All of the characters in The Scarlet Letter were victims of some kind of slavery.
             The whole town of Boston, Massachusetts was made up of Puritans. They were very religious people and religion was basically their life. They worshiped God, the church and the reverend because they considered him the messenger from God. They were so
             enslaved by their religion that they couldn't see anything past it.
             " 'I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if
             we women, being of mature age and church members in good repute, should have
             the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips?
             If the hussy stood up for judgement before us five, that are now here in a knot
             together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates
             have awarded? Marry, I trow not!' " (49)
             Here, they were discussing Hester Prynne and here sin and how her punishment wasn't harsh enough. She broke one of God's laws and had to be punished so that she will remember it forever. They didn't even give a second thought to the fact that there had to be a male involved in Hester's sin. Also, it could've been any of them, but of course that thought never crossed their minds.
             In the Market place, Hester stood in the center of a circle of people looking at her and talking about her. The only thing they could see and think about was her sin. The fact that she committed adultery. They didn't see her child as a gift from God like they saw newborns before. They only saw the child as a bad, dark sin.
             "Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in
             this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at
             her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine
             ...