Sins In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

“The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Smith 1). The Bible, which is the foundation for many religions, says this about the punishment for sins in Ezekiel 18:20. Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, gets punished for infidelity by the donning of a scarlet letter “A” for eternity. The narrator then continues to explain the next seven years of Hester’s life, and how not only she is affected, but the ways in which the life of her lover―a minister named Dimmesdale―is impacted, as well. Secrets become

When Hester walks out of the prison and onto the scaffold, the first description of her is that she holds a baby about three months old, not that she wears the scarlet letter. To prove that the baby was a product of Hester’s sin, the narrator clarifies that the baby is sensitive to the sunlight due to the fact that it had been living in the darkness of the prison until this moment. The infant is then used as a type of shield for Hester, and the narrator states, “When the young woman… stood fully revealed in the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom… as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress” (Hawthorne 50). From this quote, the reader has the ability to conclude that Hester attempted to conceal the scarlet letter by using her baby. She thought that this action would hide the shame that the letter is associated with. However, this causes the townspeople, before they see the letter as a sign of Hester’s sin, to see Pearl, who is, in turn, a logical effect of it. Pearl herself was a scarlet letter before the latter even existed in the people’s minds. The child is automatically linked to the meaning of the letter without her nor Hester’s doing

For quite some time, Hester could not intercept one of her own walks with Dimmesdale’s in order to talk to him. In hearing that he is returning from a trip, Hester and Pearl retreat to the woods in hopes that they will encounter the minister. Footsteps are heard on the path, and as Hester goes to send Pearl away, the latter exclaims,"‘...mother, he [Dimmesdale] has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?’” (Hawthorne 169). Here, Pearl bluntly asks whether it is the Black Man or Dimmesdale approaching her and her mother, and what the reasoning is for Dimmesdale to hold his hand over his heart. She also queries as to why Dimmesdale does not have his own scarlet letter to show for his sins. For a child to be making these pessimistic assumptions and connections of people is unheard of. Children in the Puritan time period were expected to behave by following the same strict, religious codes as the adults. By asking such forward and suggestive questions, Pearl breaks that societal norm. There is no doubt that Hester is left thinking these exact thoughts after she ushers her daughter elsewhere. In this way, Pearl is