Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, there are multiple instances where sin and redemption driven by the small Puritan community, aid to the plot of the story. In the midst of the novel is a young women named Hester Prynne. Hester is a women who becomes completely defied by the Puritans and receives multiple consequences due to her actions. Hester has gone against the religion and committed adultery, and now is viewed as an extreme sinner. The Puritans believe that Hester is not worthy of anything and requires a great deal of thorough repentance. The Puritans require her to wear a symbol of shame on her bosom for eternity. The Puritans force her to stand upon the “weather darkened scaffold”(Hawthorne 59) for a duration of three hours for …show more content…
The scream of this Puritan depicts how forgiving these peoples is virtually impossible. This suggests that the Puritan society is very unforgiving. Furthermore, Hester's life raising her daughter, Pearl, on her own became very difficult due to the Puritans. Hester and Pearl move to a small hut by the sea in an attempt to keep their distance from the Puritans. She does not want them to influence Pearl. They see Pearl as “demon offspring” since she was given birth by an adulterous. Pearl is only able to be viewed on earth through her “mothers’ sin” and is seen as possessing a “wicked purpose”. The Puritans view her as an unpure and wicked child. Hester was deemed unable to raise a child by the Puritan society due to her sin of adultery, making her unpure. This illustrates the influence of the Puritan law and how they view Hester of being incapable of passing good morals down to her own child. Finally, the opinion of the Puritans upon Hester and Pearl improves only when they become more of an asset to the community. Hester soon comes to the realization that the Puritans redemption could save her