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Scarlet Letter: Alienation And Corruption

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Generally throughout society people are condemned, punished, and judged for their individual choices and flaws. This can depict the concept of alienation and the way it affects the relationship between an individual and their society. In Nathaniel Hawthorne 's, The Scarlet Letter, sin and guilt play a huge role in the Puritan society during the 17th century. The author uses Hester to show that people who make mistakes will often face consequences that isolate them from their society. Throughout the Scarlet Letter, Hester experiences the effects of isolation and the outcome of sin due to the corrupt rules and strict moral values in the society.
In the eyes of the Puritan society Hester is a true sinner due to her committing adultery. While being …show more content…

After being released from prison Hester goes into the woods and finds a place " on the outskirts of town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage..." (68). This is showing that the cottage was isolated but, not totally isolated so that it would hide Hester from the rest of the world. Hawthorne uses the isolated village to show her position among the Puritans who have neglected her for committing a sin. As expected, Hester 's absence in the society made her seem unapproachable, which made it clear that she was only allowed to live somewhere without values that did not portray her status as a sinner and outcast. Although she felt as if she was being isolated by living on the outskirts of town, " there was a more real life for Hester here in New England than that unknown region...here had been her sin; here her sorrow; and here yet was to be her penitence..." (179). Here Hawthorne proves that Hester remained in the community because she felt as if it was the place where she should still serve consequences for her sin. As the quote says, her entire struggle with sin, sorrow, and shame have all been established in the the Puritan society. After facing humiliating experiences she is convinced she would be unable to start over somewhere new. As a result, Hester 's shame and sorrow led her to becoming more of an outcast to the Puritan

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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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Terence Martin makes an intriguing point in this discussion of Hester in Chapter 18 when he asserts his claim that “seven years of ignominy have left her a resolute priestess of a private cult”. (Martin) This is an intriguing assertion because it shows the dangers of moral ambiguity. Hester “wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest”, (Hawthorne 399) and like the forest that the Puritans so greatly fear, Hester has made a pact with the Black Man in the forests of moral ambivalence. Perhaps Hawthorne would say that Hester has transcended the moral confines of the archaic and hypocritical Puritans, but clearly Hester’s venture into the moral badlands have bestowed upon her a false moral compass fashioned from “seven years of ignominy” (Martin) and guilt.

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She receives three punishments from the townspeople, who claim they will free her from her sin. The community orders Hester to go to jail, wear a scarlet letter on her chest, and stand on the town scaffold for hours. Hester wears her scarlet letter proudly on her chest, and endures much suffering because of her public ridicule. Hester is “kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement” after she was released from prison, but she chooses to stay (Hawthorne 71). Later, Hester’s child, Pearl, symbolizes the Puritan view of Hester.

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Hester was viewed by the society in assorted ways throughout the course of the story. Before her sin was committed, she was a beautiful lady that was new in town and awaiting for the arrival of her long lost husband who was supposed to becoming over from England. After her good name had been disgraced with the blemish of her sin, the public's view of her changed dramatically. They were cruel and harsh to her but this only helped her to become a stronger independant woman. She realized no one was going to help her because then they'd have to bear her shame as well, so, in turn she learned to fend for herself.

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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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Hester proves that she has a higher understanding for people and life, also a sense of honor based on her own principles not society’s. This perfectly fits the mold for a romantic hero. Towards the end of the novel, we learn that Pearl became a great women and Hester could have lived a great life with her wealthy daughter, yet she chose to return to Boston and live out her punishment. Now the book describes Hester’s final resting place, “It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:—"On a field, sable, the letter A, gules”(Hawthorne 259).

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She realized that everyone will eventually find out about the sin, so she became courageous and took responsibility for her action. After she had completed her punishment in prison, she moved to a cottage. Hester was guilty for what she had done, but she started to help the poor, even though they rejected her. The guilt deprived her from all the “joys [of life] [because] she rejected it as sin” (Hawthorne 130) Hester ceased enjoying anything that a normal person would think as amusing because it was wrong for her since she became the outcast of the town.

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As the first building that was built in the community, the prison was a constant necessity to the puritans, with their very beliefs revolving around sin and retribution. Hawthorne describes the door as being so old that “The rust on the ponderous iron work [...] looked more antique then any thing else in the new world,” (Hawthorne 45). This allows Hawthorne to illustrate that the prison door is a timeless symbol in the forever changing world around it. It holds the same symbolic meaning that every prison door did hundreds of years ago: confinement from the rest of society. After the confession from Arthur Dimmesdale, the book concludes that Hester returned to the puritan community freely and not even “sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,” (###).

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Throughout the novel, Hester is fraught by the Puritan society and her suffering is an effect of how evil society is. Hester continues to believe that the crime she committed was not wrong and she should not be punished for it. Her desire to protect and love Dimmesdale, turn her into a stronger person and become a heroine in the book. Although society still views her as a “naughty baggage” (Hawthorne 73) and is punished for her wrongdoing, Hester never thought to take revenge on them, yet she gives everything she has to the unfortunate and leaves herself with very little. She continues to stay positive no matter what society has for her.

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