Hawthorne's Portrayal Of Puritanical Hypocricy

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element of the setting. Hawthorne himself was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and set the majority of his works there. He grew up just slightly later than the time period considered the colonial Puritan times. Still, he developed some strong views concerning the Puritan community from reading a lot of literature, and his writings reflect this also by the way they are written, not just by their content. They are very clean and non-promiscuous. He used this style to accommodate his readers. The people reading his literature at the time still had very strict and traditional beliefs.
Avoiding the grim tone Hawthorne…usually involved removing undesirable
Elements and modifying others. It is interesting to note…often contained such
intense emotions as jealousy, lust, and revenge, Hawthorne never allows these
to appear. Indeed, he often trivializes the negative drives of characters by
referring to them as “naughty.” The adult passions are also removed by making
many of the characters much younger…In this way Hawthorne was able to avoid
discussing the sexual themes often found… (Stott 280).
So, Hawthorne left out many romantic and sexual elements because it was not appropriate for the time period he lived in due to the lingering Puritanical outlooks.
Whether the plots of his works contain stories of the Puritans, descriptions of witchcraft, or thoughts on Salem, the setting is usually critical to Hawthorne’s themes, especially the Puritan aspect. Not only did the era affect the way he wrote; it also affected the content of his works. The Puritans were a big concern in the majority of his writings. Most of the smaller elements he used to convey his themes stem from his use of his opinions and criticism of the Puritans. He was mainly trying to get the point across that he thought the Puritan people were very hypocritical and treated people in ways that were opposite of the way they believed people ...