When "Justice" Leads to Cruelty

No matter how good-intentioned the founders of a utopia were, the society has always fell into dystopia as a result of its flaws.  A great example would be Puritan society in The Scarlet Letter.  In it, one of the most unpleasant facets of society, the prison, was created first.  Why would a society aiming to be utopian give such importance to something that will be hopefully absent from it (crime)?    Prisons are not used to rehabilitate its inhabitants but to keep a person who is a danger to society out of society.  The question is then, why is an adulteress, who is publicly shamed and and branded to remind others of her transgression given a prison sentence to serve with her newly-born, and thus frail, infant?  It is hard to understand how this much punishment is a just answer to love outside of marriage and speaks to the cruelty of Puritan society rather than its emphasis on justice and righteousness.  This view of a paradoxical Puritan justice system applies to many other aspects Puritan society; for example, if righteousness is encouraged as a result of belief in predestination, there is no rational justification for the poor being rude to Hester when they should be grateful for the gifts she brings.  Even history describes the Puritans as "...neither as somber nor as simple as they are often pictured." (The Life and History of Nathaniel Hawthorne).  The timeless phrase "To err is human, to forgive, divine." brings into perspective the how divergent Puritan justice was in contrast to the divinity that predestination encourages the pursuit of.

Sources:  "The Life and Work of Nathaniel Hawthorne"
                The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
                An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope