The author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, expressed ideas of love, passion, shame, and punishment throughout his 1800s based novel. Due to the fact that this novel was based in a Puritan time period, it brought many mental and sometimes physical difficulties for the main character, Hester Prynne. The Puritans solely believed in God and all of his rules. With that said, the author decided to illustrate the drama of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale’s adultery in order to describe the change in Hester’s attitude. Because of the many events, adversities and struggles, Hester had a complete change in attitude from shame and embarrassment to love, proudness and satisfaction.
When Hester first emerges from the jail she is looked at
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While Hester was publicly shamed, Arthur Dimmesdale, who was also to blame for the adultery crime, was fighting within himself. Hester was shamed and forced to wear the Scarlet Letter A on her bosom for 7 years; Dimmesdale hid behind lies and secrets for 7 years and it tore him apart. This time Dimmesdale, Hester, and their daughter Pearl, stand on the scaffold together. The whole town began to realize who the lover of Hester was this whole time and who became the father of Pearl 7 years ago. As years went on, people began to forgive Hester. Hester then began to start over. After she is released from prison, she is allowed to leave Boston, but she decides to stay. She supports herself and starts over by her needlework. Although for so long her shamed destroyed her, she had a change in attitude. The people in the town began to look at the A on her chest as “Able” and not “Adulter”.This allowed Hester to change from an easy going and tender women to a strong and passionate women. She realized that she needed to be strong and independent. I believe that once she stood on the scaffold with Dimmesdale and Pearl she found happiness and strength within herself. Her attitude changed from negative to a positive outlook; she realized that her past made her stronger as a woman. The people of the town had forgiven her and some even respected her. This scene of the book showed that Hester …show more content…
Her attitude in the beginning of the story was shameful, but she gained strength and became a strong, wise woman. Hester did not realize that the hardest things she had to face, were what made her strong. A negative way of life and actions transformed into a positive and strong attitude. Once Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale stood on the scaffold, she found the pride, peace and
Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempted to expose the varying ways in which different people deal with lingering guilt from sins they have perpetrated. The contrasting characters of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale ideally exemplified the differences in thought and behavior people have for guilt. Although they were both guilty of committing the same crime, these two individuals differed in that one punished themselves with physical and mental torture and the other chose to continue on with their life, devoting it to those less fortunate than they.
Hester Prynne is a character who gave up everything, even love, for her child. Hester Prynne sacrificed her peace, her beauty, her entire being for her child and this shows her determination and profound understanding of the world. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s piece, “The Scarlet Letter” shows the other side of the sinner’s story and not as a villain, but a victim.
The two of them, after Dimmesdale dies, continue with their plans to go back to England where they hope for a better life. Once in England, the two are able to change their lives around for the better. Pearl is even found to have a family of her own: “Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, … Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside” ( Hawthorne 392). Pearl was able to overcome her old life and create a new one, a better one, one that was just for her. Even though her mother was no longer around she tried her best to kept in touch with her. She also kept her and her mother’s experience in mind never to let herself go back to that life. After spending many years in England, Hester finally returns to New England. When she returns she is full of sorrow and regret; however, she continues to wear her A on upon her chest as a reminder of her pain. With returning to the land of sin, people came to Hester, mostly women, with problems of their own. They hope by talking to someone who has been through so much will help them, or give them insight on what life is like to be on the outside: “And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,—in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,—or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,—came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counseled them, as best she might” (Hawthorne 392-393). Even though Hester was miserable and thought that no
The narrator notes her change in morals and beliefs: “She had wandered… much amiss” (180). This passage describes Hester’s state of mind and morals after seven years with the scarlet letter. Compared to Dimmesdale, Hester is much wilder, yet also much better adjusted to the weight of her guilt. She has accepted what happened and uses that acknowledgment to shape her views. She has become stronger, more untamed, and more removed from society. Not only does society reject her, but her crime forces her to question morals and dive into her wilder nature. Religion and law no longer work as simple guidelines for her life. Her act is considered a sin, but out of it she got freedom, love, and Pearl. After being cast out, she now looks at society and its rules—the things most people conform to—from a more negative, outsider perspective. The letter gives her a chance to be independent and find what she believes in as opposed to what she's been told to believe in. She rejects society through both these rebellious views, and also through her actions upon coming back to the community. She helps women in the community by offering support and counselling. In such a male dominated society, this is an important step both towards feminism and away from the
ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES"(Hawthorne 394). Hester Prynne is a character linked to many things in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, “The Scarlet Letter”. She committed, a horrible sin in her puritan society; adultery with a reverend, forming a web of repercussions. Hester’s daughter; Pearl was what was left of her innocence and the outcome of her affair.The stunningly, embroidered scarlet letter Hester had to wear on her bosom was to show her crime, and punishment to everyone in her community. She was looked down on as an disgusting sinner, and object in a constant love cycle between her, minister; her lover, and Chillingworth; her former husband. She had no control over their grief or hurt. They both still loved her and had to watch her live cast away from society. Being in the situation she was, allowed Hester to be seen as many different ways throughout the novel as an object in her society.
Hester Prynne is consider to be a strong person because she was able to stand up to the council when they wanted to take her daughter Pearl away from her, she got yelled at by the council because she refuse to tell them who is Pearl’s father, and was able to change the meaning of the “A” that was given to her by a preacher as a representative of her sin which later changes the way people had thought of her. Due to these brave acts through the book Hester Prynne is consider to be a strong person by the fact that she was able to defend herself in the presents of the council multiple times without the help from the minister or anyone else and by herself she was able to change the meaning of her sin.
Through Hester and the symbol of the scarlet letter, Hawthorne reveals how sin can be utilized to change a person for the better, in allowing for responsibility, forgiveness, and a renewed sense of pride. In a Puritan society that strongly condemns adultery one would expect Hester to leave society and never to return again, but that does not happen. Instead, Hester says, “Here…had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.” Hes...
One of Hester’s greatest qualities is her unrelenting selflessness. Despite her constant mental anguish due to her sin, the constant stares and rude comments, and the
Initially, in Chapter 14, Hester has a sense of pity towards Roger Chillingworth, where she notices how the physician has changed from being a shy, light-hearted man to this so called, “spawn of the devil”, where he now has a darker, more evil demeanor to him now. This is shown in the novel where Hawthorne states, “All this while, Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years.It was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of advancing life were visible, he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered
In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne condemns the Puritan’s outdated stance on the female gender by contrasting their ideas of women with Hester Prynne’s desirable intrepidness and self-sufficiency. To begin, through highlighting Hester Prynne’s intrepid character, Hawthorne rebukes the Puritan’s inferior view of women. Reverend Wilson, a minister in Hester Prynne’s town, demands Hester to confess to the colony the father of her baby. Standing upon the town’s scaffold in ignominy in front of the entire colony, Hester boldly refuses to disclose the name her baby’s father (40). Her fearless refusal to Reverend Wilson’s appeal demonstrates a sought-after female defiance to male authority. Hawthorne designs Hester Prynne’s intrepidness and the defiance to Wilson to appeal with the modern readers of Hawthorne’s time causing the readers to denounce the
A change is to make or become different. In the Scarlet Letter change is very evident in the main character Hester Prynne. Hester has undergone both physical and emotional changes that have made her more acceptable to the Puritan Society.
As a living reminder of Hester’s extreme sin, Pearl is her constant companion. From the beginning Pearl has always been considered as an evil child. For Hester to take care of such a demanding child, put lots of stress onto her life. Hester at times was in a state of uncontrollable pressure. “Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, ‘O Father in heaven- if Thou art still my Father- what is this being which I have brought into the world!’” (Hawthorne, 77).
Hester has changed throughout The Scarlet Letter. She was pushed into a world of isolation because she did not fear acting on her passion. Hester transforms from a free-thinking woman to a strong, "ABLE" woman. The suffering Hester endured strengthened her and turned her into a person who helped another in need. The meaning of the scarlet letter shifts as Hester’s ability to endure the worst as plight increases.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are many moral and social themes develped throughout the novel. Each theme is very important to the overall effect of the novel. In essence, The Scarlet Letter is a story of sin, punishment and the importance of truth. One theme which plays a big role in The Scarlet Letter is that of sin and its effects. Throughout the novel there were many sins committed by various characters. The effects of these sins are different in each character and every character was punished in a unique way. Two characters were perfect examples of this theme in the novel. Hester Prynne and The Reverend Dimmesdale best demonstrated the theme of the effects of sin.
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...