Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” reflects the view of Puritan society from the Transcendental standpoint, and the main characters personalities outline the extreme characteristics of the Puritans according to this perspective. Hawthorne was brought up to believe in Transcendentalism, which was a very modern concept in the 19th Century, and this dramatically affected how he chose to portray the Puritans in this novel. The characters of Hester, Reverend Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Pearl are each representative of different qualities and are all impacted by the society they are living in.

During the Romantic era and Transcendental movement in the 19th C., authors, philosophers, and artists were dramatically changing the way that people thought. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s beliefs were shaped by these philosophies, along with his contemporaries and friends such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. The view of Puritan society was not necessarily true, but rather just their interpretation of how these writers thought that it must be, and according to what we have read in Demos life in the 17th C. was very different from what is described in this novel. Hawthorne was a descendent of the Puritans but felt very harshly towards their society and depicted them as miserable and severe people. He describes the Puritan children at play, “playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring each other with freaks of imitative witchcraft” (p. 64). Hawthorne describes this society so grim and bleak that the children do not “play” and have no real chance to be a child but are automatically thrown into dealing with adult issues. His view of the Puritan society is very grim, compared with his own society in which revolutionary thoughts and ideas were changing the world.

The characters that Nathaniel Hawthorne describes in “The Scarlet Letter” have unique characteristics and also individual strengths and weaknesses which are affected by the Puritan society. Hester Prynne is Hawthorne’s interperatation of all that is good in the world, being outwardly and inwardly beautiful as a person. She was described as the “model of elegance” and being remeniscent of “Divine Maternity” (p. 39). She carried an air of dignity and refused to appear affected by the communities views of her & the punishment they gave her. Her strengths include being able to carry on despite the mark of an “A” for her crime, and trying to raise her daughter as best as she could. Pearl, the daughter of Hester, was described as “a little elf” throughout the novel, and her mother was afraid that she was actually evil at times. The child was outwardly beautiful, with “a native grace” (p. 61), and often professed a strong love for her mother yet she also continually teased her and frightened her by being almost witch-like. Pearl was unlike the other children and was never included in society, just as her mother was shunned from the community, she was never accepted. Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale was the man who was the father of Hester’s daughter, yet he could not speak out and make that fact known and it tormented him and builded up inside. Arthur was described by Hawthorne as being an eloquent speaker with a striking aspect, but also of having an air of nervousness and a look “startled” or “half-frightened” (p. 46). Rev. Dimmesdale was looked up to by his congregation as being a holy person and he did not want to interrupt this view so instead hides his secret. His weakness was not of moral character, because they were not “the worst sinners in the world” (p. 134), but rather it was his fear of telling the community and how it would affect them to know their beloved Reverend had betrayed them. Roger Chillingworth was Hester’s husband who retured to find his wife being punished with her scarlet letter. He was an intellectual, and was deeply hurt by the circumstances that he found but knew why she had not remained faithful to him. Roger said “We have wronged each other” (p. 51), because he had known that he was always concentrated on his studies and was distant. He became enraged though, and as the years passed by he formed a close friendship with Rev. Dimmesdale, and enjoyed continually persecuting him and making him feel guilty about not telling anyone his sin. “To make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain!” (p. 96). Chillingworth was making the worst possible sin, to hope for someone’s demise and slow torcher of dealing with guilt, and enjoying watching the process of it. Hawthorne’s characters all are affected by society; the view of themselves and of others.

“The Scarlet Letter” shows what was wrong with the Puritan society and their judgement upon others because of their sins, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s own beliefs from his generation. The Transcendental era could not be more different from the described bleakness of Puritan times; women were becoming more respected by society, there was a great freedom and rights that were now expected by citizens, when back in the 17th Century only certain men could have such rights and even then they were monitored by the town. It is a great story of morals, concience, and the punishment of shame, yet one should not base their entire view on this novel without solid facts instead of Hawthorne’s point of view alone. As he himself said that the scarlet letter became a “legend” (p. 178) in the community of Boston, his view of Puritan life has been the most commonly perceived view of future generations.