The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, portrays the Puritans as this judgmental and conservative group of people. This can be seen through how he uses symbolism, irony, and actions of the puritans.
Starting off with symbolism, Hawthorne uses the guillotine stand as a way to allow the main character Hester, who committed sins, to show that she is in a higher position than the Puritans. The Puritans watch Hester ridicule and shame her for what she has done. But from Hester’s point of view, she is in a ‘’higher’’ position than them because she is able to stand tall and live up to what she acted on. This god-fearing group puts her down as if they’ve never committed sins. Their expectations were very high in the first place which contributed to the led down to be greater than it may have been if it happened now in the twenty-first century.
Another symbolism is the letter ‘A’, which represents ‘’able’’. To the Puritans who see it as “adulteress” shows that they perceived what she did as something that defines her soul. They saw her as a devil, which is a huge overstatement because what she did was more godly. The truth of the matter is Hester being able to wear the letter, with her daughter alongside her, represents the idea that she was “able” to overcome what people thought about them and live her life by not letting what people’s thoughts on her affect her lifestyle.
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The second technique used to show that the Puritans are just like any other standard following group is by use of irony. The people were disgusted finding out that Hester committed adultery, but at the same time were very loving towards Dimmesdale who had just as much to do in the situation as Hester. They listen to his stories and think he is wise. For the reader, it’s clear that the only reason his sermons are very powerful is that he personally relates to everything and is able to teach others what he wants to hear himself. The irony is that the people are supposed to “hate” others who have sinned because it is one of the golden rules in their religion. But, they treated Dimmesdale as the same as everyone else due to their lack of truth. If they knew that he also committed adultery, they would have treated him very negatively.
Generally, people are aware that ridiculing people based off of what they’ve done is a cruel concept. However, because of the time period and how religious the puritans were known to be, their response to the situation was totally normal. When readers nowadays read the book and see how wrong the puritan’s reactions were, it is because they live in a time period where times are evolving and people have more places to be accepted into society. If someone in the 1600s were to pick up this book and read exactly how this societal group was represented, they would think nothing bad about how Hester and Pearl were treated. To them, that was normal.
Every society has its standards, and there’s no moving away from that because people will always have an opinion on something. This is seen more when it comes to communities, such as the Puritans, as they are more exclusive. The Puritans decided to focus on the one bad thing that Hester did, rather than all the other things that were positive about her, the things that gained her respect.
Nathaniel Hawthorne correctly portrayed how social groups react to situations when the standards are set very high for others. It is very incorrect the way the Puritans treated Hester. However, his representation of them makes us sympathetic towards all the characters because while the Puritans were at fault, they really didn’t think as openly as people do in this time period.
