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The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy

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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 …show more content…

This quote symbolizes the explicit connection between Hester’s sin and why the Puritans decided to discipline her. The Puritans have an extreme set of societal rules and laws, characterized by the iron framework, but instead of following the Bible, they tend to follow their own feelings. Hester was marked as a sinner, and Puritans should have absolutely no tolerance for them whatsoever, but since she is being kind and compassionate to all, they decide it is fine to let her off the hook. This change of character is directly depicted in the following: “‘It is our Hester,--the town’s own Hester,--who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!’” (Hawthorne). The Puritans have hypocritically become proud that she is a part of their society, and seem to have forgiven Hester, for her sin. The specific reason for this, however, may be because the Puritan government does not have influence over all of society and Puritans themselves are more free-thinking than they appear: “...the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgotten Hester Prynne for her frailty…” (Hawthorne) For the Puritans, Hester has become a symbol of …show more content…

The A is described to somehow have “the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness…” (Hawthorne). It was also rumored that “an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, but that the missile struck it, and fell harmless to the ground”. These further affirm the Puritan’s sudden change of heart towards Hester, but they even go as far as comparing the A to the symbol of Christianity and give it celestial powers. This furthermore contradicts the Puritan’s supposed ‘iron framework’ and proves they are hypocrites. If ‘the godly’ really believed what they preached, then comparing a symbol of adultery to the symbol of Christianity should be ludicrous to

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Based on the first few chapters I read The Scarlet Letter is a novel about becoming a better person. Throughout the novel Hester tries saving her daughter and proves those who didn’t believe she could raise her child, even with all the humiliation she was receiving It’s all about those who have the opportunity of getting a second chance and choose to use it wisely. The Scarlet Letter gives a life lesson, but Hawthorne uses symbolism to describe

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In the beginning of the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne introduces the main character Hester Prynne, a young, beautiful member of a Puritan society being punished for her sin of love, not lust. The opening chapters introduce the reader to gossips who deem her original punishment, death, too harsh and contrary to Puritan beliefs that unborn babies should be given a chance at life. Instead, Hester and her child are to be alienated and shunned. In addition she is to wear the letter ‘A’ (which stands for ‘adultery’) on her chest which will forever display her as a symbol of shame for her sin. Though a very resilient figure who soon overcomes this pain, Hester’s isolation takes a negative toll on her life.

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The Virtue of Hester Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s highly acclaimed novel, The Scarlet Letter, a Puritan town’s reaction is described after Hester Prynne raises a scandal that goes against the town’s religious views. The Puritans believe the Bible should be translated into their life and that God should be the center of it. Many of them think of Hester as a sinful woman without virtue. They treat her as an outcast and consider that she is somehow affiliated with the Devil.

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Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not infrequently insulted the hand that fed them.” Hawthorne praises her further here and disapproves of the Puritan society because they can’t see Hester’s true personality and

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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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The Puritans have strong beliefs where society, religion, and the family lifestyle is adjacent. Hawthorne states, “Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester Prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparation for this very hour” (Hawthorne 177). Hester Prynne has been thrown out of the community for seven years and she does not expect to follow any of the Puritan rules. She should not have to follow the rules of a place that she does not belong to. The townspeople all look at Hester as an example for a sinner.

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Although the Puritans brand her as an “adulteress” through the scarlet letter, Hester resolutely integrates her sin into her life to prove that society has no influence over her, extolling the idea of rebellion and foreshadowing events in the novel. In a form of a metaphor, Hawthorne explains how Hester’s ignominy and sin were the “roots which she had struck into the soil”, causing her to permanently stay near the place of her great tragedy and not run away from her mistakes (Hawthorne 74). After Hester is publicly humiliated and required by the people of Boston to take on a badge of shame, her unwillingness to leave the harsh society may seem perplexing. She is not physically confined, and escaping New England would permit her to get rid of the letter and resume a

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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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The puritans were notorious for mistreatment and censure of sinners in order to attain a self-defined level of "purity" in their society, and Hester- the female character- faces this oppressive entity. As Hawthorne ties individuals that face oppression with Hester's figure, the oppressed individual acknowledged and defied the oppressive figure's ideologies in order to achieve self-fulfillment and pleasure. While the oppressed figure's actions seem regrettable, Hawthorne molds Hester into a character that embraces her decision to defy societal definitions of "correct activity" and turns something that was meant to harm her and into something beautiful: “the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people” (Hawthorne 156). The scarlet letter- the method of symbolic persecution by the Puritans- evolves from a brooch intended for mockery into a badge that exudes a sense of high dignity. In place of her shameful condemnation, she now captivates a remarkable figure that overcame

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Opposing the society, and not obeying the Puritan religious standards, Hester unconsciously gives the Bostonian community an impulse to contradict deformed norms. With time, Hester 's and Pearl 's isolation and acceptance of fate causes the society to forget and adapt to their sin, and therefore makes it more liberal. The Puritan society is no longer so prejudiced and is even thankful for Hester 's charitable deeds. It can be argued that Hester is the embodiment of the new democratic world which endorses individualism and independence, and supersedence of outdated Puritan

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In the novel, Hester, a young woman involved in adultery after leaving her husband in Europe, is at the center of ridicule and exclusion from the rest of the Puritan community due to her actions. This ideology of community over the individual is prevalent throughout the book, and it has far-reaching effects on not only Hester but her daughter Pearl as well. One of the key forces behind the societal exclusion in The Scarlet Letter is the Puritan ministry. As one of the most powerful groups in New England in the 17th century, they exerted a large presence in local governments. According to Hall’s A Reforming People, Puritan presence in the government came suddenly along with the influx of colonists to New England: “Bringing with them a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority, these settlers based their churches on the participation of laypeople and insisted on "consent" as a premise of all civil governance.

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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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