Hester Prynne In The Scarlett Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes the main focus, Hester Prynne, a strong female character. She stays true to herself and her daughter, Pearl, regardless of

She eventually grows to be bitter about the situation (as anyone would) but continues on with her regular life. “If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.” I believe that this quote stays true to Hester and how it affected her. Hester stayed tender to Pearl but regarding everything else, the tender was “crushed” out of it. This became largely apparent when Dimmesdale, her lovers death occurred. She lived the rest of her life with distance from everyone in the community although in the years following, she was not known for her the scarlet “A” on her chest. While her ex lover, Chillingworth and her other lover, Dimmesdale were largely paid attention to in the book, they were nothing close to a main factor. Until the end, Hester didn’t need or want someone to rely on. She was her own person and didn’t feel the need to have anyone there as a “cushion”. “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods…” She was held back by her scarlet letter but she allowed her mind to stay