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Character Changes In The Scarlet Letter

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People change for many reasons, the change may affect each person differently and over time a person can heal at their own pace. Depending on what has occurred to them and their actions towards themselves, helps to portray their reason to be and how it changed them into who they are now. Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts this in his novel the Scarlet Letter, many of Hawthorne’s characters undergo several changes because of the scarlet letter. Hester Prynne, the one who wears the letter A, is haunted by her crime as well as by her town. Pearl grows up knowing the scarlet letter and being a part of it, she does not know any of her town nor as religious Puritan, like everyone else. Dimmesdale on the other hand does, and he is the minister of the town, …show more content…

Adultery was such a terrible sin to be committed in mid-seventeenth century, especially within the puritan community. Hester wanted to protect the father of her child because she knew that if everyone found out Dimmesdale was the other part taker in this crime then, they both would have been killed but Dimmesdale, being the minister, helped and saved her by letting her off easy, thus wearing the scarlet as her punishment. When she first realizes what the letter is capable of, she does not like it and is ashamed for herself. The townspeople would treat her very differently as well as talk rudely about her. In chapter twenty one, the narrator states, “Her face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or rather, like the frozen calmness of a dead woman 's features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out of the world with which she still seemed to mingle,” this reveals vivid imagery of her face that shows how used to she has become to people’s crude remarks (349). The town has been very accustomed to Hester and her quiet ways, the stillness of her face hides what she is actually feeling.

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A person’s outward appearance often influences the way others perceive their character. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth arrives in the colony to find that his wife, Hester, is being punished for extramarital relations. As the storyline continues, Chillingworth acts as the colony’s physician, becoming very close to Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. Consequently, Chillingworth’s desire for revenge guided his appearance and interactions with Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale, ultimately altering his character.

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In addition, Dimmesdale fells guilt even though he still does not confess. Narrator says, “The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her” (narrator 154). This ruins Hester life. People in her town wanted her to leave the town or be punished such as wear a big red A on her bosom for the rest of her life.

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In the book The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale both have sinned and they both were about of it. There are two people to make a child so it's not just Hester's fault at all. She saves Dimmesdale by not telling anyone who the father of Pearl is, and for that Dimmesdale he has to leave with knowing the father of Pearl is himself, and having no one knowing that it is him. Hester is dealing with the sin, she made with Dimmesdale, well because she knows the truth about everything and everyone knows what she has done. She wants the towns people to know what she has been.

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Throughout the passage from The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses Hester’s baby, Pearl, to illuminate the theme of beauty in a dark place. Once released from prison, Hester, an adulterer, becomes a public spectacle. Through this hard time, Hester has her daughter Pearl to soothe her and to bring her strength and hope for a better future. By using vivid imagery and juxtaposition, Hawthorne depicts Pearl as Hester’s happiness, light, and beauty during a sad and lonely time. While in Prison, Hester is all alone and depressed.

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In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Hester commits adultery with Dimmesdale and gets pregnant. The worst part about this sin is that this action affects so many people other than Hester. This sin affects two people in particular- Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. Her action causes a man of God, Dimmesdale, to become corrupt with many other sins and Chillingworth to become obsessed with revenge. Dimmesdale, a town minister, commits adultery with Hester and is the father of her daughter.

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While Dimmesdale and Hester are discussing how guilt and sin have affected them differently, Dimmesdale states, “‘Happy are you hester that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!’” p 131. Dimmesdale compares the way Hester deals with her sin to the way he deals with his. Hester has be open about her sin to the point at which she reveals it on her bosom as the scarlet letter, whereas Dimmesdale keeps it in secret as the guilt boils up inside him.

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We are all sinners, no matter how hard we try to hide our faults, they always seem to come back, one way or another. Written in the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us Hester Prynne and how one sin can change her life completely. Hester Prynne changes a great deal throughout The Scarlet Letter. Through the view of the Puritans, Hester is an intense sinner; she has gone against the Puritan way of life committing the highest act of sin, adultery. For committing such a sinful act, Hester must wear the scarlet letter while also having to bear stares from those that gossip about her.

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The letter gave Hester a new power to sympathize with and be charitable to others. Townspeople even began to interpret the letter very differently from its original meaning. They began to believe that the symbol no longer meant adultery, however, its new significance was to mean “Able” (111). Her selfless acts of kindness attracted the attention of the community as she did needlework for the poor in her spare time. The community did not know the true reason of why Hester did this, but the act caused her true character and natural instinct to be generous to be reflected.

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In The Scarlet Letter, a very dominant theme is the struggle of true identity. Although, the theme varies for each person; identity either tests them or puts them to shame. For instance, Pearl struggles with identifying herself without knowing who her father is while Dimmesdale struggles with being the minister of the town and the father in hiding. As well as Chillingworth who covers his own identity as Mr. Prynne and struggles with ‘needing’ to know who the real father is just like Pearl.

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Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne exposes the blindness of the Puritan people through the treatment of Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale’s external characters. Hester Prynne is labeled as an adulteress and mistreated by society because of their unwillingness to see her true character. Chillingworth, the husband of Hester, leads the town to believe he is an honorable man and skillful doctor, when his true intents root from his vindictive nature Finally, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester’s lover and the father of her baby, acts as the perfect man therefore the town views him as an exemplar model, while he is truly a sinner. In the novel, Hawthorne portrays Hester as a strong, resilient woman, though the members of her community

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The Scarlet Changeling One of the base human principles that have followed us through time and insured our survival is the ability to adapt and change to best suit our current needs. In “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The main things that bring about Hester Prynne’s acceptance of the Letter are her reflection, self realization, and adaptation to survive and thrive in her ignorant troubled world. As she reflects on what the Letter has done in her life she realizes that she should not be suppressed by the Letter that it should be the factor in what makes her unique and as she empowers herself she changed in ways that redefine her current and future self from her past self. And not only does Hester’s Letter affect every aspect her it, but it forces her to reflect on how it has affected her.

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Who knew a single letter could be a character! Normally a character is a living person, place or thing. However, in the Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne it is different. In The Scarlet Letter: a Reading by Nina Baym, she writes about how the scarlet letter is a character in her chapter The Scarlet Letter in the Scarlet letter.

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The townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”

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