For Puritans, “religion and law were almost identical” (Hawthorne 47). In The Scarlet Letter the primary tool for policing the colonist is the Bible, specifically God. When these first policing tactics fail to prevent unwanted behavior, as they do with Hester, then Puritans resort to physical and often public punishment which serves to correct the offender’s behavior and to warn the public against this behavior. The policing approach that is taken by Puritans is first imaginary and symbolic: “Through tactics of mystification, it manipulates persons and groups into believing that it is much more powerful and efficient than it really is” (Brodeur 196). For Puritan leaders it was not enough to just pass laws they had to be able to enforce these laws through policing. These men as the colonist leaders fail to “understand the heights and the depths of human nature” (Zuckert 164). The male characters Governors Richard Bellingham and John Winthrop and Ministers John Wilson and Arthur Dimmesdale work together, serving as the religious and political authorities of The Scarlet Letter’s fictional colony, and are essential to the formation of the dystopian universe within the text. “The church joined the government in supervising standards of behavior that they imposed on every person,” and as the authorities became more and more aware of their ability to control and dominate the colonists, they placed their personal desire for power before the greater good of the colony, thus entering into the realm of dystopia (Berkin 55). In America and with the English government across the Atlantic, the Puritan authorities had complete, unchecked power over the Puritan colonists. For this reason the Puritan utopian experiment is flawed from the beginning, because for it to succeed every person would have to base all their thoughts and actions on what Puritanism deemed morally right, and served the greater good of the colony. The narrator, however, immediately points out a fundamental problem in the creation of this Puritan utopia, stating in the first chapter: “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion…as the site of a prison” (Hawthorne 45). Originally, Puritans left England for the American colonies so as to practice religious freedom separate from the influences of any other religious practices but their own, in hopes of creating their own small utopia. Puritanism was created by English Protestants, and began in England in protest of Catholicism and the institution of its practices as part of the Church of England. Also, throughout this essay George Orwell’s novel 1984 will be used draw parallels between The Scarlet Letter and the dystopian genre specifically because of its familiarity among readers, and because it encompasses many common themes found within the dystopian genre. Ultimately this essay will show that Hester becomes the master of the scarlet A, and uses it as a loophole through which she is able to secretly rebel against and subvert patriarchal Puritanism. ![]() I have specifically chosen to examine the society of The Scarlet Letter from a dystopian perspective so as to more closely examine the effects of this society on Hester’s thought process. However, at the same time, Hester’s removal from society leaves her with “nothing but the interiority of own mind,” allowing her to critique and question Puritan authority, and also to speculate on future possibilities of utopia (Murphy 474). As a result of Puritan domination over every aspect of Hester’s life, she is physically forced to modify her outward character and conform to Puritan expectations. The second part of this essay will examine the effects of the dystopian Puritan society specifically as it relates to Hester Prynne. Because The Scarlet Letter’s Puritan authorities enforce a totalitarian system of government, using extreme psychological and physical policing methods to promote ideologies, exert power, and control citizens, their once utopian goals become blurred, instead becoming dystopian. First, it will examine The Scarlet Letter as representing a dystopian society created by political and religious leaders’ thirst for power and control above the needs and desires of the people whom they are supposed to protect. The Scarlet Letter: A Façade for Subversion of Patriarchy ![]() #Puritan scaffold drawing pdfDownload a PDF of this article here: facade arnold
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