Hester Prynne And Arthur Dimmesdale In The Scarlet Letter

It is believed in Puritan society that “The wages of sin is death.” In Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale are both sufferers of this harsh seclusion for committing adultery. Hester and Dimmesdale are victims of the brutal isolation from Puritan society on the foundation of their sins. Degradation and isolation confiscate Hester of her spirit and energy while guilt tears on Dimmesdale's soul more torturously for its absence of confession. The result of their sin is death while their child is "the sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track." Through Hester's exclusion from society and the tortuous nature of her shame, she is stripped of all passion and humanity. Since society acknowledges Hester's sin, she becomes an exile in

Hester realizes this in the first scaffold scene when she resists the temptation to hold Pearl in front of the scarlet A, "wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another" (65). Pearl is, in fact, the personification of that act. Even as a baby, she instinctively reaches for the scarlet letter. Pearl is also the conscience of Dimmesdale. In Chapter 3, when Hester stands with her on the scaffold, Pearl reaches out to her father, but he does not acknowledge her. She repeats her request for recognition, and in her intuitive way, she realizes what he must do so to find salvation. In the end, it is her father’s actions that save her, making her truly human and giving her human sympathies and feelings. The great sense of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would "grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it" (338). She is a combination of her mother's passion and intuitive understanding, and her father's keen mental