Adulterous relationships always end in pain. Examples of such pain are present throughout the intricate web of time. From Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, to the media buffet of Bill Clinton, adultery leaves pain. Hester embodies this pain. Not in pity but in cause. She embodies pain. Pain of loss, suffering. The pain of adulterous relationships. The universal wronging of adultery is deserving of such pain. Even in present times, with views much lax than puritan epoch, the wrong exists in full force, and just as deserving. Nathaniel Hawthorn's "The Scarlet Letter" deals in the justice of adultery.
Wronging. This simple word exemplifies all things that one could do to destroy any sort of bond between two objects. A politician
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The feelings and morals of the time dictate right and wrong. Presently we have values and views quite different than those of Hesters period, but the wrongness of her act of adultery remain universal. Even to this day, with views much lax of those Puritans in question, her wrong remains quite acute. What is right? Right is what people of the time dictate. And even now, adultery is quite wrong. "If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow knot!" The word judgment presented itself in the previous quote. Judgment on a topic is what makes a feeling, Right and Wrong are both feelings. If one removes the emotion from the situation it becomes simply a fact. Hester slept with another man besides her husband. But add the feelings of the time, one simple fact becomes a universal wrong. In the eyes of those around her, she was deserving of her pain. Of course presently, Hesters punishment would never be fully executed to the extent in which Hawthorne's text elaborates. However, the act is still punished. Be it humiliation or financial loss through divorce "The public opinion" still punishes to a great extent. Even worse in Hesters case, her wanton disregard for morals embarrassed everyone in the town. "This woman has
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.
In The Scarlet Letter, the main characters Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale are tangled in a web of deceit, which is the result of a sin as deadly as the Grimm Reaper himself: adultery. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, describes the feeling of deceit using the main characters; for each of the cast the reaction to the deceit is different, thus the reader realizes the way a person reacts to a feeling differs between each character.
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...
The Scarlet Letter starts off by throwing Hester Prynne into drama after being convicted for adultery in a Puritan area. Traveling from Europe to America causes complications in her travel which also then separates her from her husband, Roger Chillingworth for about three years. Due to the separation, Hester has an affair with an unknown lover resulting in having a child. Ironically, her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, is a Reverend belonging to their church who also is part of the superiors punishing the adulterer. No matter how many punishments are administered to Hester, her reactions are not changed. Through various punishments, Hester Prynne embraces her sin by embroidering a scarlet letter “A” onto her breast. However, she is also traumatized deep within from everything she’s been through. Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts this story of sin by using rhetorical devices such as allusion, alliteration and symbolism.
Also known as the forest and society. The forest is basically the evil of this situation. The society would have to be the good comes out of it. Although the society could be labeled as the bad as well it’s the closest thing to good and pure. “It may seem marvelous, that with the world before her, kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the puritan settlement. (Hawthorne 73) Hawthorne says that Hester’s place of happiness is in the saneness of her own home. The good and evil is where her home resides. There are many bad things as well. Hester also felt like she never belonged to the society. The way she was treated was very differently because of her adultery sin she’s committed. “In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. (Hawthorne 77) Hawthorne says that society has not welcomed her. It’s pretty sad being from somewhere and they not even accepting you.
Hester is indeed a sinner, adultery is no light matter, even today. On the other hand, her sin has brought her not evil, but good. Her charity to the poor, her comfort to the broken-hearted, her unquestionable presence in times of trouble are all direct results of her quest for repe...
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “ The Scarlet Letter’’ is a classical story about sin, punishment and revenge. It all began with a young woman named Hester Prynne who has committed adultery, and gave birth to a child in a Puritan society. Through the eyes of the puritans Hester has gone against their religious ways. Hester must now wear the symbol of the letter “A” on her clothing for the rest of her life as act of shame. Hester Prynne faces a long journey ahead and her strength enables her to continue on.
By Hester committing a sin, they weren’t being sentenced to eternal damnation, she was. All the townspeople did was make Hester’s life a living hell. However, ironically, Hawthorne contrasts the goodness and strength with the cruelty of the religious Puritans. The letter ‘A’ upon her breast harsh cruel enough. It was “represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it” (Hawthorne 97). Hester’s identity was swallowed by her marking. Nobody knew the true Hester Prynne because the society connected the letter to her morality. Hester wasn’t a person who should be damned to Hell, but the Puritans thought so when they saw her chest. Hester almost escaped this life of being enslaved by the letter, but “Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but out loud, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation” (Hawthorne 180). She chose to live her life with the embroidery upon her chest,
When Hester Prynne becomes pregnant without her husband, she is severely punished by having to endure public humiliation and shame for her adulterous actions. Hester is forced to wear a scarlet “A”on her breast for the rest of her life. (1.) She lives as an outcast. At first, Hester displays a defiant attitude by boldly march from prison towards the pillory. However, as time goes on, the public humiliation of her sin weighs heavily upon her soul. “An accustomed eye had likewise it’s own aguish to inflict. It’s cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always th...
Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of his society
The story discusses a sin, which is adultery, and how viewing it differs from society and the sinner. Society views Hester's sin as shameful and disgraceful. Th...
Hester is a committer of the sin adultery. She receives a letter with an A on it, which is meant to represent her sin. Hester is free to go wherever she wants with her letter, but she decides to stay within the boundaries of her Puritan town: “Kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement...” (Hawthorne 73). Hester has a newfound sense of pride in the letter she wears, even though that letter is her reason for her own personal condemnation. She doesn 't have any restrictive boundaries, but she feels like her letter is that line that keeps her in her town where she will constantly be judged by others. Constantly criticized, evaluated, and assessed. Hester appears to have a negative mental state caused by her mental condemnation due to the adverse diction when she’s addressed through use of words such as sin, dark, or inscrutable. As her condemnation continues on, she (unlike Jake) changes her subjective thoughts into ones that represent pride and acceptiveness. She turns her views on life into ones that are happier and more accepting, since she has already gone through so much. Condemnation often changes how one might go through processes mentally, but those do not always have to be awful. Most see the restrictiveness in the actions of being condemned, yet new ideologies on how one
Hester Prynne's guilt is the result of her committing adultery, which has a significant effect on her life. Hester is publicly seen with the scarlet letter when she first emerges out of the cold dark prison. "It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself" (49). The spell that is mentioned is the scarlet letter, "so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom" (49). The scarlet letter is what isolates her from everyone else because it symbolizes sin. Hester is in her very own sphere, where her sin affects her livelihood and has completely cut her off from the world. Her entrance into the sphere marks the beginning of her guilt and it occurs when she is in the prison after her first exposure to the crowd. The prison marks the beginning of a new life for Hester, a life full of guilt and seclusion. Her problem is that her shame is slowly surfacing while she faces the crowd realizing that she has been stripped of all her pride and everything that was important to her in the past. The lasting effect of Hester's sin is the shame that she now embodies due to her committing adultery. The shame that is ass...
The "human tenderness" Hester exerts shows how she did not care what the Puritans thought and acted. Her sin is also an example of her independence; Hester acted on her feelings and didn’t allow the Puritan’s views to interfere with her emotions.
The basis of Hester’s punishment came about from the Puritans’ justice system; however her punishment was not completely identical to Puritan law because their system put adulterers to death. This system was founded on Biblical doctrine and principles, and it enforced the laws laid out in the Bible through the use of magistrates. The magistrates were chosen by the people and they were