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Public Shaming Revealed In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

1065 Words5 Pages

How can someone be publicly shamed for something that they have done in the past. The issue of public shaming is presented when Hester Prynne was forced by her community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown because she committed the crime of adultery in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. As well as, the two articles, “Florida ‘Scarlet Letter’ Law Is Repealed by Gov. Bush” by Dana Canedy and “Houston Couple Gets the ‘Scarlet Letter’ Treatment” also show people being publicly shamed. These, for example, show the negative effects that public shaming has on the person and their life. Public shaming is not an effective punishment since it is a violation of their privacy, cruel and unusual, and it destroys their families in the process. To begin with, public shaming a person for a crime that they have committed is a violation of their privacy. For instance, Canedy states, “The Scarlet Letter …show more content…

More importantly, the mother and child have to go through this process to maybe having the father come in the picture even though he is already not in the picture. They should not have to give the public all this information about them just because the father of the child is not in the picture. Likewise, Hawthorne states, “That little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast” (47). The whole town is pretty much all up in Hester and

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