The Scarlet Letter is an important novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne that criticizes and analyzes many important social issues with the puritan society. Hawthorne uses setting to show how the perfect society created by Puritans to ensure a theologically moral community, could never exist due to the fact that an individual’s freedoms oppose and prevail over the communities’ restrictions. The town and the forest, representing opposing elements of setting, are representative of restriction and freedom for the characters of The Scarlet Letter.

In the Puritan society, the town was where all of the daily activities and gatherings were held along with the most important aspect of the puritan society, the church, is held. The town is where the rules are upheld to the highest regard. For most of the significant characters of The Scarlet Letter, the town was seen as a place of containment for their actions. The townspeople say about Hester that “This woman has brought shame upon us all and out to die.” (Hawthorne, 36). The town is where she was completely isolated. Her freedoms were completely ignored along with her individual rights. The town is where she was known as the offender of the most heinous crime, adultery, the town decides that because she followed her freedom to love that she must now be punished and they decide to completely cut her off from the town. In the town, Hester has no choice but to follow the wishes of the town, and for the time being the town’s restrictions crush the individual’s freedoms. On the author hand, the town is a safe haven where freedom can be easily expressed for Dimmesdale. He is an important pillar of the society being as that he works for the church and is well respected in the minds of the townspeople. “Dimmesdale was a true priest, true religionist…” (Hawthorne, 84). He is allowed to be as free as the community allows, but even Dimmesdale’s individual freedoms must be diminished in the town. In the town, the communities’ restrictions temporarily take importance over the individual freedoms. The extent as to which the community crushes the individual’s freedoms is best as how they treat her. Mistress Hibbins is considered evil in the Puritans’ society. She is bitter and unpleasant.  She openly tells Hester that Hester wears her symbol of sin on her chest while the minister hides his sin.  She is constantly going into the woods at night (the woods being considered the “Devil’s Playground” and therefore an evil place to hang out). Because of her strange behavior and the opinion of the public, she is eventually tried and executed as a witch. MH(quote where she dies). The community completely abhorred Mistress Hibbin’s devotion to the devil. Her freedom to devote herself to the devil is not allowable according to the community’s beliefs. She realizes that going into the woods is considered a sin to the community, but she feels that expressing her beliefs is more important to her than what the community thinks about here. In an attempt to impair Mistress Hibbins’ freedom, they community accuses of her being witch and she is thus executed. The town was thus able to restrict the freedom of most of the characters. In the town freedoms were restricted and the town’s desires were carried out. The freedom of the individual is not expressed in high quantities in the town, but there is still some freedoms allowed.

The forest was seen as the exact opposite of the town in The Scarlet Letter. The forest was a wild, savage, uninhabited place. The puritan community had yet to control the forest, so it was still a place where all freedoms could be expressed without the restrictions of the community. “Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there?” (Hawthorne, 165). This quote by Mistress Hibbins shows how she visits the forest a numerous amount of times in order to escape from the pressures of the puritan community. The forest for her is a safe haven where she can express her individual freedom. Here she is found worshipping the devil. If she committed these actions in the town, she would have been immediately been persecuted by the townspeople. In the forest she was allowed to express herself without being judged by anyone. Her actions would not be tried for being wrong or right. She would be the only judge of what she wanted to do in the forest. In the forest an individual’s freedom not only contains the community’s restrictions, but completely annihilates them. Dimmesdale was a well respected member of the puritan society, but even he was human and needed the freedom to express himself individually. He was able to do everything he wanted in the town as long as he followed the restrictions, but that was not enough for Dimmesdale. He needed the individual freedom to love whomever he wanted. He loved Hester, but was not able express his feelings for her openly. Dimmesdale( quote where he says he loves hester). In the forest Dimmesdale is not totally comfortable, but he still sees that the forest is the only place where he will be able to express his love towards Hester. He goes into the forest, even though, he was scared of what could happen if the community finds out. To him expressing his own individual freedom was more important that following the rules and restrictions of the town. He loves the puritan belief and Hester equally that he suffers both mentally and physically over not confessing to the society, but in the end Dimmesdale confesses and his freedoms matter to him more than the restrictions of society. Hester who probably found more comfort that anyone else in the forest, used the forest to her advantage in order to be free form the rules of the puritan community. “Hester’s cottage had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants.” (Hawthorne, 55) This quote shows how Hester lived in the forest all alone from the puritan community. Here in the forest Hester was able to express herself any way she wanted. She was isolated from society and she did not take it as bad news, but rather she overcame the isolation and worked hard to be a well respected member of society. Hester also expresses her individual freedom in the forest by having a secret affair with Dimmesdale. She loves Dimmesdale and is not willing to hear what the town has to say about the affair. She believes that individual freedom is more important than the town’s rules. She admits her mistakes and continues to live a well respected life. The forest is where the characters of The Scarlet Letter are able to be free and express their feelings. The forest is a wild and unexplored place where there are no rules and everything goes. The forest is unaffected by the town’s rules and thus becomes the place where the townspeople go to for freedom. An individual’s freedom prevails over the community’s restrictions because to the townspeople the forest is an uninhabitable place where they refuse to go to. They refuse to understand the feeling of expressing one’s need and their ignorance leads them to misunderstand the visitors of the forest. The ignorance of the townspeople causes the freedom of expressing yourself to prevail over the rules and restrictions by the town.