Religion

One of the most important components of The Scarlet Letter is the Puritan religion. As this novel is set in a time period with very little scientific discoveries people relied on religion to guide their lives. Hester Prynne is imprisoned and punished based on religious reasons, the people of the town despise her because she has shamed them by going against the bible and the people adore the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale because he speaks so powerfully about god.

At the beginning of the novel as Hester is about to walk out of the prison with the scarlet letter embroidered on her dress one of the women waiting to witness her appearance utters the words "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book." The people did not want her around them, for many reasons one of the strongest being that they feared God and what punishment he might have for them if they should allow this sinner back into their society. At the same time the law-enforcers feared what God's wrath might be if they should take away this woman's life. So for the rest of her life she must wear the letter A embroidered in scarlet on her dress as a sign of shame. Now to us this may not seem that bad, but keep in mind the religious beliefs at the time; death wasn't as feared as it is now, there was no doubt in the afterlife and as long as you were good on earth you were guaranteed into heaven. This punishment forever displayed on this poor woman a sign basically saying that she is never getting into heaven, for a religious society this is truly awful. The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a young, but beautifully worded priest in Boston at this time. He is greatly admired by the citizens but is pitied by them as well, as he Hester is a member of his congregation and therefore, in their eyes, he is responsible for her soul and must feel a small portion of the blame. Ironically enough he is much more to blame for Hester's situation than they realize, but that's going off topic. Religion continues to come up throughout the entire novel through signs, suffering, and multiple other things that I'm sure our generation could explain through science should they happen now.

Ridiculous though it is, religion is the main concept this civilization and therefore this novel is built. I'm not going to turn this into any sort of discussion of my beliefs or lack there of, but i do think that it can be agreed that any person in our society as radically religious as these puritans were would be regarded as insane and brutal. The Scripture is the law, and everyone, criminals included believed this.