Part 1 of Essay
Dictated and governed by a set of religious laws, Puritan society restricted those who lived within its limits to mundane, ordinary lives. The theocratic based community was forced to live under the harsh, and often strict, guidelines of the Puritan church. Any one sin could be punished severely, whether it is a minor infr ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... in which unbridled- and often brutal- honesty can be found. Hawthorne uses the scaffold as a tool through which he demonstrates the public revelation of one’s sins. Public penitence upon the scaffold was the only way society would acknowledge, and later forgive one for their sins. It is the first step on the long road to acceptance back into the strict, Puritan society. In the first of three scaffold scenes, Hester stands before the community, wearing a scarlet A. For her punishment, she was required t ....