Puritanism As A Biased And Warped Religion In Literature - Research Paper Example

Puritanism As A Biased And Warped Religion In Literature Nathaniel Hawthorne lived and worked during the middle 1800s, but his family background and interest were focused upon the ideals of the strongly Puritan-influenced newly settled New England, to which he was an heir. In depicting his stories, Hawthorne attempted to write using subject matter and a style that reflected these early colonists. There are numerous religious and secular concepts contained within the story The Scarlet Letter that are difficult for a modern reader to understand. Some of these ideas remained unfamiliar to Hawthorne himself, but he intuitively understood that they were elemental to the early Puritans’ lives and attempted to understand them by putting himself in their place. In doing so, he developed a stronger sense of the strictures and limitations of the Puritan society, harshly criticizing it for its tendency to destroy faith rather than build it due to its hypocritical nature. While the religion acknowledged that every man was a sinner, they often singled out one individual or an entire gender as being necessarily ‘more sinner’ than the rest. Men gained some release in their ability to take leadership roles in the community and relax a bit at home behind closed doors, but women were always judged in relation to their ability to constantly live according to exceedingly high and restrictive ideals. In his depiction of Hester Prynne, Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter explores the negative side of Puritanism as a biased and warped religion. The early Puritans who settled New England held to a strict social order that was based largely upon the individual’s perceived righteousness in relation to the rest of the community. In other words, individuals who were considered to be closer to God had a higher social rank in the community than those who were considered to be closer to sin. “Religious exclusiveness was the foremost principle of their society. The spiritual beliefs that they held were strong. This strength held over to include community laws and customs. Since God was at the forefront of their minds, He was to motivate all of their actions” (Kizer, 2008). The Bible’s Genesis story of Adam and Eve thus established the most basic element of the Puritan society, that being that men were obviously closer to God than women since it was Eve who caused the fall of mankind. “Patriarchy is the system which oppresses women through its social, economic and political institutions. Throughout history men have had greater power in both the public and private spheres. To maintain this power, men have created boundaries and obstacles for women, thus making it harder for women to hold power” (Kramarae et al, 1985). In addition, the concept of sin in all its manifestations ruled every aspect of life in this society. These concepts are reflected strongly within all of Hawthorne’s stories, but perhaps none more than Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne’s story illustrates the degree to which Puritanism dictated everything involved in colonial life in 1600s New England, making Hester’s actions all the more daring as nothing she does will affect any kind of positive change in her community. Puritanism dictated all elements of life including how people talked with each other, how they dressed and what kind of relationships they were allowed to have. “In addition to believing in the absolute sovereignty of God, the total depravity of man, and the complete dependence of human beings on divine grace for salvation, they stressed the importance of personal religious experience” (Bowden, 2004). Hester’s fundamental belief in the importance of this personal religious experience functioned to hold her in town perhaps more than the forbidding forest full of savages that surrounded the village in that time. Although her passions led her to develop a relationship with the Reverend Dimmesdale, she was well aware that she would never be able to abandon her marriage vows in order to marry another. “All Hester’s strength, intelligence, devotion avail neither her lover nor herself” (Maclean, 1955: 13). Her vows required her to remain in the village as a married woman, alone and unlikely to ever have a family, for as long as there remained no news of Dr. Prynne’s whereabouts. “They [the Puritans] also spoke of salvation in terms of ‘covenant.’ In the notes to the Geneva Bible … emphasis was on a personal covenant of grace, whereby God both promised life to those who exercised faith in Christ and graciously provided that faith, on the basis of Christ's sacrificial death, to the elect” (Noll, 2004). Any decision on her part to turn her back on her vows would have been considered equal to turning her back upon God himself. Despite these feelings of duty and fidelity to an ideal rather than a flesh and blood person, Hester also realized she was a woman who had need of companionship and love, which she found in Dimmesdale as well as in the Bible in which people are directed to love one another. Not able to rectify these conflicting emotions, Hester is trapped in a cycle of inactivity as she awaits divine direction either from the minister or from some other source. That answer came when Hester got pregnant in a close-knit society in which such a condition could not be hidden or covered up. Once Pearl was born, it was obvious to the villagers that Hester was a much greater sinner than the rest of the villagers even though all she’d wanted was a little love and companionship. This meant she must be both punished for her crimes against God and shunned from pious society. To win her place in heaven, it was the responsibility of the community to cause her to suffer the lowest status on earth as penance for her past deeds, physically manifested in the form of the scarlet letter she was sentenced to wear on her chest for the rest of her life. However, Hester turns this badge of shame into a brand of courage and strength, signifying that she could bear such disgrace and shame and yet still find a means of surviving. Having been “of an impulsive and passionate nature” (Ch. 2), Hester is seen to have little control over her life, but remains in control of everything she does within the novel. When she is brought out to the public square and placed on the platform, the town leaders give her the opportunity to rid herself of the brand if she will just name the man who impregnated her. Hester doesn’t take advantage of this opportunity because she is interested in protecting her questioner who hadn’t seen fit to come forward on his own to admit his guilt. At this point, she already realizes that in the single instance of wearing the Scarlet Letter, the image has already been branded into the hearts and minds of her accusers while the betrayal inherent in Dimmesdale’s silence and her neighbor’s lack of Christian forgiveness has seared into her heart. She tells Dimmesdale, and the rest of the town, that the letter can now never be removed: “It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony as well as mine!” (Ch. 3). Although Hester hates the scarlet letter, she wears it both because of her internal commitment to her religion as well as because she is aware that her community will never allow her to forget it. In this depiction, Hawthorne shows the Puritan society to be about love and forgiveness without truly realizing what these words might mean. However, Hester remains strong in spite of this because of her underlying faith in a God divorced from the judgment and punishment of her neighbors. Her strength is shown near the opening of the story as she talks with Chillingsworth in her jail cell: “’Thou knowest,’ said Hester – for, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame – ‘thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any’” (Ch. 4). Although she was apparently wild and willful in her youth, evidenced by her own memories, her interaction with Roger Chillingworth proves she has only become stronger through her experiences. In seizing the letter, she seizes control of herself as well as her own independence. The strict social order of the Puritans which focused so exclusively upon each other’s perceived righteousness meant that there was a high degree of social control within the villages. “These Puritans insisted that they, as God’s elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to God’s will as revealed in the Bible. This union of church and state to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism direct and exclusive control over most colonial activity until commercial and political changes forced them to relinquish it at the end of the 17th century” (Noll, 2004). Thus, Reverend Dimmesdale’s role as the village preacher was more involved than what we think of as a minister today. “Though not theocracies, most colonies in New England were dominated by Puritan mores and doctrine” (Clark, 1999). Understanding this makes it easier to see how Reverend Dimmesdale could not be seen to be associating himself with Hester after Pearl was born. She was a fallen woman and he represented the highest moral authority. Rather than mixing as a means of bringing the fallen closer to God, the Reverend was expected to keep his distance so as to avoid contamination. It is interesting to compare Hester’s strengths as a sinner to Dimmesdale’s weaknesses as a pillar of moral character and righteousness. “Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister – an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look – as of a being who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own” (Ch. 3). While Hester is openly shunned and condemned for her sins, Dimmesdale proves incapable of dealing with the inner accusations that torment his soul. It is difficult for a modern audience to understand why Hester would put up with so much abuse rather than simply packing up her things and moving to another village and starting over. While it was not necessarily true that the colonies were so far separated that Hester could not have made her way to the next town on her own, this would not have accomplished anything more than making the two females homeless as their reputation would have followed them. Hester had entered town as a new wife with a house already built and ready for her. Until her husband chose to reveal himself, it remained undisputedly hers which would not have been the case in any other town. “Building homes and establishing farms required intensive and often backbreaking toil” (Jones, 1853). In addition, it was essential for colonists to rely upon each other for sustenance through the long, cold winters of the New England environment. “New Englanders evolved an intricate web of interdependence to meet the demand for labor, working for neighbors who sold their labor in return” (Jones, 1853). Although Hester’s crime was considered very serious, she was not confined to prison or sentenced to capital punishment because it would not have served the colony to have her locked away in prison, which again was not necessarily the case had she gone to another colony. Although most of these basic Puritan ideas were still a part of Hawthorne’s family belief system at the time that he wrote The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne himself was questioning the validity and purity of these concepts, particularly as they tended to vilify and weaken women. Realizing the degree to which the ideas were held only a few generations back, Hawthorne traced a progression in society that led toward forgiveness. While sin indeed is the ruin of all mankind, his emphasis remains on the word ‘all’ throughout this novel rather than the more common emphasis placed on the feminine gender. In Reverend Dimmesdale, Hawthorne illustrates how hidden sin is present in every man, even the most holy, and how its realization can both forge a better, meaning more moral, man as well as expose the sins of others. The way in which Hawthorne presents his tale leaves ample room for analysis as he shows Hester to be a very strong woman making the best of the situation society has locked her into. The base portion of human nature brought Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale together, but the higher calling of their religion, society and environment kept them apart. Had just one of these elements been different, the outcome might have been much different. Works Cited Bowden, Henry Warner. “American Puritanism.” 2004. Believe. April 10, 2009 Clark, Michael P. “Puritanism.” Encyclopedia of American Literature. Steven R. Serafin & Alfred Bendixen (Eds.). New York: Continuum Publishers, 1999, pp. 921-24. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1992. Jones, Abner Dumont. “Cotton Mather.” The Illustrated American Biography. New York: J. Milton and Company, 1853, p. 59. Kizer, Kay. “Puritans.” University of Notre Dame, 2008. April 10, 2009 Kramarae, Cheris and Treichler, Paula A., with assistance from Ann Russo. A Feminist Dictionary. London, Boston: Pandora Press, 1985. Maclean, Hugh N. “Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter: ‘The Dark Problem of this Life.’” American Literature. Vol. 27, N. 1, (March 1955): 12-24. Noll, Mark A. “Puritanism.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2nd Ed.). Walter A. Elwell (Ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company, 2001, p. 857. Read More