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The interpretation of “the scarlet letter”
How does nathaniel hawthorne feel about his characters in the novel the scarlet letter
Hawthorne's view on sin and evil in the scarlet letter
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1) Hester’s love for Dimmesdale runs much deeper than the child they now share. In chapter three, several people of high authority attempt to force Hester to “give the child a father!” (74). Even through this humility and scolding, Hester refuses to disclose her and Dimmesdale’s truth. Now, in chapter five, Hester ponders what anchors her in Boston. One conclusion that she cannot hide from-despite her trying- is that a man lived here. Not just any man, but “one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union” (84). No matter if Hester endlessly denies staying in Boston because of her love for Dimmesdale, the truth always occupies the back of her mind.
2) Pearl, just as those found in nature, is very rare and unique. Her radiance in the “gorgeous robes…” (92) depicts an illuminating child standing out amongst all of the grey puritan children. Although Pearl was made out of a horrifying situation, she is a beautiful, extraordinary girl. As real pearls form from dirt and become beautiful and rare, Pearl is a living example. Hawthorne stresses Pearl as an “outcast of the infantile world” (95) because she is a precious gem that glows against the dark
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To Hester, the world is beginning to revolve around the letter that perches on her bosom. Even when she designs clothes for Pearl, she mends a dress with “…a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut…” (102) and adorns it “with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread.” (102). Hester begins to project the image of her sin onto Pearl, drawing a connection between the two. The townspeople do not see Hester for herself, but for the letter residing on her chest. When Hester and Pearl walk by the Puritan boys, they scream “…there is the woman of the scarlet letter…” (103). Also, when Hester looks into the armor, the scarlet letter and Pearl – who resembles the letter – are contorted. They appear bigger, as to overshadow
Pearl is a symbol of Hester’s transgressions and even has similar qualities as the sin which she represents. Pearl’s life and behavior directly reflects the unacceptable and abnormal nature of Hester’s adulterous sin. Hester is plagued with more than just a letter “A”; she is given a child from her affair who is just as much a reminder of her sin as the scarlet letter. Ultimately Hester overcomes the shame associated the scarlet letter and creates a sense of family for herself and Pearl. This relationship is integral to the theme of this novel and the development of its characters.
Hester is a youthful, beautiful, proud woman who has committed an awful sin and a scandal that changes her life in a major way. She commits adultery with a man known as Arthur Dimmesdale, leader of the local Puritan church and Hester’s minister. The adultery committed results in a baby girl named Pearl. This child she clutches to her chest is the proof of her sin. This behavior is unacceptable. Hester is sent to prison and then punished. Hester is the only one who gets punished for this horrendous act, because no one knows who the man is that Hester has this scandalous affair with. Hester’s sin is confessed, and she lives with two constant reminders of that sin: the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl, the child conceived with Dimmesdale. Her punishment is that she must stand upon a scaffold receiving public humiliation for several hours each day, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest, represe...
Pearl is first introduced as the young babe clutched to Hester's chest, as she stands before a crowd of puritans beholding her humiliation. Embarrassed of the glaring letter on her chest, Hester thinks to hold little Pearl in front of her scarlet mark; however, she resolves that “one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another” (P.37). It is here that we see for the first time that Pearl has been reduced to nothing more than a symbol of Hester's sin, synonymous with the scarlet letter. As Pearl grows, so does the obvious nature with which Hawthorne portrays her as the scarlet letter. Throughout the book, we see Pearl dressed in bright clothes,
In the beginning of the novel, Hester Prynne exits the prison of the Puritan community of Boston, a large letter “A” clearly visible on her chest and a child in her arms. This is the first time the letter makes an appearance, and it is here where readers realize Hester has done something terribly wrong. The letter “A” sewn onto her clothes initially represents “adulterer”, but who exactly is the father of Pearl, the child Hester is holding, if her husband has been missing for two years? The townspeople would love to know the answer to that question, too, but it is only revealed to readers a few chapters into the story as being the unexpected Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale faces an
To her parents¡ªHester and Dimmesdale, Pearl plays a role of living scarlet letter compelling them to face the reality and confess their sins to the whole world. As the product of their passion, Pearl is a constant mental and physical reminder to her parents of what they had done wrong. It seems that her mission is to force her parents to suffer a lot from the punishment while she was brought up happily and innocently. Pearl successfully achieved this by firming the letter the center of Hester`s life. More than one time, Pearl asked Hester about the letter, which caused Hester`s intense agony of a shame generated in her. With Pearl being around her, Hester will never escape the punishment of her wrong deed.
Your habits can affect your story and give you a big twist to the storyline. There is a story in the literature that contains the person who made the wrong decision. The sacrifice of sin, Hester Prynne, emerges as a determined, loving and strong heroine, living her life in The Scarlett letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
She begins to transform internally. The legitimacy of the principles Hester formerly believed in is diminishing. Her thoughts are becoming more progressive than those of the Puritans. Previously, Hester felt an unbearable pain when Pearl touched the Scarlet Letter. Now she is unfazed by it. Hester recognizes that she is “standing alone in the world … hopeless of retrieving her position” in society (Hawthorne 107). She does not feel the same connection to Puritan society anymore, which frees her mind from some of the agony she has been going through. Hester’s mindset is so far ahead of her time that “the world’s law [is] no law for her mind” (Hawthorne 107). Hester does not, however, attempt to share these thoughts. It would be lethal to reveal such enlightened beliefs among Puritans; they would likely consider her a witch or an agent of the devil. Instead, Hester continues to keep to herself, slowly growing further from her
One day following Hester’s trial, Hester visits Governor Bellingham to deliver a pair of gloves she made for him and to learn whether or not the authorities will take Pearl from her. The Puritan community already acknowledges Pearl as a devil child. They strongly associate Pearl to the scarlet letter in, “that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom.... ... middle of paper ...
Hester Prynne was a young woman living in a Puritan community in the "New World." Her husband, Roger Chillingworth was said to be lost at sea, and Hester assumed his death. Upon this basis, young Hester committed a crime of adultery with her fellow Minister Arthur Dimmesdale. The result of this extra marital affair was the birth of young Pearl, an "elf-like" child. When the townspeople become aware of what Hester has done, they forced her to wear an ultimate sign of punishment, the scarlet letter. This letter "A" for adultery had to be worn on Hester's bosom at all times.
“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. . . . It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet! (Hawthorne 165)” Here the light imagery represents joy or peace and Hester’s Scarlet Letter is blocking her from having any; therefore, when Pearl creates her own Letter A, Hester tells her to quickly run into the sunshine so she does not lose her peacefulness. Throughout the novel, Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily a powerful woman; she doesn’t attempt to fight back for her identity, instead she peacefully regains it. To somewhat cope with her punishment, Hester provides care for the poor and brings them food and clothing. By end of the novel, Hester’s Letter A has become known for “Able” not “Adultery” and she has become an idolized mother to the women of the Puritan
When being questioned on the identity of her child’s father, Hester unflinchingly refuses to give him up, shouting “I will not speak!…my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one!” (47). Hester takes on the full brunt of adultery, allowing Dimmesdale to continue on with his life and frees him from the public ridicule the magistrates force upon her. She then stands on the scaffold for three hours, subject to the townspeople’s disdain and condescending remarks. However, Hester bears it all “with glazed eyed, and an air of weary indifference.” (48). Hester does not break down and cry, or wail, or beg for forgiveness, or confess who she sinned with; she stands defiantly strong in the face of the harsh Puritan law and answers to her crime. After, when Hester must put the pieces of her life back together, she continues to show her iron backbone and sheer determination by using her marvelous talent with needle work “to supply food for her thriving infant and herself.” (56). Some of her clients relish in making snide remarks and lewd commends towards Hester while she works, yet Hester never gives them the satisfaction of her reaction.
Hester wears the scarlet A on her chest, to publicly atone for her sin and receive redemption in the light of God. She mirrors this in Pearl’s attire, as she dresses her in a “crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread” (69). Hester’s sin and Pearl are both guilty acts, but were also both acts of affection. Hester dresses Pearl in a beautiful scarlet dress, in attempt to create an “analogy between the object of [Hester’s] affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture” (70). Hester tries to show that Pearl is another physical representation of redemption of the sin that the scarlet letter
Both committed adultery but have suffered in different ways. Hester’s punishment composed of public shaming on the scaffold for all to behold, but afterwards she did not suffer from guilt because she confessed her sin, unlike Dimmesdale, who did not confess, but rather let his sin become the “black secret of his soul” (170), as he hid his vile secret and became described as the “worst of sinners” (170). He leads everyone to believe of his holiness as a minister and conceals the, “Remorseful hypocrite that he was [is]” (171). Hester, a sinner too, however, does not lie about how she lives and therefore, does not suffer a great torment in her soul. While she stays healthy, people begin to see Hester’s Scarlet Letter turn into a different meaning, of able or angel, and they view her in a new light, of how she really lives. Dimmesdale however, becomes sickly and weak after “suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul” (167). He hides behind a false mask as he is described as possessing, “Brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head” (300), and perceived as the most honorable man in New England. People do not see him as truly himself, but rather who he hides
...uriosity concerning Hester’s scarlet letter. From early childhood, she displays unearthly inquisitiveness about the minister’s habit of placing his hand over his heart.” Along with all of this, Pearl, herself, seems to assert her superiority over her mother and father as far as resisting evil, in declaring, “"Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother, or he will catch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!"
When Hester has the choice to move away or stay in the community, she decides to stay in the community but in a secluded area in the forest. Hester Prynne did not flee, “On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west”(Hawthorne 67). She decided to stay but become secluded in the forest because there, one can generate a different identity or character. Rules are not exercised in the forest so she develops herself here. With Dimmesdale, he lives in town where everything is known and anything can be punished if it is necessary. Dimmesdale when living in society has to constantly fear that someone will find out his guilty secret. This puts a burden on his health from the pain he has been feeling from the guilt and weakness he has for not being able to admit his actions. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods they become happy again. For example, “It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced,