Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
The impact of Puritans on the
The impact of Puritans on the
Critical analysis of the Scarlet letter
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The impact of Puritans on the
The impact of Puritans on the
Critical analysis of the Scarlet letter
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Way back in the 17th century the Puritan religion was the leading religion in The New World. Their religious beliefs were strict especially in Salem, Massachusetts. They had extreme punishments for for laws even in the case of a minor offense. The punishments were based of the laws created by their religious beliefs. Hawthorne uses several examples of foreshadowing in “The Scarlet Letter” that reflects the strict beliefs of their society.
The Scarlet letter is a book written in the time period of the mid 17th century in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During this time, the puritans were a very strict and religious group of people who were oblivious to their hypocrisy. Notably, whenever someone had committed a sin, they publicly shamed the sinner as punishment such as putting Hester on the Scaffold with her child in the middle of town and questioning her about the baby in her arms. Committing a sin is the equivalent of interaction with or being possessed by the Devil. Due to the Puritan religion and the time period the people were in, they treated Hester and Pearl as a follower of the devil and the child of Satan.
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.
Hypocrisy plagues the pages of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as a result of the Puritans deceitful and conforming ways. Trials and rumors bring out the worst of the Puritans in The Crucible. While, in The Scarlet Letter, scandal and humiliation overcast the so called holiness of the Puritans. In the Puritan society, pride and selfishness would bring out one’s hypocritical ways if their reputation was at stake.
The Scarlet Letter’s Development The Scarlet Letter is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and has many different central ideas. Some of those central ideas are hypocrisy, sin, revenge, guilt, and conformity. Dimmesdale, the town being full of hypocritical individuals, and Dimmesdale committing adultery to reveal how Dimmesdale has to conform to how the town sees him, while the guilt is ruining his health. Hawthorne conveys the central idea that sin creates guilt, which creates secrets and conformity by Dimmesdale being a minister who has committed adultery and will not confess that he did.
New Historicism Literary Analysis Essay Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was influenced heavily by the time era it was written in. To achieve a fuller understanding of the work as a whole it would be best to start by analyzing the time era in which it was written. There are many historical facets that can be explored to help determine some of the underlying meaning in The Scarlet Letter .
The Puritans in The Scarlet Letter seem to fit this description very exactly. They have a community that alienates Hester from the rest of them, and forces her to make it on her own without any compassion. They try to act like they are doing Hester good by treating her this way, but really they are condescending toward her for committing such a sin. By failing to demonstrate to Hester that not just the outside world is sinful, but they too are sinners, makes it appear that Hester is the only flawed citizen of their Puritan society. The Puritans in this book create a community so drastically different from the rest of the world, they make their part of the world seem absent of flaws.
Imagine living in a place where one small sin could define who you are for the rest of your life. That is what happened in The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The novel is set in a seventeenth-century Puritan community in Boston, Massachusetts. A young woman by the name of Hester Prynne commits a small act of adultery and is shamed for the rest of her life, by wearing a scarlet letter “A” on her breast. The book is centered around the theme of justice and judgement.
The mere thought of a person’s entire personality changing, simply based on their whereabouts, might seem entirely nonsensical and absurd. Yet, when dealing with an unforgiving society such as one crafted by the ideology of Puritan times, one might start to believe that the individual’s conflicting natures may be the result of the fear of punishment from such a society. As most individuals have the natural desire for self-preservation, the idea of hiding one's true thoughts if they do not conform to the community’s ideals seems prompted, or even necessary. Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author well versed in the ideals of Puritan culture, deciphers this concept and relays his findings in his novel The Scarlet Letter through a character that seems
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published in 1850. It focuses on the life of the main protagonist, Hester Prynne, living in a Puritan community. Both Yamin Wang and Maria Stromberg offer insight into The Scarlet Letter and analyze multiple aspects of the story.. Both Wang and Stromberg claim that there is an underlying ideology hidden in the texts of the book. Wang approaches the story from a feminist approach and states that Hester represents the feminism in the Puritan community, and she analyzes the Puritan’s outlook on women in their society.
The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.
The Scarlet Letter and Uses of the Puritan Past illustrate various aspects of the cultural values in Puritanism and their societal impacts. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne depicts Puritanism as a bleak, strict cultural instance in which people who do not conform to their rules are shunned and distanced from society. In Uses of the Puritan Past, Puritan culture is described as a social construct based on four primary virtues. These virtues were the main influence of Puritan activity in Uses of the Puritan Past, as they were responsible for the creation of social rules and essential morality resulting in increased power and influence of the Puritan over every day Puritan life in New England. Even though both The Scarlet Letter and Uses of the
Throughout history, social status plays a significant role in the way people are treated. The Scarlet Letter is a novel with a clear distinction between the lives of those who are in the upper class and those in the lower class. Author Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestors were firm believers in Puritanism. Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter to portray the one-sided ideology of societies that allow socioeconomic status to determine how people are treated, and as a call for change to diminish this unfair treatment. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the disparity between the treatment of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in order to establish that it is unjust to treat people differently simply due to their social status and that
In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne effectively conforms to the conventions of the gothic genre for the purpose of characterizing the Puritan society as oppressive, portraying the hypocrisy found within the society and highlighting the consequences for not confessing
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)