Scarlet Punishment In Hester Prynne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Punishment Hester Prynne, the titular character in The Scarlet Letter, bears her scarlet cross on a path—though distant from the Savior’s righteousness—blemished only by a singular, yet substantial blot of sin. Her cross, an earthly eternal sentence of shame, is a bloodied A—eclipsing her startling beauty with a mark of degraded morals. Yet, that A is not alone in its reminder of her adulterous affair; her daughter, her “Pearl of Great Value”, was the co-product of Hester’s affair. Hester suffered years on end, being humiliated and shunned. She, indeed, humbly accepted her transgression and its retribution—not with innocence and incomplete understanding as a certain young sailor did, but with absolute remorse and willingness to

In 1990, a man took the latter of a choice of prison or wearing a T-shirt reading "I'm on Felony Probation. . . . My record plus two six-packs equal four years" at all times for a year”, among a few other requirements. In Hope v Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 (2002), the disgrace of human dignity by handcuffing a prisoner to a post as punishment is unconstitutional. But, another man got probation by carrying out a punishment to hold a sign on a busy street corner stating his crime of bullying a neighbor and their handicapped children. A woman chose to hold a sign saying "Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus," on a street corner for two days to avoid jail. The pillory aspect of Hester’s punishment could easily be constitutional as it lies below the previous examples in gravity. Yet, in regard to her “eternal” burden of wearing the cursed mark of adultery, a murkier sea of opinions is formed. Just, in 2016, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that their requirement of sexual offenders being listed on a registry for 25 years since their last offence is constitutional. There have been punishments lasting more than a few hours or days in

To broaden this perspective allows for certain key points to break through. The first is that the penalty for adultery still remains as death—made clear by Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.” Adultery, falling under the nearly all-encompassing umbrella of sin, still allows for Hester to deserve execution. However, in John 8, the Pharisses asked Jesus for his opinion on how to deal with an adulterer, he responded with, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” The simple interpretation of this is that it is not the responsibility of humans to determine judgement—at least as far as death—but the authority of God, “He that is without sin.” The Puritan leaders had no right to give Hester her punishment in the eyes of the Bible’s entirety. Later, in that chapter, Jesus says to the adulterer, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” Even, Jesus, though righteous enough to renounce her, gave the adulterer clemency so long as she revoked her ways. The Bible offers forgiveness, but to the unremitting, the penalty is death. No man is righteous enough, but Jesus, to punish the fault of another. But even with Jesus, it is said, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Consequently, there is no virtue, nor holy justice in Hester’s scarlet letter.