Shame In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Whether someone is put upon a scaffold in the mid seventeenth century or on the cover of yesterday’s New York Times, public shame is more about sending a warning message to a community through using the “criminal” as a symbol for misconduct rather than causing shame to the individual. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel that follows Hester Prynne, an adulterer, through her life with her daughter, Pearl, the father of her daughter, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, her husband that she cheated on. In the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, Hester is released from prison and lives and provides for her daughter solely alone, which completely contradicts the standard conventions in her community at the time. As part of

At the end of the book soon before her death, Hester reflects on her life, and realizes that “in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too” (243). The letter was meant to be a defining symbol of Hester and her sin, but instead it was a symbol of help and hope. The purpose was to attract the “world’s scorn”, but instead she was praised for her persistence and grace. Hester’s powerful personality and strength allowed her to change the opinions of the general public and give her a chance to rebrand herself. There was no longer any regret attached to the letter, and without regret, it is clear that Hester does not wish that she had done anything differently to avoid becoming an adulteress. The Puritans did not want to give Hester forgiveness, so she forgave herself and allowed herself to move on. Hester comforted women in her community as a therapist, and “She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period[...]a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness” (243). After all that she had gone through in New England, Hester was somehow still willing and eager to return and assist women suffering through what she went through. Hester was original in the sense that she was able to endure hate and guilt that most people, like Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, could not survive through, physically and emotionally, and being selfless, she knew that it was her duty to her people who may not be as strong as her to endure the pain themselves. Talking to people about their transgressions could easily force Hester to conjure her past emotions, but once