rominent friends supplied Hawthorne with government employment in the lean times, allowing him time to bloom as an author. Later, when he served as a Consul in England, he attended services at a Unitarian church in Liverpool. But, it could not be more typical for a Puritan that he could not get along with the religious rituals and ceremonies, like, for example, funerals. He simply had these Puritan aversions that already caused the Puritans to split from the Anglican Church. He simplely wanted to have a small regular income that would allow him to forget everything, which was not important to him.
The rich lore of family and local history provided much of the material for Hawthorne’s works. The majority of his works takes America’s Puritan past as its subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses the material to the greatest effect. Hawthorne perhaps chose this dark subject to convey his contempt for Puritanism. He indicates that his main purpose is to picture a way of “life” in the Salem Custom House, the satirical “the Custom House” became the critically acclaimed prologue to The Scarlet Letter, not before described. While not recognized by Hawthorne himself as his most important work, the novel is regarded not only as his greatest accomplishment, but also frequently as the greatest novel in America literary history. After it was published in 1850, critics hailed it as initiating a distinctive American literary tradition.
Chapter 2
Ⅱ.Puritanism in the novel
A.The summary of the story
The novel, The Scarlet Letter, is about the struggle three people face while trying to live their lives and find happiness in a Puritan society. It told the story like this. In the early 1640s, Hester has come to the small town of Boston, Massachusetts, from Great Britain, while her husband, Chillingworth has left to deal with something .But after then, there is no news about him and nobody know whether he is alive or not for two years. Then Hester and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the town's priest, engages in the act of adultery and produce a baby girl named Pearl. Although only Hester know that Dimmesdale is the father, she has promised Dimmesdale not to reveal his identity. Hester is put on display in front of the entire town in order to punish her, and to also serve as an illustration to the town's people from sinning. She is then put in jail with the baby for a few months and forced to wear a scarlet letter "A" which stands for "Adultery" forever. Hester's husband, Roger Chillingworth, who had been captured by Native American Indians on his way to New England and held in captivity for two years, escapes and enters the town of Boston. After learning of what Hester had done, Chillingworth poses as a doctor and vows to discover the identity of Hester's partner in sin. Hester agrees to keep his true identity a secret, too. "From main idea of this story, it's easy for us to see the fact that it exposed gloomy and despicable repulsion of human nature and at the same time extolled glorious soul by portraying the dark reality under Puritanism in the 17th century."[3] (P92) Through this novel, the characters and situations have helped to describe the Puritan town Boston and Puritanism.
B.Hester,one of the victims of Puritanism
Firstly, Hester Prynne, one of the main characters, who in order to pursuit her own real love is convicted of adultery and is condemned to wear The Scarlet Letter “A” on her chest as a permanent sign of her sin. In modern society, Hester has done nothing wrong. She is brave and of graceful nature. She isn’t hide her own feeling and to love Dimmesdale bravely and commit a sin. But in the Puritan society, Hester should have kept adherence to her husband, even she had not a bit love for him. And furthermore, she should kill her natural love within her, instead of letting it released and committing such a sin at Boston. After Hester commits the sin, the Puritan society immediately enforced its law against her. “Hester betrayed her husband and went against the principle of honesty on Puritan, so she must accept the severe penalty in the Puritan society at that time.”〔[4] (47) Besides to wear the red letter, she must suffer public shame on the scaffold.
The beliefs of the general public at that time can easily be summed up in the first scaffold scene, which also gives a prospective of what Hester Prynne must deal with. “On the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue.”[5] (P42) For the public, Hester’s punishment is reasonable. They don’t pay any pity on her, but take her punishment as one way of amusing themselves. It is a typical phenomenon of Puritanism t
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