Scarlet Letter and Religion Essay

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Religion features prominently as a theme in global literature and in fact literature is rooted in religious and cultural traditions, including the ancient literatures of the Middle East and Mesopotamia. Modern literature sometimes presumes a pro-religious worldview, but occasionally, authors offer scathing critiques of the way religion is used for mind control or social, political, or economic control. Generally, the evolution of literature shows that as the role of religion in society changed, so too did the role of religion in literature. Literature since the modern era, including work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, often offers scathing critiques of religion, whereas postmodern literature allows religion to play a more complex role in shaping individual identity. In Canadian author Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, religion is portrayed as a personal choice rather than as a cultural institution. On the contrary, the 19th century work by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne shows how religion serves mainly as a patriarchal institution that does more harm than good. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter heavily criticizes the political, social, and psychological roles of religion in a patriarchal society, whereas Yann Martel's Life of Pi presents religion more as a subjective phenomenon. The differences between these two authors' treatment of the theme of religion reveals an important cultural shift between the modern and postmodern eras.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter, the author shows how religion becomes a tool of social oppression and political control. The story takes place in the 17th century, during the peak of Puritanism in the New England colonies. Hester Prynne is the protagonist of the book. She has been sentenced by the church-state (Puritan New England was essentially a theocracy) to wear a scarlet letter "A" to publically shame her for being caught for committing adultery. As a result, Hester is shunned by the community and her daughter has no friends. Her husband has abandoned her, showing how women had few rights to divorce if they needed to. The man she had the affair with was a man of the cloth, Reverend Dimmesdale, who ends up dying of his grief and guilt. Nobody wins when religion takes control of the state, presuming to legislate morality.

Using plot, characterization, and setting in The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne shows that religious authorities are hypocritical, and especially fundamentalists, as the Puritans in the novel do not practice what they preach -- particularly Dimmesdale who is the priest who has the romantic affair with Hester Prynne. The lack of compassionate, truly Christian approaches to social order also come across as hypocritical. Hawthorne portrays the Reverend Wilson and other religious members of the community as being rigid and self-righteous, rather than the more honest protagonist and her lover, both of whom admit they have transgressed from their community's social norms. There is no benefit in ostracizing Hester Prynne other than to use her as a moral scapegoat for controlling the rest of the community and pressure people into conforming to Puritanical values. In spite of the negative way Puritanism is portrayed in the text, however, his contemporaries read Hawthorne as an apologist for Puritanism (Mills). The way his contemporaries read The Scarlet Letter was that Hawthorne was trying to re-purify Puritanism, to expose its faults as with the unnecessary shaming and witch-hunting of women. Likewise, Hawthorne "recovered what Puritanism professed but seldom practiced: the spirit of piety, humility, and tragedy in the face of the inscrutable ways of God," (Mills 78). Hawthorne distinctly uses the art form of literature to parody Puritanism and expose its deep-rooted hypocrisies.

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For Hawthorne, religion is not a problem just because it is hypocritical, though. It is a problem also because it has too strong a role to play in politics, society, and even the law. A scarlet letter was a badge of shame, a means to publically degrade a member of the community as a form of legal punishment for the "crime" of adultery. Adultery is no longer a crime in the 21st century, but it did take generations of feminist activism to show how fusing morality, religion, politics, and law can be dangerous. Literature is often a powerful tool that can be used to impact policy and social change, and The Scarlett Letter does show this. The time period in which Hawthorne writes The Scarlet Letter was on the cusp of major social, political, and economic changes. These changes might help show how Hawthorne was able to launch a scathing critique not just of religion but also the patriarchal nature of religion. Hawthorne purposely chooses to write about not his own time period, but the period of early colonial American history when the Puritans remained in control of political and social life. In fact, Reverend John Wilson was based on a real historical figure (Gilligan). Religion and law were "almost identical" in Puritan times, and based on the outcome and tone of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne clearly reveals this to be a problematic coupling (Gilligan 26).

Setting his novels like the Scarlet Letter within this cultural and historical backdrop allows Hawthorne to make connections between Puritanism and its faults and the faults he was commenting on and critiquing in his own time. Doing so, using the past as a means to showcase the present, also allows Hawthorne to use the literary techniques of setting as metaphor. The Puritan setting of The Scarlet Letter is a metaphor for the social and cultural milieu of the 19th century, an era in which slavery still existed and women were not yet considered citizens at all. Against the backdrop of Puritan New England, Hawthorne makes clear and cogent suggestions about what can be done to eliminate the role of religion in politics and to eliminate the types of patriarchal institutions that inhibit the expression of genuinely American values like freedom and liberty. In writing The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne can also be said to be a feminist. Hester Prynne is the heroine of the novel because she liberates herself from the patriarchal constraints of Puritanism (Gilligan). Hester Prynne also admits that she had been in a loveless marriage, while Hawthorne shows that her adultery was hardly a moral transgression given the fact that her husband had practically abandoned her -- he is absent throughout the book. Marriage, like the religion that upholds marriage as sacred, is a patriarchal institution that is designed to retain women as subordinate, servile creatures.

Literary techniques like characterization, setting, theme, and tone highlight the role of religion in The Scarlet Letter. Even though he is a priest himself, Dimmesdale is as torn apart from the way the Puritans have interpreted Christian doctrine. He clearly loves Hester Prynne, but his internalization of guilt leads to his tragic death. Dimmesdale is depicted as being just as much a victim of a patriarchal religious hierarchy as Hester is. Hester is depicted as being solid and strong, able to withstand the tremendous amount of social pressure to conform to standards of female comportment, to remain entirely….....

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