The Necessity Of Identity Community In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Necessity of IdentityA community is a social group whose citizens reside in a like region, share government, and posses a common culture. The Puritan societies that once populated the New England colonies captured this idea of community and heightened it to its extremes. The community’s stern regulations create a habitat which lacks personal expression and leaves little room within its boundaries for one’s own identity to be ascertained. Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates their austere standards for society throughout his novel, The Scarlet Letter. In a Puritan society dominated by the necessity to conform, only those who isolate themselves from the strict expectations of the community may fully develop their individuality.

Hester Prynne, despite the resentment felt for her by the society, is able to find her identity through her isolation. Though there is no punishment preventing her from leaving those who shun her, she would rather stay and accept what they perceive as sin as part of who she is than flee and be forced to conform to a new society. The isolation she faces by remaining
As the minister, he is placed upon a pedestal on which he can do no harm, while he has secretly sinned with Hester. His inability to reveal his secret to the citizens demonstrates his unwillingness to submit to the isolation Hester and Pearl must endure. Pearl, in her ability to reveal the truth through her actions and questions, is unable to accept Dimmesdale intimately while he keeps his sin hidden from the community. Even when acknowledged as her father she refuses to kiss him as he asks. It is not until he proclaims his sin upon his death bed that she will at last kiss him in recognition. She herself has not been restricted by the harsh standards of the Puritans, thus permitting her to develop freely and with disregard to what is considered normal in