The scarlet letter was written during the time period of romanticism.

Reverend Dimmesdale is one of the main characters in the novel, he is a man of God that's passionate in his religion. However he has a conflict which is the suffering of private guilt. It's known that "In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders..." (Hawthorne 150), this tells the reader that he would whip himself at night to punish himself for the sin. He knew that he deserved to be punished since he kept his sin to himself and didn't confess. This also leads to the picture provided because now one can ask if the letter A on his chest was done by himself, since no one knew about his sin.

Dimmesdale is a symbol of hypocrisy, he knows what's right but has no courage to make himself do the public act of confessing. "His spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter" (Hawthorne 178) meaning that all though he goes and gives great sermons about the consequences of sin he seems to not be able to deal with them himself. The image provided demonstrates what Dimmesdale did, which was give sermons to the town's people and be fake about his own identity.

The Puritan Church believed in original sin and full commitment to the church. They were very centered on the idea of purity, and sins would be taken very seriously, they would be rooted out and punished harshly. Hester Prynne is another major character that gets punished by the puritan church. As her term of incarceration was over, "Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast" (Hawthorne 81), this demonstrates how the puritans didn't take her sin of adultery lightly, she was publicly shamed. With both the baby and the letter she was demanded to proceed to the scaffold and stand in front of the community for judgement.