Nathaniel Hawthorne's Use Of Satire In Scarlet Letter

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, a woman named Hester Prynne is found guilty of committing adultery. She lives in the Puritan settlement of Boston, Massachusetts where if the town’s laws are broken, the culprit suffers. Throughout the novel the Puritans ridicule and mock Hester for her actions. Through Hawthorne’s use of diction and imagery he exemplifies his disapproval for the unyielding religious punishments of the Puritans. The town’s magistrates condemn Hester to stand on a scaffold in front of the whole town for three hours. Hawthorne uses imagery to paint in the reader’s mind a accouter of the inhumane actions committed by the mob that scorns Hester. The members of the crowd all had “their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door” fidgeting with anticipation to humiliate Hester Prynne (Hawthorne 34). Many people crowded the grass yard in front of the jail with anticipation, almost as if they were at a football game, waiting for the players to take the field. The townspeople “anticipated [the] execution of some noted culprit” and many women “appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected

As the residents surround Hester and start her grueling humiliation, the tone of the novel shifts to accusatory and disdainful. One woman says that “at the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead” (36). They think that she “has brought shame upon [them] all, and ought to die” for it (36). The people think that Hester got off easy and should have been severely punished for her sin. Hawthorne expresses his disapproval of the society’s rituals by saying that even “the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful” (35). This expresses the towns unrelenting, brutal punishment to anyone who does something wrong, regardless of the gravity of the