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Importance Of Hester Prynne In The Scarlet Letter

Decent Essays

Hester And Her Importance

Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the book The Scarlet Letter, introduces three major characters in his telling of a story, set in a 17th-century puritan colony, of betrayal, struggle and repentance. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth lives are explicitly intertwined in the narrative. But the main focus by the author is the actions of Hester Prynne and the impact of these actions on others throughout the novel. As the main character, Hester is first introduced to us by several outraged rotund and ruddy-cheeked matrons expressing how they would have handled the punishment of Hester for adultery. “At the very least they should have put a iron on Hester Pyrnne’s forehead” (Hawthorne ###), they echoed as these matrons righteously attend an execution on the gallows in a market place. “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die: is there not law for it?” (Hawthorne ###). But despite this scorn, Hester chooses not to cower in her public shaming but faces her situation holding her infant with as much dignity, spirit and ladylike demeanor in a way that allows her natural beauty to show. In fact, the narrator in Hawthorne’s book continuously remarks on Hester’s beauty and states “Here was the taint of deepest sin the most sacred quality of woman’s beauty, and the most lost for the infant she had borne" (1034?). Meaning that her sins are labeled and judged in the minds of others because if they had not previously

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