Sick Room In The Early 1900's

One thing every living organism has in common on this planet-- age. No one wants to age or face the fact that aging is inevitable. However, since it’s impossible to beat the never ending time clock that is life; everyone wants to be as comfortable as possible when age finally does catch up with them. When the majority of people think of comfortability in old age, they think of living in their own homes and being surrounded by their loved ones. Not many individuals want to be placed into a nursing home type facility because they can’t imagine themselves being comfortable that way. Nonetheless, even though being placed in a home does take away some of an elderly person’s independence, usually the independence lost is in activities that person can no longer do for themselves. Indeed, nursing homes do have their own set of scary stories behind them; life lost, independence lost, and privacy lost, yet many of those stories are outdated. Upon investigation, it would be easy for anyone to scare themselves out of a nursing facility due to the stories that are out there. Yet, upon even further research people would be able to see how far the United States has come in their development and evolution of nursing care facilities. The care of the elderly in the form of nursing homes has faced a tough evolution starting off with a harsh past, to what nursing homes are like now, and what people can expect for the future of these homes.

Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them; always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester's brow (

Plot 4 Pgs. 70-74- As Hester stands in front of everyone, she begins looking around the crowd. She sees a very familiar face out there. It's a face she hasn't seen in a while, but she knows. It is her husband that she has not seen in two years.

While in the town, villagers persecute and criticize her endlessly for the sin of adultery. She is faced with name calling such as “the naughty baggage” and forced to wear the scarlet “A” to display her sin (49). Hester has a hard life in the strict Puritan village, but the forest is a mysterious place “never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth” (183). Although the forest is mysterious to others, Hester experiences it as an escape from the constant condemnation in the village which represents the punishment for her sin. In the forest, she does not have to be afraid of her feelings. It is the place where “she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves” (182). Hester escapes to not feel like a failure and even plans to run away with her love, Dimmesdale. Hester’s punishment and penance are publicized in the village, but she is able to find a haven in the

Conflict is first observed through Hester’s ongoing difficulties with her fellow townspeople. Hester receives ridicule from on looking townspeople, as a gossiping woman states, ‘ “At the very least, they

When she is humiliated on the scaffold for her sins, her shame is worsened when her husband, Roger Chillingworth, coincidentally emerges. Through the use of situational irony, Chillingworth’s return makes Hester conscious of the “hot, midday sun burning down upon her face and lighting up its shame” and describes her encounter “dreadful” (61). When she and her baby become ill in the prison, there is another instance of situational irony; the physician called upon to help them turns out to be Chillingworth. Upon seeing him, Hester “immediately [becomes] as still as death” (68). Hester has to face the result of committing adultery when she encounters Chillingworth years later.

Upon the gallows, she is ordered to reveal the name of the father of her child yet she remains steadfast in her resolve to remain silent and create a life for herself and Pearl. This decision allows the reader to understand the tension that the puritan way of life created for all of the citizens. The novel begins with the story of the narrator and his role within his customs house duties two hundred years after Hester’s story ended. The narrator’s story is a direct reflection of Hester’s story and has many of the same symbolisms. Within the custom house the narrator is surrounded by men who are the embodiment of do as I say not as I do.

Thou art no Pearl of mine! Said the mother half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering, Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent you here?” Hester's candid and slightly callous tone shows her characters overwhelming and doubting feelings towards Pearl. Having this tone enables the reader to comprehend the troubles Hester is going through. Those troubles being, raising an elvish-child alone and in exile while dealing with the multitudes of her sin. Using imagery and tone Hawthorne was successful in developing (in particular) the characterization of Hester and showing how her intuitive mind attempts to overcome sin.

The novel opens to the reader by describing Hester’s walk through the town to a shame scaffold holding her infant daughter Pearl. This first scene on the scaffold Hester refuses to give the name of the child’s father to the people knowing

She makes it known that she does not need a man to survive in the world. Instead of letting her offense get in the way, Hester changes the meaning of the letter A from meaning something bad and shameful to “Able”(141); it makes her strong “with a woman’s strength”(141). At the end of the novel, Dimmsdale calls her and Pearl onto the scaffold and reveals that he is Pearl’s father. Hester is finally accepted in society at the end of the novel as a counselor to women who “[demanded] why they were so wretched, and what the remedy [was]”(227), but instead of discarding the Scarlet Letter, she keeps it fastened to her bosom, and it is seen as a something “to be sorrowed over”(227) and “looked upon with

She looks beyond her own sins and has a sudden realization that in fact anyone has the ability to transgress just as easily as she did. Hester is “terror-stricken by the revelations” of knowing that others sin. The fact that she is “terror-stricken” suggests that she is now looking at the world around her in a way she never previously had. Hester is overwhelmed with “terror” to realize that people are genuinely immoral. This scene highlights a major concept of brooding romanticism: a character having a tragic confrontation with the universe

Though Hester appears as a passive, unmoved individual, Pearls reflects her mother’s true feelings through her wild, lawless behavior. Considered an outcast of the society like her mother, Pearl has outbursts of emotion towards the townspeople. When other children would gather around her, “Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations” (64). During the New England Holiday festival, Pearl is a mirror of Hester’s hidden emotions by her unmistakable excitement and restlessness. “Pearl, who was the gem of her mother’s unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester’s brow” (156). Though Hester outwardly hides the feelings of her inner self, Pearl reflects what no one can see in her mother’s

For the most part, Hester sees her relationship with her daughter as a big important factor in her life. This can be seen by the ways that Hester express herself. “She is my happiness - she is my torture, nonetheless!” (Hawthorne… pg.

Due to Hester’s crime of adultery, she must wear a scarlet letter on her chest for the rest of her life. Hester first exemplifies her strength when she is released from prison and people were expecting to see her “dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud,” (Hawthorne, 49). However, the townspeople find her more gorgeous and ladylike than before. This shows Hester’s inner strength, due to the fact that she is not easily distraught by her punishment. As Hester endures her public penance, the angry crowds are looking at her letter, and Hester repays them with a “bitter and disdainful smile,” even though the reader gets the impression that she is not truly handling the punishment well (Hawthorne, 53). This displays Hester’s inner strength, Hester is able to hide her feelings during her punishment. The author states that Hester endures the pain from her public penance that morning; however she does this by protecting her spirit with insensibility (Hawthorne, 63). This exemplifies how strong Hester’s demeanor is throughout her shameful

The characterisation of Hester reinforces this reading, as although she is established to be repressed emotionally and displays a disinterest in romantic relationships, readers see in chapter 4 that this was not always the case. As a child, Hester’s hopeful and romantic expectations are shown through her relationship with Hilde, and it is described that the two ‘washed their necks every day with cold water so that it would be beautiful to receive…the necklaces and pendants and jewels some man would want to cherish her with’ (pg. 70). This implies that the idea of marriage and romantic relationships once appealed to Hester when she was a child. Although she has forgone any attempts at romance in her adulthood, Hester still displays a desire for companionship, and achieves this through her relationship with Kathy. Her desperation to keep Kathy as a companion is reinforced through her extravagant spending, spoiling Kathy with ‘clothes, foods, furniture, cassette players and transistors’ as ‘there was no end to their wishes and to their shopping’. This text may therefore be read as a comment on the nature of human beings, as it naturalises the human need for companionship through Hester’s past and present desires for a