Essays on The Scarlet Letter

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates the need for humans to abide by the laws of nature and conscience, rather than the laws of man, to achieve happiness. The laws of nature, enforced only by the human conscience, govern every individual. Humans learn these...

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set in 1600’s Puritan Boston. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, a woman who suffers public ignominy, forced to wear a red scarlet letter for her sin of adultery. The Scarlet Letter provides a look at...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne accepts that she has sinned and realizes that she must pay the price for her crime. In doing so she becomes overwhelmed with courage and conviction and assumes a redemption that is denied to most of...

In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne establishes a duality between piety and sin that manifests itself in the character of Arthur Dimmesdale. Throughout the plot, Dimmesdale is presented as a faithful and religious minister. Hawthorne primarily portrays this by detailing the power of...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter employs dramatic clout within the characters with the light and dark contrast. The “blackness” did not allude to race. The dark colors underline sin and their evil, distraught intentions while the lightness emphasizes innocence and exposure. Hawthorne implies Calvinist...

Throughout the late 18th century and 19th century, Romanticism was a highly popular literary style adopted by many novelists. Nature, a prominent element of Romanticism, is used in these authors’ writings not just for descriptions and images, but also to emphasize major ideas. One gifted...

In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne Prynne redefines herself despite being shunned by the Puritan community. Although she has sinned, she does not dwell in the past. She grows stronger as a person from the cruelty of the townspeople and the shame...

The author of my book is Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by his other famous book, “The House of Seven Gables” which was published in 1851. Something that is common between the two books...

The Scarlet Letter, perhaps the most notable work of prodigious American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, was first published in 1850 and has since been subject to a plethora of literary criticisms, including those from psychoanalytic, new historical, and reader-response perspectives. In each of their articles, scholars...

The literature of the American Renaissance is rich in symbolism, and in no author’s work is this more evident than in that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Perhaps the most popular of his works, The Scarlet Letter has long been dissected and analyzed by scholars and critics;...

Love and hate require intimacy and heart-knowledge. Both emotions leave the individual subservient to the emotion and become compulsory for survival. If an emotion develops into a discernible obsession, it may eventually abandon the zealous lover or no less zealous hater disheartened and dejected once...

When a person or character makes a mistake or commits an affective act, their life can be altered both negatively and positively. This idea takes an important contribution in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This novel focuses solely on Hester Prynne: as the protagonist...

In The Scarlet Letter, author Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester Prynne, an unhappily married seamstress, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the local Puritan clergyman, to prove that a community that forcefully suppresses the natural desires of an individual is dangerous, both to the individual and to the community....

The story of Adam and Eve illustrates the sinful nature of man. A common theory about the story of Adam and Eve is that God intended Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The argument is, if God had not...

In Hawthorne’s intricately woven tale The Scarlet Letter, his characters create a parallel theme with the Biblical story of Original Sin. By examining the characters and their interactions and insights about each other, one can examine the symbolic parallels with the Garden of Eden. One...

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne writes the consequences of one sinful act in a Puritan community. This sinful act involves three main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingsworth. As The Scarlet Letter progresses, each character copes with his or her sin differently, and therefore...

Why does Hawthorne give Hester Prynne the name Hester? Hawthorne himself, as is well known, changed his family name from Hathorne, to distance himself from those Puritan ancestors whose achievements and excesses haunted his fiction. The Scarlet Letter tells of Roger Prynne’s reinvention of himself...

Written in 1849 and published in 1850, the novel The Scarlet Letter by American Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864), delves deeply into the concept of sin, the awareness of guilt, and the effects that religious fanaticism can have on human communities and individuals. The intention...

The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a story of Puritan society and the significant impact it had on people’s lives. It takes place in a New England city during the 17th century. The protagonist, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Reverend Arthur...

There is no doubt that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ​The Scarlet Letter ​is a novel on morals. The way society judges Hester Prynne and the actions of Arthur Dimmesdale, speaks to Hawthorne’s views of Puritanism and religion as well as the treatment of women. However, there is...

In the Scarlet Letter, there are many elements of transcendental beliefs and values present because of Nathaniel Hawthrone, the author of the Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne affected the structure of transcendentalism through his experience on the Brook Farm. He has also been involved in the belief...

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Everyone knows this hackneyed quote, but people still judge others based on outer appearance. By doing so, these people ignore the possible inner greatness of those they so quickly set aside. The character Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s...

Hester Prynne is considered to be both one of the first heroines and feminist icons in American Literature. This is despite Nathaniel Hawthorne, born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, being labelled as a misogynist, threatened by the growing feminist movement. How Hawthorne portrays...

Puritans are often mischaracterized as overly strict and moral persons whose lives revolve around killjoy attitudes and laws against all innocent social pleasures. Qualities of sympathy, charity, and compassion are rarely tied to Puritanism or seen as characteristics that exemplified their way of life. (Newberry,...

Hawthorne wrote his incredible, psychological novel, The Scarlet Letter, not only in the literal sense, but also symbolically to thoroughly ingrain his strong ideas into the minds of his readers. Hawthorne uses sunshine, the forest, roses, the scarlet letter and Pearl to portray deeper thoughts....

In the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne masterfully puts many different types of themes including: sin, adultery, revenge, guilt, and blame. He uses character development to format the plot of this novel with rising actions and a turning climax. There are four main characters that make...

Imagine walking down the street, on a seemingly perfect day. The sky is blue, the birds are chirping, people are smiling and laughing. Then, all of a sudden, people begin rising into the air. They become microscopic as they ascend into the clouds. These people...

From Genesis, the true nature of humanity has been closely associated with sin. While the Puritans vehemently believed that sin degraded both God and human beings, in the Scarlet Letter, it is the very nature of transgression and the resulting scorn which bestows extraordinary powers...

Some authors experiment with various styles and techniques throughout their literary career, with distinct differences between various works. This is not true in the case of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne displays striking similarities in style and content in his works. Such similarities can be displayed between...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Feodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment share a common theme – the consequences of escaping punishment. This paper explores the authors’ views about psychological punishment as a much worse sentence than any given by the law. It focuses particularly on...