Public Punishment In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is based around a story taking place in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century. During the seventeenth century, many citizens of England travelled to America in hopes of gaining more religious freedom; these people were often called Puritans or Pilgrims. However, while gaining religious freedom, they did not have unlimited freedom to do whatever they wanted; there were still laws that needed to be followed. At the beginning of the novel, it is introduced that Hester Prynne, who later becomes one of the main characters, has committed the crime of adultery. Her punishment not only includes a public punishment of standing on the scaffold for three hours but also she is required
Even amongst the New England Colonies where religion was all that practically mattered to the people, there were different types of crimes each with different variations of punishments. Out of all of the different “colonial” punishments, most of them revolved around one thing: public punishment. Similar to what happened in The Scarlet Letter, the author of “Crime and Punishment in the Plymouth Colony” confirmed that the punishment for adultery was to wear the letters AD for the rest of ones lives and two “severe whippings”. The author continued and claimed that if at any point a person was seen without the letters on, they would be publically whipped (par.4). Although slightly different from what occurred in the novel, the same idea is recognized that public punishment is necessary as well as a type of permanent marking. Although the idea of the scarlet letter does not really have much of a connection with religion, it does relate to the ideas of immorality. Even when not incorporating religion into a crime/punishment, immoral behavior was. Public punishment is further discussed within Cox’s article “Bilboes, Brands, and Branks”; here the machine called a pillory is mentioned. Cox identified the pillory as “an upright board hinged or divided in half” and he further acknowledged that it was used for treason, sedition, arson, blasphemy, witchcraft, perjury, wife beating, cheating, drunkenness, and more (par.24, par.26). These crimes, all of which were not related to religious beliefs and laws, were punishable by the pillory, a type of public shaming. These words by Cox reinforced that while many crimes were relative to religion, there were also some which were