Megan Parzych 4
Ms. Krygier
Honors English 10
26 November 2017
Views on the Scarlet Letter
In history, the Puritans were very strict and liked punishment. They looked upon people who have sinned in a very negative way. This is evident in The Scarlet Letter. The townspeople looked at Hester Prynne and her sin in a very strict way and wanted her to be punished greatly. Hester has to wear a letter A on her chest for her punishment of adultery. In The Scarlet Letter, the meaning and significance of the letter A is altered as the novel goes on. Hester, the townspeople, and Pearl all have views of the letter that change. Through their views of the letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, reveals what his view on the letter is.
Hester’s view of
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Because Hawthorne wrote the book and the characters, some of how the way they acted was true to himself. Hawthorne, throughout the story, shows that he always has pitied Hester. He says that Hester was “tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from the regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes” (50). Most of the other people in the story are described as being very ugly. One woman criticizing Hester is called “the ugliest and most pitiless” (49) compared to the rest of the townspeople who are called “self-constituted judges” (49). Hawthorne’s physical descriptions of the people allude to how they are in the inside. He uses physiognomy to show how each person truly is. When he says that Hester is beautiful, he is saying that she is a good person with a good heart. This could mean that Hawthorne relates to Hester and her letter, and believes that even though the letter signifies her sin, which was wrong, it does not indicate the type of person she is on the