Essay on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Hester is a character portrayed in both the light and the dark as she walks out of prison. She is free of sin, but is reminded everyday by the letter she wears. Hester struggled with the Puritan’s intolerance to Pearl and her. Hester “like a black shadow emerging out into the sunshine like she was free of sin” depicts the contrast between light and dark. (Hawthorne 49). When she walked into the sunshine she felt like something was lifted off of her chest. As a seamstress she had “sewn on her chest in bright red…an A” (Hawthorne 50). This mark symbolized the acceptance of her sin.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a brilliant writer of the 19th century. Hawthorne created a novel that reflected the time period of the Puritans in New England. The Scarlet Letter contains a representation of the people during that time period but can also be related to the reader’s time period. Originally, God created the world with complete perfection until man fell, and sin entered the world. In the eyes of God, a sin is a sin. There is no worse sin that one can commit. Man is the one that decided that one sin could be more harshly judged than another. Hawthorne uses the theme of sin to show the importance of one’s faith and conviction and how those principles relate to fallen sinners.

Hawthorne juxtaposes the incredible grace and poise of Hester with the grotesque words and figures of the established Puritan women. When she is heading up to the scaffold, Hester is described as, “lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days, characterized by a certain state and dignity” (Hawthorne 46). The idea of Hester being “lady-like” and having “gentility”, which are very positive qualities to have for a woman, especially in Puritan times, is used as a foil to the malicious treatment Hester receives. These positive traits also show the beauty and desirability of

Throughout, “The Scarlet Letter,” Hawthorne is able to enhance the plot by intricately incorporating symbols which represent a deeper meaning. One of which, is the infamous, and ambiguous, scarlet letter that lays upon the bosom of Hester Prynne. In the beginning of the book, the audience is immediately introduced to the scarlet letter as a symbol of shame and adultery. The narrator describes the Puritan society as very judgemental and harsh. Comments like, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die,” creates this negative and unwelcoming atmosphere which surrounds Hester for a majority of the book. From then on, the Puritans constantly refer to the

The Scarlet letter takes place in a puritan society. Where the town revolves around punishment. They do not believe in pleasure and believe that humans are mostly evil. These people are Anti-transcedentalist. The main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, Pearl and chillingworth support this theory that the citizens believe. Hester is a beautiful women and she has a kind her. She enjoye sewing and she gives all the only she makes from sewing to charity, while donating clothes to them also. Hower, Hester and Dimmesdale committed the sin of adultery and created Pearl. Chillingworth is Hester’s husband but not the father of her daughter. In his novel “The Scarlet letter” , Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of Pearl, the burrs and sunlight to

Conflict can take on many forms in one’s life, such as conflict with self, with society, with religion and with others. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, develops the theme of conflict through the moral sin of Hester Prynne. Conflict is observed through Hester’s difficulties with the townspeople, challenges with the Puritan way of life, struggles with herself and tensions with Roger Chillingworth. Committing sin in the Puritan society leads to a great deal of conflicts.

Though never forced to don a branding like the letter “A” in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, people in modern society are always remembered along with their act of wrongdoing. However, the subjects of the public judgement may not see their choices as immoral. People shame for a difference in beliefs and morals. For instance, Kim Kardashian, a popular reality TV star attained her own personal fame by making a sex tape with rapper Ray J, and, consequently, was shamed in the headlines. Despite the bashing, Kim did not see why her act was deemed shameful. Kim acts as a modern day Hester Prynne because she underwent the same humiliation from her society.

"Those who before had known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped" (39).  Hester, who is being openly condemned for her sins, Hawthorne describes ironically.  To the Puritans, Hester should be dim and obscure, surrounded by darkness and evil.  However, Hawthorne instead describes her shining beauty and the godliness she makes out of her sin and shame by exposing it to the public.  The Puritans condemn Hester for her sin and look towards her as evil, yet she is exposing her sin to the sunshine, to the public, something that Hawthorne praises in the novel.  "A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!  Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!" (40).  The Puritans feel that they are hurting Hester Prynne by exposing her sin, yet it is only making her stronger and making her grow.

It shows how the Puritans are seen as the enemy a monster to the world and that they only bring evil. Also, the rose can be a beacon of hope to Hester as a symbol of being free before going

Symbolism of The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter is a novel full of love, hate, mystery, drama, grief, sin and revenge, all of which happens in today’s day and age, but the author explains how these emotions were dealt with in a different time period. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in 1850, but the time period in the book is the 17th century, in Boston. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne uses the symbols of light and dark to depict good and evil among the characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.

While Puritan women are weak and dependent upon their husbands, Hester Prynne is empowered and self-reliant. A character designed by Hawthorne to show 19th century women that women’s work could be valuable, Hester supports herself and her daughter by needlework. “For, as the novel unfolds, the letter, intended by the Authorities to signify harsh but just condemnation, is made by Hester to signify something entirely different—able, admirable.” (Bell 109) All aspects considered, the ability of Hester, a woman who committed sin and was publicly punished for this crime, to manipulate this punishment into a virtue

Hawthorne’s Evil Seductress Some people claim that D. H. Lawrence effectively achieves his purpose in his essay “On the Scarlet Letter” by criticizing Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter using literary techniques. Lawrence explains in his essay that Hawthorne depicts Hester in a way that is interpreted differently by critics. Lawrence uses short syntax, a sarcastic tone, and famous allusions to effectively convey that Hester Prynne is an evil seductress.

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.

For two days last week, I bore the letter “P” on my chest for this project in an attempt to understand what Hester Prynne felt like throughout the novel with her scarlet “A,” adorning her chest. Students like myself went about their ordinary school days with meticulously decorated or traditionally simplistic letters pinned to jackets, shirts, or worn around their necks. For two weeks, it was common to see someone walking around with a letter pinned onto his or her chests. However, every student taking part in this project had the same goal of feeling as Hester Prynne did in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The process started with selecting a flaw, producing a finely decorated letter, wearing it around school to see the reactions of peers, friends

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.