ety. Hawthorne was provided a position as surveyor at the Salem Custom House in 1846, an experience he details in a lengthy introduction to The Scarlet Letter. In the same year he published another collection of tales, Mosses from an Old Manse.
It was after he left his position at the Salem Custom House that Hawthorne wrote what are considered his most successful novels, including The Scarlet Letter (1850); The House of the Seven Gables (1851); The Blithedale Romance (1852); and The Marble Faun (1860). In 1852 Hawthorne wrote Franklin PierceÆs campaign biography and won a U.S. Consulship at Liverpool, living in England from 1853-1858. Returning to The Wayside in 1860, HawthorneÆs health began to deteriorate and he died in his sleep in 1864 in Plymouth, New Hampshire, while touring the White Mountains with Franklin Pierce.
The historical context of The Scarlet Letter encompasses AmericaÆs Puritan past. Religious reformers who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s under the guidance of John Winthrop, the Puritans were intolerant of any departure from their own views and lifestyles (something readily apparent in The Scarlet Letter). A repressive and authoritarian society, Hawthorne would use the Puritan society as an analogy for human society. His own heritage, being the descendant of one of the judges at the Salem Witch Trials, both haunted and intrigued Hawthorne throughout his life and writing career. The Scarlet Letter most manifests this duality, one that pits sin against redemption and goodness against evil. The rise of transcendentalism in his own era also impacted the context of The Scarlet Letter. Transcendentalists believed that the Divine is manifested in all things, particularly the natural world. Instead of adopting organized religion, transcendentalists maintained that the individual maintains a personal and direct relationship with the Divine. In the characters of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, a...