Hester Prynne In The Scarlett Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne has known to become his masterwork and is thus far his most illustrious novel. A tale of sin and its gruesome consequences, one’s temptation to passionately love, revenge and guilt, and most importantly the immense repercussions of social stigmatizing and public shaming are all profoundly implicated throughout this story Over the course of twenty-four chapters, Hawthorne illustrates the life of Hester Prynne, the female protagonist who has been brutally condemned by the Puritan society to wear an “A” on her bosom as a symbol for adultery, the horrible sin she has committed. Nkechi Diallo, commonly known as Rachel Dolezal, a former civil rights activist and former president

Hester Prynne 's sin was a violation against that of Puritan laws, she was a public sinner but her sin was widely identified and found offensive by the Puritan community that set rigid and oppressive rules that Hester seamessely violated. The ridicule from the Puritan society towards Hester is illustrated at the beginning of the novel where Hawthorne asserts, “In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. 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 63). Similarly, Rachel Dolezal although her wrong-doings are recognized amongst a wide range of people, her false identification as a black women has immensely hurt black Americans specifically due to the fact that her actions were in direct effect of black lives and her idea of racial fluidity, which essentially is when one believes they can change their identification of what race they believe they are, deeply insulted black people rather than the contrary (Oluo 2). This all suggests the existing parallel between Hester Prynne and Rachel Dolezal in regards to how their sin infringed a particular group of