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What conclusion can you draw from the fact that every new colony must provide a prison and cemetery at once?

Hester is somewhat, alienated because she would refuse to tell the name of the other adulterer. When she is released from prison and asked to stand on the scaffold, she is asked to tell the name of the other adulterer. Hester is in love, and because of that love, she chooses to stay in the town of Boston and has to always wear the scarlet “A” on her chest, so long as she lives in Boston. She, herself says this when standing in front of the people of Boston, "I might face his agony

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 narrator covers the events of several years. After a few months, Hester is released from prison. Although she is free to leave Boston, she chooses not to do so. She settles in an abandoned cabin on a patch of infertile land at the edge of town. Hester remains alienated from everyone, including the town fathers, respected women, beggars, children, and even strangers. She serves as a walking example of a fallen woman, a cautionary tale for everyone to see. Although she is an outcast, Hester remains able to support herself due to her uncommon talent in needlework. Her taste for the beautiful infuses her embroidery, rendering her work fit to be worn by the governor despite its shameful source. Although the ornate detail of her artistry defies

The citizens of Boston know that Hester is married and her husband isn 't living with her. Therefore, when she becomes pregnant, she is arrested for adultery, a grave sin in their Puritan society. Consequently Hester is punished with jail time and made to wear a scarlet letter A for the rest of her life, meaning adulterer. These punishments make her life as a single mother even more difficult. Suddenly, Hester is disliked and ridiculed by everyone in the town. People look down on Hester to make themselves seem better than her. In chapter two, several women gossip about Hester. "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute- book" (Hawthorne 78).  The women are calling for an even harsher punishment than the scarlet letter. They want Hester to be executed. As well as being ostracized by the entire community, Hester must endure living in a patriarchal society. Hester has no choice but to adapt to the adversity she faces. To avoid some of the daily persecution she faces, Hester moves to the outskirts of town, where she learns to tend a garden to grow food for her daughter Pearl and herself. This is a clear example of acquiring a skill, because talent and hard work are needed to grow a garden. She also learns to sew, and earns money by crafting beautiful articles of fabric for people in Boston. Hester also applies her free time to crafting clothes for the

You might wonder why Hester doesn't leave Boston, since it is only in Boston that she must wear the scarlet letter. What are her reasons? Be sure not to overlook the most important of them.

‘The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance.” and “She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it through off the sunshine…” (4). While managing to face her realities, Hester accepts her “sin” and fate with dignity.

To start the book, we find that a young woman has committed adultery and when standing in front of a mocking crowd, she is ashamed of her actions. Continuing through the book we find that the adulteress, Hester Prynne, displays many examples of positive outcomes arising from negative situations. She becomes more and more aware of the faults of society and becomes wiser as she deals with the consequences of her actions. Even though Hester made a terrible decision that came with many extremely negative effects, she gained personality traits, perceptions, and people that rose from her mistake.

5. Standing on the scaffold, Hester envisions her earlier life.  What facts do you learn about her previous life?  What was her relationship with the man “well stricken in years”?

As the book opens, Hester is brought forth from the jail and walked to the scaffold. For the first time being seen in public named an adulterer, Hester shies from the public as they mock her. However, "She never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weight upon its sympathies." (Hawthorne 140). Soon, it did not matter what other people thought of Hester because of her sin. She chose not to live with the humiliation, but she did have to live with herself.

Hester’s initial sacrifice for love is highlighted during her decision to commit the affair with Arthur Dimmesdale. Although she was fully aware of the consequences that accompanied the affair, she considered love to be more valuable than her reputation among other individuals in the community. Yet again, Hester was met with another option to further sacrifice the reputation that had already been abandoned, when she exclaimed “that I might endure his agony, as well as mine” (Hawthorne 58). She held the identity of her affair a mystery to the outside world, which not only provided the man with protection, but it also defined Hester’s idolization of love and endearment. Due to Hester’s reputational sacrifice, Nathaniel Hawthorne used her forbidden relationship to characterize the rigid and punitive Puritan community of the colonial

The setting of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet letter” is crucial to the understanding of the event that takes place in the story. The setting of the story is in Salem, Massachusetts during the Puritan era. During the Puritan era, adultery was taken as a very serious sin, and this is what Hester and Dimmesdale committ with each other. Because of the sin, their lives change, Hester has to walk around in public with a Scarlet Letter “A” which stands for adultery, and she is constantly being tortured and is thought of as less than a person. Dimmesdale walks around with his sin kept as secret, because he never admits his sin, his mental state is changing, and the sin degrades his well-being. Chillingworth

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

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

In June 1642, the townspeople of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gathered together in front of the scaffold to see the the punishment that would be levied on the young women, Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne was guilty of adultery and forced to stand upon the scaffold for three hours. While Hester was standinding on the scaffold, she was subject to name calling and constant questioning, by the other women of the town. As Hester was being shamed, she noticed and man in the crowd, it was her husband, who was presumed to be dead. Her husband, angered deeply by this, vowed to find the man responsible for this, and selected the new name Roger Chillingworth. The reverend, John Wilson, and the Minister, Arthur Dimmesdale questioned Hester, but she refused to reveal the the father.