Summary Of ' Hester Prynne ' Essay

It was Election Day and Dimmesdale was giving his sermon inside the church. This sermon was his most powerful sermon that he had given. As Dimmesdale was inside the church giving his sermon, Hester was standing outside the church next to the scaffold with Pearl. When Dimmesdale finished his sermon, there was a procession to the town hall. However he did not proceed with the procession. He went to climb the scaffold and called Hester and Pearl to join him. Chillingworth tried to stop him because he knew what he was going to do so he said that he could still save him. Dimmesdale brushed him off and continued to climb the scaffold. Malcolm Cowley states, “Facing the crowd he tears open his ministerial band and shows that there is a scarlet A imprinted on his own flesh” (Cowley 16). He exposed his sin because he wanted to be free of his sin and be with Hester and Pearl. This scene also describes Dimmesdale’s dying words and actions. He asked God to forgive Chillingworth and asked if Pearl would kiss him. So Pearl kissed him on the lips. This was significant because it showed that she accepted and forgave him. Hester also asked him if they would ever see each other again, but he does not think they will because of their

     Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a dark tale of sin and redemption,centers around the small Puritan community of Boston during the 17th century. In the midst of this small community is Hester Prynne. She is a woman that has defied the Puritans, taken the consequences and in the end conformed with the Puritans. It did,

When Chillingworth asks Hester the identity of her lover, she refuses to answer. Because of this, Chillingworth makes her promise never to reveal that he is her husband. After Hester is released from prison, she goes to live in a small cottage at the edge of town. After a few years, people begin to notice that her daughter, Pearl, behaves very strangely, and they threaten to take her away from Hester. Hester takes Pearl to Governor Bellingham's mansion planning to plead for the right to keep her daughter. At the mansion she is met by the governor and his three guests, Reverend Wilson, Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. Reverend Dimmesdale convinces the governor to allow Hester to keep Pearl. Chillingworth, who has been living with Reverend Dimmesdale since his arrival in town, begins to suspect that Reverend Dimmesdale is the father of Pearl. One evening while Dimmesdale is sleeping, Chillingworth examines Dimmesdale's chest and finds something which confirms his suspicion. From this moment on, Chillingworth devotes himself to seeking revenge. One night, Dimmesdale is so tormented by his conscience that he goes and stands on the scaffold that Hester had stood on seven years earlier. As he is standing there, he sees Hester and Pearl walk by and he calls them onto the scaffold with him. After he acknowledges his guilt to them, a giant red A

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 newborn child, whom she suitably named Pearl, named because of her extreme value to her mother. Her subjection to the crowd of

In his work “On the Scarlet Letter,” D.H. Lawrence addresses the controversial character of Hester Prynne. He is just one of many critics who have analyzed Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional character, where some look to her as a hero and others blatantly shame her for her sin. Lawrence makes up the latter of this crowd, and is able to prove his case in a very meaningful manner. The critic believes that Hawthorne sugarcoats Hester’s image, and tries to make it look as if she is the victim of the tale. Disregarding this sympathy, he addresses the root cause of her sin rather than its consequences. As he writes, he uses a multitude of literary techniques to help convince readers of Hester’s seemingly evil character, using descriptive diction, a

  "What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us," stated Oliver Wendell Holmes. This eventually proves to be especially true for Hester Prynne, the main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne, a fair young maiden whose husband had disappeared two years prior to the opening of the novel, has an affair with the pastor of her Puritan church, resulting in the birth of her child Pearl. Because of this act of adultery, Hester Prynne is branded by the scarlet letter "A," which she is forced to forever wear upon her attire. The plot thickens as Hester's former husband returns to New England and becomes

Dimmesdale longs to confess his sin, but he cannot bring himself to do it. Dimmesdale has visions and delusions and begins to think falsely about the world. Dimmesdale feels as if there is a scarlet letter on his chest. When Dimmesdale brings himself to the platform where Hester was punished, Hester and Pearl join him. Pearl asks him if he will stand with them on the platform and he tells her on judgement day that he will. After time passes, people begin to think differently about Hester and the scarlet letter. They now consider the letter to be a sign of her strength. When Hester meets again with Roger Chillingworth she tells him that she must reveal the secret for the good of Mr. Dimmesdale. Hester wants Chillingworth to stop the evil practices

Believed by many writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, society corrupts and conforms the individual, and it is the individual who breaks from consistency and conformity that is most free. Hester Prynne, a woman punished for adultery, is isolated by herself and her community, but breaks free from strict Puritan society. Roger Chillingworth, the husband of Hester, isolates himself which leads to the destruction of himself and the community. Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth experience different types of isolation, and while Hester chooses to transcend Puritan laws and live a purposeful life regardless of how it affects her, Chillingworth decides to become infatuated with the sin of Arthur Dimmesdale and live in revenge outside of Puritan

The townspeople, in shock, sympathize Hester because the unknown adulterer exposes his secret. As Dimmesdale finishes his last words to his true love, he dies in Hester’s arms. Watching Hester lose the love of her life and Pearl lose her father allows others to sympathize them because once again they are left to fend for themselves. The shared feeling between the Puritan town

But Hester turns her back on these escape routes.  She stays in the settlement, shackled, as if by an iron chain of guilt, to the scene of her crime and punishment.  As Hester stands on the scaffold, thinking of her husband, he appears before her startled eyes at the edge of the crowd.  And his first gesture is indicative of the man.  Whatever shock or dismay he may feel at seeing his wife on the scaffold he immediately supresses his emotions and makes his face the image of calm.  The glance he bends on Hester is keen and penetrative.  Here is someone used to observing life rather than participating in it.  His is a "furrowed visage" (43).  Chillingworth looks like a man who has cultivated his mind at the "expense of another faculties - a perilous enterprise, in Hawthorne's view" (Loring 187).  Where his overbearing intellect will take him, Hawthorne wants us to think that he could be the catalyst for great conflicts later in the novel.  Chillingworth's finger raised to his lips, commanding Hester's silence, begins a pattern of secrecy that is the mainspring of the novel's plot; a secrecy that Hester must maintain in order to protect both her and her husband from the harshness of the Puritans.  Hawthorne's emphasis on the ability of Chillingworth to analyze the human mind and reasoning foreshadows his treatment of Dimmesdale later in the novel.

Imagine yourself on display in front of your whole town, being punished for cheating on your husband or wife. Today adultery is looked down on, but in reality nobody makes a huge deal out of it. Sin can affect a person in many ways, but whether it’s good or bad only time can tell. In the old days, religion and law were looked at as one, and Hester Prynne just so happened to sin, which in turn caused her to break the law. In the novel, Hester displays that how a person deals with sin has a lasting impact on the people around her, and most importantly those that are the closest to her.

As Hester settled into her new home she befriended a young man, Reverend Dimmesdale. They developed a companionship over a period of two years after Hester had arrived in the new country. This union turned into an affair, which left Hester pregnant without anyone knowing the father’s identity. Hester’s husband was “lost at sea” so everyone knew that Hester’s affair was out of infidelity. The town turned against Hester and accused Hester of adultery. Hester lived in a community of Puritans who had very strick rules. Adultry was a very big sin that when committed could be resolved in death. For Hester's punishment she was lead up on the schfold in front of the whole town. It was as if she was in a trile but had nobody defending her. As she had her baby Pearl in her arms she was asked who the father was, but she would not say. Soon the reader finds out that the father is Reven Dimmesdale. During Hester's trile her was very nervous that she would tell. If she would have told he would have been sentenced to death. To the end of her trile she did not say who was the father but she could only live because of her baby and she has to wear a letter A on her cloths for now

The three main characters in the novel are Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale. Hester is an adulteress and has a baby named pearl and she is convicted and her punishment is to wear a scarlet letter “a” upon her chest and to wear it until her death where it will be marked upon her grave as well. Her husband who she cheated on was Roger Chillingworth, which was his alias in the new world. He discovers Hester’s ignominy and is set on finding her partner in the “crime” they committed against him. Dimmesdale is the man who Hester had an affair, although he is the minister and that is a huge scandal for the preacher who speaks against infidelity. Hawthorne makes the relationship acceptable by showing that Hester and Dimmesdale actually love each other opposed to Chillingworth and Hester’s fake love.Chillingworth convinced Hester into marrying him which she never wanted to do in the first place, he only wished to own someone not love them. Chillingworth can be associated to evil because of his wish for revenge and torture to Dimmesdale which are considered the worst kind of sins. Chillingworth is also referred to as a leech which is what

Hester Prynne is the main lady in this novel, she is the mother of Pearl, a seamstress, and a shunned woman who committed adultery with a priest. Hester is also the wife to roger Chillingworth, who keeps his identity a secret to everyone but her. Hester starts out our tale in the prison, where a rose bush is visible outside the

After being found guilty of adultery, Hester is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her clothing as a public sign of shame. Her long lost husband, now under a new name to remain unknown, reappears after being presumed lost at sea. With revenge on his mind, a drama explodes around Hester. Over many years, her lover Dimmesdale falls ill and the new town physician Chillingsworth spends many hours by his bedside, only to start believing that Arthur is the father of Pearl, Hester’s out-of-wedlock child. When pleading with Dimmesdale, Hester begs him to leave for Europe so that they can start a new life together. This plan fails when Hester discovers that Chillingsworth is also to be a passenger. Eventually, Dimmesdale dies in Hester’s arms, and losing an opportunity at revenge, Chillingsworth dies shortly after. With a large amount of money left to her, Pearl and her mother relocate to Europe to start a new life (Hawthorne).