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Mistress Hibbins In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

656 Words3 Pages

Title “ The Market-place” and “The Recognition” BEFORE READING I inferred that it’s not actually about a market-place, or it doesn’t takes place in market or anything but it is too crowded therefore the author might call it a marketplace. AFTER READING -Hester is publicly ashamed in the marketplace for committing adultery. -Someone recognizes Hester while she is on the platform. Vocabulary - “Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand.” (Hawthorne 75) - “This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer …show more content…

Supernatural - “It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows.” (Hawthorne 76) - “It had the affect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.” (Hawthorne 82) - Mistress Hibbins is called a witch, which absolutely shows an example of supernatural. But we are not sure if Hawthorne believes she is a witch; it’s more likely that he is talking with the tongue of Puritan community. - The Scarlet Letter had an affect of a spell, which means that the spell took her out of the ordinary life and turned it into a supernatural life. Character The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. Hester is physically described by Hawthorne as a rusty gold, to show actually how beautiful she is but what has Puritan turned her

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Although she is described as physically attractive, her inner beauty reflects her attractiveness from the outside, allowing her to bear the burden of the scarlet letter with dignity and grace. In contrast to the Puritan society’s expectations, Hester’s charmer reveals her pure and innocent heart. Hawthorne’s use of physiognomy in Hester’s character highlights the irony of the situation, as her beauty contradicts society’s perception of her as a sinner. Overall, Hester’s beauty reflects her true character and defies the societal expectations imposed on

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1014 Words | 5 Pages

One woman criticizing Hester is called “the ugliest and most pitiless” (49) compared to the rest of the townspeople who are called “self-constituted judges” (49). Hawthorne’s physical descriptions of the people allude to how they are in the inside. He uses physiognomy to show how each person truly is. When he says that Hester is beautiful, he is saying that she is a good person with a good heart. This could mean that Hawthorne relates to Hester and her letter, and believes that even though the letter signifies her sin, which was wrong, it does not indicate the type of person she is on the

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500 Words | 2 Pages

Instead of displaying the scarlet letter ‘A’ as a detriment, Hester parades it with her own style, embroidering it and making it her own. Comparably, Gladwell narrates the idea that, “power can come in other forms as well— in breaking rules, in substituting speed and surprise for strength” (Gladwell 13). Both novels elucidate that not all extraordinary people become noteworthy in conventional ways; toying with society’s barriers in the manner that Hester did makes her a hero amongst the women of New

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997 Words | 4 Pages

By comparing the audience's perception of Hester to the outward openness and accepting nature of Hester; Hawthorne support his notion that women or in this case a sinner like Hester were held to a higher standard than that of men, which explained why the majority of the outrage and scrutiny from the audience was focused on Hester rather than her counterpart,

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635 Words | 3 Pages

Sprinkled Snickerdoodlepastasauce Scarlet Letter Essay Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shifts from a disapproving tone in the beginning of the passage to a more hopeful tone near the end of the excerpt. During the initial parts of the text, Hawthorne utilizes Anglo-Saxon diction in order to convey a disapproving tone towards the Puritan Society. The author begins the text by immediately portraying the townsfolk as wearing “sad colored garments,” and “some [women] wearing hoods.”

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1213 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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665 Words | 3 Pages

She is a beautiful, young woman who has sinned, but is forgiven. Hawthorne portrays Hester as "divine maternity" and she can do no wrong. Not only Hester, but also the physical scarlet letter, a sign of shame, is shown as a beautiful, gold and colorful piece which

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328 Words | 2 Pages

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes a distinct style in his writing to influence his readers’ impressions of his characters and attempts to provoke an emotional connection from reader to character. Hawthorne uses many types of literary styles in his writing to get the emotional connection he wants from the reader, including figurative language, high diction, and hedging, or the use of equivocal language. Hawthorne uses figurative language in attempt to compare his characters to something that is more relatable. On page 134 he says, “The aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale’s frame…” Here Hawthorne uses a metaphor to compare Mr. Dimmesdale’s parishioners to a sheppard and his flock.

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1266 Words | 6 Pages

Her beauty is lost as “her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine” (Hawthorne 515). Hester has stopped being a woman, which the narrator even confirms. She is able to reclaim her womanhood briefly when she takes off her cap and letter in an intimate moment with Arthur Dimmesdale. She is finally allowed to be beautiful since “the burden of shame and anguish [depart] from her spirit” (Hawthorne 536). However, when she has to put her hair back in the cap and fasten on the letter “her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, [depart], like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her” (Hawthorne 541).

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749 Words | 3 Pages

To effectively prove his claim about women having a strong character and breaking Puritan laws, Hawthorne makes the characters that Hester interacts with predominantly male. He states, “Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals” (225). Men in the novel influenced the government, and therefore the church. Because of this, the men in the novel held an excessive amount of power; even though they held power Hester did not concede. Hawthorne allows male characters in his novel, so the focus of the novel can be placed on the only female, Hester, and to show how even with all the testosterone, Hester is able to remain

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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.”

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337 Words | 2 Pages

“Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, —at her, who had once been innocent, —as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.” (5.1) Hawthorne shows that to the town Hester was sin. She was punished as an outcast

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576 Words | 3 Pages

The existence of the supernatural has pervaded and consumed the minds of those who ponder of things beyond our control . Many have been frightened by the moments of loneliness in your own home and by the hearing of perceived paranormal noises . The book The Scarlet Letter has some series or suspicions of supernatural occasions or individuals. In the book we come across some very intriguing characters. Pearl is a young girl who is very wise for her age, Mistress Hibbins, and the actual scarlet letter itself.

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920 Words | 4 Pages

The Scarlet Letter and Uses of the Puritan Past illustrate various aspects of the cultural values in Puritanism and their societal impacts. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne depicts Puritanism as a bleak, strict cultural instance in which people who do not conform to their rules are shunned and distanced from society. In Uses of the Puritan Past, Puritan culture is described as a social construct based on four primary virtues. These virtues were the main influence of Puritan activity in Uses of the Puritan Past, as they were responsible for the creation of social rules and essential morality resulting in increased power and influence of the Puritan over every day Puritan life in New England. Even though both The Scarlet Letter and Uses of the

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1284 Words | 6 Pages

The society’s intentions to portray themselves as pure individuals while condemning Hester for her sins even though they mask their own, highlights the hypocritical nature of the society. Ultimately, by the use of the supernatural character of Mistress Hibbins, Hawthorne is able to provide a metaphorical representation of the hypocrisy in the society while conforming to the conventions of the gothic genre. Moreover, through the presence of negative emotions that catalyze actions, Hawthorne effectively illustrates the consequences for not confessing sin while conforming to

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