ipl-logo

Hypocrisy In Scarlet Letter

458 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of The Scarlet Letter

Towards the end of chapter five in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne, in addition to her personal guilt as a result of her sin, is subjugated to humiliation due to the townspeople’s actions. Isolation caused by the behavior of people around her prompts Hester to reseed into herself, which leads Hester to a realization that not only disgusts her, but provides evidence of hypocrisy within the practice of beliefs that the Puritan town is structured.
In this section, Hawthorn describes Hester’s submission to pain inflicted by humiliation cast upon her by townspeople: Hester resists the urge to fight back, instead pushing down her reaction and accepting the punishments doled out by her community. For example Hester “[schools] herself long and well” …show more content…

An example is when Hester enters the town’s church as to “share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father” and is meet with distain from the members of the community as they highlight her as other by making her “the text of discourse”(80). Even with in the town, playing children “babbled [insults] unconsciously” at her, for their parents obviously entertain themselves by discussing Hester, providing the chance for the children to “imbibe from [them]” that she had done something wrong (80). In addition to children Clergymen also address Hester in the streets, drawing conflicted citizens into a “ mingled [grinning] and [frowning] crowd”(80). As a whole the citizens of the town don’t have the same set of moral codes for if they did there would be no evidence of mix emotion within the crowd of onlookers. All and all Hester’s internal conflict over her sin comes from her belief in puritan morals, where the punishment condemned on her from the townsfolk can not be similarly linked to their Christian

Show More
Related
857 Words | 4 Pages

From the time in which justice and order was enforced by governing figures, man has struggled with the conflict of balancing freedom and protection. Often times, those who seek answers to the disorderly find solace within religious beliefs; they find protection and answers to questions of security, where an omnipotent being took reign and watched over one’s life. However, when applied to governing forces, these laws based off religious beliefs regulating certain actions and desires restrict freedom. In The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Arthur Miller argue that conscience should supersede religion. Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter uses pathos to enforce this claim; whereas Arthur Miller argues the same claim using logos in his book The Crucible.

Read More
315 Words | 2 Pages

Hawthorne uses many forms of rhetoric to portray his characters, but relies heavily on pathos in the instance of Hester Prynne. She’s a member of an inherently misogynistic society, and because she’s a woman, her every act is scrutinized. As punishment for her act of adultery, Hester is ordered to adorn her chest with a permanent scarlet letter. Although the audience is well aware of the atrocity of the sin she’s committed, Hawthorne’s writing sparks a feeling of empathy within the reader. Throughout the novel, the reader is exposed to several clear uses of pathos.

Read More
585 Words | 3 Pages

In the beginning of the book when Hester is recieving her punishment for her adulterous relationship, Hawthorne. Describes the situation by saying, “there can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature-whatever be the delinquencies of the individual- no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do” (Hawthorne 53-54). This portrayal of Hester’s punishment shows how shameful it was made out to be for her. She is forced own up to her sin and take the shame publicly upon the scaffold. And much like in Brooks’ The Shame Culture this begins to shape behavior.

Read More
1409 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
336 Words | 2 Pages

The Breaking of Charity Arthur Miller, in an excerpt from "In a Sense I Went Naked to Salem," used the phrase "breaking of charity. " From the given examples, this phrase means the changing of positive emotions into negative emotions. Said examples were lovers turning into enemies and parents disowning their child. In "The Scarlet Letter," Nathaniel Hawthorne uses multiple characters and how they are treated/how they feel as examples of "breaking of charity.

Read More
941 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1092 Words | 5 Pages

Her fellow citizens treat her in such a way that “...every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere.” (Hawthorne 72) The idea of harsh punishment for sins was the broadest of these Puritan values. Hester Prynne was punished with public humiliation and “with only that one ornament, -the scarlet letter,- which it was her doom to wear” (Hawthorne 77). This brings into effect another part of Puritan society, the sin of one community member was the sin of all, ensuring that God's chastisement would fall on the entire community.

Read More
867 Words | 4 Pages

However, in The Scarlet Letter Hester accepts her sin: “Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom” (Hawthorne 56).

Read More
791 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More
857 Words | 4 Pages

Society has had a long history of belittling both people and their individuality, and also not allowing people to reach their full potential. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne is constantly talking about society in a negative way. Hawthorne himself is a transcendentalist who views society as a terrible institution and a way to stop people from reaching their true potential. Hawthorne's view of both puritan society and society during his time plays into his view and characterization of Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne is a fictional character who committed a sin and was publicly shamed and shunned from society because of it.

Read More
719 Words | 3 Pages

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.”

Read More
686 Words | 3 Pages

The Hidden Sin and The Revealed Sin As humans, we live in the that are brimming with sins and evil desire. As the creator of all the creatures, God, sent his only son to save the people from the control of devil. The only thing we have to do is to acknowledge our mistake. Bible teach us that we should tell the truth to God and your neighbors, and God will forgive you. But people are worse, they not only hide the sin and their evil behaviors but also try to deny it.

Read More
796 Words | 4 Pages

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist, Hester Prynne is a Romantic Hero. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, we see Hester Prynne’s struggle in Colonial America after she is condemned by the Puritan society. She is sent to America by her husband, but he never returns, and Hester later conceives a child with the local minister. She is convicted with the crime of adultery, but refuses to identify the father, she is then forced to wear the Scarlet Letter. The novel captures her experience as she struggles to survive the guilt, sin, and revenge.

Read More
999 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
936 Words | 4 Pages

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)

Read More

More about Hypocrisy In Scarlet Letter

Related Topics

Open Document