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How Does Hester's Sin Affect Society

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Many people believe that they have the freedom to do whatever they want because they assume that what they do will not affect the lives of others; this is a dangerous assumption. Sometimes people don’t realize the effect they have on others until the effect materializes. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester’s sin has an effect on much more than just Hester. Not only does Hester’s sin affect herself, but it also affects the community around her. Hawthorne uses imagery of Hester’s physical attributes to demonstrate how the effects of the “A” that Hester wears on her chest extend beyond Hester’s mental well being but to her physical well being as well, ultimately suggesting that Hester’s sin affects more than just Hester herself.
Hawthorne shows the reader the consequences that the scarlet letter inflicts on Hester’s physical presentation, revealing …show more content…

The letter which Hester carries around with her transforms her mentally, as everything she now does has a sinful connotation to it. The mental effects of the letter are clear to the reader up to this point, but only now does Hawthorne examine the physical effects of the letter, giving the reader a new perspective of what the constant reminder of sin does to Hester. Hester’s mental transformation is compared to Hester’s physical transformation when Hawthorne writes that, “Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change [than that of her character]”, describing the long reach that the sinful letter “A” on Hester’s chest uses to mold Hester to its own liking. Hawthorne explains that Hester’s “rich and luxuriant hair, had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine”, showing how despite Hester’s innate beauty, she presented herself with less beauty than she possessed because of the “cap” under which her beauty was hidden, in the

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