Isolation In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Even today in society, people are alienated from society because of various reasons, including being a minority, race, beliefs, and values, as occurs in The Scarlet Letter. A character’s alienation reveals the surrounding society’s assumptions or moral values in The Scarlet Letter and this concept is understood through Hester Prynne’s alienation from society. The clear contrast between Puritan society and Hester’s wilderness seclusion is evident throughout the novel, and her isolation is comparable to being excluded from the cafeteria and sitting in the bathroom to eat one’s lunch. In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester is isolated from society, because she committed adultery, put simply. This occurred after she married Roger Chillingworth, and he sent her to America, saying that he would follow shortly after. However, after waiting for two years, she had an affair with Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister in Boston, and soon after, gave birth to Pearl. Because she had an affair while waiting for her husband to arrive, who was assumed to be lost at sea, but really captured by Native Americans, she was charged with adultery. What made this situation worse,

First of all, the scarlet letter embellished on her bosom, defines Hester’s isolation from society visually and symbolically. At first, although it stands for ‘adulteress’, it eventually is turned into an ornament of good meaning. Because she helps the less fortunate by doing needlework and giving them food, although they treat her bitterly, she, in a sense, atones for her sin through these actions. The ‘A’ begins to stand for ‘able’, because of how much she gave back to the community. One of the largest and most important points from her isolation is her growing feminism, especially in regard to how the women are treated by the men in the Puritan