Puritan laws were extremely rigid and the members of society were expected to follow a strict moral code. Due to this fact, anything that was believed to go against this code was considered a sin. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter looks into the life of a Puritan family. The mother with the name of Hester committed adultery with the minister named Dimmesdale and had a girl named Pearl. For their punishment they both must have a scarlet letter “A” either sewn into their clothes or into their body at all time. Hester’s real husband does not know the sin Hester committed until he returns from being held captive by Indians. Hester’s real husband Roger Chillingworth spends 7 years trying to get revenge on Hester and Dimmesdale. Throughout the novel both Hester and Dimmesdale go through the challenge of confessing to their sin. The moral consequences they have to face depends on the way they try to deal with their sins. Hawthorne thinks that hiding your sins overall has a huge negative effect on the sinner. At the beginning of the novel when Hester’s sin is revealed she becomes an outcast in the community and judged by many. Hawthorne writes, “she …show more content…
Since Hester confessed and accepted her own sin she didn't have to live in Guilt like Dimmesdale. Hester does all she can to be accepted by the community and eventually her hard work pays off. At the beginning of the novel she was looked at very negatively and through the work she did she became accepted by the community. Dimmesdale on the other hand concealed his sin to himself throughout the novel. His guilt build up to the point where it made him mentally and morally ill. Finally he decided to open up with Hester and that revived his energy. Although they may have committed a sin, the confession of their sins helped the Puritans accept them in the community and live lives without guilt and
Hester's shame does become very influential in her life making her unable to express herself freely. "Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt at moments as if she must needs to shriek" (52-53). Hester's guilt has surfaced fully because when she wants to simply express herself, she is prevented from doing so due to her guilty conscience. She wants to take revenge on everyone that has passed judgment on her by giving them a disdainful smile, but she is fearful that she might start feeling guilty for doing such a thing. It seems Hester can live without any consequences of sin if she is able to suppress her anger, but she is actually being slowly isolated from the world. Living peacefully for Hester is slowly isolating her because she acts kind to others to avoid confrontations, which shows that she is afraid of the world and is actually trying to hide from it. Guilt is still the consequence that causes Hester to become isolated from the world around her, but there is another larger consequence which she is reminded of everyday.
Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the ideology of Puritan society in the novel the Scarlet Letter; however reader also get to witness his characters being an illustration of hypocrisy and victims to their own guilt. In the Scarlet Letter, as in many of Hawthorne’s shorter works, he makes profuse use of the Puritan past: its odd exclusionary belief, its harsh code of ruling, its concern with sex and witchcraft. The Scarlet Letter is a story that is embellished but yet simple. Many readers may view this novel as a soap opera due to the way Hawthorne conveys this Puritan society’s sense of strictness and inability to express true emotion along with the secrecy and how deceiving the characters are being. As the story unfolds the main character Hester Prynne is bounded in marriage at an early age. She engages in an adulterous affair with an unknown member of their small village. Hester soon becomes pregnant and with her husband’s absence the chances of this child belonging to her husband are slim. The towns’ people know that she has committed a sin and imprisons her for her crime.
To begin with, Hester’s sin drove the story, but after the community established her as a sinner, she overcame her sins but she still struggled through other characters. Instead of depicting Hester’s inner turmoil directly to Hester, Hawthorne portrays her tumult through other characters in her life such as Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the community. Dimmesdale proclaimed to Hester, “If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and
In the second chapter, Hawthorne explains how when Hester appeared for the first time before the town for public ignominy she was unaffected. Hester had come to accept the Puritan religion, and punishment of adultery. “Those who had before 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.” (chp. 2) This clearly shows how Hester is unaffected by the ignominy, how she acts as if nothing is happening. Hester quickly realized, though, that being self-reliant and giving no regard to ill treatment from society would ultimately pull her through her life as a social outcast. In the end, Hester’s strength, honesty, and compassion carry her through a life she had not imagined. While Dimmesdale dies after his public confession and Chillingworth dies consumed by his own hatred and revenge. Hester endures her punishment without a word against it, and grows from it, making her a
Dimmesdale doesn’t tell anyone that he’s Hester’s lover and when given the chance to admit his sin, he let it go so many times . There is a time Hester asks him for help when the old minister tries to take Pearl away from her, she says “Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knows me better than these men can. I will not lose my child! Speak for me! Thou knows,—for thou hast sympathies which these men lack!—thou knows what is in my heart, and what are a mother’s rights, and how much the stronger there are when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!” (105). At that time there’s an opportunity that he could tell everyone the truth and stand up for them, but he chooses to hide it instead to admit what he has done and allow everyone to learn from his imperfection. He is the worst sinner because he is a coward that he decides not to confess to everyone even though he has so many opportunities.
Being a woman in a Puritan society, Hester did not have much influence, and her crime as an adulteress made her a public figure of shame. Over time, Hester became accepted and also accepted herself, and this caused her dealings with sin to not be as heavy. In the 13th chapter of the Scarlet Letter, “Another View of Hester”, Hawthorne describes how Hester has found her place. (13-146/147). This quote shows how Hester’s role has changed and how she had developed.
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.
First of all, the scarlet letter stands for Hester's sin. By forcing Hester to wear the letter A on her bosom, the Puritan community not only punishes this weak young woman for her adultery but labels her identity as an adulteress and immoral human being as well. "Thus the young and the pure would be taught to look at her, with the letter flaming on her chest", also "as the figure, the body and the reality of sin." And the day Hester began to wear the scarlet A on her bosom is the opening of her darkness. From that moment, people, who look at her, must notice the letter A manifest itself in the red color covering not only her bosom, but her own character. The Puritans now only see the letter A, the representation of sin, scorn and hate
Despite the severity of her crime, she does not show any denial - or even regret - for committing adultery. Instead, she embroiders the scarlet letter “A”, a mark that was intended to shame her, onto her dress to make it look pretty. Here, readers can see Hawthorne's use of irony to support his thematic message. By turning her punishment into a display of how her beauty “shone out and made a halo of … misfortune and ignominity,” (Hawthorne, 51) Hester lessens the humiliation she would otherwise have to endure. After serving her prison time, Hester is allowed to roam free and move wherever she pleases; yet she stays in the very town she was shamed in.
The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era, adultery was taken as a very serious sin, and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin, their lives change, Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery, and she is constantly being tortured and is thought of as less than a person. Dimmesdale walks around with his sin kept as secret, because he never admits his sin, his mental state is changing, and the sin degrades his well-being. Chillingworth
Hester is forgiven because Dimmesdale confessed and conscience which is Pearl kisses him. Another is Pearl’s inherited guilt and inherited redemption.
Everyone interprets situations differently; there would be no point of the human mind if we did not. The novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is about the character Hester’s life and struggles, after committing adultery. In the society she lives in, which is a Puritan society, adultery was a huge sin and forbidden, especially by a women. Hetser however, was smarter than the average women and knew how to manipulate the town to think she was not the one at fault in her sin. An Analysis of Hester’s Hypocrisy in The Scarlet Letter by Yanxia Sang goes into detail about how the character of Hester is hypocritical.
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.
During the late 1600’s in Boston, it is an ideal thing to follow the Puritan ways of life. If one interferes with a Puritan value, it is common that puritan people will publicly shame one for sinning. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne commits adultery in Puritan society. She becomes the town adulteress and is constantly humiliated by her peers. No one has the knowledge of who she commits her sin with. Behind the shadows of all this shaming hides Arthur Dimmesdale, the town minister. Hester and Dimmesdale both commit adultery, yet Hester takes the blame. Throughout the novel, Dimmesdale keeps his secret of sin, causing him to feel great remorse, each scaffold
The scarlet letter is the Puritan’s method of broadcasting Hester’s sin to the world, but it also has an internal effect on Dimmesdale. Puritanism is a strict religion where pleasure is strictly forbidden and is punishable. When Hester Prynne is discovered to have committed adultery, she is forced to wear a scarlet A, which is short for ‘adultery’. When this is first revealed, Hester stands in the jail carrying baby Pearl and, with the people jeering, is asked by Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale if she would tell the world who the Pearl’s father is; Dimmesdale is relieved when the answer is ‘no’– and it is later revealed that Dimmesdale is the father. Over the course of the novel, Dimmesdale’s