Puritans In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne writes in his romance novel, The Scarlet Letter, in order to address his intended readers, the Victorians. Although the novel was composed in 1850, Hawthorne sets his piece in the 17th century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts. Stephen Railton, a literary critic, asserts that the reader and the audience differ. In addition, he also discloses that Hawthorne utilizes the Puritans in the story act as the audience, who directly respond to the actions of Hester Prynne and other characters; the readers however, interpret the novel and are affected by the audience. The Scarlet Letter clearly conveys a surrogate audience to react to the actions of Hester and other central characters.
In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne utilizes the repressive authoritarian Puritans as a way to enable the equally condemning Victorians to reflect upon their own society. Hawthorne expresses the earthly
Onto the minister they project their image of pure. Angelic self, the self-gratulatory image that is fostered by their denial of the sinful self” (Railton 487). Here, the Puritans are not as condemning towards the minister, as they are to Hester. By misreading Dimmesdale, the Puritans fail as an audience, in this instance. In addition, “One part of the reputation Puritanism had in the nineteenth century was intolerance” (Railton 490). If the Puritan society as a whole was intolerant, they should not acquit the reverend and condemn Hester for the same sin. The Puritans reject the amount of sinners in their own society: “If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne’s” (Hawthorne 175). The Puritans only condemned Hester for these actions because she beared a child, a visible sign of her infidelity. The Puritans are a parallel to the Victorians, meaning they need to examine their own society’s