Hester Prynne: A Romantic Hero

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist, Hester Prynne is a Romantic Hero. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, we see Hester Prynne’s struggle in Colonial America after she is condemned by the Puritan society. She is sent to America by her husband, but he never returns, and Hester later conceives a child with the local minister. She is convicted with the crime of adultery, but refuses to identify the father, she is then forced to wear the Scarlet Letter. The novel captures her experience as she struggles to survive the guilt, sin, and revenge. Throughout the novel she also demonstrates her characteristics as a Romantic Hero. While some say that Hester doesn't fit the romantic hero, because she appears more of a victim then a heroine. Although Hester Prynne doesn't perfectly fit the Romantic Hero

Hester proves that she has a higher understanding for people and life, also a sense of honor based on her own principles not society’s. This perfectly fits the mold for a romantic hero. Towards the end of the novel, we learn that Pearl became a great women and Hester could have lived a great life with her wealthy daughter, yet she chose to return to Boston and live out her punishment. Now the book describes Hester’s final resting place, “It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:—"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules”(Hawthorne 259). So not only did Hester have completely different perspective than the Puritan society, but she managed to sway and change their opinion of a once infamous symbol. The A on her grave represents her different moral ideas and her own self-taught