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Scarlet letter significance of letter a
Scarlet letter public humiliation
Scarlet letter significance of letter a
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Greensboro North Carolina Sit in Amy Costello On February 1st, 1960, four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworths in Greensboro, where they refused service to anyone but whites. When denied service the four young men refused to get out of their seats. Police arrived but were unable to take action due to lack of provocation. By that time Ralph Johns (a local business man) had already alerted the media, who then covered the story on television.
The Scarlet Letter, shows how badly people were treated for committed a sin in that time period. The main character, Hester Prynne committed lechery and in puritan society, which was very closely related to religion breaking the commandment that forbid adultery earned a very big punishment. It was even worse for Hester because she ended up conceiving a child. One way Hester was shunned by people was by having to wear the scarlet letter that would bring her public shame. Hester knew that because of the letter “young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, —at her, who had once been innocent, —as the figure, the body, the reality of sin”
The Scarlet Letter narrates the story of Hester Prynne, a recently married young woman sent to America in search of a new and better life, despite the fact her husband, Roger Prynne aka Dr. Roger Chillingworth had remained in England for the purpose of business. She had moved to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 1640’s. The book begins with Hester’s emergence from the town’s jail wearing the scarlet letter A embroided on her dress and holding a baby. The scarlet letter is a mark that women convicted of adultery were forced to wear among the Puritans during 17th century New England. The Puritans had been a group of people who sought to purify the Church of England from all Roman Catholic practices.
People often say sins are the deepest and darkest part of a person, but are they really the deepest? Don't some people wear their sins on their sleeve for everyone to see? Yes they do, but then others bury their sins hiding them from humanity. These are the two types of people in the world: those that openly admit their sins and those who hide and deny their sins.
The Scarlet Letter opens with Hester Prynne, a young woman who has committed adultery and is being punished. She is shown to be a proud, confident woman but is quickly forced to mature under the burden of public humiliation. Hester becomes an unhappy and bitter woman, her mind and body hardened by the stress of her punishment and her inability to forgive herself and move on. Throughout the story, she struggles to come to terms with what she has done and only when she finally does, can she return to her former happy, unburdened self and regain her former beauty. At the start of the novel, Hester has just received her sentencing for her crime of adultery.
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.
Hester Prynne is the heroine of “The scarlet Letter”, and it is possible for us to fully sympathize with her because Through reading the text “The Scarlet Letter” we can find out Hester Prynne had a difficult life and had been suffering very much comparing to other characters because she handles her situation by keeping Dimmesdale a secret even under pressure refusing to let them take her daughter Pearl from her and not hiding from the public after her sin of adultery is revealed and she is punished. Though Hester Prynne does faced her situation better than the other characters it is still she who sufferers the most. The another reason which compel the reader to sympathize on Hester Prynne is because she had to under gone the worse consequences of her sin that she must live with her relationships and interactions with Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and the way she deal with her sin and the results of it.
The book The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne has symbolism all throughout it. People and objects are symbolic of events and thoughts. Throughout the book, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale to signify philosophies that are evident during this time period. Hester Prynne, through the eyes of the Puritans, is an extreme sinner; she has gone against their ways, committing adultery. For this sin, she must wear a symbol of shame for the rest of her life.
Hester Prynne was from puritanical, Boston and in 1642 really turned her life completely around. She had a child out of wedlock and in puritanical that just wasn’t acceptable. They made her wear a “A” on her dresses and made her stand on a scaffold for three hours. They asked for the name of the father of her daughter (Pearl) but she refused to let the name be known. Dr. Chillingworth (her long lost husband) which she thought had died at sea, also came to her prison cell and asked for her the name of her boyfriend (pearls father), he threatened to ruin him.
Imagine living in a place where one small sin could define who you are for the rest of your life. That is what happened in The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The novel is set in a seventeenth-century Puritan community in Boston, Massachusetts. A young woman by the name of Hester Prynne commits a small act of adultery and is shamed for the rest of her life, by wearing a scarlet letter “A” on her breast. The book is centered around the theme of justice and judgement.
The novel The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, focuses on the life of a young woman named Hester Prynne, who is tried and convicted of adultery. In the beginning of the book, Hester is seen on the scaffold, clutching a baby. Throughout the first three chapters, the baby is mentioned, but not given a very prominent role. However, her character truly adds an inside look into the chapters. The first time the baby appears is in chapter two, when Hester is walking up to the scaffold.
Feminism is the philosophy advocating equal political, economic, and social rights for women. The idea of feminism was not at all prevalent during the 1850s when Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was published. In spite of this, Hawthorne wrote one of the most influential feminist novels of his time: The Scarlet Letter. This novel was hailed as an important feminist novel because of the main character: Hester Prynne.
Personally, I did not care for this book as I found the story to be quite predictable. However, when we had in-class discussions I often found myself becoming more engaged in the material after listening to various extensive arguments made about the morality of certain characters. One discussion we had concerning Arthur Dimmesdale’s character piqued my interest as the average response to the question of his character was that he was a cowardly man that lacked redeeming qualities. The general consensus about Hester in that same discussion was that she was a woman who didn’t need a man as she raised Pearl with diligence and that she was a personification of the feminism movement. I quietly raised my hand to respond to the arguments being made
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published in 1850. It focuses on the life of the main protagonist, Hester Prynne, living in a Puritan community. Both Yamin Wang and Maria Stromberg offer insight into The Scarlet Letter and analyze multiple aspects of the story.. Both Wang and Stromberg claim that there is an underlying ideology hidden in the texts of the book. Wang approaches the story from a feminist approach and states that Hester represents the feminism in the Puritan community, and she analyzes the Puritan’s outlook on women in their society.
Hester Prynne, the Worst Sinner Three different people, all with different stories but all have something in common; they’re all sinners but the question is who is the biggest sinner? In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, many characters are portrayed as sinners like Dimmesdale, Hester, and Chillingworth. But overall the biggest sinner in the story was Hester Prynne and there are many reasons for it. Obviously the reason for the scarlet letter, she was an adulteress. Hester caused many problems with people in the town including the most holy man Dimmesdale and a man that should've never been involved, Chillingworth.
