Conflict in The Scarlet Letter

The book Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne is full of various types of conflict. In fact, the conflict that occurs within the book is what keeps the story going. The setting for this book had a huge impact on the conflicts and other obstacles that the characters had to go through. If this book hadn’t been in the same time or place, then the story would have turned out completely different than from how it did. The Scarlet Letter’s setting took place during Puritan times, when they had just came over from England to form a new world, and had several pressures put on them to make this new “Utopia” work. Because of this, Hester had to go through many trials that other people did not. This shows that the setting of the book was one of the most important things that the author had to choose in able to get his message across.

One of the things that created conflict over and over again, was the fact that the setting took place within a Puritan society. When the Puritans first started to settle, they had a strict set of laws and rules that each member of the society was expected to follow. Back then, one of their laws was that one could not commit adultery when one is married. Because Hester, under their definition, was married she broke the law when she was found pregnant by someone other than her husband.(49) Another way that the Puritan way of life had caused conflict was that the council was run by men.(98) This was very important back then because women would not have been on the council, meaning that the laws back then probably wouldn’t have been to Hester’s favor. Not only was the Puritan way of life new and stt was also very plain and simple. Extravagant things such as lace or anything else that would have showed money or a high-class status was strongly discouraged. (151)

This book not only took place during the time of a Puritan society, but it also occurred when this certain society was new. Because it was a newer society, it was still trying to