Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel The Scarlet Letter and in "Young Goodman Brown" and other short stories, offers a fictional critique of the strict, conservative, and even cruel moral values and world view of Puritanism. The major characters in the novel and short stories suffer mightily not because they are evil, but because they live in a society whose Puritanical values condemn them for acts which are merely human, however wayward. Hawthorne draws these characters with great understanding and compassion, responses fully lacking in the Puritan society which condemns them. At the same time, Hawthorne, through his narrators, offers a stiff indictment of the cold-hearted Puritans who so cruelly condemn and isolate these characters from society for their all-too-human transgressions. This rejection of Puritanical values is the thread which unites the novel and the stories to be examined here. However, an even more destructive force than Puritan society is the internalization of Puritan values by many of the major characters themselves.
In The Scarlet Letter, the letter "A" is sewn onto the dress of the adulterous Hester Prynne, marking her as evil, sinful, and inferior to the others in the town who, in comparison to Hester, consider themselves moral, religious, spiritual, and Christian. There is no doubt that Hester, and her lover, the minister Arthur Dimmesdale, have committed an act which transcends the standards which hold together not only Puritan society but most societies then and now. However, it is an act which calls not for relentless condemnation and ostracism, but forgiveness, an opening of the heart of which the Puritans are shown by Hawthorne to be incapable. As harmful as this Puritan marking of Hester as a grave sinner is to her, however, she possesses a strength of character which allows her to transcend the social and moral judgment against her and achieve a sense of peace within herself, if a sorrowful peace. Sh...