rong. Such individuals lack the generosity Hawthorne infuses into the heart of Hester Prynne, a women openly persecuted by laws that are man-made and hypocritical. Hester should full responsibility for her sin and shields her fellow sinner, but she “struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself,” (Hawthorne 24). In this manner, we see that The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne’s call for tolerance and mercy and a critique of such man-made values used to prosecute others in the name of religion, morality and God.
The Scarlet Letter is a romantic novel, mainly because it is a long, fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary events. Unfolding over a seven year period, we are treated to the heroism of Hester Prynne and her adulterous beloved, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and the mysterious actions and behavior of their love child, Pearl, and the witch, Mistress Hibbins. The story is set against the background of Puritan, New England, a stern, authoritarian, colony founded by a group of religious reformers. Before the novel begins, Hester is guilty of an affair which produced Pearl while her husband was abroad. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, comes to America just as Hester is being pilloried. He determines to remain in Boston in disguise in order to discover the man with whom she had the affair. Chillingworth soon uncovers the identity of Pearl’s father, the young and emotionally captivating pastor. He proceeds to torment Dimmesdale’s soul, eventually foiling the escape of the pastor, Hester, and Pearl. At the end of the novel, Hester and Dimmesdale mount the pillory with Pearl together, where he reveals that he, too, has a scarlet “A” etched on his chest from remorse. However, this act of public repentance allows him to be free of the Satanic clutches of Chillingworth. Pearl, too, a child that barely seems human to others in the novel, reclaims her humanity by giving her real father a kiss...