While questioning the power of love, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter on the struggle of a convicted sinner in a Puritan community. Hester Prynne, originally from Europe, is subject to a world of pain and punishment when she is convicted for adultery. Hester was married once before, but because of complication in the travel to America, she was separated from her husband, Roger Chillingworth, for three years. Subsequently, Hester has an affair with an initially unknown lover, which results in a child. When convicted, she is subject to various punishments, which are enforced by the town superiors, including Hester's lover, Arthur Dimmesdale. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne characterizes Hester's personality by giving her an unaffected attitude. Hester’s unique personality emerges when the community attempts to punish her by shaming among the town scaffold, an enforced dress code, and condemnatory remarks. Hester seems unaltered by the opinionated wrath of the New England townspeople as she stands, child in hand, atop the discomforting town scaffold. It is exposed that Hester is traumatized when Hawthorne writes, “Her mind, and especially …show more content…
Throughout the novel, it is unclear if the love between Hester and Dimmesdale remained, although it is clear that they both had responsibilities to one another, after Hawthorne states, “here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations." Dimmesdale symbolically assists Hester in many ways, including persuading the townsmen to end her prosecution by speaking on her behalf and aiding Hester in the Governor's Mansion when preventing her daughter, Pearl, from being taken away. The clergyman puts himself on the line to protect Hester, and in return, Hester allows him to endure seven years of pain physically and