Everyone has a religion, and throughout life religion has and will always control people’s lives. Carl Marx once said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” Societies throughout the world have always been guided by religious beliefs. Sin, as defined by the society and in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, has been a common trait in the behavior of the members of the community. What people don’t see is that personal sin “affects the individual and the society” (Magill, 5849).
The women and men of the Puritan society were very harsh and judgmental. The women especially were very mean and rotund. Since the society had very strict laws about sin the women looked down on Hester. They thought that she was a “…brazen hussy…” (Hawthorne, 51) for sleeping with another man. For Hester’s transgression standing on a scaffold and wearing the letter ‘A’ permanently on her chest was her punishment. The women disagreed with this light verdict and thought “…at the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead.”(49) One “…female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self constituted judges”(49) thought that “this woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die.”(49) The men of the colony, on the other hand, were more merciful in punishing her and gave her a light decree to only wearing the ‘A’ as long as she lived, whereas she should have died in accordance with the Bible. The men hoped that Hester would “…be a living sermon against sin….”(58), and that should be reprimand enough. Chillingworth, although loving and kind toward his wife and the community, was very revengeful towards the adulterer. Even though Chillingworth didn’t know whom it was he declared, “His fame, his position, his life, will be in” his “hands, Beware!”(70)
Not only does sin affect the society and how they think it also can affect the individual. Sin affects a personal in many different ways. Hester was affected emotionally by the...