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.
After reading the story of Hester Prynne and her daughter Pearl in the Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne portrayed the Puritan society along with the rules of double standards. The Puritans were a religious minority group who believed that the Church of England needed to be purified of the influence of Catholicism. They believed that women were culturally inferior to men and married women were expected to follow the edicts of their husbands and were unable to interact with local government on their own. Married women were also unable to sue for divorce. Widows were an exception and had no male figure to guide them.
How can someone be publicly shamed for something that they have done in the past. The issue of public shaming is presented when Hester Prynne was forced by her community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown because she committed the crime of adultery in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As well as, the two articles, “Florida ‘Scarlet Letter’ Law Is Repealed by Gov. Bush” by Dana Canedy and “Houston Couple Gets the ‘Scarlet Letter’ Treatment” also show people being publicly shamed. These, for example, show the negative effects that public shaming has on the person and their life. Public shaming is not an effective punishment since it is a violation of their privacy, cruel and unusual, and it destroys their families in the process.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. This quote from the Declaration of Independence means to signify the putative promises America has made to its citizens: freedom and equality. But sadly, these promises have not been kept. These lines of the Declaration of Independence are a cruel lie hanging and dangling far out of reach of many Americans. They act as an affront to many Americans, as freedom and equality are not available to most people in America.
In the novel Scarlet letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne gives his open opinion quite often. In fact the Scarlet Letter is written in a third person omniscient point of view. This mean that Hawthorne is able to tell the reader certain things that the reader could not figure out with just literary analysis alone. Hawthorne first demonstrates this third person omniscient point of view when he writes “With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with first a flush and
Man vs Society The main conflict in the story is Hester’s battle with the strict puritan values of the society she lives in. In her town, adultery is a serious crime that results in severe punishment. However, Hester commits this crime while her husband is presumed to be dead, and yet she is still punished. Through public humiliation, the society pressures Hester into inconceivable amounts of guilt and anguish. Hester, despite the burden she carries with her scarlet letter, is able to use her pain as fuel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the novel, The Scarlet Letter for many reasons. One of the reasons why Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote this novel was to show the corruption in the puritan society. He uses his novel and Hester Prynne to show how much he dislikes and disagrees with the puritan beliefs. Through out the novel, The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne makes it clear that he dislikes and disagrees with the puritan beliefs and lifestyles. Hawthorn likes to use symbolism to prove his point and he does that many of times in the novel to show how he dislikes the puritan’s faith.
One of the themes in "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is what Karl Marx would call "rugged individualism." This concept is when someone sticks out in the masses, and has little to no regards of the customs of the society in which that person thrives in. Their traits can either benefit them, cause them detriment, or both simultaneously. Two of the main characters especially exemplify rugged individualism: Hester Prynne and the man who identifies himself as Roger Chillingworth. It can be inferred that Hester did not always agree with Puritan law and culture in the time leading up to her conviction.
The Puritan society believes that Hester also represents immorality because of her sin, which causes several townspeople to distance themselves. Whenever Hester enters town, many people notice the scarlet letter that she is forced to display on her breast, and so young "pure" children would soon learn that she was a representation of sin and passion, learning to not stay near her. Hester is unable to go into town without being ridiculed by the townspeople, as she is a living symbol of sin. Puritan children, despite being uninformed about the meaning of the scarlet letter and the sin Hester has committed, impose alienation on her, as the scarlet letter probably frightens and gives a burning sensation to children when near. The alienation that
In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the setting to better establish the characters personalities and understand their status in the Puritan community. The setting specifically enhanced some of the characters more than others, Pearl along with her mother, Hester and her father, Dimmesdale saw this enrichment which subsequently allowed us to understand their struggles as individuals and as a family. The scaffold was a key part of character development from start to end, initially just involving Hester and Pearl as a baby but eventually after a long stretch of time Dimmesdale came out of hiding and admitted to his sins on the same scaffold. Pearl was viewed as a product of sin and was rejected by the Puritan town folk, but
In the seventeenth century, Puritans were feared and venerated as a domineering culture, imposing strict punishment on anyone who failed to abide by their moral code. Puritan society left no room for human error, nor did it care to heed to the protests of any malcontent who might taint its religious and social uniformity. It is not that the Puritans were “bigots,” but simply that they wanted to fulfill their religious plan without the interference of anyone who did not hold their beliefs or was not aware of their objective (Park 63). Thus, while purification of the Church of England was the initial Puritan objective, this aspiration soon became obscured by greed and the incontrollable voracity for power (Park 74). As a result, Puritan society befell to coercion and discrimination.
Imagine a world where people are governed by imagination, everyone honestly expresses themselves, and nothing is impossible. This heaven-on-earth existed during the Romantic literary time period as shown in the novel called 'The Scarlet Letter', written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Romantics believed that nature broke the boundaries of science. Consequently, in Hawthorne's novel, nature is described as a divine force with a mind of its own. Another characteristic of the time period was enforcing individualism.
Throughout the novel, Hester is fraught by the Puritan society and her suffering is an effect of how evil society is. Hester continues to believe that the crime she committed was not wrong and she should not be punished for it. Her desire to protect and love Dimmesdale, turn her into a stronger person and become a heroine in the book. Although society still views her as a “naughty baggage” (Hawthorne 73) and is punished for her wrongdoing, Hester never thought to take revenge on them, yet she gives everything she has to the unfortunate and leaves herself with very little. She continues to stay positive no matter what society has for her.
Amanda Vicente The Scarlet Letter Reading Response AP English Language Period J 16 August 2016 Journal Entry 1: Chapters 1-2 In The Scarlet Letter, the author sets a mood from the beginning of the book. The setting is old and beat up in front of an aged wooden prison with judgmental Puritans ready to tear a women apart. The Puritans are hypocrites and the author portrays that in the story.
Taking Into Perspective Hester Prynne Feminists are people who are passionate about bringing gender equality into the society that we live in. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is portrayed as a beautiful woman who is charged of being an adulteress, despite this fact, she was able to persevere and endure the shame and the humiliation of her sin. In a feminist perspective, women are constantly being abused by the over-arching society, influenced by men. As a feminist writer, Adrienne Rich points out in her essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” that men derive their “charisma” from exerting power over women and being able to be in control.
