Transcendental Themes within The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 is a story of adulterated love and revenge, set in 1640’s Boston, in a small Puritan community. Nathaniel Hawthorne evokes transcendentalism and romanticism in a variety of ways throughout the novel, focusing on youthful innocence, truths of the human hearts, the pureness of the natural world, worth and freedom of the individual, and the ubiquitous idea that the artificial nature of society corrupts. Because of the time in which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, he was greatly influenced by the ideas of transcendentalism, and romanticism. A huge inspiration that led Hawthorne to incorporate these ideas into his writing were the people in which he was involved with on a personal level. At the age of 33, Hawthorne had just published his first book titled, “Twice- Told Tales” and luckily for him it was very popular with a woman named Elizabeth Peabody. Elizabeth Peabody was one of three daughters from an old New England family who was a distant descendent from the family whom the renowned Peabody Museums at Harvard and Yale were named after. Through her lifetime, Elizabeth managed to acquaint herself with many leading thinkers of her time, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott. This led her to publish her own book in French and German that was considered the “first book-length exposition of transcendentalist ideas”. Later in time, however, Hawthorne married Elizabeth’s younger sister, Sophia, but still had a great reverence for Elizabeth’s ideas, works, and person. Due to Hawthorne’s association with the entire Peabody family he was compelled to write The Scarlet Letter with much influence from them, their connections with transcendental and romantic supporters, and society as a whole.
Throughout the entire plot, nature and everything that goes along with it is portrayed as a pure and happy source of bliss, guidance, and sympathy. At the beginning of the book it is given in the first