Stark Romanticism

“Change,” declared political science writer Saul Alinsky, “means movement. Movement means friction.” Indeed, society transformed and clashed between 1649 and 1850 as the austere Puritan lifestyle gave way to Romanticism. Because of their distinct contrasts, The Scarlet Letter, a nineteenth-century tale of punishment against sin in seventeenth-century Boston, misrepresents Puritan life. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter applies a Romantic technique of literature to illustrate Puritanism by tinting situations in the story to a nineteenth century approach. …

…repentance from sin. Roles swap, as nature affirms virtue instead of an origin for evil. Truly, Puritan and Romantic outlooks contrast greatly. Romantics view the world as a source for good, while Puritans consider it a struggle against evil. The collision of viewpoints provides an interesting twist as Hawthorne reinvents Puritan life within the realm of the nineteenth-century. Defiantly, The Scarlet Letter would have been told in a different manner two-hundred years before its publishing.