to give herself and her a family a better life in a form of seeking justice. While Dimmsdale confesses his sin a form of getting justice for himself by dying without any regrets. All of these characters were sinners who believed they werent the worse sinner whic is why they deserved justice.
Normally when most people think of vampires, they envision a deathly, pale creature with fangs. But Thomas Foster seems to think differently, who argues that it is not necessary for a vampire to embody a stereotypical vampire. Surprisingly enough, even humans can be these types of monsters. From Foster 's perspective, being a vampire not only includes an individual 's aesthetics, but also their actions, personality, intent, and overall representation of personal identity. The classic novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, presents an excellent example of this occurrence, where the character Roger Chillingworth meets the criteria of a vampiric figure, based on Thomas Foster 's ideas of vampirism, found in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
Smiles, Samuel. "The Scarlet Letter." The Critical Temper. Ed. Martin Tucker. New York City: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1962. 266.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s character, Hester Prynne’s, actions creates a lot of controversy regarding Prynne’s sin, resulting in Hawthorne writing his critical essay, “On the Scarlet Letter.” D.H Lawrence critiques Hawthorne because he believes that Hawthorne favors Hester Prynne to an unnecessary extent , in The Scarlet Letter. Lawrence uses several devices that allow him to express his viewpoints about Hester Prynne and her sin. D.H. Lawrence uses biblical allusions, bullet-point syntax, and a mocking tone to convey his thoughts on why Hawthorne gives Hester Prynne too much credit.
Hawthorne's statement through Chillingworth offers insight into Dimmesdale and Chillingworth along with a representation of Hawthorne's disapproval of the Puritan values. This disapproval is the driving force of the novel, and it underlies the relationship between Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the prevailing greater justice of God. The contrast of the Puritans' justice and God's makes the message of the story greater than a love story or a story of a sin. With this theme, The Scarlet Letter becomes a comparison of the flawed justice of humans and the divine justice of God.
“A bloody scourge…rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance.” (Hawthorne, 141) In the Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Minister Dimmesdale starved himself, whipped himself, and tortured himself to get rid of the guilt caused by his sin with Hester Prynne. Hawthorne describes the minister’s guilt as the evil that anchored him down and shows how Dimmesdale tortures himself but can never get rid of it. His guilt came from many things. First was his guilt for committing the crime with Hester Prynne. Second is his guilt for not being with her at the time that she was put upon the scaffold. Last was his guilt from not revealing himself to his own daughter and from having to stay out of her life due to fear of being shamed by the community. Hawthorne’s views on guilt and Dimmesdale are mostly that his guilt controlled his life completely until the very end when the power of the sin and guilt took over to the point where he couldn’t control himself.
Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. "The Scarlet Letter." The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors. Ed. Charles Wells Moulton. Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith Publishing, 1989. 341-371.
Gerber, John C. "Form and Content in The Scarlet Letter." The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Eds. Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1988.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Scarlet Letter”. American Literature: Volume One. Ed. William E. Cain. New York: Pearson, 2004. 809-813. Print
In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, the author, Nathaniel Hawthorn makes a commentary on the hypocrisy in the Puritan life style through his portrayal of his characters Arthur Dimmesdale, the town’s adored Puritan priest, and Hester Prynne, the ostracized sinner. Throughout the novel, Nathaniel Hawthorn depicts traits that contradict the Puritan’s ideas of how a defiled sinner and a proper Puritan priest should behave by the social conventions of their time. The author does this by illustrating Dimmesdale, who is supposed to be a righteous and holy person, as a sinful and cowardly man. Dimmesdale is also show to be a naive individual who is oblivious to the ever present danger that surrounds him. He is a complete contradiction to commonly held image of the honorable and holy priest. And the character who is portrayed as a righteous and selfless helper is the adulteress Hester Prynne, the woman whom the Puritan people detest for her sin. Hester is also shown to be a confident and strong character, a
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, focuses on the effects of a secret, ungodly affair between the beautiful Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale who is a
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...