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How Does Hester Prynne Change In The Scarlet Letter

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Asrai Brainerd Ms. Morrison Identity & Society 23 March, 2016 In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester accepts their sin and uses it to help the townspeople that are struggling with their own transgressions, while Dimmesdale lets their sin drain him until he becomes weak and empty inside. The change we see in both major characters is actually who they are on the inside showing through their exterior facade. Hester goes from almost rebellious of what her religion has taught her, to someone that people in town go to advice to on how to be a good Puritan in their almost utopian society. While Dimmesdale starts out seeming morally strong because of his position in the town, he has secretly committed a crime that would get both him and Hester executed. This war inside of him is what leads people to recognize how much of a coward he truly is. …show more content…

“…she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors.” (p51.) The Hester seen in the first scene of the novel is not ashamed of her crime, she accepts her punishment and is unwilling to break under the pressure being put on her to tell the town who her partner was. Hester’s actions go to show that she knows her crime is something she has to accept on her own, and that what the people in the town think of her doesn't matter, only what God thinks matters. While Hester may be seen as weak by the people of the town because she gave into lust like any sinner would, the people that see the situation from the outside can see that Hester is truly strong because she accepts all of the fault for a crime she and Dimmesdale

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Dimmesdale suffers differently from Hester, because while she “bore it all” to the townspeople (181), his fears forced him to hide his sin, living a life full of “nothing but despair” (177). Hester, though made a social pariah of the town, has a more honest and healthy way of dealing with her sin. Because Hester is forced to face her wrongdoings under the watchful eye of her Puritan neighbors, she did not have the same guilt of secrecy that Dimmesdale did. Dimmesdale, by hiding his sin, allows himself to become a captive to his guilt. The way that Dimmesdale dealt with his guilt was unhealthy for him, both mentally and physically.

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Arezu Lotfi Mr. Burd, Block A American Lit 11 November, 2015 Fight or Flight With the inner struggle of guilt, a person can either be redeemed or destroyed. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne Hester Prynne is ridiculed publicly by the Puritan community for adultery. Mr. Dimmesdale, the man Hester cheats with is a young minister in the town, and hides his sin from the community. Together the two have a daughter named Pearl, that Hester raises.

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As two main characters in The Scarlet Letter, which is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester and Dimmesdale are committed adultery, therefore, the scarlet letter is patched on Hester’s chest. Accordingly, Hester and Dimmesdale have some similarities and differences. Both of the characters have the same sin, love each other, love Pearl , and indeed, they have been changed by their sin. On the other hand, the way that Hester and Dimmesdale deal with their sin is totally different, and it brings them to different ending as well. Hester and Dimmesdale love each other deeply, even though they have changed totally since their identical sin has revealed.

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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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Hester is confident that things will get better, so she stays in Boston. She is courageous because she talks to Chillingworth, her former husband, and tells him to stop trying to get revenge. The “A” brings Hester redemption. She is finally redeemed when her and Dimmesdale confess and ask for forgiveness. Everyone sins, but accepting the sin, learning from the sin, and changing is what makes Hester admirable.

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“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 1 John 1:9”. This tells us that we who believe in confessing our sins must understand that every sin needs to be recognized and heard. We can see that in the novel Hetser, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth have all sinned and been forgiven. Hester’s sin changes throughout the novel because, in the beginning, this was a punishment that affected her day-to-day life. We then see at the very end she finally takes off The Scarlet Letter A because she is finally able to let go of her sin of adultery.

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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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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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The villagers began to believe that Hester was the embodiment of a woman’s strength, and they praised her for the work she had done for those less fortunate than her. They had faith that Hester could do anything she set her mind to because she was “‘so kind to the poor . . . [and] helpful to the sick’” (111). They viewed Hester’s kindness as strength and overlooked her sin because of her charitable deeds. While the her peers still remembered Hester’s previous actions, most citizens believed she evolved into a respectable person in spite of these actions, and they thought confessing her sin made her stronger.

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Hester Prynne is the heroine of “The scarlet Letter”, and it is possible for us to fully sympathize with her because Through reading the text “The Scarlet Letter” we can find out Hester Prynne had a difficult life and had been suffering very much comparing to other characters because she handles her situation by keeping Dimmesdale a secret even under pressure refusing to let them take her daughter Pearl from her and not hiding from the public after her sin of adultery is revealed and she is punished. Though Hester Prynne does faced her situation better than the other characters it is still she who sufferers the most. The another reason which compel the reader to sympathize on Hester Prynne is because she had to under gone the worse consequences of her sin that she must live with her relationships and interactions with Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, and the way she deal with her sin and the results of it.

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Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne exposes the blindness of the Puritan people through the treatment of Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale’s external characters. Hester Prynne is labeled as an adulteress and mistreated by society because of their unwillingness to see her true character. Chillingworth, the husband of Hester, leads the town to believe he is an honorable man and skillful doctor, when his true intents root from his vindictive nature Finally, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester’s lover and the father of her baby, acts as the perfect man therefore the town views him as an exemplar model, while he is truly a sinner. In the novel, Hawthorne portrays Hester as a strong, resilient woman, though the members of her community

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The book The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne has symbolism all throughout it. People and objects are symbolic of events and thoughts. Throughout the book, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Hester, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale to signify philosophies that are evident during this time period. Hester Prynne, through the eyes of the Puritans, is an extreme sinner; she has gone against their ways, committing adultery. For this sin, she must wear a symbol of shame for the rest of her life.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter depicts the flaws in the human nature of both Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Although each character possesses their own belief and values, both played their part in the sin committed. However, there is always a cause for an individual’s wrong doing and in the case of both Hester and Dimmesdale it, “had been a sin of passion, not principle, nor even purpose” (Hawthorne 152).

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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.

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The Scarlet Letter covers much pain but the underlying romance throughout provides readers with a little happiness. Throughout the book, readers are rooting for the future romance between Hester and Dimmesdale. In being exposed to Dimmesdale’s extreme guilt as well as Hester’s constant suffering, everyone desires the happy ending where they run away together in order to make better life. The underlying tone being romance and devotion, Hawthorne continuously plays on the idea of forbidden love. He subtly expresses this idea through Dimmesdale’s emotional remarks such as “love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world” (Hawthorne, 282).

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