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The scarlet letter, critical analysis
The scarlet letter, critical analysis
The scarlet letter, critical analysis
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Domino’s Pizza,the biggest pizza chain in the country with a little over 13,000 franchises, makes 16 million dollars every month. This is all because of one man, who put his blood, sweat and tears into a small pizza place in Ypsilanti, Michigan. A man who never gave up and never stopped believing in himself. Although he had many accomplishments, he went through many hardships in his life to make them. That man is Tom Monaghan.
They are perceived to believe in a male-dominated patriarchal society, where women are to do as they are told, children are to be seen and not heard, and upholding the laws of the Bible is the most important rule in life. Defiance of any of these rules is absolutely not tolerated. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne a member of the Puritan society, is convicted of adultery, a sin she did not commit. Since
The Scarlet letter is a book written in the time period of the mid 17th century in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During this time, the puritans were a very strict and religious group of people who were oblivious to their hypocrisy. Notably, whenever someone had committed a sin, they publicly shamed the sinner as punishment such as putting Hester on the Scaffold with her child in the middle of town and questioning her about the baby in her arms. Committing a sin is the equivalent of interaction with or being possessed by the Devil. Due to the Puritan religion and the time period the people were in, they treated Hester and Pearl as a follower of the devil and the child of Satan.
The“Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne has become an american phenomenon. In the “Scarlet Letter” the main character, Hester, is charged with adultery. The people of the puritan faith put Hester through harsh punishments. The puritans believed that they had to purify the christian faith. Hester's punishment was too Harsh because pearl could have been harmed, Hester’s husband was lost, and this mistake will follow Hester for the rest of her life.
The exploration of societal pressures. Life can be separated into two equal parts totally independent from one another. The inner self, being the innermost thoughts and feelings of the individual, and the outer self, how the individual decides to conduct itself around the others in society. Often times one of these parts takes control of the other, suppressing its partner. The suppression is often not of equal frequency because of the obligation humans feel to be liked and to fit in causes the outermost self to be given the most thought and worry.
In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne tried to convince people that it is human nature to be hypocritical and that the most hypocritical people tend to be those who claim to be extremely “devout” to their religion. Hawthorne developed this idea through Reverend Dimmesdale who ironically disobeyed his religious morals, as well as the townspeople who claimed to be “devout” to their Puritan religion, yet brought negativity into their community through severely punishing those who had made mistakes. As Puritans, both the townspeople and Dimmesdale were expected to bring kindness into their community and follow the teachings of God, but they both carelessly disobeyed these morals by hurting others. By using common, everyday people, Hawthorne
This is shown when Hester was repeatedly shunned and ridiculed by her fellow townspeople, who saw her as a symbol of sin and moral corruption. The men in the novel, particularly the ministers and judges, were shown to be deeply misogynistic, treating them with contempt and disdain. This goes back to the beginning of the novel where Hester was forced to stand on a scaffold and display the scarlet letter for all to see. The men in the town gathered around her and heaped insults and abuse upon her, while the women looked on in silence, seemingly unable to defend or support her. Another example of a victim of misogyny in The Scarlet Letter was Pearl, the daughter of Hester, and because of her mother’s sin, Pearl was mistreated by members of the community as she was seen as the product of her mother’s infidelity.
In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, some main themes in story are hypocrisy, sin, and forgiveness. Throughout the novel, the Puritans mark, interrogate, ridicule, and disrespect Hester, but beginning in Chapter 13, they are reluctant about their vile demeanor towards the marked sinner. Suddenly forgiving, the Puritans start to view Hester and her scarlet letter as symbols of capability and kindness, not adultery and sin. The explanation of their unusual switch in opinion may be due to Hester’s acts of courtesy and comfort towards anyone in the town, but this also exposes their hypocrisy. In essence, The Scarlet Letter contains themes of hypocrisy, compassion, and sin, which are displayed when the Puritans, all of the sudden, begin
“Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” (190) These “teachers” had guided Hester, one of the main characters in the book Scarlet Letter, to become who she needed to be. In addition to following these guidelines, Hester finds herself a representation of what is wrong with religion.
Hypocrisy is defined as the practice of claiming to have moral standards of beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform. Multiple characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter clearly fit this definition. The characters of the novel are forced into hypocrisy to satisfy the expectations of society and to avoid their fear of living the rest of their lives with ignominy. The characters are often times hypocritical without realizing they are.
Puritan society in The Scarlet Letter was male dominant which affected the portrayal and view towards women. From the start, men were given roles and opportunities
In “The Scarlet Letter” he depicts it as an oppressive 17th – century Puritan society. “The style of Puritanism that Hawthorne presents is drab and gloomy, preoccupied with judgment and punishment, unrelenting and dogmatic,”1 writes Deborah L. Madsen in her book, “American Exceptionalism.” Hester Prynne, the main character accused of adultery, is persecuted by Boston community. Not only adults despise her, but also children who, blinded by the decayed values and norms, humiliate her and her child, Pearl. The character of Hester symbolizes the fight against Puritan enslavement, the need to modernize the prevailing norms that cause nothing but harm to American society.
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.
(Hall, 127). This idea of a fair and just society was the centerpiece of Puritan society, and it subsequently led to the virtue of community over the individual which was previously discussed. When it comes to The Scarlet Letter, the ideology that Puritan morality is fundamental to everything is truly front and center. Hester’s struggle due to her past sin is a perfect example of this; The ministry attempted to purify and protect the community by excluding Hester from societal affairs, even going as far as attempting to strip Hester of her custody of Pearl. Overall, Hester’s forced
In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)
