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Literary analysis of scarlet letter
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Hester wonders if he is seeking revenge, but he forgives her. However, the fact that he stays in town and tells Hester not to tell anyone he is her husband makes it seem as if he is going to seek revenge. Chapter five begins with Hester being released from prison and her moving to the outskirts of a town in a cottage away from everyone in order to avoid getting ridiculed everyday. However, she stays in Boston where everyone know her sins in order to feel the pain of her sins. Hester had no social life due to her sins and was condemned in the streets by ministers who began sermons on sins at the sight of
By negatively depicting the Puritans with his depressing diction, Hawthorne establishes a scornful tone that highlights the Puritan’s
The Devil in The White City is a nonfiction book, that takes place in the years before, during and after the Chicago’s World Fair in 1893. Erik Larson is famous for writing historical nonfiction; he spends weeks, maybe even months researching the interesting historical events, and writing them for the public to understand in a better context. The two main characters in this interesting historical non-fiction book are; the protagonist, Daniel Hudson Burnham; who is an architect and has built many important structures such as Union Station in Washington D.C. and the Flatiron Building in New York. The antagonist, H.H. Holmes; a doctor that is famous for being one of the most notorious serial killers of all times, especially the urban killings.
Puritans throughout the 1800’s believed science and knowledge was sinful. Much of Hawthorne’s writing
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a transcendentalist. He judged his Puritan ancestors in their deeds, especially the witch persecutions. Transcendentalism, Puritanism and the idea of witchcraft were reflected in his novel The Scarlet Letter. Although The Scarlet Letter doesn‘t address witchcraft directly, witchcraft saturates the background of the novel. Many factors factors had their influence on the Puritan society, be it positive or negative.
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.
“The child’s own nature had been born amiss, —the effluence of her mother’s lawless passion, —and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all” (Hawthorne, 541). This shows how much she has internalized the judgment of her peers. In many other chapters, Hester perceives Pearl as a positive outcome of her sin, but in this particular quotation, Hester is questioning if it was even worth it at all. These dark thoughts and feelings continue in this chapter when Hester contemplates
This shows that Hester does not necessarily need to worry about what the people of Boston think of her or how she needs to redeem herself in order to fit back into the society. When Hawthorne says “The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!” he is showing how there is no way for Hester to change her society. She should have love and joy, but instead she is faced with guilt, which leads to her downfall. Along with this, Hawthorne demonstrates how the people of Boston are actually the sinners while Hester and Dimmesdale represent the Angel and the Saint of the city.
Yet, despite the heavy burden she has to bear, she acts more civil than most of the characters do in the entirety of “The Scarlet Letter”. Instead of her guilt and shame tearing her down, she chose to rise above it as seen in this quote; “she [Hester] repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will.” (50 Hawthorne) No doubt at this time, Hester’s heart is filled with pain and worry. After all, these were people she has known for some time and perhaps has even befriended.
She was full of sinful thoughts yet admirable in the way she carried herself through her society. Hester committed adultery against her husband Chillingworth and had to wear a scarlet A on her chest for the rest of her life. Her punishment was constant public shame and she had to live with that forever. Hester also strived for love and a feeling of acceptance. Hawthorne displayed Hester as a strong independent women by giving her a strong spirited heart and shows her confidence in herself by dressing up her A (found in chapter 5) and being proud of who she really
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.
Hester understands that she has committed a sin, and takes full responsibility for her actions. She embroiders her own scarlet letter ‘A’ for ‘Adulteress’ that the townspeople make her wear, and dresses Pearl in all red, presumably to acknowledge her sin. However, near the end of The Scarlet Letter, she plans to run away with Dimmesdale, which would challenge her religion and morals. In The Crucible, Mary has wanted to tell the truth since Act I. Throughout the play, she faces peer pressure, which affects her behavior.
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.”
Hester proves that she has a higher understanding for people and life, also a sense of honor based on her own principles not society’s. This perfectly fits the mold for a romantic hero. Towards the end of the novel, we learn that Pearl became a great women and Hester could have lived a great life with her wealthy daughter, yet she chose to return to Boston and live out her punishment. Now the book describes Hester’s final resting place, “It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:—"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules”(Hawthorne 259).
Throughout the novel, Hester is fraught by the Puritan society and her suffering is an effect of how evil society is. Hester continues to believe that the crime she committed was not wrong and she should not be punished for it. Her desire to protect and love Dimmesdale, turn her into a stronger person and become a heroine in the book. Although society still views her as a “naughty baggage” (Hawthorne 73) and is punished for her wrongdoing, Hester never thought to take revenge on them, yet she gives everything she has to the unfortunate and leaves herself with very little. She continues to stay positive no matter what society has for her.
