Hester Prynne
• A beautiful women and wearer of the scarlet letter, which is a patch of fabric in the shape of an “A.” It tells those in Hester’s community that she is an “adulterer.”
• She was married to Chillingworth who sent her ahead to America to live with the promise of joining her but never followed through.
• “People say,” said another, “ that Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.” (47) She had an affair with a Puritan minister named Dimmesdale who is very respected in the community, which led her to conceal his part in the affair. From the affair she gave birth to Pearl who is only evidence of her crime.
• Hester is a strong woman who endures years of shame and torment from those around her. Hester becoming an outcast from the community allows her to make observations about her community and see them for who they are and not what they perceive to be.
• “She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry: she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes these were her realities-all else had vanished.” (55)
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale
• A young man that achieved fame in England as a theologian and then immigrated to America.
• Despite his religious background and connections with the community he and Hester became an item. Although he will not confess it publicly, he is the father of her child.
• He doesn’t deal with his guilt well only leading to heart condition which Hester’s husband Roger Chillingworth takes advantage of as an act of revenge.
• Dimmesdale is an intelligent and emotional m...
... middle of paper ...
...he grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand.” (44)
Tone
• The tone in the beginning of the novel is quite spiteful however the novels progression it becomes thoughtful, and fairly straightforward. There is also a tiny amount of irony that is just thrown in there.
Narrator
• The beginning of the Scarlet Letter opens with the narrator’s account of how the book came to be. The narrator remains nameless and was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the customhouse’s attic, he discovered documents and among them was a manuscript with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A.” When the narrator lost his job he decided to write a fictional account of the events he read in the manuscript. The book about to be read is the narrator final product.
One of Hester’s greatest qualities is her unrelenting selflessness. Despite her constant mental anguish due to her sin, the constant stares and rude comments, and the
Reading the Scarlet Letter reminds me of one of my own experience. When I was a fifth grade elementary student, two of my friends and I agreed to cheat on a geography test. On the day of the test, one of my friends was caught. The teacher found the cheat sheet where it showed the handwriting of the three of us. When he was asked who the other two is, he remained silent. The teacher said that he will be punished, standing in the corner of the classroom for one straight week, and it will be lighter if only he told our name. My friend still did not say a word, so he received the punishment. What he did was similar to what Hester Prynne does. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne is portrayed as a woman with remarkable strength of character through direct and indirect characterization.
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
The guilt that now rests in Hester is overwhelming to her and is a reason for her change in personality. The secrets Hester keeps are because she is silent and hardly talks to anyone. “Various critics have interpreted her silence. as both empowering. and disempowering. Yet silence, in Hester’s case, offers a type of passive resistance to male probing”
With sin there is personal growth, and as a symbol of her sin, Hester’s scarlet “A” evokes development of her human character. The Puritan town of Boston became suspicious when Hester Prynne became pregnant despite her husband being gone. Being a heavily religious village, the townspeople punished Hester for her sin of adultery with the burden of wearing a scarlet “A” on all that she wears. Initially the...
Chillingworth saw Hester, after emerging from a great period of solitude, as a symbol of life. He regarded her as almost a savior. ...
Those who read “The Scarlet Letter” perceive Pearl as she who personifies her mother’s sinful extramarital affair. After all, Hester adorns her in the same manner as the infamous letter. Yet, near the end of the book Hawthorne revealed, through Reverend Dimmesdale’s final moments, another reason behind his characterization of Pearl:
While it is evident Dimmesdale has great rhetorical skills, Hester Prynne’s exquisite play on words is more subtle but just as important in the development of their personalities. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is artfully mastered in language, which is important as a Puritan Minister. Many people said [Dimmesdale’s preaching] affected them like the speech of an angel and the narrator practically gives him “the gift of tongues” (Milliman 1). He appeases the crowd by saying to Hester Prynne, “[see] the accountability under which I labor” which is meant to shame her for the adultery she has committed but also “secretly” confesses his equal participation in her sin (1). His audience, the people of Boston, perceives accountability as responsibility of what a minister must relay to his congregation and not as the truth of his wrong doing (1). Hester Prynne also uses a double entendre as she tells Dimmesdale to speak for her when Wilson and Bellingham try to remove Pearl from her care. The men think she is merely asking her minister for support, not asking of her lover to own up to the responsibility of their child. This cry for help reminds Dimmesdale that his “sympathies...
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter silhouettes the human experience as being intricately woven with equal parts loving bliss and guilty anguish. He describes, from different characters’ perspectives, that only through one does the other have meaning. That living is a sensation fully encountered exclusively from naked emotion which is tended toward, the liberty to articulate those truths, and solidarity. Pearl becomes the embodiment of the former, who is described from the very beginning as an unearthly “creature”, the second by Arthur Dimmesdale, slowly killed by his secret sin, and the latter by both as they discover the lawless triumph of pleasure and pain. Over the course of the novel’s
Gerber, John C. "Form and Content in The Scarlet Letter." The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Eds. Seymour Gross, Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty, and E. Hudson Long. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1988.
The Scarlet Letter is a novel revolving around a woman who committed the sin of adultery in a small Puritan town in seventeenth-century Boston. Hester Prynne, the adulteress, refuses to reveal her lover’s name, and as a result is forced to wear a large, red "A" on her bosom. This is to tell everyone of her sin. Hester is also forced to live isolated with her daughter, Pearl, who is the result of her sin. Meanwhile, the small Puritan town remains very devoted to and very proud of their young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. What they do not know is that it is Dimmesdale who is Hester’s Lover and Pearl’s father. The fact that Dimmesdale keeps his sin a secret is tearing him up, both physically and emotionally. To complicate matters even more, Hester’s old and slightly deformed husband is back. He had stayed in England for quite a while allowing Hester to settle into their new home.
Throughout many years of her life, Hester was considered an outcast by the people of her town. These repercussions are felt by her daughter, Pearl, as well, because she has no friends. They don't associate with others and some instances occurred when Puritan children would throw rocks at the two. During this time, Hester refuses to make publicly known the name of her child's father. To bear the weight of her punishment all alone made her even stronger. As her life progressed, Hester became less of an outcast in the public eye. She was gifted at embroidery and was charitable to those less fortunate than she. (Although Hester was a talented seamstress, she did not make as much money as she could have because she was not allowed to sew wedding dresses. This is obviously because she had committed sins that were supposed to be confined to the sanctity of marriage.)
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a cult classic. And with good reason. Anyone who simply believes that the title of this book just signifies that the protagonist wears a scarlet “A” on her dress in punishment of her adultery is ignorant. Obviously this paper would not be required if such were true. Instead, The Scarlet Letter is extremely ambiguous. One can argue that the scarlet letter is a character itself. I intend to flesh this out in literary, historic, and symbolic terms.
Her husband is an old, misshapen man who Hester married while still in Europe. Chillingworth sends her ahead of him to New England, and then does not follow her or correspond with her for two years. Ironically, he shows up on the day that Hester is publicly punished for her sin of adultery. This is the first of the three scaffold scenes. Hester stands alone, clutching her infant.
Throughout all the sinful things Hester Prynne has done, she still managed to obtain good qualities. Hester was an adulterer from the book The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hester was looked down upon by the citizens of Boston because of the sin she and another person committed, but no one knew who her partner in crime was because she refused to release his name. Towards the very end of the story Hester’s accomplice confessed and left Hester and Pearl feeling joyous, because now they didn’t have to keep in a secret. Hester is a trustworthy, helpful, and brave woman throughout The Scarlet Letter.