More handpicked essays just for you.
The scarlet letter feminist
The letter A the scarlet letterThe symbolism
What is the symbolic meaning of the title "The Scarlet Letter"
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Scarlet Letter Research Paper
Is Hester right or wrong for committing adultery? Leaving her husband and to be humiliated? Hester was very bad and what will that do to her? She committed adultery and Hester was an object of the story. “The Scarlet Letter” and book was written in 1850 and Nathaniel Hawthorne is the author of the book. Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to tell the readers that adultery is very bad and you should never to that to anyone you should marry. Hester had a lot of strengths in the story and weaknesses during the story her strengths were trying to change the person that she is in the story and wants forgiveness and another thing is she wants to be a good mother for Pearl and tell her everything and not lie to her. Her weaknesses were committing adultery, lying, doing things she should not have done. They said that
She only did it to take care of her father that was dying. And the movie was a musical and took place probably a hundred years ago. The simulates of them they both struggled through time. The lady from ‘Les miserable’ was trying to have money and Hester wanted to get away from home, and her husband. In real life my friend I had committed adultery. So did my brother but they regretted it ever since he wished he never did it and wanted forgiveness. The difference between Hester and that lady from Les Miserable is they both have there own outlook on things their one point of view. Hester was full of guilt and they punished her and the reverend (old man) had a plan to revenge Roger Chillingsworth and the life style is stressed deeply. I guess you could say the same thing for the other lady. They both also suffered and they were both punished and had trouble being accepted in the
The punishments that the characters must undergo are worsened by the fact that they do not tell the whole truth. Hester has been found guilty of adultery but when she is asked to tell whom it was that she committed the sin with she refuses saying "Never.
They both committed adultery, which then became the root of all of the issues within their respective stories. How this was known to be wrong was the commandment given by Jesus Christ in the Bible, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” This makes their sins completely equal to each other. The punishment inflicted upon them was different however. Hester was forced to wear a scarlet letter A and bear her shame and John was executed. Hester suffers from the intense shame and ridicule as it is stated, “She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.” It is remarkable to know that both characters felt a physical weight of their guilt. And it’s rather profound when John confesses his sin. He said. “I have known her, sir. I have known her.” All the while he was trembling and weeping, showing how much he truly feels his sin. Whether or not it is true, is it society’s place to judge individuals based on rumor and or hearsay and carry out
In the beginning of the story, Hester is faced with serving the temporary part of her sentence, standing on the scaffold in front of the whole town. "It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue" (48). The citizens of the town had gathered to criticize Hester as she stood on the scaffold, and many of the town’s women were discussing the simplicity of Hester’s sentence, since the usual punishment for committing adultery is the death penalty. Although she had to put up with the remarks about her for three hours while she was standing on the scaffold, the ridicule followed for many years to come. Hester and her daughter were thought upon as sinners long after Hester had served her sentence.
Hester is facing it all, from public scorn to loneliness. Hester becomes an outcast from everyone in a New England colony with her daughter, Pearl. Author, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes of the eventful life of an adulteress in an eighteenth century colony in this fictional classic. Hester Prynne is a young married woman who moved from England to a colony in Massachusetts. While waiting for her husband to arrive, Hester has an affair with a man named Dimmesdale and is put into prison. Hester, even though she is caught in her sin, shows great strength of character; Hester chooses to protect those that she cares about even though it causes her personal suffering. As a result of her strength, Hester causes great change in others around her.
Nathaniel Hawthorne paints Hester Prynne as a person, a person that made mistakes, but who worked tirelessly to atone for them. Hawthorne’s use of of positive diction and profound imagery also set Hester’s tone as a woman scorned, but
...t with the sin in a completely different way not only because she was a different person, but because there was no additional weight of a secret that went along with the sin. Instead of trying to figure out her identity, the way Arthur had, and clinging onto the belief that what she had done was not a sin, she allowed herself to surrender and believe what the rest of society believed at that time. The people of Boston saw adultery as a sin, and there was no way that any good or love could come out of it. When Arthur's character is tested, he struggles to find the answer but is unable to, and literally dies trying. Hester, on the other hand, does not give such a noble attempt, but rather chooses, whether consciously or not, to go along with society’s views of adultery.
Unknowingly, Hester Prynne sailed from Europe to the Americas betrayed and tricked. Waiting for the arrival of her husband, Roger Chillingworth, she lost hope in him ever arriving or even still being alive. After enduring two years of tortured loneliness and lost love, Hester wished to feel the warmth of love again. She tried to fill this emptiness by making love with the Reverend Dimmesdale. When her child Pearl was born, Hester's adulterous sin was discovered and she was cast out from their society and required to wear an embroidered “A” on her bosom in punishment. Hester felt guilt for her sin the rest of her life and sought repentance and absolution until the time she died. Hester never had true love for Chillingworth, but was tricked into marriage. She later told him this while speaking in her jail cell saying to him, “... thou knowest that I was frank with thee, I felt no love, nor feigned any” (Hawthorne, page #). Hester was betrayed, tricked and allowed herself to become caught up in the evil desires of another. She then allowed herself to be trapped by sin, cau...
Hester’s real sin, which she admits in her first interview with Chillingsworth, was to marry the old man. Neither loved each other. Hawthorne appeared to hint that Hester married him because of social and economic necessity; he appeared to have married her because he though she would bring a little life into his existence. The matter appeared doomed in Hawthorne’s eyes, and unnatural. Hester doomed herself when she married Chillingsworth, certified that doom when she committed adultery, and finalized that doom when she concealed Chillingsworth’s identity from Dimmesdale. The effects these events had were the separation from her society, her lover, her husband, her child, and her own best self. She did it all in the name of sanctity, for true love, and she paid the price. Dimmesdale was changed by the affair in a way that “ [he] grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet had a [tone] of decay.';
Hester Prynne had been tainted with sin once she had committed the crimme of adultry. Mistress Prynne has "raised a great scandal" in the town of Boston.(chapter 3) Hester left to the new world before her husband had. Her husband has not returneed in the past two years, and she had a daughter of three months. Meaning Hester has sinned by cheating on her husband and having anothers man's child. This goes against the Puritians ways of being holy which means Hester is not only a sinner but a criminal as well. Prynned had commited one of the seven deadly sins which is lust. She is put onto a platform so society may look down at her for commiting a sin. However Hester doesnt view herself as the worst sinner in the town of Boston but, views Chillingsworth as the worst sinner of all. In chapter 15 Hester states how Chillingsworth has "done me worse wrong than I have done him." Hester believes all of her memories with Chillingsworth have been her ugliest remembrances. She views him as a monster for marrying her and thinking that they could be happy since she was young and he was a old scholar. hester no longer see's her old husband but a deformed monster in his place. She disregards any happy memories she ever had with and believes he has deeply wronged her which makes him the biggest sinner of all for ruinnig Hesters life. Hester tries to seek justice by escaping to the o...
Hester Prynne committed a crime so severe that it changed her life into coils of torment and defeat. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester is publicly recognized as an adulteress and expelled from society. Alongside the theme of isolation, the scarlet letter, or symbol of sin, is meant to shame Hester but instead transforms her from a woman of ordinary living into a stronger person.
"...pain is in itself an evil; and indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning." (Chase 127) In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne presents a very clear view of his stand on morality, which he carefully cultivates through the course of the story. The moral, which is "Be true!" applies equally well to all of the characters in the novel. Though his view does seem to stand as true through the length of the story, it does not, unfortunately, transfer as smoothly to our lives today. In essence it is a hedonistic view to take, which requires a slight stretch as to his interpretation as to how evil, and important, an individual's pain is unto itself. By looking at each of the main characters in turn, it may be determined exactly what his view was on this subject, and how it may be applied to life in our society today.
Hester’s role in the story is described as sleeping with a priest and got accused of committing adultery and got punished by having to wear a scarlet letter “A” on the breast of her gown (Hawthorne 71). Hester Prynne’s punishment is to go to prison and then with her child, Pearl, go and stand out on the platform in front of everybody wearing her scarlet letter on the breast of her gown (Howells). Hester...
In the first several chapters of The Scarlet Letter we can understand Hester Prynne to be a good but misunderstood soul. Labeled as an adulteress, she is the victim of the Puritan lifestyle. A person with many positive traits, she is treated as a terrible person for one unholy act. Far from the evil woman that some of her neighbors see, Hester is a strong, proud and loyal person who resists the worst influences of her community.
Hester was very trustworthy, she kept in secrets that could have possibly changed her and her daughter
Adultery has existed since the beginning of mankind. Being independent has become irrelevant while staying loyal to a partner has almost been distinguished, in which defeats the purpose of Puritan beliefs during the Puritan society time. In the 1850ś a book takes the sin of Adultery and turns it into something relatively heavenly. In the novel, ¨Scarlet Letter”, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates how the actions of a single character, Hester Prynne, can change the symbol ¨A” to adultery, ability, angel, and pearl being the living ¨A¨ due to her actions.