Essay about The Scarlet Letter Are the Puritans Really...

The Scarlet Letter: Are the Puritans really like that? Nathaniel Hawthorne accurately portrayed the colonial Puritans of Boston in his book, The Scarlet Letter, and what their actions and reactions would have been to Hester Prynne committing adultery, and the events thereafter, which also conform to what we know about the Puritans and how they were fastidiously against sex in any form. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Not hardly. In The Scarlet Letter, we see Hester Prynne, who is put on trial for committing adultery (from which came a baby girl, Pearl) after her husband had been missing for four years, and presumed lost and drowned at sea. This fits our thoughts of the Puritans and what they thought of sex, and how they†¦show more content†¦Many reviewed Dickens and Dumas (and some even The Scarlet Letter itself) as â€Å"Trashy Literature†. The Puritans would have, quite frankly, been aghast at this. In fact, the Puritans were quite forthcoming in things involving sex- they expressed themselves frankly, not shyly. Of course, the Puritans did have a strict moral code; however, this mostly centered around them finding religious purity in their lives. To be sure, chastity before marriage was an unbroken rule, and faithfulness to one’s spouse in marriage was as well. However, would the Puritans have acted as they did towards Hester? Probably not. The Puritans, in reality, glorified marriage and sexual union within marriage and took a very dim view of celibacy. A Boston congregation even expelled one of it’s members because he hadn’t had sex with his wife for over two years. If married men arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony without their wives, the magistrates ORDERED them to either leave, or send for their wives immediately, with no exceptions. Divorces were also permitted Puritan New England, and the divorce laws there were the easiest in the Western world. In The Scarlet Letter, it is revealed that Arthur Dimmesdale, the new reverend of the Salem church, is the father of Pearl and the person who committed adultery with Hester. However, once again, an unmarried man, especially a reverend ofShow MoreRelatedHester As A Strong Female Character And The Scarlet Letter1572 Words   |  7 Pagesand The Scarlet Letter as a Feminist Novel In The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a question arises: Is The Scarlet Letter a feminist novel? First, what is feminism? Feminism is â€Å"the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men†. Feminism is really about a woman’s strength since the act of feminism causes a woman to go against traditional views and be ridiculed for that. What does feminism have to do with The Scarlet Letter? HawthorneRead MoreWhat Is the Moral of the Scarlet Letter? Essay952 Words   |  4 Pages Nathaniel Hawthorne is famous for his long fictional work the scarlet letter in 1850, which is still considered as the most important work of him. The scarlet letter involves the presence of facts and figures to support the text and also includes the fictional work in the text. Hawthorne was actually inspired from the manuscripts he got in the custom house in Salem while he was working as an executive officer o r the surveyor in custom house where the taxes are paid, their he foundRead MoreWhat Is the Moral of the Scarlet Letter Essay1116 Words   |  5 Pages The scarlet letter is a text written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 a fictional work which tells about the history of England during the puritan age and the story of women named Hester Prynne. The author feels this text as a romantic work because the text includes about love and the adulteress. The text involves facts and fiction of the author such as the â€Å"Custom-House is a fact and real, while the author was working as a surveyor in the Salem custom house inRead MoreScarlet Letter And Symbolism1045 Words   |  5 PagesThe Scarlet Letter and Symbolism Nathaniel Hawthorne uses many forms of symbolism in his book The Scarlet Letter. Symbolism is, according to Merriam-Webster, â€Å"the art or practice of using symbols, especially by investing things with a symbolic meaning or by expressing the invisible or intangible by means of visual or sensuous representations.† This means that the author was using objects to represent an action or idea. The symbols used in his book is either all physical or visible objects. ManyRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter and the Crucible Comparison948 Words   |  4 PagesCuellar April 04, 2012 In The Crucible and The Scarlet Letter, they are both known to be a part of the Puritan religion. The puritans are known to be very strict. Often people are put to cruel punishments for mistakes or sins they had committed. The actions they take to â€Å"punish† a person are extreme. The Puritans act and seem so committed to their religion. The people seem â€Å"Holy† but you never really know what happens behind closed doors. The Puritan religion is so strict is causes members to becomeRead MoreSymbolism Of Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter882 Words   |  4 PagesThe Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter was a novel written in the 1850 s by a man named Nathaniel Hawthorne. Throughout the Scarlet Letter he uses scads of literary devices. The literary devices are there to give the novel more depth. The main device he uses in the novel is symbolism. Hawthorne uses the symbolism to make an object have more than one meaning. Three of the elements he uses as symbols are the scarlet letter, Pearl, and the forest. These symbols are seen differently by the Puritan peopleRead MoreComparing The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone and The Crucible by Arthur Miller1394 Words   |  6 Pagesdevout society. While this may have usually been the case, this was not always so. The Puritan society was also known not to act out of Christian love, but to cruelly lash out at those who sinned or were deemed unfit for society. Two works of literature that display both aspects of this society very accurately are The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel   Hawthorne, and The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. The Scarlet Letter displays a society that treats two people very differently who commit the sin of adulteryRead MoreThe Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne1153 Words   |  5 Pages i. 1. The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a romantic novel that takes place in sixteenth century Boston, Massachusetts. 2. As a romantic novel, it focuses on the various relationships between the characters and the drastic experiences caused by the scarlet letter between the four main characters being Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingsworth, and Pearl Prynne, with the condemnation of the Puritan society 3. The unknown narrator follows the novel’s main antagonistRead MoreAnalysis Of Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter 1071 Words   |  5 PagesJalon Ellison English 10 Mrs. Jackson 16 December 2015 A Sinner Defined by The Scarlet Letter Society has not changed as far as labeling people and probably never will. In the Puritan society they branded, tortured, and defined human beings the way they saw them even though they did not know how the person they were humiliating truly was. Hester Prynne is a good example of this in the novel The Scarlet Letter written by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne is using the character HesterRead MoreSins inThe Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Essay1517 Words   |  7 Pagesâ€Å"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred† (Hawthorne). As this sentence is read in the The Scarlet Letter, the reader will realize that the main theme of the book is the sentence above. Throughout the book, secret sin damages the lives, soul, and the integrity of the main characters. However, it could have easily been evaded through open confession of their sins. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s purpose in writing this novel is