Isolating Hester Prynne In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet letter is a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 that follows main character, Hester Prynn, as she endures life in The Massachusetts Bay Colony with her daughter. Hester’s life in this society is mainly focussed around the actions of two characters other than her daughter Pearl. These characters are Roger Chillingworth and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. In the novel, Chillingworth was Hester’s husband when she lived in Europe and Dimmesdale is the local reverend who became the father of Pearl after a love affair with Hester. The two have contrasting roles in The Scarlet Letter but are bound together through their relationships with Hester forming the structure of the novel. With the use of symbolism, imagery, and diction, Hawthorne molds the characters of Roger Chillingworth and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale into representations of the flawed natures of the Puritan colonies in 17th century New England.

Hawthorne’s message about obtaining salvation through the means of being open and true to yourself, is shaped by the contrasts of consequences the characters Hester Prynne, who publicly acknowledges her sin, and Arthur Dimmesdale, who hides his sin, face. In Hester’s case, she was publicly shamed for her sin from the beginning and was forced to wear the symbol of her sin, the scarlet letter “A” representing adultery, to isolate her from the rest of society. She had the opportunity to leave the town and begin a new life free from the scarlet letter, but she decides to stay as, if she were to run away or remove the scarlet letter, she would be admitting to the shame of her sins. Her staying, shows she wants to change the scarlet letter to not represent her sin, but her as a character.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is often renowned as his best work. The novel tells about the rigid ideas of 19th century Puritan New England through the story of Hester Prynne, Minister Dimmesdale, and Pearl. Hawthorne points out that the Puritans are often more ready to judge, punish, and damn someone than to forgive them. He is very critical of this idea, and goes against it by ending the novel with Hester Prynne becoming a respected individual that other women often look to for advice, and by changing the perception many people have of the Scarlet Letter from, “Adultery” to “Able”. Throughout the novel Hawthorne refutes the harsh ideals of the Puritans through the

Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the truth about Hester’s situation. This is the fact that she is not alone; others have sinned, just not been caught. Despite Hester’s feeling of utter isolation, her predicament gives her a second sense of the many sins under the surface. This could be compared to present day in the way that the people imprisoned are not the only sinners. It does not make everyone innocent because they do not have a scarlet letter or reside in a

The Scarlet Letter tells the tale of a woman named Hester Prynne who has an illegitimate child, Pearl, with one of Boston’s well-known ministers, Arthur Dimmesdale. Set in Puritan New England in the 1700s, the environment encircles the Puritan beliefs as well as the Puritan government. Caught by the town when she starts to show, Hester is sentenced to prison time and public humiliation for her adultery. As she raises Pearl she encounters her eccentric behavior and wild actions in stride as she has difficulties establishing just punishments for her. Over the course of the novel, Pearl develops into a main character, daringly questions the townspeople, and leads Hester away from evil, which increases her significance in the novel.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne follows the story of Hester Prynne in seventeenth-century Boston and her journey as the ashamed town outcast and sinner. On this journey readers are introduced to Hester’s daughter, Pearl, her lover, Dimmesdale, and her former husband, Chillingworth. The story starts off with Hester and her young child Pearl walking out into the town to climb atop the scaffold where they are to be ridiculed for Hester’s sin of adultery. Hester is identified with a scarlet “A” on her chest resembling the sin she committed and to mark that she should be alienated throughout the town. But, when townspeople see Hester they are mesmerized by her beauty, “The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and

In the beginning, society is quick to make a judgement of Hester Prynne when she is new and becomes a victim of her own passion. This quick reaction is exemplified when the elder women of Boston discuss her crime; the group's ring leader states, "'It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactress as this Hester Prynne... If the hussy stood up for judgement before us five... would she come off with such a sentence as the worship magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!'" (#). By saying this, the woman is complaining about how light Hester Prynne's punishment is in her opinion. She assumes Hester is an evil adulteress, even

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, main character Hester Prynne was disgraced and condemned for having a child with a man other than her husband. In the beginning of the novel, Hawthorne uses the letter “A” to symbolize shame; Hester was forced to wear the letter on her chest for the rest of her life to label her as an adulterer. Hawthorne also uses this symbol to reveal Puritan beliefs and ideas. In the novel’s Puritan society, any woman who committed adultery was viewed as a criminal, as demonstrated by Hester.

In the year 1850, an author by the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter. Wrote in the form of a historical drama, Hawthorne found ways of keeping the reader intertwined with the book because he did not reveal who the father of Hester’s daughter really was until the last few chapters. Hester, who is the main character of the story, committed adultery against her husband, Chillingworth, who fakes his identity as a doctor and tries to find out who Pearls’ (Hester’s daughter) father is. Near the end of the story, Hawthorne reveals the identity of Hester’s lover, Dimmesdale, the minister of the town. Guilt and confession is one of the main themes throughout the book.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter began in a small town in Boston on a very important day where Hester Prynne and her young child, Pearl were forced to stand on a scaffold and for Hester to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest for her crimes of adultery that created Pearl. The story continues to tell how Hester and her daughter grew up around the unknown father, Arthur Dimmesdale, who later reveals himself as such, and a Hester Prynne’s former husband who seeks revenge and now goes by the name of Roger Chillingworth. In the end after Dimmesdale and Chillingworth’s deaths Hester and Pearl move away and start a new life, although once Pearl has grown Hester comes back to her small town to live out the rest of her life in shame.

The scarlet letter has affected Hester in many ways. One of the biggest ways it has affected her is in the way of feeling very guilty and shameful. She thinks she “would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s sinful passion” (Hawthorne, 76). Hester believes that her sin will serve as a walking example to the whole community and that people will always remember her for her adulterous act. Likewise, when she made the decision to still live in her town, on the outskirts that is, she feels that by facing her sin head-on and cope with the people who will continue to gossip about her, it is her only way to make herself pure again. When she enters

When Hester Prynne is first introduced in the novel, she comes off as a young woman who has lost all control of her life due to her adultery conviction. In the beginning, Hester appears as one of the stronger characters in the story, as seen by her bravery on the platform in which she is sentenced to stand on for three hours in front of the town. She is described as a woman whose "beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped” (46) and throughout the second and third chapters, readers soon realize the only bad things about Hester are the choices she has made. Consequently, her decisions and her crimes result in her being condemned by her fellow Puritan citizens. The people of her town view Hester’s initial punishment as a festivity and soon enough a judgemental and subjective crowd accumulates around the platform, all shaming her for cheating on her husband. In addition to Hawthorne 's description of Hester Prynne, he also makes vivid connections between her character and her child’s character in the first few chapters. For example, in chapter two, Hawthorne compares Hester and her child as both being outcasts in their town because adultery is an unforgivable crime which results in eternal shame, and her babe is a child of sin who will “seek a heavenly Father,” and “never know an earthly one” (58) which is out of the norm for the children of this time.

The Scarlet Letter is a classic novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which entangles the lives of two characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale together through an unpardonable sin-adultery. With two different lifestyles, this act of adultery affects each of them differently. Hester is an average female citizen who is married to a Roger Chillingworth from Europe while Dimmesdale is a Puritan minister from England (61). Along the course of time after the act of adultery had happened, Hester could not hide the fact that she was bearing a child that was not of her husband, but from another man. She never reveals that this man is in fact Arthur Dimmesdale, and so only she receives the punishment of prison. Although it is Hester who

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” has always been one of the most well known pieces of literature to this day. From the infamous letter “A” the protagonist Hester Prynne wears on her breast to the hypocritical puritan beliefs the book mentions - the book remains both romantic and complex. It takes place in the mid seventeenth century in Boston, Massachusetts where Hester is publicly humiliated in front of her entire village for committing adultery and having a child that is considered illegitimate to society. Throughout the entire novel, her husband Roger Chillingworth spends the next several years of his life plotting revenge against Hester’s adulterer, Arthur Dimmesdale, which is not revealed until the second half of the book.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is about the transformation of Puritan woman known as Hester Prynne who changed from being labeled as an adulterer to somewhat of a living legend. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s original husband was supposed to follow her in the new world, but sadly he never did. As a result Hester had to fend for herself having no chance to speak up against authority. She wore a scarlet letter as a result of a secret affair with Dimmesdale; this relationship made the public view Hester negatively. This dehumanizing stigma disappears when Hester performs good deeds , bettering a reputation in a judgemental community. Her daughter starts out as a symbol, and it is not until she is kissed by Dimmesdale at the scaffold, that change begins to occur. Hester Prynne’s transformation is the most remarkable because she endures adversity at the point where an average person would break down in defeat . Consequently, she distracts herself with household activities and kindness towards people in need to improve her precarious situation. Pearl has to pay for Hester’s actions and can only be freed from the trap when Dimmesdale finally recognizes the girl. Once accepted by her new father, Pearl gains a new identity and has a purpose in the world.