The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a great piece of literature. It explores problems in society that still occur today. It is fascinating to see how the Puritans punished adultery then and the lack of punishment of adultery in our society now. It shows how all the characters affect Hester and what everyone does in the community. It shows that no one is exempt from any type of crime in that town. In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, he analyzes the characters of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Pearl.

One of the main characters in The Scarlet Letter is Hester Prynne. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester is described as “a comely woman whose pride sustains her through her punishment and for all the years of her life” (Overview: Characters). She is tall, has dark hair and her attire showed the attitude of her spirit (Hawthorne 51). She has a husband, Roger Prynne, whom she did not love. Before she got married, she was a strong-willed and eager young woman. Her husband, Prynne, has sent her to America and he was to arrive later. When he never arrived in Boston, she assumed he was lost at sea (SparkNotes).

At the beginning of the book Prynne is walking out of the prison holding her daughter, Pearl, with the scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her clothing (Hawthorne 51-52). She wears the scarlet letter as a punishment and her secrecy to her lover. Her husband is in the crowd, and is living in Boston for revenge on her lover (Sparknotes). Hester is being charged with adultery. Her sentence is one that could be used for a much lesser crime (Korobkin). She is then kicked out of town and is forced to live on the outskirts of Boston in a small cottage (Hawthorne 62).

Dimmesdale is the “judge” in Hester’s case. When Governor Bellingh...

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...es from Gale. Web. 12 Jan. 2012.

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Pimple, Kenneth D. "'Subtle, but remorseful hypocrite': Dimmesdale's Moral Character." Studies in the Novel 25.3 (Fall 1993): 257-271. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 158. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 14 Mar. 2012.

Pringle, Michael. "The Scarlet Lever: Hester's Civil Disobedience." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 53.1 (2007): 31-55. Rpt. in Children's Literature Review. Ed. Dana Ferguson. Vol. 163. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 12 Jan. 2012.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Scarlet Letter.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 1 Feb. 2012