Adultery In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, the letter is understood as a label of punishment and sin being publicized. Hester Prynne bears the label of “A” signifining adulterer upon her chest. Because of this scorching red color label she becomes

When two authors from distinctly different societies and historical periods build stories around the same theme, there is an undeniable importance in the message being delivered. One of the authors bringing this message about is author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne tells the story of Hester Prynne, a Puritan women in seventeenth century Boston, Hester, having committed adultery, is branded with a scarlet ‘A’ on her chest. The story describes the animosity that society feels towards her and her daughter Pearl, through the story Hester redefines the meaning of the ‘A’ and Pearl’s life is formed in a new light. While the setting of twentieth century Baltimore is unlike that of early Puritan society, The Other Wes Moore

In The Scarlet Letter, an adulterer named Hester was shunned by the church and society. This book also has the church as the main group. The main unspoken rule dealt with was adultery. Hester’s husband had sent her ahead to America. She had an affair with a priest and this was just something that you did not do, and it was a logical unspoken rule that was broken, and, therefore, she was unable to really belong in this town for a very long time. The girl was so shunned, they put an “A” on her clothes. This was the epitome of humiliation. At this time, no one would associate with a girl like Hester. There was never a feel of belonging after that “A” was placed on her clothes. Hester’s actual husband who disguised himself as Roger Chillingworth to avoid the humiliation. Dimmesdale was the man she had an affair with, and he was a minister.

Adultery was considered one of most heinous crimes according to the Puritan religion. Nathaniel Hawthorne shows the different ways that sin can affect the lives of many. From the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, sin is the main focus of the novel and how it can ruin people's lives. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne makes use of the structure of the novel to effectively show how sin has a lasting impact on the characters.

To begin, Hawthorne uses the scarlet letter “A” to reinforce the theme of Guilt. Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” upon her bosom because she has committed the sin of adultery. This leads Hester to feel guilty for the rest of her life. Hawthorne states, “... that scarlet letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself” (Hawthorne 51). The quote shows how feeling guilt has made her much more distant from the rest of the townspeople. Hester experiences this agonizing guilt whenever she glances in a mirror, or down at her chest. Pearl is the result of Hester’s

The first symbolism in the novel is how the letter “A” represents adultery. Julian Hawthorne stated, “it burns upon its wearer's breast, it casts a lurid glow along her pathway, it isolates her among mankind,” The letter “A” became part of Hester. It made her have her own glow and made her an outcast from society due to her independence and rebellious mindset. Hawthorne symbolizes the letter to represent Hester Prynne’s sin throughout the book. She,“ turned her eyes downward at the scarlet, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real,” (Hawthorne,5). Hester Prynne’s sin has brought her shame because the puritans believed that humanity should live life by the bible. Additionally, in the bible it is a sin for humans to have

The main character, Hester Prynne, is publicly shamed for adultery and forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest. Although one might view Hester as an evil character considering that she has committed a rather unbearable sin in the eyes of 1650 Boston, she is not at all a bad person. Though she commits one of the worst sins for a woman, she is not entirely unvirtuous. Though Hester is punished by being forced to wear the scarlet letter, she turns the letter “A” into more than adultery. “Such helpfulness was found in her, - so much power to do, and power to sympathize, - that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength”

The most obvious symbolism Hawthorne uses is that of the scarlet letter upon Hester's breast. In various scenes, wise, old travelers interpreted the 'A' to mean angel and able. They said this because Hester was so kind to strangers and able to carry on, despite her harsh punishment. In another scene, Hester and Pearl are traveling near the town's church when Pearl "paused to gather prickly burrs . . . . She arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter" (152-53). Pearl also made an 'A' out of seaweed when they were near the ocean and put it upon her own breast. To the reader, the scar of the scarlet letter doesn't seem as painful as the constant reminder of young Pearl. Pearl was her "reality of sin" (89).

From adultery to satanic children The Scarlet Letter has about every horrid possible outcome known to man. With all of the hate, discontent, trouble, toil, and strife someone says that once you go deeper into the readying there are several good thing. So among the hate for Hester and her child, among the doctor who was only keeping the priest alive for his own personal gain, among the priest living a lie for his own sake there is supposed good. I will find some but, I am telling you know that I personally do not agree. I believe that this book it meant to give of what happens when you do something you know is wrong, but I will not justify it for you, no sir, I will not believe most of what I wright.

out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take

In the novel, “Scarlet Letter” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about a character named Hester, evidently she had changed the symbolic meaning of the“A” from adultery to ability, angel, then to Pearl, her daughter, to the living “A”. Adultery was known as an enormous crime during the Puritan society. Individuals at first had only seen Hester as the sin she had committed. ¨Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life… and the more lost for the infant that she had borne” (Hawthorne, pg. 86). Hester had laid with a man out of her marriage and consequently had gotten pregnant.

It was not long after Hester’s visit to the governor’s home, that he passes away. Of course the governor was thought to be a holy man and none of the puritans thought of him as a sinner. However, on the night of his death, the old sexton noticed that in the sky, a scarlet “A” appeared. “…a great red letter in the sky, - the letter A, which we interpreted to stand for Angel.” (Hawthorne 144). The sight of this mystical “A” caused a bit of uncertainty for a few reasons. One reason was the meaning of the letter. In Hester’s case, the Scarlet letter was meant to mark her sin but a man of the governors stature was thought to have not ever sinned and thus in theory would have no reason for an “A” to follow him to his grave. This marked an important change in the perception of the sin represented by the scarlet letter. The puritans began to question the idea of sin because how could a mark of sin show up for someone who obviously has not sinned? In Hester’s case, after the incident with governor Winthrop, many of the puritan people began to see Hester’s “badge of shame” as more of “one of good deeds” (Hawthorne 147). This transformation in their way of thinking was done in a way so that Hester was not “unmarked” but at the same time, the deceased governor was not being looked at as a sinner. Toward the end of the novel,

The first representation of the ‘A’ was adulteress. When Hester Prynne slept with Reverend Dimmesdale, as a married woman, she became pregnant. The community thought her a widow, and knew that she could not be pregnant, unless she had committed adultery. The community decided on a punishment for her crimes, Hester was forced to wear the scarlet ‘A’ at all times as a reminder of the sin she had committed before God. In the puritan era sin was utterly unacceptable, and Hester had committed adultery, a sin punishable by death itself.

Novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his fictional novel, “The Scarlet Letter”, expresses a story about a young woman, Hester Prynne, back in the 1600s who was convicted of adultery and must now wear a big “A” on her chest to show those in the small Massachusetts Bay colony the sin she has committed. Hawthorne’s purpose is to illustrate the hardships Hester must go through for committing such act in the small colony where religion was put first. Hawthorne adopts a serious and pitiful tone throughout the novel to get the adult readers to sympathize with the main character, Hester Prynne. Though this book was written back in the 1800s and is based off a woman who’s shamed for adultery, this book can still relate to today’s world with some of

Babies are very special creatures. The emotional connection a mother has with a their own newborn is one of the strongest bonds that has ever existed. In today’s standards having a child with a person you are not married to is frowned upon, but that’s it, no other punishment or penalty. However, rewind into the past and now the problem of adultery has grown tremendously. The act of adultery is punishable by death, a sentence that was given to the character of Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter. In the story of The Scarlet Letter, we discover Hester, who had a child with the town’s minister Arthur Dimmesdale, she is then resented by the town and is given a death sentence, but since the town does not know who committed adultery