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The Puritan Judicial System In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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In Puritan societies, the judicial system was intrinsically linked with religion to the extent that church and state were nearly indistinguishable from each other. The Puritan judicial system influenced by multiple sources, hardly differentiated between crimes and sins, was prone to corruption and hysteria and inflected many dehumanizing punishments. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter provides an accurate image of the puritan judicial system and its various punishments.
In the Scarlet Letter, one sees a depiction of an extraordinarily cruel justice system that is pursued with a religious zeal. Turning over of particularly mischievous children to public authorities as depicted in the Scarlet Letter was commonplace. However, Hester’s …show more content…

The judicial system got rid of anyone who tried to question, resist, or corrupt an action the government pursues. In Puritan colonies, the difference between sin and crime was nonexistent. Social outcasts were seen as a threat to their way of life and their judicial system mercilessly eliminated them. Witchcraft trials were particularly ludicrous with spectral evidence primarily responsible for most of the convictions. Anyone that practiced another religion whether Protestant or Catholic were removed from the colony by the judicial system as well.
For evidence of corruption in the puritan judicial system, one can look towards the case of Anne Hutchinson. Although, prayer groups were common in Puritan communities Anne Hutchinson was persecuted for holding one with slightly different beliefs than the church of Boston. Her main “crime” was teaching that faith alone and not a moral or religious life is the means of salvation. A large portion of the evidence used against her was accusations of several lewd acts simply for having both men and women in her prayer group. In the end, she was excommunicated and forcibly removed from the

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In Salem, Massachusetts, the lives of many residents were at the mercy of a few young girls. The town was ruled by religion which opened many opportunities for residents to fear anything that they believed as against them, their religion, or just simply immoral. The people who lived there called themselves Puritans. The Puritans were a group of English Protestants who believed that they must purify the church of England from its catholic practices. In Salem, the residents were ruled by religious leaders who oversaw the town’s court.

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This being one of the main influences that still exists to this day, the “Puritan doctrine also helped to nurture self-government in the new land” (Fowler). Essentially, what this did was create a community democracy in which our state’s political system is based from in the United States. Although the Puritan’s initial idea of government was for the people, they also “favored a model of government based on a community’s covenant with god.” (Fowler) One of the main flaws with their self-governance was within their definition of democracy, only religious leaders could attain a position within government because of their political religious

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In our society, many people rely on the power of law and justice in order to protect themselves. Some powerful men abuse and misuse their power which brings many unfairnesses and tragedies. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Judge Danforth is a deputy governor of the state, and he is also the judge for the witchcraft trail. Judge Danforth represents the authority and supremacy in the entire play. Throughout the play, Danforth’s tyrannous and stubborn personality caused many wrong decisions that he made in the court.

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In Puritan society, citizens are to strictly adhere to set laws and instructions, or they risk being condemned to ‘an eternity in Hell’, as they put it. To understand as to why the Puritans are so conservative, one must first comprehend their origins. The Puritans are a sub-denomination of Christianity which left Europe to establish an orthodox society, purified of all corruption, that is also attributed, The City on the Hill. The Holy Bible,the ultimate (-- removed HTML --) , declares the manner in which an ideal Puritan is to act. Unfortunately, few of the Puritans who Arthur Miller portrays in “The Crucible”, a play that which describes the accounts of mass hysteria in a Puritan community named Salem , abide by the statutes enacted by God.

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Throughout History, women have long struggled and fought for the same equality, justice, and rights as males in society. Historians have two opposing views of what life was like in Puritan society. One side argues that Puritan society was a golden age for women as they worked alongside their husbands, had an important role in the household. However, opposing historians argue that Puritan women were inferior to men in the society for five main reasons. Women were inferior because they were supposed to be silent company, they only received half the inheritance of their brothers, they were meant to have and take care of the children, they received harsher punishment for their wrongs, and they had to follow strict rules.

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In Puritan communities their lives were dedicated to their religion. They emphasized strict loyalty to biblical ideas and rejection of secular ones. In “ The Enlarged Salem Covenant of 1636” the

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The Puritans were having conflicts with the Church of England because of disagreements with rituals. The corruption of the English government led Winthrop and his followers who served as justices of the court to enforce progressively strict punishments for those who broke the law. Harsh laws began to be put in place to try and cleanse the society of sin. After the death of James I, his son Charles I began to destroy the body of government because Parliament denied his request for money to run his programs. Charles then made a mandatory loan for the English citizens.

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Although the community originally knew Hester as a disgrace, the town’s opinion of her changed over time as she began to do work for the poor and needy. After this shift in the town’s view of Hester, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet [letter] by its original signification” (111). Instead of Hester’s scarlet letter serving as a reminder of her scandalous sin, her peers “ had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as a token . . . of [Hester’s] many good deeds” (111). She became known for her charity and generosity, which caused the civilians to overlook her sinful behavior.

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The townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”

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One of the key examples of this in The Scarlet Letter is Dimmesdale, a highly respected preacher who was renowned throughout the Puritan community. When the Puritans learned of his involvement in the adultery case with Hester, they were shocked at first but overall, they did not mock or insult him like they did to Hester 7 years prior. This is clearly shown in their reactions shortly after Dimmesdale confessed: “The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they

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Puritans also transformed civil and criminal law and the workings of courts with the intention of establishing equity.” (Hall). The ministry’s role in government is best described by their authoritative stance in deciding Hester’s custody over Pearl, which was only halted when another member of the ministry contradicted their overall stance. They were also involved in banishing Hester and Pearl from the community by

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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)

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