The Puritans who settled 17th-century Massachusetts had an especially strict interpretation of Christianity and sin. They considered human nature inherently sinful, and—as The Scarlet Letter illustrates—created a very punitive legal system to curb this supposed propensity for evil. Puritan law concerns itself with questions of private morality (e.g., adultery) then treats these personal failings as crimes worthy of anything from public humiliation to death. The residents of Salem take great pride in this system; as one man says to Chillingworth, “[I]t must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness […] to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people; as here in our godly New England” (57).

However, the novel is in many ways a critique of the Puritan understanding of sin and judgment. In fact, it’s debatable whether Hawthorne frames even the “sin” that kickstarts the entire narrative as immoral. While the narrator uses words like “erring” to describe Hester, he also suggests that her affair with Dimmesdale was a response to the perhaps greater wrong Chillingworth committed in marrying a woman he knew did not love him—an act that the Puritan moral code clearly isn’t equipped to condemn.