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Hester Prynne's Case

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“Hester Prynne’s Case: Justice Then and Now” The Scarlet Letter, a book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne during the mid-1800s, is about an adulterous woman’s life in Boston; during the early mid-17th century in New England, the Puritans already had imposed strict laws for the people to acquiesce. Many centuries later, penalties for adultery became less severe; in fact twenty-nine out of fifty states of America don’t federally admonish their residents for adultery. If Hester Prynne, the adulterous from the novel, lived during the late nineties or the third millennium— now a more liberal society— she could have had a more lenient punishment or could have gotten off scot-free without having to endure the punishment and shame she endured during the 1750s. In the United States’ states where adultery is federally penalized, a spouse has to …show more content…

After the Puritans indicted Hester Prynne for adultery, they passed the verdict, ordering Hester Prynne to eternally wear the scarlet letter A, which stands for “Adultery.” Wearing the letter on the beast part of her clothes served to remind Hester Prynne of her sin, and the shame she brought on herself; along with that, future immigrants to Boston would also know Hester Prynne was an adulterous just by noticing the scarlet letter on her clothes. In contrast to punishment for adultery during Hester Prynne’s time, some states have strict punishment for adultery, while some have lenient punishment— even though “Adultery is rarely prosecuted as a criminal offense.” One of the States that harshly penalizes adultery is Massachusetts; in Massachusetts an individual decreed guilty of adultery can be sentenced to a maximum of three years. A state stricter than Massachusetts is Wisconsin where punishment for adultery $10,000 or 3 ½ years of imprisonment, but in some cases a judge has the right to give both

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Sin and Revenge in Massachusetts The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, taking place in colonial Massachusetts, depicts the life of Hester Prynne. A women shunned by her society for committing adultery and a mother to her newborn child, she must bear a large red “A” upon her dress as her punishment. However, her punishment does not satisfy the colony -- the majority believes she deserves a worse punishment. In contrast, an inopportune traveler hears of Hester’s transgression on the day of her public trial and decides that she does not deserve punishment.

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Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, a brilliant spokesperson and a devout and wise Puritan minister in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, is the lover of a woman who commits adultery, Hester Prynne. Hester, a recognizable adulteress, wears the scarlet letter and lives as an outcast. Contradicting, Reverend Dimmesdale’s sin stays hidden from the Puritan community, know only to Hester and himself. As a minister, Dimmesdale believes he should suffer from punishments the way Hester did for committing the same crime, which leads him to fall into a terrible mental and physical state.

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Although publicly admitting to sin can be a challenging task, time will heal the initial pain. Hester Prynne, of the Scarlet Letter, lives this lesson as she commits the sin of adultery. Her punishment for the sin is to wear the letter “A” on her bosom until she is allowed to remove it by the Puritan authorities wishes. Initially, Hester feels guilt and shame as she wears it. As Hester’s character grows in strength, she overcomes the letter’s original purpose of punishment.

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Hester in the scarlet letter and the adulteress from John 8 are very alike. They both committed Adultery, otherwise understood as voluntary intercourse including a married man or woman and a man or woman that is not the others spouse. Both of these women’s communitiesacknowledged their sin. And both if these women felt condemned by their sin. Their similarities are very evident, their differences however must be explored.

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Punishment of Puritans for their sins occurred harshly and frequently, and these punishments ranged from fines, branding, and severe whippings to hanging and death. Many of these penalties involved public humiliation of some kind, which made it extremely difficult for townspeople to accept by their peers after they had sinned. Because the Puritans believed religion was immensely important, the community was often reluctant to allow citizens that exhibited sinful behavior to achieve redemption (Cox). However, in the case of Hester Prynne, an adulterer in Nathaniel Hawthorne 's The Scarlet Letter, the townspeople eagerly made amends with her. This novel narrates the life of Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and courageously accepted the repercussions

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“’Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, never the less, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side’” (Hawthorne 59). There are two sinners that have committed the same sin but one is known to society and the other hides it. In The Scarlet Letter Hester and Dimmesdale have committed adultery but only Hester is publically punished for her sin, while Dimmesdale punishes himself.

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OUTLINE INTRODUCTION In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, many people in this community committed a form of sin but hides it due to the consequences. Publicly shamed for committing adultery, Hester must live with a scarlet A on her chest for the rest of her life, but the other person that commits adultery with Hester cannot say a word due to his place in the community. THESIS STATEMENT: Due to his place in the Puritan community, Dimmesdale cannot say a word about committing adultery with Hester, which affects him and Hester and Pearl.

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The book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a complex novel that has underlying themes of sin and the responsibility for sin. The novel takes place in a Puritanical society, but two people, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, fornicate with each other, even though Hester is married to someone else. Only Hester is punished, so Dimmesdale keeps his guilt inside, not revealing it to anyone. Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, then proceeds to ruin Hester’s partner in crime, corrupting his soul and being the ultimate cause for his death. Hester, on the other hand, leads a relatively happy life after she had repented for her sin.

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Capital punishment was wide spread in Puritan Boston. Although the Bible was a moral guide, societies were swarmed with crimes and sins. The punishments included severe whipping, imprisonment, slitting nostrils, and public execution on scaffold(“Puritan”). In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, although Hester and Dimmesdale are guilty of the similar sins, they experience different punishments and outcomes.

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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.

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When Hester Prynne committed adultery she was punished greatly. She was made to stand in front of the town on a pedestal being shamed. Not to mention the scarlet letter A on her chest representing the crime that she had committed “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” (Hawthrone pg.

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The Scarlet Letter, a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, functions as an evaluation of Puritan ideas, customs, and culture during the 17th century. Through this evaluation, we can get a good idea of what core values and beliefs the Puritans possessed, as well as the actions they take in cases of adversity brought about by “sinners”. Some Puritan virtues created stark divisions between groups of people, some of which led to discrimination under certain circumstances. One of the most prominent of these is the treatment and standards of men and women, a concept that surfaced during some of the major points in The Scarlet Letter. The divisions that were created by Puritan standards of men and women played a great role in shaping the plot of The Scarlet Letter, determining the fate of many of the characters.

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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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