Tuesday, September 11, 2012

In The Scarlet Letter, explain the Puritan attitude toward luxury and how Governor Bellingham and Revered John Wilson responded to it.

It becomes abundantly clear that Arthur Dimmesdale is not
the only character in the novel who is living a kind of double life. Ostensibly at
least, Puritanism eschewed luxury and embraced a simple, plain kind of lifestyle. And
yet, as Hester Prynne and Pearl go to and enter Governor Bellingham's house, it is clear
that in spite of his society's professed rejection of luxury and indulgence, a taste for
the good things life has to offer persists in private
behaviour.


Note the description we are given of Governor
Bellingham at the beginning of Chapter Eight:


readability="10">

The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and
severe, and frostbitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the
appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround
himself.



It is clear that the
Reverend Wilson shares this belief as well:


readability="12">

The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of
the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for all good and
comfortable things; and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit or in his
public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial
benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of
his professional
contemporaries.



This
professed disavowal of luxury combined with the private embracing of it seems to point
at the central hypocrisy of Puritanism, as its proponents certainly do not spare
themselves any luxury they can obtain. It also points towards the double life lived by
so many characters, and establishes Hester Prynne as being, in some senses, more honest
than other characters in the book - she openly confesses and owns up to her "sin"
whereas other characters are not so forthright.

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