Introduction to Puritanism
AP Language and Composition
For you to gain the most understanding that you can of the ideas presented in The Scarlet Letter, you
must have an in-depth knowledge of the history of the Puritans and their deep-seeded religious beliefs.
Please read the information below to assist you in learning about the Puritans.
STORY PREFACE
There are three things that earthly riches can never do;
They can never satisfy divine justice,
They can never pacify divine wrath,
Nor can they ever quiet a guilty conscience.
And till these things are done, man is undone
Thomas Brooks
Puritan Writer
Henry VIII, England’s King, had a problem. He was not as powerful as he thought. Wanting a son and
tired of his once-beautiful wife, Catherine of Aragon, Henry wished to marry Anne Boleyn. But the
Catholic Church rarely granted divorce dispensation and Pope Clement IV would make no exceptionsnot even for Henry.
Cataclysmic events were about to ensue.
THE GREAT MIGRATION
When Henry could not get his way, he created the Church of England (Angelicana Ecclesia). That move
was ironic because a mere twelve years earlier, Henry had denounced Martin Luther and his Protestant
Reformation. The King's written statement against Luther caused Pope Leo X to confer on Henry the title
Defender of the Faith. Now Henry himself had launched the English Protestant Reformation, which freed
a king with wandering eyes to divorce Catherine, the first of his six wives.
Henry married Anne Boleyn (mother of the future Queen Elizabeth I) and closed all Catholic monasteries
in Britain. Their wonderful treasures were now Henry's. Former Catholics became Protestants. The Pope,
and the Catholic Church, no longer had authority in England. With Parliamentary support, Henry
declared himself head of the Anglican Church.
While Henry lived, Catholic resentment seethed under the country's religious surface. When Henry died,
and his daughter with Catherine of Aragon (Mary I, a Catholic) became Queen (after her frail
stepbrother, Edward VI, failed to survive an illness and the reign of his handpicked successor, Lady Jane
Grey, lasted nine days), Catholics were emboldened.
Taking revenge, they and their queen (nicknamed "Bloody Mary" for obvious reasons) created political
chaos and caused the deaths of approximately three hundred Protestants. Mary's five-year reign ended
with her death (possibly of cancer) in 1558. Elizabeth I, Mary's half sister, thereafter ascended Bitain's
throne.
Introduction to Puritanism
AP Language and Composition
By 1570, religious disagreements in Britain turned on how to free the Church of England from its
remaining vestiges of Catholicsm. (Henry VIII's church, after all, was essentially Catholic without a Pope.)
In 1608, one group of people - the Pilgrims - believed they had to completely break with the Anglican
Church.
Also called "Separatists," the Pilgrims left England and, by way of the Netherlands (where they remained
twelve years), eventually sailed on the Mayflower (where the men on board signed the Mayflower
Compact). They landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
Another group of people - the Puritans - believed the Church of England could be "purified" from within.
In other words, they thought it was acceptable to remain members of the Anglican faith, although many
thought it best to leave the country.
Thousands of Puritans left Great Britain in what has been called "The Great Migration." Some went to
the West Indies. Those who came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony intended to form "a city on a hill"
which would become a model for people still living in England.
Such far-reaching religious hopes of the Puritans, however, never fully blossomed from the seeds Henry
VIII had unwittingly sown.
WHO WERE THE PURITANS?
When Elizabeth I became Queen of England in 1558, the people once again had a Protestant ruler on the
throne. Many of her subjects believed British life (both secular and religious) should be based on Martin
Luther’s concept of Sola Scriptura – on the Bible alone. With increasing fervor, religious leaders pressed
for this approach.
Shrewd and pragmatic, the new queen wanted to establish stability in her kingdom. She viewed
extremism, of any nature, as inherently destabilizing. If she agreed to govern all the country’s affairs
based only on the authority of the Bible, she would have to simultaneously ignore her country’s
traditions. Elizabeth’s view was to blend tradition, reason, and the Bible’s teachings as a rational way to
broadly, and inclusively, govern her people.
Within a dozen years after Elizabeth ascended the throne, there were two schools of thought in the
country. Once group embraced the monarch’s view; the other insisted that English church and state
must be purified consistent with Biblical principles. The first group coined the term “Puritan” as a
derisive description of the second.
In 1630, when the Puritans left England for their new life in Massachusetts, they considered themselves
“English.” They planned to conduct their religious affairs through the Church of England but expected to
govern themselves. Unlike the Pilgrims, who focused on individual righteousness before God, the
Puritans focused on corporate righteousness.That meant the entire community – their “city on a hill” –
had to conform to the same Biblical precepts.
Despite their differences, however, Puritans and Pilgrims agreed on this fundamental concept: Salvation
was by God’s grace alone, through individual faith alone, in Christ Jesus alone. In that sense, they were
all products of Luther’s Protestant Reformation.
Introduction to Puritanism
AP Language and Composition
Implementing Old-World beliefs in a New World environment, the Puritans maintained their focus on
education and their strict sense of “right behavior.” For the first time in recorded history, children were
provided with a free education when, in 1635 (the year of The Great Hurricane), the Puritans established
the Boston Latin School. They founded America’s fist college – Harvard – across the Charles River, in
Cambridge, the following year.
Puritan life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was harsh. Actions mattered, since outward behavior
reflected inward religious faith. With that in mind, woe unto anyone who ran afoul of the community’s
standards. Such a person could easily, and quickly, end up in the pillory.
HISTORY OF THE PILLORY
Although Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, people living in the Massachusetts Bay
Colony were expected to conform to strict, autocratic standards established by the community’s
leaders. All of the leaders, of course, were men.
Seeking to remain essentially British, as they tried to purify the Church of England from within, the
Puritans carried on with certain customs they had known before The Great Migration. One of those
traditions was punishment in the pillory.
Tracing its history to the 12th century, the pillory was a common sight in towns throughout Britain and
on the continent. It consisted of an upright board with a hole in the middle where a person’s head was
set. As often as not, a person’s ears were nailed to the board. Usually there were two openings for
hands.
Also known as the neck-stretcher, the pillory’s purpose was to publically punish (and humiliate) people
for all kinds of offenses. Frequently, a pillory could be rotated, so members of the public could get a
good look at the person on display, as depicted by William Pyne in The Costume of Great Britain
(1805). The most famous pillory in London was at Charing Cross.
Sometimes people locked in a pillory had bricks, or other heavy objects, thrown at them. Not a few died
as a result, since they were unable to protect themselves with their hands.
Others, like Daniel Defoe (the author of Robinson Crusoe) who spent three days in the Charing Cross
pillory (beginning July 31, 1703) for writing a pamphlet (The Shortest Way with Dissenters), were
showered with flowers by a sympathetic crows. Most, however, endured the more usual barrage of
smelly eggs and rotting vegetables, dead cats or animal offal, sticky mud and human waste.
This type of punishment, at least in Britain, was finally abolished in 1837. How was it used in colonial
America?
THE PILLORY IN AMERICA
Writing 230 years after John Winthrop and his fellow Puritans left England aboard the Arbella – roughly
the equivalent of time between the beginning of the American Revolutionary War and the presidential
election of 2004 – Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter. In a famous passage, he describes
the purpose of the pillory in Puritan times:
Introduction to Puritanism
AP Language and Composition
This scaffold consisted a portion of a penal machine which now, for two or three generations past, has
been merely historical or traditionary among us, but was held in the old time to be as effectual in the
promotion of good citizenship as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in
short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so
fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze.The
very idea of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There
can be no outrage, methinks – against our common nature – whatever be the delinquencies of the
individual – no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame.
The pillory, intended to prevent “the culprit” from looking away, was part of a punishing humiliation
process. Anyone “doing time” on that scaffold would have had little, if any, sympathy from a crowd of
Puritan on-lookers.
These were, after all, the years of a colonial theocracy wherein civic life and religious mores were
intertwined. These were early American days when thieves could be punished with brands on their
hands or women (who had committed adultery) could be branded with an “A” on their foreheads
(escaping, thereby, the normal penalty for that offense which was death.) And … these were the days
when a disapproving public could make a person’s life utterly miserable over the least-possible
infractions.
The pillory, according to the Puritans, was a fitting punishment for anyone having the audacity to
disregard societal, or religious, rules. Its use continued until an act of Congress abolished it on February
27th, 1839.
HAWTHORNE AND THE SCARLET LETTER
Salem, a Massachusetts town which was home to the infamous witch trials of the 17th century, was also
home to Nathaniel Hawthorne when he wrote The Scarlet Letter. Perhaps he was influenced by the
town’s history when he penned his tale of Puritan pride and punishment. Or maybe he wrote the story
to examine the skeletons of his own past, his great-great-grandfather (John Hathorne) having been one
of three Salem judges who determined people were witches and condemned them to death.
One can imagine Hawthorne (who once worked at Salem’s Custome House) wanting to believe his
ancestor experienced inner turmoil when his personal sense of human justice was confronted with strict
Puritan standards. Nathaniel explored such concepts through his characters – Rev. Dimmesdale, for
example.
Caught between his own conscience, the standards of his community, the blind devotion given him by
the townspeople, the dark presence of Hester Prynne’s husband (Roger Chillingworth) and his desire to
help Hester (the mother of his illegitimate child), Dimmesdale faces a serious moral dilemma. Perhaps
the novel’s resolution of that conflict was Hawthorne’s attempt to ameliorate the actions of his Puritan
relative.
Not all contemporary reviews of the book were glowing. Thirty-six years after its publication, The
Atlantic Monthly featured an article entitled “Problems of the Scarlet Letter.” In the April, 1886 edition,
the author observes:
It is with the subjective consequences of a sinner’s act that our understanding of him begins. The
murderers blow tells us nothing of his character; but in his remorse or exultation over his deed his
Introduction to Puritanism
AP Language and Composition
secret is revealed to us. So Hawthorne fixes the starting-point of his romance at Hester’s prison-door,
rather than at any earlier epoch of her career, because the narrative can thence, as it were, move
both ways at once; all essentials of the past can be gathered up as wanted, and the reminiscences and
self-knowledge of the characters can supplement the author’s analysis…But the personages of this
tale are not technically developed; they are gradually made transparent as they stand, until we see
them through and through. And what we thus behold is less individual peculiarities than traits and
devices of our general human nature, under the stress of the given conditions.
Addressing spiritual and moral issues, The Scarlet Letter was America’s first psychological
novel. Adultery, in 1850, was a risqué subject for any book, let alone a “romantic” story.But with the
New England literary establishment behind him, Hawthorne succeeded.
Exploring universal themes, the book remains a classic. In fact, one could draw parallels between that
age and this. Religious fundamentalism characterized, and sometimes terrorized, Puritan
society. Religious fundamentalism characterizes today’s terrorists.
Modern readers might quibble with Hawthorne’s English, but it’s hard to ignore the relevance of the
message.