The Effectiveness of the Scarlet Letter as Punishment

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The answer to the question of whether or not Hester Prynne’s punishment in regards to her sin and the crime of adultery was a befitting one varies greatly between the individual characters within the novel. Some found that her punishment was far too lenient, and that a much harsher one was warranted. It leads the reader to question the effectiveness of the letter, as Nathaniel Hawthorne himself said “The scarlet letter had not done its office”. It was truly the letter itself and its ineffectiveness that allowed Hester to grow as an individual.
Many of the female inhabitants of the village held the belief that a more severe method of punishment should have been exacted upon Hester, citing that it was undoubtedly her beauty which swayed the magistrates decision to not have her hanged or whipped as, at the time, adultery was considered a capital crime for which death was the proscribed punishment. Indeed, the puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631 passed the law which stated, “It is ordered, that if any man shall have carnall copulacon with another man’s wife, they both shalbee punished by death”(Shurtleff 21). There was however even within the Puritan community itself a great disparity on the views on adultery and the degree of culpability with regards to men versus women. Often there was a huge double standard and the punishment for women was far greater than for men.
It could indeed be argued that Hester was lucky in that isolation and being forced to wear a ‘badge of shame’ were the only punishments that befell her. Despite the intention of the scarlet letter itself to remind the wearer of her sin and the shamefulness of the deed which she had committed, it seems to have had the opposite effect on Hester, it almost e...

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Last, Suzan. "Hawthorne's Feminine Voices: Reading "The Scarlet Letter" as a Woman."The Journal of Narrative Technique 27.3 (1997): 349-76. JSTOR. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
Mcnamara, Anne Marie. "The Character of Flame: The Function of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter." American Literature 27.4 (1956): 537-53. JSTOR. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
"Puritan Life." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
"The Scarlet Letter." By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Search EText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
United States. The Governor and the Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England.Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England: 1642-1649. By Nathaniel Shurtleff. Vol. II. Boston: William White, 1853. Print.

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