The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, focuses on the life of Hester Prynne—the unlucky soul who is caught committing adultery and forced to live a life of shame and ignominy. The scaffold is not only the start of her predicament, but it is also the end of the once seemingly perfect Reverend Dimmesdale’s own guilt. The scaffold is the setting of a scene three times throughout the novel: the beginning, middle, and end. For such a lifeless object, it is difficult to recognize its significance in the novel; however, the scaffold is used by Hawthorne to portray the changing relationship between the characters, specifically Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl.
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 is a popular novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which is mainly read during one's high school years. The Scarlet letter is set during the sixteenth century in Boston Massachusetts where a young woman named Hester Prynne is publicly shamed by the Puritans. When Hawthorne was writing this novel he described the puritans as a sad, bland society which had a reliance on the consequence of sin. His description of the Puritan society was not fully opinion-based since the Puritans that came over from England did dress simply. This leads the reader to wonder how much of his personal opinion made its way into the story and how much is historical fact.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne takes place in a Puritan community where there lived a courageous woman, Hester Prynne and her young daughter, Pearl, who was conceived when her mother was in the state of infidelity. Hester Prynne was incarcerated, for she had committed adultery and was obligated to bear the scarlet letter A upon her clothing, near her bosom. Throughout the novel, Hester progresses but struggles to understand the symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter she wears. The letter was very elaborate with embroidery and gold thread that flourished it.
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, describes the experiences of a woman, Hester Prynne, who is publicly shamed for adulterous actions, which resulted in a child. The book shows the progression of her life and her daughter’s in addition to the life of Arthur Dimmesdale, who is the father of Hester’s daughter, but never revealed it publicly in fear of being viewed differently by his peers. Dimmesdale and Hester, connected by the act of adultery, have both experienced stress and unforgiveness, resulting in negative changes to their mental states. Troubled by this stress and unforgiveness, both Dimmesdale and Hester reflect the negative changes through internal struggle, yet in slightly different manners. Suffering from stress
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, tells the story of a misguided women who fails into the trap of love. Through the use of symbolism, Hawthorne presents the development of characters such as Hester and Dimmesdale; this in turn helps prove the idea that people can change over time. The symbol of the letter A aids with the development of Hester. The letter A, in the beginning of the novel, embodies the sin that Hester has committed.
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.
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.
The scarlet letter “A” first appeared in the second chapter of the novel. Hester Prynne stood up on the stage, a baby in her arms. Her chest wore a scarlet letter embroidered with gold thread, a scarlet A! This letter “fine cloth as the base, all decorated with elegant embroidery and ingenious patterns of cloth of gold, with magnificent whimsy and exquisite craftsmanship” (Wan Yuanai, 2006: 6). “The scarlet letter on her breast ‘A’” represents the English word “Adultery”.
Hester Prynne faced many mockeries that were a direct result of the scarlet letter “A” that was placed upon her bosom. Although she was offered a way out of that same ridicule she faced from the letter, she refused to take it off. As the novel goes on, it became more sacred to her being: “It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself” (51). The scarlet letter came to represent Hester not only as a woman in seventeenth century society but also as a person who naturally encounters sin and deals with it in their own way. During the seventeenth century women were naturally assumed to be less inferior from men due to scientific discoveries and the recent religious
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, a historical fiction novel. Hawthorne chooses to use a unique scaffold scene as the basic structure of the book. This scaffold is used for meetings, elections, and sermons; However, it is also used for punishment and confession. In the novel, Hester Prynne commits the crime of adultery with an unknown man that is later known. As the story progresses, the scaffold appears in three scenes, and each individual part advances the actions in the story.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story of two lovers who are in search of redeeming themselves by God and how society has them in confinement where they cannot wiggle or stretch for a breath of freedom. Each persuading idea for one of the two being the Protagonist develops; in which as the story goes into great detail of how passion for love began in a colony of puritan rule and how they both fell into struggle, but found happiness in between to make a balance of hope. The protagonist is assured to be Hester Prynne because of how she tries to atone for her sin, how Nature does not approve of her hiding her true self, and her title with the vivid red letter A on her chest. While that is true Dimmesdale can still be argued to be
The story is set in 17th century Boston. In the 17th century, Boston was a Puritan settlement. A young woman named Hester Prynne is being led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms. Hester has a scarlet “A” on her breast. That “A” on her breast means that she has committed adultery, that or which, she is being punished for.
Noting that Hester is the focal point of the novel, the antagonist role is not that of a single entity representation; the antagonist features in the novel are personified throughout the Puritan society itself. No singular person in the novel is solely to blame for problems, but rather, every person in the novel is to blame in some form. The villain of the society is the society itself; a recurring idea in many cases throughout modern and ancient history. Despite such claims, the definition of what makes someone or something a villain can be defined differently depending upon which of the myriad angles and lenses of views are being used to contemplate a situation. What is to be exemplification of a villain in the referenced novel is any individual
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is categorized as a romance novel, some think of it as a feminist work. Nathaniel Hawthorne was very anti-feminist himself, viewing woman authors of his time as inferior. He also, in The Scarlet Letter made sexist comments such as “damned mob of scribbling woman”. Even though Hawthorne wasn’t a feminist at all, there were still feminist themes, especially in Hester’s character. Hester's character is a strong woman who cares deeply for those around her.
