Comparing The Scarlet Letter By Hester Prynne

There is nothing more revolting in the history of humanity, than the social atrocities committed towards one another. Despite this, even in the modern day these social issues continue tainting our lives and consuming our humanity one day at a time. The exile many face over race, religion, and sexuality is prominent all over the world and as a result wars have been fought and blood drawn. Nevertheless, it is imperative that the world gains social knowledge, or enlightenment, to prevent such moral atrocities from frequently occurring. Modern society, like the past has ignored strides towards enlightenment demonstrating there is still much to improve upon in the twenty-first century.

Edward Said, literary critic, has described exile as something “strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience,” and as something that can be “potent, even enriching.” In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne experiences an exile after being marked as an adulteress which intrigues the reader because of its ability to change her substantially throughout the novel. Hester’s exile is intriguing because she often is near other people, but she remains on the outskirts of the town, and of society. Through the years, this exile leads to Hester’s complete transformation proves her incredible strength, even when faced with such tragedy.

A 1636 Plymouth Colony law required anyone convicted of adultery to "wear two Capital letters viz AD cut out in cloth and sowed on theire uppermost Garments on their arme or backe; and if att any time they shallbee taken without the said letters whiles they are in the Govrment soewarn to bee forthwith taken and publickly whipt."[1] Other Massachusetts colonies had their own versions of this law. In fact, "The Capitall Lawes of New-England, as they stand now in force in the Common-wealth, by the Court, in the years 1641, 1642, established within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts," proclaim that "if any person committeth adultery with a married or espoused wife, the

  "What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us," stated Oliver Wendell Holmes. This eventually proves to be especially true for Hester Prynne, the main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne, a fair young maiden whose husband had disappeared two years prior to the opening of the novel, has an affair with the pastor of her Puritan church, resulting in the birth of her child Pearl. Because of this act of adultery, Hester Prynne is branded by the scarlet letter "A," which she is forced to forever wear upon her attire. The plot thickens as Hester's former husband returns to New England and becomes

“Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break.”

The characters in the Scarlet Letter are judged greatly through how and who they are able and unable to forgive. Such as the main female lead, Hester Prynne, and her struggle for the town to forgive her, finding the will to forgive herself and having God forgive her. Although, this was hard because every day she had to live with the scarlet letter upon her chest as a reminder of her sin. Another character that had one of the roughest times in the novel was Arthur Dimmesdale. This man kept a sin hidden for most of the novel and let it eat him away. The person that Dimmesdale needed to forgivehim the most was Pearl. He spent most of the novel trying to earn her beloved trust. Pearl would ask him favors to go into town with her but it

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne develops the dynamic characterization of Hester Prynne from a beautiful, innocent girl into a somber, hardened women to showcase the evils and hypocrisy of Puritan New England’s culture of shaming. Hawthorne employs rhetorical devices such as metaphor and juxtaposition to further develop the characterization and his critique of Puritan society. When initially describing Hester, Hawthorne emphasizes her incredible beauty, and juxtaposes this with the other ugly, judging Puritan women, adding to the hypocrisy of her being shamed for sinning. Hawthorne emphasizes the verbal assault on Hester by employing metaphor and imagery in its description. After the community shuns and shames Hester for years, Hawthorne uses metaphor again to show how Hester’s body and character changes for the worst, emphasizes the malice and evil of public shame.

Throughout history, mental illness has been labeled as a defining deformity, that harnesses in its “victims,” into a box, parallel to the familiar “mime in a box” image. In a world where we glorify “normality,” a lack of illness, which by all means is a gift, the beauty of one mind takes away from the beauty of an outlier, even though, ironically people may not even recognize their differences. Hester, at a glance suffers from a literal scarlet letter, but an imprint on her brain may exist as well. Irrational actions, sudden emotional episodes, and destructive thoughts can only prevail for so long following sin; Hester’s persona has branches of self-defeating personality disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. No one of her time, however, will bring the issue to light, Hester will be left known as the mistress, a witch, or “A,” rather than to explore her “complicated” condition. As decades pass, Hester’s state will remain, as the “A,” the mark of the stigma on mental illness today. When left neglected, society rejects the possibility that under a visible coating, mental deformities may lie; those who are divergent, who require affection more, are made subordinate, marginalized with no quest for a cure.

The Puritan townspeople of Boston, Massachusetts, punish a woman for committing an ignominious act with an unexpected man. Hester stands alone on the scaffold as townspeople scowl and judge, wondering who her lover is. The innocent town seamstress is a sinner in the eyes of the pure citizens. As Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter continues, the residents notice Hester’s abilities when caring for her daughter. She also regains respect as the bearer of the scarlet letter, the emblem she wears that “takes her out of the ordinary relationships with humanity and encloses her in a sphere by herself” (Hawthorne 51). Mistress Hester Prynne is an example taught to others because of her hardships faced without her true love. Hester transforms

Imagine yourself on display in front of your whole town, being punished for cheating on your husband or wife. Today adultery is looked down on, but in reality nobody makes a huge deal out of it. Sin can affect a person in many ways, but whether it’s good or bad only time can tell. In the old days, religion and law were looked at as one, and Hester Prynne just so happened to sin, which in turn caused her to break the law. In the novel, Hester displays that how a person deals with sin has a lasting impact on the people around her, and most importantly those that are the closest to her.

Our personalities are different no matter who you are. It is what makes each of us unique and different from each other. A lot of us tend to lead two different lives and not even notice it. We act one way around our parents or when we are alone (that is who we really are), then another way around our friends. For the good or the worst, people change a little depending on who they are with.

In the stories of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the antagonist characters display parallel story lines through their searches for the enemy. Roger Chillingworth, the former husband of Hester Prynne and the antagonist of The Scarlet Letter, works against his wife in order to find her untold second lover. Frankenstein is a contrasting story in which an unnamed monster is the antagonist towards his human creator, Dr. Frankenstein. Yet despite quite different story lines, the two characters possess traits that exibit parallels between them. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth displays the startling passionate characteristics of an unwavering drive to seek out his foe, madness as his focus on his search takes over his entire being, and terrible anguish when his task is unexpectedly over, all of which are reflected in the daemon created at the hand of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley 's novel Frankenstein.

Hester and Dimmesdale aren’t all too different. They are both parents to Pearl, and they both committed adultery. Hester and Dimmesdale are both kind people with hearts that could never

Hester Prynne, a character within The Scarlet Letter, is a prime example of Hawthorne's common transformation of individuals within his books. These mutations involve the qualities and attributes of her physical appearance, feminine emotions, and reputation among the townspeople. Throughout the novel, the mentioned elements of Hester's character develop and change several times, providing the reader with better understanding of the influence that the scarlet letter and other characters have on her.

The Scarlet Letter Critical Analysis Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, the direct descendant of John Hawthorne, and a judge at the infamous Salemwitchcraft trials. The guilt that Hawthorne felt over the actions of his ancestor had an enormous impact on his writings. In his introduction of "The Scarlet Letter", Hawthorne accepts the guilt from his forefathers and offers to repent for their crimes (Waggoner, 5). This unusual way of viewing guilt and sin is one driving factor in Hawthorne's writing. The other, which is closely related to the first, is the relationship between men, and of man to humanity as a whole.