The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This assignment is about the people who fled to the USA in the end of the 17s to the beginning of the 18s. On the basis of relevant historical technical books and the novel "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne it is described how the community was in New England in the 17th century. With an account of the community, a historical source which confirms some of the information given by the technical books and the characterization of the main person and the setting in the novel it is compared how it conforms to the historical descriptions.

Not only were the Puritans very religious people they were also very devout and gentle, but with their very religious spirit came also a superstitious belief in witches. Their community was divided hierarchy with God above the community, the priest above the Church, the public authorities above the ordinary citizens etc., either way their society had a better equality of status than they had in Europe. Furthermore they had a lot of focus on sexual sins in their community's laws where one of them was fornication. This is a very interesting point to the main character of the novel: Hester Prynne is a young woman who was sent to America by her husband who soon after dies. She falls in love with the priest but gets pregnant and her sentence is to eternally carry the letter of sin. Even though Hester and her child have been pushed out of the community she gets accepted and years later people come to her for help.

The description of the Puritan people in the novel conforms to reality within their faith but the novel also pictures the people as sorrowful and depressed which is not the case with the history. The community's superstitious beliefs have also been included in the novel where it appears as a witch, incidents that include the Devil, demons or hellfire. The conclusion is that Nathaniel Hawthorne has used knowledge of the community to write his book.

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