The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel set in the Puritan society of Boston, Massachusetts in the 1640s. The Puritan government was strictly based upon religion and the laws in the Bible. All sins were punished with sure consequence. Hawthorne's depiction through his descriptions of this Puritan society creates a vision of a dark, gloomy world, a world without joy or happiness. In such a society as this, where laws regulated nearly every …showed first 75 words of 1272 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1272 total…United States, has undoubtedly been found guilty of adulterous acts, yet has not been sentenced to do any sort of retribution. Forcing a woman to wear a symbol of adulterated sin on her clothes probably would not be punishment at all in today's world. The idea that being an adulterer was onceconsidered to be a crime punishable through death is quite a foreign concept. The only thing adultery represents today is sufficient grounds for divorce.