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Social issues of the scarlet letter
Literary style of nathaniel hawthorne
Social issues of the scarlet letter
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In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, adulteress Hester Prynne must wear a scarlet A to mark her shame. Her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, remains unidentified and is wracked with guilt, while her husband, Roger Chillingworth who seeks revenge. In June 1642, A young woman named Hester Prynne was found guilty of adultery in the Puritan town of Boston. Then a crowd gathered to witness the punishment and now she must wear a scarlet A on her dress as a sign of shame.
In The Scarlett Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne creates Hester Prynne, who is affected by the sin resulting in a psychological novel. Hester’s sin of adultery affects her. The Boston community abhors Hester, including the young children who throw mud and rocks towards her. In
Hester's True Side In committing an act of adultery, Hester Prynne, the primary character in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, finds herself a victim of harsh judgement and ridicule by her Puritan community. She becomes isolated as a result of this scandalous behavior and becomes emotionally involved in a love triangle between her husband and her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, who is the town minister. As a result of her shameful history, the townspeople attempt to destroy and embarrass her by socially neglecting her and labeling her as an outcast and loner. Though the people of the community pursue several attempts to shame her, Hester Prynne's beauty, selflessness, and strength help her overcome this rejection from the townspeople and
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.
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.
While her punishment changes her physical appearance, it has a far more profound effect on her character. Hester seems much older and worn down with the scarlet letter on her bosom. To Hester, the scarlet letter is a
In 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne published his most well renown, fictitious novel, The Scarlett Letter. Hawthorne described the adversity Hester Prynne, his main character, encountered as a result of the child she birthed out of wedlock. He alluded to the Puritan views of the colony through their reaction to her affair, and the way they treated both Hester and her daughter, Pearl. Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrated that the belief in predestination generated a lack of empathy to those labeled as sinners.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in the tale of sin, revenge, and punishment, Hester Prynne involves herself in self-deception due to being caught up in a fraudulent interpretation of her sin and lives in an opaque concept of a better life. Hawthorne 's emotional and psychological drama revolves around Hester Prynne, who is convicted of adultery in colonial Boston by the civil and Puritan authorities. She is condemned to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her chest as a permanent sign of her sin. Consequently, Hester is complicated by her own interpretation of the letter and is embittered by the fact that she deems her punishment and the trials of her punishment will disappear along with the removal of the Scarlet Letter revealed by the characterization of her attitude in the novel. In the beginning, Hester attempts to prove that she does not care about what other people think, but later becomes paranoid and wants to escape from being the product of wrongdoing that the town perceives her as.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone demonstrates the consequences of sin and the effect it brings upon the individual and in the community in Boston 1840s. Throughout the Scarlet Letter, readers are constantly reminded of hypocrisy through characters such as Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth. Hester Prynne, the main character, was a strong, independent woman who dealt with her sin of adultery very well. Instead of running away from it, she lives with it and accepts her punishment to be publicly shamed in the town. However, while struggling to accept the will of the court, she did not believe that she truly committed a sin.
John Updike described Hester Prynne, the main protagonist, as “a mythic version of every woman’s attempt to integrate her sexuality with societal demands.” In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne was used as a symbol of women’s struggle and acceptance to meet society’s expectations as a woman and especially as a wife. These expectations being; loyal, the proper mom for her child and following the guidelines of the Bible by not committing any sins, etc. She was labeled as an adulterer but above everything else she became a power identity and a symbol of bravery. Before understanding why Hester was a mythic version for all these reasons, it is important to first understand who Hester is, what she did and why she is such a crucial character in this 1850 romance novel.
The use of the vibrant color red is used throughout the book The Scarlet Letter due to the fact that the color red is associated with "passionate love, seduction, violence, danger, anger, and adventure." (Color Matters). The Scarlet Letter is a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel where the main character Hester Prynne commits adultery and is condemned to wear a scarlet letter A. Nathaniel Hawthorne's unique use of symbols is evident throughout the book as he gives simple everyday things, like the letter A, a rose bush, and the colors black and red, moral meaning to help the reader comprehend the content of the story. The letter A Hester Prynne is ordered to wear is meant to be a form of public shame.
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.
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
Most think of "story" and remember the characters. Usually, a book is remembered by the characters who are in it and their individual vindications. Contrary to popular belief, individual characters are not what make a story memorable, or even a story at all. It is the the setting that molds the story in it's entirety. The setting is by far the most underrated yet essential part of a story.
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.
