Puritanism in the Scarlet Letter #4

Among the Puritans, Indians were considered to be much too undomesticated and as "savages." Although, in the beginning, there was a middle ground between them, where both civilizations were very unbiased towards each other. This impression shifted as a result of the Puritans' innumerable attempts of converting the natives to Christianity, forcing them to succumb to the Puritans, and also the Puritans' view that they had ownership of Indian land. From reading chapter eighteen, I made a connection to Pearl and the wilderness. "She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods." The natives were associated with wilderness as they ordinarily sustained themselves in forests and darkness. The wildness seen in Pearl ties into the uncivilized Natives. The town refuses to accept Pearl, isolating her from the rest of society, despite Pearl's inclination of becoming accepted. It was not only Pearl who had been seen by the town as wild and corrupt but also the Native Americans and Hester Prynne, whom had been fenced off from the entire society for nearly all of the remainder of her life. 

In the last chapter, King's Chapel is mentioned as well as the writing engraved on Hester Prynne's tombstone. The King's Chapel is an actual Puritan church which had been built in 1749 and is also located where the story takes place. I am not entirely sure if the tombstone is of great significance at all, but I remember studying Puritan tombstones in my history class. What I got out of it is that the tombstones of a person expressed the person's (in this case, a woman's) modesty and integrity as an individual. However, the writing engraved on Hester Prynne at the end of the story is a device to show that punishment would follow her even after she died: "ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES," (243). This further reinforces the belief of the scarlet letter's purpose and the Puritan concept of predestination, that they would not be able to save themselves since God had already determined their destiny.

Puritanism in the Scarlet Letter #3

Page 189 makes a connection with Martin Luther: "Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned among the New England Puritans." Puritan beliefs grew out of the Reformation, principally from the teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin. The Puritans believed in predestination, that humans are inevitably determined by God at birth whether they would enter heaven or be condemned. The society's judgement of Hester Prynne is that she is unfit of the society, further isolating her from the realms of the world around her. Another association I found within the Scarlet Letter connects with indentured servants. "Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Governor's bond servant - a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave," (201.) Indentured servants were especially common in colonial America. A man from America would pay for an English man's journey from England to America if the Englishman gave his approval to work for the American man for seven years. 

Another Puritan concept is traced in chapter thirteen: "It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates." The Puritans believed that every person was brought about in the company of original sin, that every person is born sinful. They believed that every person was a sinner as a result of Adam and Eve committing the first sins. The Puritans had been consistently assessing themselves whether or not they may enter salvation or be condemned, as how a person live indicated the means of a person being predestined to go to heaven or the depths of hell. Upon finishing The Scarlet Letter, I have realized that Hawthorne portrays Hester Prynne as contradiction to the Puritan beliefs. Due to the society acknowledging her sin of adultery with Dimmesdale, of course the people were inclined to think that she would be condemned in her after life. However, I think she had skillfully redeemed herself as a moral woman - maybe even the most virtuous woman of the colony. This inward analysis of Hester Prynne reveals the altered beliefs during Hawthorne's time in comparison with the ideologies among the Puritan time period.