Inner Beauty In The Scarlet Letter

Inner Beauty The Puritans of the colonial time became notorious for their strict religious virtues. They interpreted various events and objects as satanic or malicious. Their society condemned those who did not share their beliefs, and believed that a select few were predestined to live in heaven after death. The Puritans followed the custom of devoting their lives to God because there was a chance that any of them were already chosen for salvation. Hawthorne loathed their oppressive principles, and in his novel, The Scarlet Letter, he displays the narrow-mind of the Puritan community, especially in their opinion of nature. Hawthorne presents the contempt he keeps for Puritan views by contrasting how they perceive the natural setting with how he views it: a beautiful refuge outside of the community law. Upon their arrival to the New World, the Puritans faced potentially fatal entities that they had to overcome to survive the harsh wilderness: hostile natives, disease, and starvation. They saw that the natives lived in the forest, and thus gave it an evil connotation. This is comparable to how people today stereotypically associate the Muslim religion with terrorism, due to a small percentage of extremists committing acts of violence. In the novel itself, the town witch, Mistress Hibbins, performs her conjuring in the woods at night, and asks Hester, the protagonist, “Wilt thou go with us to-night? There will be merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make one” (Hawthorne 80). The Puritans regarded witchcraft as one of the wickedest sins a person could commit, and if it occurred in the forest, the community steered clear of it. Since the townspeople never entered the forest, the only view they perceived of it was the dark and insidious guise portrayed externally; similar to how people today judge those they first meet only on their physiognomies. Hawthorne disproves them with the vivid imagery of areas of the forest and the beach; he shows that the supposedly evil geographic features surrounding the village are actually beautiful and inviting. On the beach Pearl, Hester’s daughter, steps into the tide pool and sees her reflection which “…beckoned likewise, as if to say,-‘This is a better place! Come thou into the pool!’” (115). Hawthorne shows how nature calls for people with its magnificence and they approach it, entranced. In addition, Hawthorne gives a voice to the forest elements through ample use of personification. “The brook… had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say” (128). Hawthorne clearly shows the vivacity of …show more content…
His use of the natural setting with descriptive imagery etches the picture of early Massachusetts clearly into the reader’s mind. He also shows how the forest serves as an escape from the harsh Puritan culture and into a magnificent wilderness where no rules or laws restrict its inhabitants. As many important discussions and decisions occur within the security of the wood over the course of the novel, without the forest being incorporated into The Scarlet Letter, the plot could not progress. The natural setting provides a beautiful image and an appropriate meeting place for the protagonists, yet the Puritan community views it as malevolent and avoids