Making mistakes is a common occurrence in today's society, and almost seems like the norm. But back in the Puritan times, one mistake could cause a person to be publically shamed forever. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, public shaming is a major theme felt by the main character Hester Prynne. She was publicly shamed for committing adultery, forced to wear the letter “A” on her clothes, and shunned from society. This takes a tole on her and her daughter Pearl because Hester can’t be the mother for Pearl that she wants to be. Causing Hester to have to spend her time trying to redeem herself. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the Puritan values dismantle Hester’s attempts at redemption for Pearl, society, and herself. The way Puritans looked at life was very different from the way people look at it today. If someone were …show more content…
In the beginning she is publically shamed by her town for committing adultery and then forced to wear a big letter “A” on her clothes. Then she feels as though her daughter Pearl doesn’t think she is a good mother. Morally, that destroys a human being, but not Hester. Hester begins the long struggle of looking past the Puritan values of life, to redeem herself. She starts off by redeeming herself, to herself by accepting the big letter “A”. Using her needlework she makes the letter “A” look more eccentric to fit her style, and make her feel better about herself. Then she moves on to her daughter Pearl. She loves Pearl very much, and finally gains redemption from her. Which shows Hester that Pearl really loves her of the way she is. This gives Hester the boost she needs to redeem herself to the public. By going on the scaffolding with Reverend Dimmesdale, Hester shows the public she isn’t scared and knows that she will still end up in a good place. And will be known as a strong individual
Hawthorne describes Hester Prynne’s life desolate in The Scarlet Letter due to public shaming. Hester Prynne indeed commit a crime and sinned, however, she should not have to have her life ruined because of it. There are many more options to punish a criminal than by publicly shaming them. For example, the culprit can be put in prison, spend a certain amount of time doing community service, pay a fine, or anything else that fits the wrongdoers actions. Comprehensively, public shaming can cost someone’s happiness in their life all because of one mistake they made in the past.
In "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, he focuses on alienation. Being part of the Puritan society and considered an outcast by society. Hester Prynne has been pushed aside from her community because of her affair with the minister, Mr. Dimmesdale. This sin affected Hester by forcing her to wear the Scarlet Letter “A” on her chest to remind her of this everyday. She has embraced the issue and addresses it by changing her attitude. For work, Hester performs needlework and is a seamstress for the community. She works to earn back her respect from the townspeople, yet they believe in perfection and have trouble accepting her back.
People all over the world continuously commit sins some are bigger than others and some do more damage. In the book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a woman, Hester Prynne, is publicly shamed and force to wear a scarlet A upon her bosom for committing adultery. Throughout the book, Hester and her daughter, Pearl, try to adapt to life as an outsider. The two are continuously judged for Hester’s sin, and humiliated, however, they overcome this judgment and are seen in a different way. Hester and Pearl have been publicly shamed, Pearl has been considered an elfish devil like child, and after all the humiliation they were able to turn their lives around.
Hester is a youthful, beautiful, proud woman who has committed an awful sin and a scandal that changes her life in a major way. She commits adultery with a man known as Arthur Dimmesdale, leader of the local Puritan church and Hester’s minister. The adultery committed results in a baby girl named Pearl. This child she clutches to her chest is the proof of her sin. This behavior is unacceptable. Hester is sent to prison and then punished. Hester is the only one who gets punished for this horrendous act, because no one knows who the man is that Hester has this scandalous affair with. Hester’s sin is confessed, and she lives with two constant reminders of that sin: the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl, the child conceived with Dimmesdale. Her punishment is that she must stand upon a scaffold receiving public humiliation for several hours each day, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest, represe...
“Woman, it is thy badge of shame!" (107). Governor Bellingham was describing the scarlet letter to Hester while they were discussing if the punishments that Hester had to go through were adequate enough for the crime. Hester was living in the outskirts of the city in a small abandoned cottage for several years with the only thing that had any monetary value in her life, her child and the product of committing adultery, Pearl. She and her little Pearl were shunned from the community for her acts. In the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester is punished in more than one way, and she is able to deal with it openly so the community will, over time, forgive her.
Hester Prynne, the wearer of the scarlet letter, conveys a couple of different ways in which guilt can affect individual’s lives for worse and for better. Depending on the emotional depth of the sin and how it affects the society, one of the worst results of sin is the feeling of being an outcast. “Much of the marble coldness of Hester’s impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world,–alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected,–alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even has she not scorned to consider it desirable,–she cast away the fragments of a broken chain.” (Hawthorne 112) In this quote, Hawthorne describes Hester’s emotions of desertion and the ignominy of being alone. For Hester, these sentiments reach a point to where they are almost unbearable. After some time passes, she realizes that in order for her life to continue on, she needs to change the way she is living. “She wanted–what some people want throughout life–a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and mak...
In the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, the letter is understood as a label of punishment and sin being publicized. Hester Prynne bears the label of “A” signifining adulterer upon her chest. Because of this scorching red color label she becomes the outcast of her society. She wears this symbol of punishment and it become a burden throughout her life. The letter “produces only a reflection of her scarlet letter; likewise, the townspeople's image of Hester revolves around her sin. The evil associated with Hester's actions and the letter on her chest consume all aspects of her life, concealing her true beauty, mind, and soul” (R. Warfel 421-425). Society pushed blame upon Hester Prynne, and these events lead to the change of her life. The Puritans whom Prynne is surround by view the letter as a symbol from the devil, controversially some individuals look upon the letter, sigh and fell sympathy towards her because they have or are involved in this same situation. Nonetheless the haunting torture Hester Prynne battles daily drags on, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows this torture “of an impulse and passionate nature. She had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely wreaking itself in every variety of insult but...
D.H. Lawrence’s paper “On the Scarlet Letter” addresses a range of criticisms and ideas regarding Hester Prynne and has been widely considered in regard to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. He explores different aspects of her sin as well as her nature through this analytical paper. It is in these criticisms that he conveys that Hester Prynne is wrongfully admired by both fellow characters and the reader by using repetition, choppy syntax, and biblical allusions.
Through Hester and the symbol of the scarlet letter, Hawthorne reveals how sin can be utilized to change a person for the better, in allowing for responsibility, forgiveness, and a renewed sense of pride. In a Puritan society that strongly condemns adultery one would expect Hester to leave society and never to return again, but that does not happen. Instead, Hester says, “Here…had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.” Hes...
At the beginning of the Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne is labeled as the “bad guy”. The townspeople demand the other adulterer’s name, but Hester denies this revelation. She does not reveal it because she knows that the information will crumble the foundation of the Puritan religion and the town itself. “‘But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?’ ‘Ask me not!’ replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly into his face. ‘That thou shalt never know!’(Hawthorne 52). Hester knows that finding out that the father of the child, the Minister that is leading the town, will diminish credibility for the church and for Dimmesdale, the Minister. During her punishment, Hester decides to move out near the woods and make a living as a seamstress. Hester is regarded as an outcast from Boston, but she still gives back to the society that shuns her. ‘“Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?’ they would say to strangers. ‘It is our Hester, —the town's own Hester, —who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!’”(Hawthorne 111). Her acts of kindness, helping the sick and comforting the afflicted, toward the society that makes her an outcast shows the inner goodness of a person. Throu...
Hester Prynne, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, the Scarlet Letter, faces a crucible. She commits adultery with Reverend Dimmesdale and becomes pregnant with a daughter, Pearl. She is isolated from the community and the general public except for when she must stand upon the scaffold for three hours as part of her punishment for her sin. She must also wear a scarlet letter “A” for adultery on her breast. The town looks at her differently because of her sin but Hester stays true to her personality. Hester fairs her life by honoring her punishment and her mistakes, as well as taking care of Pearl and teaching her to be kind.
Everyone in the town each has different views on their life, for Hester, her punishment has changed the view of the world around her. At the beginning of The Scarlet letter, Hester is put on the scaffold in the middle of the town. She is being publicly humiliated, as well as, questioned for what she has done. Hester stands on the scaffold looking as if she is not sorry for her sin. She stands there holding Pearl, the outcome of her sin. She was described as a tall and elegant beautiful woman with a rich complexion. The town is shocked by how she elegantly embroiders the scarlet letter “A.” Hester decides that she deserves the punishment of the town for her sin of adultery. When Chillingworth shows up this make her experience a bigger amount
Without an honorable reputation a person is not worthy of respect from others in their society. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, the struggle to shake off the past is an underlying theme throughout the novel. Characters in this novel go through their lives struggling with trying to cope with the guilt and shame associated with actions that lost them their honorable reputation. Particularly, Hawthorne shows the lasting effect that sin and guilt has on two of the main characters in the book: Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale.
Hester Prynne committed a crime so severe that it changed her life into coils of torment and defeat. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester is publicly recognized as an adulteress and expelled from society. Alongside the theme of isolation, the scarlet letter, or symbol of sin, is meant to shame Hester but instead transforms her from a woman of ordinary living into a stronger person.
In the novel the Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character Hester Prynne sinned by committing adultery which changes her identity while she wears the Scarlet Letter. “In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity” (Erik Erikson). The way the scarlet letter defines Hester as someone who sinned in her society. The way that her society reacted to her with the scarlet letter, made her question her identity of who she is with the scarlet letter. Hester is forced to change her identity and the society around her looks at her in a different eye than what she was before she received the scarlet letter.