Hester Prynne's Dichotomy: The Scarlet Letter

Maddie Kelsey

Ms. Zamora

English 3 P. 2

27 February 2015

I will neither give nor receive unauthorized aid.

Scarlet Letter Essay

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne is a Puritan woman who commits infidelity with a preacher, Dimmsdale, and bears a child, Pearl, as the result. In the Puritan world of colonial America (1620-1640), adultery was viewed as a sin towards the Lord and resulted in severe punishment. To punish Hester for this unlawful act, the council of leaders force her to wear a large ‘A’ on her bosom so that the community would be aware of her unthinkable sin. Ultimately, she is shunned by the community and chooses to moves to the outskirts of the town and avoids any unnecessary confrontation. By

doing this, she finds herself challenging the Puritan views and eventually embracing her fault.

Hester’s withdrawal from society provides her the freedom to grow intellectually and spiritually as an individual. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the dichotomy between Hester’s outward conformance and inner rebellion and uses the scarlet letter to support the theme of individuality.

The scarlet letter separates Hester from her puritan society and enables her to elicit sympathy from the reader by forgiving other sinners in her community. This dichotomy is used to point out the hypocritical nature of Puritanism: those who condemn Hester are condemnable themselves according to their own set of values. Although Hester becomes a living symbol of immoral behavior, her character is more forgiving than the community who condemns her. Whenever Hester is in the presence of one who sins for a personal reason, “the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb” (Hawthorne 148). Hester can relate to, and forgive others’ sins

rather than judging and condemning them. On one hand, the letter symbolizes Hesters own non-conformity to Puritan rules, but it is also seen as a symbol of forgiveness and compassion. Hawthorne continues to illustrate Hester’s outward conformity in a change to her physical appearance and states: “the attractiveness of her person had undergone a change… It was a sad transformation… her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine”(Hawthorne 150). Hester continues to obey the wishes and rules of her Puritan community despite her internal beliefs. She does so by hiding her beautiful hair with a cap in order to please the town and discontinue any further thoughts. By letting her outward beauty wither away, Hester begins to look like every other Puritan woman with the exception of the flaming scarlet red letter upon her bosom. While Hester outwardly conforms by bearing the “A, she is inwardly compassionate towards all those committing personal sin. Hawthorn ultimately uses this to support his theme of individuality despite outward conformity.
While Hester’s outward appearance is conforming, she is beginning to inwardly resist against the Puritan values.

Secretly meeting in the forest, Hester and Dimmesdale declare their love for each other. This behavior strictly defies the Puritan values to which she outwardly conforms. They secretly plan to reside in Europe to escape their current

situation.
Hawthorne states: “The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, –stern and wild ones, –and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss...” (Hawthorne 183,185). The scarlet letter was supposed to be used as a medium to punish Hester and therefore push her to conform to puritan values. Ironically, the letter instead opened her mind to the “regions where other women dared not tread”. Although she felt “shame, despair, and solitude”, these feelings gave her a sense of self worth that she never possessed prior, contrasting to its intended negative effects. Hester was alienated, publically shamed, and out casted in the community and consequentially because of these actions, she finds her individuality and frees her mind from all Puritan beliefs. Moving on in the novel, Hester continues to ponder about the scarlet letter saying,
Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence…the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But…the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn, bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, and yet with reverence too (Hawthorne 285)
From the beginning of the book, one can see the difference in representation of the Scarlet letter as it was once a symbol of sin and is now a symbol of strength and victory. Hester expresses her individuality by embracing her past and using it to her advantage. By disregarding the Puritan culture, she inwardly rebels and becomes her own symbol of self-empowerment, holding her head up high and owning up to her past.

Throughout the novel, Hester was condemned for an action that was considered to be sinful to her community. Because the Puritan society of Hester’s time was a patriarchal one; independent women, similar to her, were extremely uncommon. Committing the sin of adultery broke Hesters contact with the other people in the community, but as she in more sinned against than sinning, her individualism grows. In conclusion, although Hester outwardly conforms to society, she inwardly rebels to puritan values and by doing this, finds herself.
Work Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest Association, 1984. Print.