What one thinks about another person or religion is based upon a number of things. One may be prejudice to a religion based upon their religion or because someone else may have told them something about that religion that badger that religion. Puritanism gets the most criticism. H. L. Mencken said "Puritanism: The Haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." This is very funny, yet very true. Puritanism is a very strict religion, with many rules and regulations. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, writes about a lonely, widowed woman that finds love, but is ridiculed for her affair with her lover.
In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne describes a Puritan village that condemns a lonely widowed woman that has a love affair with the town's minister. As more and more details come out about the affair, Hester Prynne, is now pregnant with her lover's child. She has the baby and names her Pearl. Hester is faced with many decisions in her life, whether she should tell the town who she had the affair with. The people plead and threatened her to tell them his name, but she would not do so. Hester tries to live by the Puritan code, and she wishes that she could just wear the scarlet letter and just have people think what they think and keep it to themselves. The Puritan's are a very unforgiving people, if one does not do something the way it is meant to be in the bible. Hester just wants to live a normal life without any of the town's peoples negative thoughts that they say towards her decision. Hester was just looking for a little companionship after a long trip from England. .
Dimmesdale is the man that Hester had her affair with. Dimmesdale is the village minister. As the minister he must up hold a certain stature in the village. He has to abide by the bible. Dimmesdale is the type of character that does what he says, yet, when it is about another person, he can only point them in the right direction.