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Hester Prynne's Transformation In The Scarlet Letter

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Juliette Dougherty ELA 12/Sec. 08 Ms. Diamond 31 March, 2018 Hester Prynne's transformation throughout The Scarlet Letter Justine Sacco sent out one tweet, and that was all it took to ruin her life. From the time she sent the tweet, to the time she stepped off the plane in Africa her entire life had changed. The entire world's eyes were on her, and they were intent on ruining her life. She lost her job, her face was plastered all over the media as a racist, and she was receiving death threats. All of this because of one tweet. Hester Prynne made one mistake, and it would change her life forever. The Puritan society was a theocracy. They believed they had the right to judge and punish people as they saw fit, and so they did. Hester was banished, …show more content…

What the Puritans did not see coming was that, like Justine Sacco, Hester would not let this shame ruin her life. She would not let the judgement of others define who she is, and who she was going to be. She transforms her life, refusing to let her mistake define her. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne's uses the shame she receives as her motivation to transform herself from an adulterer, to an angel, to able. Hester has committed a sin that required two people, yet she bears the burden of shame alone. Hester soley takes the blame from her mistake, refusing to give up the name of the man she had an affair with. She accepts the endless amount of shame the village throws at her. As she walks out of the prison cradling her daughter, Pearl, the townspeople watch her in contempt. They whisper and glare as she walks up to the podium where she will face the public shaming or consequences of her sin, “It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it in the public graze” …show more content…

Although it takes some time, Hester grows to realize this. She acknowledges that in order to find the light, or the goodness in herself again, she must accept the punishments that she is given. This means Hester must learn to live with them, and still continue her life. In The Scarlet Letter light is used to represent salvation and purity, which is what Hester strives to reach. One day in the forest it seems as if she has given up, and plans to run away. She throws her scarlet ‘A’ into the river, and Hester feels as though she can finally be happy, “ All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of solemn trees” (Hawthorne, 199). This supernatural occurrence appears after Hester throws off her scarlet ‘A’. She throws away her guilt, and the burden of her shame. Once her body was free from the anguish the sunlight came to her, showing her redemption. After Pearl forces Hester to put the ‘A’ back on, and the sunshine disappears Hester realizes she must bear the burden of her shame to before she can fully reach redemption. Hester seeks redemption through her charity. She begins sewing for the community, living in exile, and raising Pearl. She repents for her sins through her selfless acts of helping the less fortunate.

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The Virtue of Hester Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s highly acclaimed novel, The Scarlet Letter, a Puritan town’s reaction is described after Hester Prynne raises a scandal that goes against the town’s religious views. The Puritans believe the Bible should be translated into their life and that God should be the center of it. Many of them think of Hester as a sinful woman without virtue. They treat her as an outcast and consider that she is somehow affiliated with the Devil.

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In committing adultery, Hester caused the community to shun and ridicule her. “So that both men and women, who had been acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time, was that Scarlet Letter… It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and inclosing her by herself” (51). This quote is stating because of the Scarlet A, Hester is alienated from the rest of the community. The Scarlet A separates Hester from everyone else, even her child Pearl.

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Hester commits adultery and as a result

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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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By wearing the “A,” Hester was publicly humiliated, however, her development in character causes a change in the meaning of the Scarlet Letter, which leads her to taking pride in the letter as it grows a part of her. After Hester’s sin the Puritan community places a false

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Considering the townspeople’s reactions toward Hester’s sin of adultery, it can be concluded that in the Puritan era, religion was of utmost importance, and the Puritans met sins with extremely harsh punishments. Because the majority of the Puritan town viewed Hester as a disgrace, she became “Lonely . . . and without a friend on earth” (56). This made it effortless for the inhabitants of the town to continue to insult and degrade Hester because they did not care to learn her true personality. While a few civilians had sympathy for Hester, the town mostly regarded her as shameful and

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She receives three punishments from the townspeople, who claim they will free her from her sin. The community orders Hester to go to jail, wear a scarlet letter on her chest, and stand on the town scaffold for hours. Hester wears her scarlet letter proudly on her chest, and endures much suffering because of her public ridicule. Hester is “kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement” after she was released from prison, but she chooses to stay (Hawthorne 71). Later, Hester’s child, Pearl, symbolizes the Puritan view of Hester.

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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is about the transformation of Puritan woman known as Hester Prynne who changed from being labeled as an adulterer to somewhat of a living legend. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s original husband was supposed to follow her in the new world, he only shows up gesturing to his wife during public shaming. She wore a scarlet letter as a result of a secret affair with Dimmesdale; this relationship made the public distrust her after they found out she was pregnant. Pearl and Arthur Dimmesdale are the only people Hester associates with because they share common traits and are a bit weird in their ways. Her daughter starts out as a symbol, and it is not until she is kissed by Dimmesdale at the scaffold, that

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From being exiled by her society, Hester becomes more open-minded. The text claims, “The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.” (Hawthorne 210). Hester realizes that the expectations of the community are unrealistic and unfair, which puts her into a new perspective of thinking.

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The townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”

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Adding on the narrator states, “All the light and graceful foliage of her character has been withered up by his red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it” (Hawthorne 112). Regardless of Hester’s true personality and characteristics, the Puritan townspeople only see the scarlet letter sewn onto her chest. However, they start to notice Hester Prynne’s selfless

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Hester was sentenced to wear the scarlet letter "A" for the rest of her life and Hester was forced to stand on the scaffold, so she could be publicly humiliated for her sin. Hester and Pearl will go through life, being shamed by others. The townspeople want to see Hester suffer. Hester and Pearl are strong enough to receive the looks and the talks that they will be getting from the

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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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