convicted were hanged, another Puritan punishment was carried out, excommunication. The sinners could not leave the world as people of God, so dozens were humiliated and broken by being expelled from the church. The few truly honorable people never broke down and confessed lies to save their lives. Therefore they were punished with death that the law required by the same church that taught them the values they died for.Authorities were not the ones to execute the punishment in The Minister’s Black Veil, but the impact nevertheless affected the individual and the Puritan community. Nothing painful or humiliating was forced upon Reverend Hooper, but he chooses to do something that punishes him emotionally for the rest of his life. He puzzles his church by appearing one day and, “Swathed about his forehead, and hanging down over his face, so low as to be shaken by his breath, Mr. Hooper had on a black veil” (Hawthorne, The Minister’s Black Veil 102). The purpose of this punishment, or whether it was intended as a punishment at all is never revealed to anyone. The simple black cloth may have been a penance for secret sin, a sign of humility, or a painful barrier to be offered to God. The emblem itself, such a minor and seemingly painless thing to endure was not a punishment in itself. It was the repercussion it had on Reverend Hooper’s relationships that made it such a painful infliction.The intended punishments for breaking a Biblical law or personal belief were not the worst hardship in interdependent society. The effect on relations with other people of the congregation was a punishment in it self. In The Scarlet Letter, feeling contempt from the same people who once searched for God’s grace along with Hester, made her penance part of all contact with other human beings. Just as Puritan lawmakers gave no second chances to sinners, the people followed an unwritten policy of intolerance. Hes...
