The last main influence on my writing is my Puritan family background. "One of Hawthorne's forefathers was Judge Hawthorne, who presided over the Salem witch trials in 1692 . . . Hawthorne's sensitivity to guilt is clearly present in The Scarlet Letter" (Clendenning). I used the backdrop of the natural world to show not only that characters in The Scarlet Letter are anonymous to the Puritan culture, but also above it. Describing Pearl as a "...lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion" (81, The Scarlet Letter), begins this image. This "rank luxuriance" is based on the strict Puritan morals. It describes the child as a mistake or an outcast even though the birth of a child is supposed to be a wonderful thing. A difference in a positive way is a direct statement about Puritan children: "...Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children..." (87, The Scarlet Letter). …
