Romanticism is categorized as "a preference for simplicity and naturalness, a love of plain feelings and truth to common place reality, especially as found in natural scenes". Nathaniel Hawthorne was an anti-transcendentalist and believed in the dark side of man, hence his dark romantic novel The Scarlet Letter. This allegorical novel depends heavily on symbol and character. The novel is chock full of symbolic dimension of images, characters, and descriptions. The Scarlet Letter defines the …showed first 75 words of 1645 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1645 total…Hawthorne only encourages people to look inside themselves, find out who they really are and how they really feel and live by that. His literature also encourages for people to question reality, morals, religious doctrine, and social mindset. Overall, Hawthorne alters European Romanticism to American Romanticism by finding the thoughts and evolving the genre in a completely new way to make it reflect the ideals of America while remaining true to the genre's definable aspects.