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Hester Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter

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Similarly, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist Hester Prynne is defined by a scarlet A. The scarlet letter accomplishes the Puritan’s intended office of stripping Hester of her humanity by shaming her and also instills fear of disobeying in the townspeople, thus exposing the Puritans as puppets to their magistrates.
The scarlet letter’s intended office is to shame Hester. After Hester is released from prison, she is put upon the scaffold in front of the townspeople, who “wisely judg(e) that one token of her shame…(o)n the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A” (47). A sense of age is given through the world “wisely” …show more content…

While describing Hester’s freedom from her prison sentence, Hawthorne states: “the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, —at her, who had once been innocent, —as the figure, the body, the reality of sin” (71). The repeated syntax of “at her, the” drags out the sentence, slowing it, recreating her dehumanization over the years as Puritan society sees her not as a person, but as “the reality of sin.” An air of helplessness is created around the children of the Puritans in the words “young and pure” because they are unable to defend themselves from the will of adult Puritans. In addition, “her,” or Hester, is the object of this sentence, making her submissive to the Puritan magistrates who are using her as a symbol of disobedience and puts the Puritan children above her due to their “pur(ity).” Hester is helpless because as shown in the syntax, she has been reduced to an object to be used for other’s will. The characterization of helplessness of Puritan children conveys how they are unable to choose what they believe is right and wrong, and the reduction of Hester allows the Puritan magistrates to use her as an example in order to scare their subjects into obeying the Puritan law. In addition, when Pearl pushes Hester to stand in front of Governor Bellingham’s armour, which causes “the scarlet letter (to be) represented in exaggerated and grand proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her existence. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it” (95). The inflated diction such as “exaggerated,” “grand proportions,” and “greatly” takes the emphasis off of Hester as a person, and puts it on the constant reminder of her sin, the scarlet letter. The scarlet

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