The Scarlet Letter is based on the book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which was published in 1850. This is the same year of the Compromise of 1850, also known as the Clay compromise, which postponed the American Civil War. This was during a time of great dispute over slavery and state rights. Although the earlier Missouri compromise stated clearly that two states must enter the Union at a time, one free and one slave, the Compromise of 1850 gave popular sovereignty to every state entering the Union allowing them to choose which to support. The story in The Scarlet Letter can be seen as a figurative analogy with the disputed concepts of Hester’s, the leading lady and adulteress in The Scarlet Letter, time paralleling the disputed concepts of Hawthorne’s time.
The Scarlet Letter takes place in Boston Massachusetts during the 17th century from 1642 – 1649 when Puritans were settling in the colonies to avoid religious persecution from England. This was a time when Puritans were fighting an English Civil War because although they felt the Church of England was correct they also felt that it needed to be purified and stricter. Similar is the conflict going on in Hawthorne’s time when the south and the north both agree with the concept of America’s unity but the south, like the Puritans, wish to have their right to make the choices that they feel appropriate and which cater to their societal settings and standards of belief. In this case it becomes Hester and not England which parallels the north. Just as the north goes against what has been traditional and against something that they see as not being just in God’s eyes, slavery, Hester goes against the tradition of Puritan values and society by violating the sanctifies of her marriage because she does not see her affair as being wrong in the eyes of God since she loves and considers the man she is being adulteress with as her true husband in the eyes of God. In both times there is a struggle between what is dictated by tradition and society (Puritans and the south) and the progressive views of human choice and freedom (Hester and the north). Puritans moved to the Americas from England to get away from persecution of their beliefs and to gain the liberty to worship God as they choose. Puritan society dictated though that uniformity in religion must exist in any society for it to thrive and the citizens to be healthy and pure and because of this it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose this one true religion, even forcibly if necessary in order to save the souls of all of the communities citizens. Because they regulated the laws of the citizens through scripture, Boston’s first constructed code of laws listed the number one law as being penalty of death for crime of adultery.
The movie is inaccurate in this sense because it has Hester wear an A instead of being brought to death in order to remind her and the community of her sin. Although the labeled A is meant to stand for adulterous it is often ambiguous in its meaning as it stand also for many of the qualities she posses as well as many qualities of the community. Even though Hester’s strong character, good qualities and usefulness do not go unnoticed to the community, she is still strictly out-casted as the intent of Puritan society at the time was to reinforce the strict values of the Church of England and do so in such a fashion that England would remodel their church to fit that of New England’s. The south is like this in the way of their ambiguity of leaving and fighting against England to escape from oppression only to oppress others in their freedom and to keep that structure of oppression which they had gotten from England. Puritans justified their seizure and oppression of Native Americans by suiting their religious society by labeling them as less then humans and calling them heathens put on earth by God to test them and for their use and without this God’s plan would be left unfulfilled. This is similar to the way the south dehumanizes African Americans in order to use them to fit their societal purposes and to use them in a way that they as well see morally fit. Like Hester and the preacher do not see them as having this purpose (we can see this in The Scarlet Letter with the preacher saying “they are not heathens but being born to liberty they take not well to bride and bit” and with Hester’s sound of appall when offered a slave when trying to rent indentured men) but allow it to degrees to avoid conflicts because they do share similar goals and beliefs as their society, the north as well disagrees with the south’s dehumanization of African Americans but also allows it to degrees because their share similar societal goals and wish to attempt to avoid conflict.
After her conflict with Puritan society, The Scarlet Letter concludes with Hester’s lover dead (the reason the north fights for), her husband dead (the embodiment of Puritan society and slavery) and her and her daughter, the product of her affair, moving away from the Puritan society which has come to accept her in its own way and on to more promising things. Although the Compromise of 1850 postponed the Civil War, the tensions are still strongly perceived and Hawthorne’s message in The Scarlet Letter is that a clash of the two (south and north) will occur over fundamentals and that things loved will be lost but so will that which holds us back from good judgment and that out of all of this will come an uncertain acceptance that will lead to a promising future of a good standing product of the two. This last part represented by Pearl, the child of Hester and the preacher who’s life was impacted and directed by the clash between self freedoms/choices and oppressions.
