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Nathaniel Hawthorne's Use Of Satire In Scarlet Letter

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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 …show more content…

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

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By comparing the audience's perception of Hester to the outward openness and accepting nature of Hester; Hawthorne support his notion that women or in this case a sinner like Hester were held to a higher standard than that of men, which explained why the majority of the outrage and scrutiny from the audience was focused on Hester rather than her counterpart,

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When you think of a Puritan society, what comes to your mind? Perfect, flawless, and a religion based on following God? Well, that is what it says on paper, but is it really that perfect? Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne jabs at the Puritans in an attempt to portray just how flawed they really are. After reading the book, you want to think that Hawthorne is telling the story of sinning in a Puritan society.

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We are all sinners, no matter how hard we try to hide our faults, they always seem to come back, one way or another. Written in the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us Hester Prynne and how one sin can change her life completely. Hester Prynne changes a great deal throughout The Scarlet Letter. Through the view of the Puritans, Hester is an intense sinner; she has gone against the Puritan way of life committing the highest act of sin, adultery. For committing such a sinful act, Hester must wear the scarlet letter while also having to bear stares from those that gossip about her.

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Power for women is not much back in the 1600s. Women had no power at all in the government, and as natural they find power in other effects. A lot of them did it in marriage. In the works, The Crucible by Arthur Miller and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrated the control of women in the Puritan times. Even though in both The Crucible by Arthur Miller and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, women have less power in the society than men, in The Crucible women have a better say in the action of the society than the women in The Scarlet Letter.

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Considering the townspeople’s reactions toward Hester’s sin of adultery, it can be concluded that in the Puritan era, religion was of utmost importance, and the Puritans met sins with extremely harsh punishments. Because the majority of the Puritan town viewed Hester as a disgrace, she became “Lonely . . . and without a friend on earth” (56). This made it effortless for the inhabitants of the town to continue to insult and degrade Hester because they did not care to learn her true personality. While a few civilians had sympathy for Hester, the town mostly regarded her as shameful and

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This shows that Hester does not necessarily need to worry about what the people of Boston think of her or how she needs to redeem herself in order to fit back into the society. When Hawthorne says “The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!” he is showing how there is no way for Hester to change her society. She should have love and joy, but instead she is faced with guilt, which leads to her downfall. Along with this, Hawthorne demonstrates how the people of Boston are actually the sinners while Hester and Dimmesdale represent the Angel and the Saint of the city.

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