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In The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne, Hester Prynne is labeled as an adulteress by the community. Many people are often labeled by others. As humans labeling is a part of life; it helps people to categorize their thoughts. I know that when I started dancing, I labeled myself as a dancer. By the time I left St. Mary’s, and maybe even a little bit now, dance defined me, just as Hester’s adultery defined her. It became the only thing that people knew about me, and the only thing I knew how to talk about. Hawthorne says, “It is a good lesson …to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized” (24 Hawthorne). I wanted to broaden my horizons, as paradoxical as it sounds, the best way for me to do that was through dance.
No one is perfect. Especially when it comes to parenting. Even Book characters have trouble being good parents. One example of this is Hester Prynne. She is a book character for the book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Now, Hester is not the worst mother, but she is not the best either. How can you be the best mother in the world with a heathenish daughter like Pearl? Still, Hester does her best, and that's all anyone should ask for. Hester is a good mother because she looks out for Pearl's future, she knows when to be stern and she is a great role model.
Human nature thrives on labels and stereotypes; they are methods society uses to better comprehend others disposition and justify their behavior. However, when placed stereotypes can override individuality, and this can force one to conform to such labels, hide their true character, and change their persona. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester is a victim of such a stereotype. The Puritan society in which she lives confines and defines her based on her sin, and not by a totality of her actions and character. Nevertheless she emerges, reborn, as her own person once again. Hester Prynne's development through the use of archetypes, symbols, and Romanticism reinforce the theme of the effects of stereotypes and labels and their refutal in The Scarlet Letter.
The scarlet letter is more than just an “A” that Hester Prynne wears as punishment. The “A” on Hester’s clothing is a symbol for adultery, but under the hand stitched “A” it is much more. The “A” tells a story of how one mistake can make a big impact on life. Throughout the book there have been many scenarios that the “A” has affected different characters, in a positive and negative way. This little letter has many meanings to many people, some people that did not know it would even affect them. The simple letter is much more powerful than what anybody thought.
Hester Prynne, an adulteress, is imprisoned by the laws of Puritan society and instead of running away, struggles to accept her badge of shame as a very real part of who she is. When she is first commanded to wear a scarlet letter A, she sees it as a curse. For the first few years she tries to ignore the ignominy under a mask of indifference. “Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air or weary indifference,” Hawthorne writes. (page 48) Even so, she cannot hide from what her sin has produced. Every day her daughter Pearl reminds her of her sin. The only way to freedom is to avoid being defined by the society in which she finds herself. It is a gradual process but slowly, due to her compassion for the poor and sick, people start to view Hester's badge as meaning “Able” rather than “Adulteress”. Eventually her badge becomes a blessing as other women come to her for advice and counseling in that,
The Scarlet Letter is a classic novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which entangles the lives of two characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale together through an unpardonable sin-adultery. With two different lifestyles, this act of adultery affects each of them differently. Hester is an average female citizen who is married to a Roger Chillingworth from Europe while Dimmesdale is a Puritan minister from England (61). Along the course of time after the act of adultery had happened, Hester could not hide the fact that she was bearing a child that was not of her husband, but from another man. She never reveals that this man is in fact Arthur Dimmesdale, and so only she receives the punishment of prison. Although it is Hester who receives the condemnation and punishment from the townspeople and officials, Dimmesdale is also punished by his conscience as he lives his life with the secret burden hanging between him and Hester.
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...
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s well known novel, The Scarlet Letter, extensive diction and intense imagery are used to portray the overall tone of the characters. In particular, Hester Prynne, the wearer of the Scarlet Letter, receives plentiful positive characterization throughout the novel. Hester’s character most notably develops through the town’s peoples ever-changing views on the scarlet letter, the copious mentions of her bravery, and her ability to take care of herself, Pearl, and others, even when she reaches the point where most would give up and wallow in their suffering.
Hester Pryne of The Scarlet Letter Hester Pryne, after being punished for her sin, lived an important life. In "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester was convicted of adultery. However, after her conviction, she managed to raise a daughter, became an important seamstress in her community, and set an example for her close-knit community. Pearl, the daughter of a convicted sex offender, grew up living a different life from her peers.
Social norms have existed in every society since the dawn of time and they are very prevalent in The Scarlet Letter Social norms in the novel are based upon very Puritanical values which causes the townspeople to live a very rigidly structured lifestyle. Naturally, this type of society causes many problems for those who choose to go against the values of society. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester is shown to be one of those who goes against society when she is convicted of adultery. Because she is convicted of this, she is ostracized from society. Upon her being ostracized, she becomes more enlightened than most because she is given the ability to see society through a different lens in the comfort of privacy in her own cottage. It is in private settings such as these that produce some remarkable discoveries about society. Thus, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, the need for privacy in uncovering the truth suggests man's natural discomfort in open society.
Nathaniel Hawthorne expresses the different themes of ignominiousness, sin, and censurability through his story, The Scarlet Letter. These thematic aspects apply to Hester and Dimmesdale because of the secrecy both of them obnubilate and the censurability the secrecy engenders which gradually corrodes and eradicates everything about them. The culpability Dimmesdale feels results in the decay of his soul, which is diseased by his sin, censurability, and thus, "was haunted by either Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth" (118). The soul is where the source of his decay commences and this decay eventually spreads to Dimmesdale's body which commences crumbling and deteriorating. Hawthorne describes, "his
Hester Prynne's choice to control the meaning of the scarlet letter transforms her from a shameful and evil person to a compassionate woman. Her refusal to stop wearing the letter proves the letter has a different meaning rather than adultery. Hester Prynne transforms the meaning through her good deeds and deserved redemption. After some time, society begins to construe the scarlet letter as ?Able? rather than adulteress. From this process Hester creates a passionate identity. The scarlet letter claims Hester Prynne?s past but only she can determine whether it will benefit or hurt her future.
How does one determine how to analyze a book written by a dead author? The answer is easy. You can see clearly in the works of most authors, that their writing has a direct correlation to some aspect of their life. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a prime example of his work relating to his personal life. Throughout the book, my mind seesawed back and forth between how feminism relates to the writing but also how psychoanalysis does too. In this case, I do not believe that there is one answer, or maybe even one at all, but the evidence against both is very compelling.
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the reader meets the character Hester Prynne who as the novel progresses, one notices the changes in her character are very dramatic. The changes are both physical and in her mannerism’s. There are many significant events which took place before the start of the novel and during the novel. Some of these events that lead to this dramatic change include the affect of wearing the scarlet letter, the secrets which she keeps, and her daughter Pearl’s evil characteristics. By these events, Hester Prynne’s image is transformed throughout the time of the story.
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.