How does the historical context of Salem Village and Hawth‘s own family inform the reading of the story?

Not unlike the Reverend Dimmesdale, Nathaniel Hawthorne was plagued by a shadow of guilt which darkened his life. Hawthorne's guilt found its source in his Puritanical ancestors, such as Judge Hathorne, who played a role in the condemning to death of people in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. (Because of Judge Hathorne, Nathaniel changed the spelling of his surname.) The Scarlet Letter and other works of Hawthorne's reflect the sin-obsessed climate of the Puritan era. Hawthorne struggled to overcome the history of his family and some of the consequences of Puritanical attitudes about humankind and sin.
One of the attitudes that Hawthorne fought against was that of the Puritanical interpretation of a world in which sin has no place. Known for its intolerance of any spiritual weakness and a source of religious fanaticism, Puritanism made it nearly impossible to be holy. In his novel, Hawthorne demonstrates a repudiation of the concept of "an eye for an eye"; furthermore, he examines the psychological effects of sin on a person. Hawthorne desires communal values such as loving one another, suffering and rejoicing together, and, most of all "being true!" by being honest with oneself, and others and living as members of one body that recognizes that "to err is human" and all men are sinners. In contrast to Puritanism, Hawthorne, with his theme of The Individual vs. Society in The Scarlet Letter, offers through his main characters the concepts of people helping one another to communal values, to loving one another, to rejoicing and suffering together, and to living together as members of one body.