Sccaffold Scenes In The Scarlet Letter

The scaffold shows how the punishment imposed on us by others may not be as destructive as the guilt we impose on ourselves. When Hester was standing on the scaffold she is not thinking about being punished. She is having flashbacks to earlier times and feeling guilty for what she had done. The scaffold is a platform used for redemption and a symbol of the harsh Puritan code.

Hester Prynne of Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter defies the Puritan belief system through her rebellion and compassion. Hester defies the Puritan belief system through her rebellion. Hester Prynne, while in Boston waiting for her husband to come from Amsterdam, commits the crime of adultery and gives birth to a child, causing her to be punished. Hawthorne describes her crime in dialogue between Hester’s husband, who has just arrived in Boston and is unaware of Hester’s circumstances, and a towns member who infers as to what she has done and how much of an uproar it has caused, during her public punishment, in the government forces her to stand on a scaffold for three hours and condemned to wear an A on her chest

The scaffold appears early in the when Hester Prynne is forced to climb up to the scaffold where her punishment will be carried out. The mother and child are gawked at and humiliated, as they are forced to stand there on display for the town. Hawthorne writes:

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, the author uses three scaffold scenes to mark the development of Hester Prynne. The image of Hester atop the scaffolding is a metaphor for her forced solitude; for her banishment from society; and for the futility of her punishment. In the first scene, Hawthorne uses the scaffold to explain how Hester can not believe that the “A'; and the baby are real. In the second scaffold scene, Hawthorne tries to convey to the reader that Hester has fully repented for her sin, however this is not true. In the final scaffold scene, Hester does not yet fully repent for her sin because her love for Dimmesdale is still strong. Through Hester, Hawthorne is trying to communicate to the

In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, we notice that action only happens in a few places, among which are the forest, the market place, the governor’s residence, and Dimmesdale’s house. Although all these locations are significant to the story, the most important symbol among them is certainly the scaffold in the market place, where the story begins and ends. The scaffold’s meaning changes throughout the story and has different values for different characters. It represents humiliation, then insight, and finally redemption for Hester and Dimmesdale, but for Chillingworth, it symbolizes birth of sin, growth of sin, and ultimately consummation by sin.

In the first scaffold scene Hester Prynne is depicted standing alone while clutching her baby. She has been sentenced to the scaffold for three hours to face public condemnation. In the Puritan society, where this novel is set, public shame is a source of entertainment. On this occasion the townspeople are present to watch the judgment of Hester.

From the beginning, we see that Hester Prynne is a young and beautiful woman who has brought a child into the world with an unknown father. She is punished by Puritan society by wearing the scarlet letter A on the bosom of her dress and standing on the scaffold for three hours. The scaffold is a painful task to bear; the townspeople gathered around to gossip and stare at Hester and her

The second scene of the scarlet letter is about Hester Prynne, a young women that committed adultery, becomes the center of attention by being publicly placed upon a scaffold for all the eyes of the town to view and criticize. Hester is a beautiful lady with a magnificent completion, but all of this has been overlooked because of

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, behaves in an unforgivable, yet understandable manner. When Hester Prynne is in prison for having an affair, proven by the resulting child, Dimmesdale does not confess to his sin nor stand with Hester during her shameful punishment. Throughout the novel, Dimmesdale is being torn apart by the gnawing guilt growing inside of him while Hester is constantly a scornful object in the public’s eye.

Hester’s scarlet letter is a piece of clothing, the “SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom” (Hawthorn 51). Her interpretation of the extremity of her sins is one of self composure and calm. She views her sins solely as a "violation in the natural order" of the environment and therefore cannot even perceive her sin as being evil except through outside influence. Dimmesdale on the other hand, has a scarlet letter carved in his chest. This is revealed when Dimmesdale was giving his revelation, in which “he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. It was revealed!” (Hawthorn 232). Dimmesdale 's personal interpretation as to the extremity of his own sins is a "violation of God 's law," which is the law that he is totally dedicated to and supported by. Dimmesdale 's interpretation of his sin is much more severe than Hester 's, it is a violation and direct contradiction of his own self consciousness and physical existence. Therefore the appearance of his A, even though it is never directly described in the novel, must be powerful, broken, and brutally dishonest (...a ghastly rapture; Hawthorne pg.95). Since the Scarlet Letter on Hester is visible to the public, she was criticized and looked down on. “This women has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die” (Hawthorn 49) is said by a female in the marketplace talking about Hester. She becomes a stronger person through living this hard life.

The harsh townspeople force her up on the scaffold to be humiliated in front of the whole town. Not only is she sent up on the scaffold with her sin revealed by the “A” for everyone to see, Hester becomes an example of what a woman should not come to be. The author is talking about Hesters experience on the scaffold and her pregnancy, “Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, 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 frailty and sinful passion”(32). Hester looses her individuality and is labeled by the townspeople and known for the Scarlet Letter. Further, the townspeople singled her out as an alien or outcast of the town forcing her to live an abnormal live. She was ridiculed and known for her one sin, unable to have acceptance back into society. Although the townspeople feel as if Hester has brought sin upon there lives, she clearly have not harmed any of the townspeople physically, and they have no grounds to punish Hester. The cause of the townspeople's harsh disciplinary acts on Hester originates from a strict, unrealistic standards of puritan society and the zero tolerance of any ungodly behavior observed in the town. Due to the absence of proper justice, Hester's sentencing is left up to the harsh townspeople in which they show no mercy or

The changing imagery of each of the three scaffold scenes presents Hawthorne’s idea of private vs. public sin. Using different visual elements such as light and placement, Hawthorne’s imagery creates a separation of each scene (and character) for the reader. This idea is carried out through the portrayal of Dimmesdale and Hester, each with their own kind of sin to endure. In the first scaffold scene, Hawthorne exemplifies Hester’s public sin as she stands in the exposure of daylight, facing a crowd of townspeople, her embroidered A visible to all. Her shame is very much public, with societies reactions and judgements ringing loudly throughout the scenes description.

In The Scarlet Letter, the three scaffold scenes are very important in advancing the action of the story and developing the characters. The scaffold is located in the middle of town and is where Hester is being punished for her sin. Dimmesdale hid his sin from the town, however his guilt led him to confess on the scaffold as Hester did. Through it all, the scaffold shapes both Hester and Dimmesdale as individuals. The scaffold makes both Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin public, leading them to more obstacle which brings the story along.

Ultimately, in chapter 23, the meaning of the scaffold changes for the last time in The Scarlet Letter. The final scaffold scene in some ways resembles the first. Once again, all the major characters meet in the marketplace in full daylight. As Dimmesdale sees Hester, and Pearl beside the ‘scaffold of pillory”, Hawthorne states “ And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester Prynne had encountered the world’s ignominious stare.” (Hawthorne p.206). Arthur Dimmesdale later states “In the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what for my own heavy sin and miserable agony I withheld myself from doing seven years ago.” and “He turned

The scaffold first makes an appearance in the second chapter. Here, it is used as a form of punishment. After Hester Prynne's damnation of committing adultery, she is bound to a scarlet letter “A” that is sewn to her clothing. On top of that, she is chastised by having to stand on the scaffold in front of the public. Up there, she holds her daughter, Pearl, who symbolizes the sin that now haunts her (52-53). This plays on with the punishment that the scaffold represents. Standing here, the people judge Hester, and “were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence” (54). By beginning the novel with the punishment and mockery that the scaffold brings to