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Kate Mabe

Mrs. Achenbach

AP English 11

20 January 2004

The Scarlet Letter and the End of the Age of Reform

The year 1790 marked the beginning of the Second Great Awakening in America.

Christians began turning their eyes toward their Puritan roots, with God, sin, and

redemption becoming the focus of a new kind of Christianity: evangelism. In the 1820s

and 30s, religious sects began to separate into their own sinless communities, or

Utopias, where they felt they would be pure in the eyes of God. Abolitionism, Feminism,

and Perfectionism marked the era as an Age of Reform, and a time of social and

religious revolution. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, the Awakening and its

revolutionary spirit died down, and in 1849 Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his novel The

Scarlet Letter. The novel is set in the time toward which Americans were looking for

religious inspirationthe time of Puritanism. Unlike his contemporaries, who believed

that revelation could heal even the worst of sinners, Hawthorne offers a view of sin

without redemption, but rather with acceptance. A combination of the revolution

occurring around him and the revitalization of Puritanism may have prompted Hawthorne

to write a novel which delves into Puritan history with harsh and revolutionary criticism.

The novel was both revered and condemned, but altogether widely reada product of its

times, and an influential work arriving just at the moment in which America was

propelling itself forward and out of the Age of Reform.

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Conveniently enough, Hawthorne chose to set his novel in the midst of the world

that he wished to criticize (Kaul 10). Puritanism had the attention of the nation during the

Second Great Awakeningthe religious fervor of that era was what many Americans

were hoping to revitalize. So, Hawthornes novel would undoubtedly be widely read, as it

dealt with issues that were currently important to society. However, he uses this setting

not to approve of the Puritan way of life, but rather to display its shortcomings, and offer

a different view of human sin. As observed by A. N. Kaul, Hawthornes attitude toward

Puritanism in the novel involves an irony which often assumes the innocent guise of

approval (9). Consider the rose bush by the prison door in the opening scene. The

symbolism of the rose bush offers a light of hope, which at first appears to be hope for

redemption. Thus, Hawthorne seems to be agreeing with the evangelists of the time in

saying that all sinners can possibly be cleansed and redeemed of their sin. But at the end

of the novel, the evangelists become disappointed, for Hester has not become cleansed of

sin, but rather has accepted it. The rose bush becomes no longer a symbol of Christian

redemption, but one of human sin in its most shockingly beautiful form. This same irony

is evident also in the character of Hester herself. When Hester begins to become accepted

slowly back into the community, there seems to be hope for her redemption. But soon we

realize that Hester is satisfied not by being cleansed of sin but by having embraced it.

Hawthorne had taken a period of time and a state of mind which was currently being

closely examined by Americans and shed a rather revolutionary light on it.

Such a new and critical way of looking at what was a revered time in American

history sparked varied reactions. The Christian moralists of the Great Awakening found

plenty to condemn. An article in The Christian Register, dated April 13, 1850, stated that
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as a Christian narrative, detailing the experience of a Christian man and woman, falling

away from their purity, and struggling to get back again, it is utterly and entirely a

failure (58). Orestes Brownson condemned the book in October of the same year for

dealing with dangerous subjects and seeming to condone sinful behavior:

There is an unsound state of public morals when the novelist is permitted,

without a scorching rebuke, to select such crimes, and invest them with all the
fascinations of genius, and all the charms of a highly polished style. In a moral
community such crimes are spoken of as rarely as possible, and when spoken of
at all, it is always in terms which render them loathsome, and repel the
imagination. (Brownson 529).

Judging by this reaction and others of its kind, Hawthornes novel was indeed quite

revolutionary for its time period. In the midst of a surge of repentance and redemption,

Hawthorne spoke of the unspeakable, and suggested that sin could possibly be embraced

and accepted as an inevitability. More often than condemned, however, Hawthornes

novel was praised. It was very widely read, and often seen as a work of genius.

Contemporary criticism praised his characters, lessons, and symbols. The mixed reactions

to this book capture its revolutionary essence. It was written during a time when the

country was hovering between the past and the future. Even though some held back, The

Scarlet Letter helped push the nation forward.

The Scarlet Letter can be seen most clearly as a backlash against the Great

Awakening and the Age of Reform in its claim that perfectionism, a quality which

Americans of the time strained to achieve, is in fact impossible. Parallels are drawn

between the Puritan society of the novel and the Utopias that were springing up around

the country in hopes of achieving perfection. This comparison is first drawn in the

opening 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
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practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery Here,

Hawthorne has set up an analogy in which the Puritan community is comparable to the

Utopian community, and in his novel he depicts the Puritan community as failing. The

book was written during a time when Utopian communities throughout the country were

being set up and then failing relatively soon. Hawthorne realized what Americans coming

out of the Age of Reform were soon to discover as wellthat the effort to achieve a

well-integrated community life in such a world must lead to tragedy (Kaul 20). His

novel appears to have been written in order to shake the reformists awake from an

impossible dream.

Hawthornes novel, while it dealt directly with a time long past, dealt indirectly

with the age in which it was written. The Great Awakening and the Age of Reform

attempted to resurrect a time which Hawthorne saw as full of flaws. The novel came

along at the end of this period, and its criticism and revolutionary ideas might well have

helped push the nation out of it. Larry J. Reynolds wrote in 1985 that when Hawthorne

wrote The Scarlet Letterthe fact and idea of revolution were much on his mind (67).

Indeed, Hawthornes novel is truly the product of a time of revolution, during which

Americans reverted back to their Puritan roots with more intensity then ever, only to

reject these views, tear themselves away from the past, and turn towards a future which

would not see another Great Awakening.