The Scarlet Letter Learning Target: Determining theme and central ideas in The Scarlet Letter ( The novel was written in the 1850s by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a transcendentalist ( It is set in the 1640s, in the small Puritan community of Boston in Massachusetts ( Hawthorne is commenting on the influence of the Puritans more than 200 years after they first came to America; he feels America needs to "transcend" above the Puritan attitudes that dominate the country still in the 1850s (people's anger over Margaret Fuller's pregnancy seems to have partially inspired Hawthorne in this area) ( Another theme is hypocrisy the Puritans don't always do what they are supposed to do ( Another theme is guilt and how carrying a sense of guilt can affect humans ( Another theme is revenge and how an obsession with it can destroy a human being ( Another theme is feminism and why women should be allowed to do more than be wives and mothers