Anti Transcendentalism In The Scarlet Letter

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Hester’s Tough Decision Anti transcendentalism, fixed to the mid-19th century, was the idea that nature was good, man was evil and was set out to destroy nature. The Scarlet Letter was a famous book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne that implemented anti transcendentalism. In the first chapter the reader was introduced to 3 symbols; a prison, a cemetery, and a rose bush. All puritanical meanings, the prison symbolized justice and judgement, the cemetery symbolized death of course, and the rose bush simply meant forgiveness. Hawthorne continued his story with a woman by the name of Hester Prynne upon a scaffold, or raised platform. Hester was on the scaffold because she had recently been convicted of Adultery. Her punishment was to stand on the scaffold for 3 hours, and wear the finely…show more content…
After serving the punishments of her ignominy, she decided to stay in town rather than escaping her ignominy and mistakes. Hester chose to stay in town for 2 primary reasons, the first described by Hawthorne, ‘There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgement, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution.’ Through this quote Hawthorne proclaimed Hester’s love for Dimmesdale. Hester even wanted marry Dimmesdale after the ironic event in which Dimmesdale convicted and punished Hester for adultery. The most prevalent reason why Hester chose to stay in Boston was explained by Hawthorne in the following quote, ‘It was a new birth, with strong assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne’s wild and dreary, but life long home. All other scenes of Earth, even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother’s keeping, like garments put off long ago, were
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