Critical thinking through literature

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts and therefore knew New England culture first-hand. His novel the Scarlet Letter offers a poignant critique of religious conservatism in America but the themes expressed in the novel are universal. Hester Prynne is shunned from Boston, and she and her daughter Pearl are made into a pariahs. Prynne spent time in prison and is literally exiled from the community, forced to live outside of city limits and makes a meager living as a seamstress. She and her husband had been estranged for years; Hester lived in Boston and her husband was either lost at sea or delayed his arrival indefinitely. Either way, Hester had an affair with Arthur Dimmesdale and Pearl is their child. Proof of her adultery in the form of the child shocks the Puritan community of Boston. Their concern with Hester's personal life, and their lack of compassion for her predicament, is the underlying conflict in the Scarlet Letter. Moreover, Dimmesdale is a prominent Boston minister. As a religious leader, his affair with Hester is as morally reprehensible as her transgression is to the Puritanical community. To emphasize the fallacy of religious fundamentalism, Hawthorne portrays Dimmesdale as a deeply conflicted man whose guilt drives him to physical illness and eventually, death. At some points in the novel, the author portrays Prynne and Dimmesdale as lovers with genuine affection for one another. However, their love is unable to blossom because of the religious conservatism that stifles joy in the Puritanical community.

Hawthorne's point-of-view is clear. His painting Prynne as a hero and Dimmesdale as a tragic casualty of religious righteousness shows his disdain for Puritanism. Hawthorne himself lived among a transcendentalist community of writers and other creative people who encouraged freedom of thought and alternative forms of spirituality and religious expression. Transcendental ideologies fuel Hawthorne's perspective in the Scarlet Letter, a book which most likely disturbed religious officials and conservative Christians when it was published. Hawthorne's work seems remarkably and admirably political given the time it was written. The author is concerned about the long-term social, psychological and political effects of religious conservativism.

Furthermore, Hawthorne does not limit himself to commentary about Puritanical culture on a structural level. He illustrates the deleterious effects of organized religion on personal happiness and social order. Hawthorne portrays the persecution of Hester Prynne as being ridiculous, making a powerful statement against what the author must have viewed as continued religious persecution in the United States. Undoubtedly when Hawthorne published the Scarlet Letter in 1850, the religious revival movements bore witness to victims of persecution who resembled Prynne. Women like Hester were especially subject to ridicule and social exile if they subverted social norms. Given that slavery and sexism were still pervasive realities in American society in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Scarlet Letter borders on being a radical work.

Hawthorne also reveals how religion had pervaded Massachusetts Bay society to the extent that public laws reflected Christianity. The idea that Church and State should be separate did not emerge until much later in American consciousness, and by the time Hawthorne wrote the Scarlet Letter in 1850 the nation had been fully formed and founded on principles far different than those upon which the Massachusetts Bay Colony was: namely, religious plurality was protected in the Constitution. In spite of that, women had few rights in public society. Women were prohibited from voting or holding public office. Adultery and sexual freedom remained taboo, as was homosexuality and mixed-race relations.