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Hester Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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High school is known as being the prime time for gossip. Anyone who has been the subject of a circulating rumor can attest to the unbearable shame that accompanies whispers and cold stares in the hallway. Nowadays, this stage of life is short-lived, and as we get older, gossip often becomes the least of our worries. On the contrary, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts a Puritan society in mid seventeenth century Massachusetts, in which the character Hester Prynne is the talk of the town for years after she commits adultery. One might imagine that Hester would want to hide her humiliation, or desperately escape from such disapproval, but amidst the years of public scrutiny and isolation, Hester Prynne not only survives, she flourishes. …show more content…

“...that Scarlet Letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself “ (Hawthorne 62). Using this letter to distinguish Hester as an adulterer for all to see, the colony sets her up to live a shameful and isolated life, never forgetting her sinful offense. The severity of the deed in the eyes of the Puritans is reflected by their harsh objection, which they voice while gossiping among themselves. A lady of the town even exclaims, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die...let the magistrates who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray” (60). The townspeople are so disgusted by the crime of adultery, that some truly believe that it deserves the penalty of death as a sign to all that this behavior is not accepted, and neither is

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This shows how ungrateful and judgemental her society is. All things considered, through these many skills Hester accomplishes, the meaning of the scarlet letter, embroidered on her chest, changes in meaning from ‘adulterer’ to ‘able.’ This eventually leads to women looking up to her and going to her for advice. As a result, “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too” (Hawthorne 257). Hester’s experiences living with society, as they looked down upon her, eventually changes the way society looks at people and the choices they make.

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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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Although the community originally knew Hester as a disgrace, the town’s opinion of her changed over time as she began to do work for the poor and needy. After this shift in the town’s view of Hester, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet [letter] by its original signification” (111). Instead of Hester’s scarlet letter serving as a reminder of her scandalous sin, her peers “ had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as a token . . . of [Hester’s] many good deeds” (111). She became known for her charity and generosity, which caused the civilians to overlook her sinful behavior.

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The“Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne has become an american phenomenon. In the “Scarlet Letter” the main character, Hester, is charged with adultery. The people of the puritan faith put Hester through harsh punishments. The puritans believed that they had to purify the christian faith. Hester's punishment was too Harsh because pearl could have been harmed, Hester’s husband was lost, and this mistake will follow Hester for the rest of her life.

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In the beginning of the book, Hester Prynne, a civilian from Massachusetts Bay Colony, is being led to the scaffold where she is sentenced to be publicly shamed for committing the act of adultery. Within her sentence, Hester is forced to embroider a large scarlet “A” on all of her dresses. She had stitched the “A” with gold thread, which added a sense of elegance that she is now denied. On the scaffold, Hester carries Pearl, her daughter, in her arms at all times. On the scaffold, Hester is asked to reveal the name of Pearl’s father, but she refuses to release that information.

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans of Boston persecute Hester Prynne for adultery. She continues to protect her lover, the minister Arthur Dimmesdale, though she is forced to wear the letter ‘A’ on her chest and suffer through hardships and solitude. In her cottage on the edge of both wilderness and civilization, Hester finds herself stuck between the confines of her strict religious community and the ‘sinful’ romance that she feels in her heart to be sacred. Utilizing images of nature, Hawthorne describes Hester’s development of individuality throughout her seclusion from Puritan society, and conveys his own support of Hester’s relationship with Dimmesdale.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter describes the story of Hester Prynne, an adulteress who conceived a child with reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Throughout the story the condemnation, punishment, and repercussions of the affair that she endures are depicted. For the duration of this novel, Hawthorne portrays the lives lead by Puritan society as hypocritical and sanctimonious.

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The scarlet letter, as the focal point of the novel, has the capabilities to take an individual “out of the ordinary relations with humanity” (Hawthorne 60), exiling them away. Hawthorne reveals that the two lovers, Hester and Dimmesdale, quickly take on two different meanings of the scarlet letter. Although Hester was quickly able to understand “the hidden sin in other hearts” (74) because of the scarlet letter, Hawthorne demonstrates that she was still not fully “good” in the eyes of society due to the adultery she had committed. Hester was aware of both the sin she had committed and of what society thought of her, revealing that the exile “had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (176). This examines that there was a negative side to her exile; the exile allowed her inner morals to become strong and overpower both her and her relationship with Dimmesdale.

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Hester’s scarlet letter is the equivalent of the slut shaming that too many women experience every day.” (A Freedom Letter, para 1). This correlates with Hester’s situation, because she had a private affair with another man. Hester’s actions were between her, Dimmesdale, and God, but the townspeople took it into their own hands to decide on her punishments. Those included locking her up in prison, publicly humiliating her on a scaffold in town, ordering her to embellish all of her clothing with red A’s, and constantly gossiping about her private life.

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The Puritan community had strict core values and views on how society should operate based on the church’s teaching in the 17th century. People were expected to follow society’s standards, and if someone did not, that person would be deemed an outcast and ridiculed with shame. However, it was ironic that many in the Puritan community were hypocrites by sinning and not confessing their sins, but keeping them hidden in the dark. The main character of The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, is the exception of society’s standards because she commits the sin of adultery, takes responsibility for it, is punished, and flourishes as a person when she learns compassion for the underprivileged and sinners in her community. In understanding others in the

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, while beginning as a story of one woman, Hester Prynne, ultimately serves as a bird’s eye view of the community she lives within. The crushing weight of socio religious expectations within this community morphs public opinion into a weapon, one to be used unyieldingly against those deemed corrupt. Though never explicitly rebuked by the puritan doctrine or its leaders, this gossip-fueled public shame is utilized by Hawthorne to illuminate the hypocrisy within his ancestral hometown. Hester’s reputation is completely interwoven with the community’s own, with each of her wrongdoings leaving a stain upon the record shared amongst the townspeople.

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Gothic novels are often classified by their use of supernatural elements, dismal atmospheres, decaying settings (sometimes in the form of castles or dark buildings), and the mysterious. Additionally, authors may use the element of a manuscript or an item that is purported to be the origin of the story. In the preface to The Scarlet Letter, “The Custom-House,” Hawthorne discovers such a manuscript left behind by a Surveyor Pue, along with a scarlet letter “A” that serves to be an artifact of some magic, intertwining the tangible and fictional realms. Aside from magic, Gothic stories also involve some castle or similarly decrepit structure; Governor Bellingham’s mansion serves this purpose in Hawthorne’s novel. Bellingham’s home was grand and

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In “The Scarlet Letter” he depicts it as an oppressive 17th – century Puritan society. “The style of Puritanism that Hawthorne presents is drab and gloomy, preoccupied with judgment and punishment, unrelenting and dogmatic,”1 writes Deborah L. Madsen in her book, “American Exceptionalism.” Hester Prynne, the main character accused of adultery, is persecuted by Boston community. Not only adults despise her, but also children who, blinded by the decayed values and norms, humiliate her and her child, Pearl. The character of Hester symbolizes the fight against Puritan enslavement, the need to modernize the prevailing norms that cause nothing but harm to American society.

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Women in today’s society of often contemned because of adulterous acts. In the novel, Hester was also treated the same. The Scarlet Letter shows how other women feel about Hester and her sin by stating: “This woman has brought shame to all of us, and she ought to die” (1). Puritan women in the novel saw adultery as a terrible sin, just as women today shame others who have committed the act. Now, women will turn against an adulterous friend, just as the women in Boston did

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In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)

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