Scarlet Letter And The House Of The Seven Gables

Many readers have been challenged in understanding the meaning of Puritanism in the books The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. A close examination of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables will reveal how Puritanism plays a role in these books. Many essays have been written explaining “Hawthorne’s Style” of writing towards Puritanism. An examination of Hawthorne’s setting, limited characterization, and tone will reveal how Puritanism plays a role in these novels.
First, Hawthorne uses setting in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables to explain how these novels use Puritanism. In The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne uses Puritanism by explaining the history of the Pyncheon family of New England dating back two hundred years before the book actually begins. “In The Scarlet Letter it starts off in colonial Boston, among the first generation of Puritan settlers, those who emigrated from
the Old World to the New (as opposed to those who would later be born there)”(“Where?” 31). Additionally, The House of Seven Gables takes place in “a time-worn mansion in Salem” and is “the story of a distinguished but troubled New England family--the Pynchon’s” (Library Journal par. 2). The Scarlet Letter begins in the mid-1600s in Boston, Massachusetts. The House of the Seven Gables begins in the 1800s then dates back to the 1600s just as The Scarlet Letter begins, this is how Hawthorne compares the two stories. Second, Hawthorne uses limited characterization of six important charters in The House of the Seven Gables to show Symbolism and Puritanism in each character.
“Symbolism means that each of his characters represents an aspect of life or of society” (Diorio 63). In The Scarlet Letter limited characterization is also used by Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter shows characterization through Puritanism. “Since the Puritans revere authority, their authorities really are their representatives; and this is why the only developed Puritan characters in The Scarlet Letter are the rulers of church and state. The others are anonymous; the Puritan people as a whole are simply a crowd that Hawthorne calls on occasionally for general effect” (“Who?” 54). Hester Prynne is the main character in The Scarlet Letter “Most of what the readers know about Hester, however, comes from the picture Hawthorne paints of her life after adultery” (Diorio 51). As you can see these two novels use mostly Puritanism and some Symbolism to give descriptions of the
characters. Lastly, Hawthorne uses tone to describe Puritanism in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. These two stories have an ominous tone. “This man of iron thus possesses all those attributes that Hawthorne had enumerated in The House of the Seven Gables as constituting the essential moral continuity between the Puritan of the seventeenth century and his descendant of the nineteenth” (Kaul 67-68). In The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne describes the prison door in an ominous tone, “the wooden jail was already marked weather stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle brown and gloomy front” (Hawthorne 1). In The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne also uses an ominous tone when he is describing the Pyncheon Well, “This was a fountain, set round with a rim of old mossy stones, and paved, in its bed, with what appeared to be sort of mosaic work of variously colored pebbles” (Hawthorne 58). In conclusion, Hawthorne uses Puritanism to describe the setting, limited characterization, and ominous tone in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. These two novels date back to the mid-1600s when a sin was a crime because that’s how puritans believed it should be. Also when Hawthorne describe his character using Symbolism and Puritanism describing good and evil. Lastly, Hawthorne used an ominous tone to describe the Pyncheon Well in The House of the Seven Gables and the Prison door in The Scarlet Letter.