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Hester’s severance from society causes her to think beyond the Puritan mindset, greatly changing her opinions on the world.
At the time of her ignominy, Hester is connected enough to Puritan society to suffer the entirety of her punishment. Although Hester maintains her strong demeanor, she greatly feels the burden of her sin. She has been raised to believe that her sin, adultery, is one of the worst actions possible for a woman. Without a supportive husband or public lover, Hester is utterly alone. She and her daughter, Pearl, are ridiculed by the entire town the second they exit the prison. Public embarrassment is a very common form of punishment in Puritan communities. It was effective as well, as Hester “continually, and in a thousand other ways, [felt] the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal” (Hawthorne 59). Hester’s
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punishment is designed to be agonizing for any member of society. She is physically detached from society by moving out of town with Pearl. Whenever she goes into public, Hester is tormented by everyone that crosses her path. Not even can she find solace at church; when she goes, she is made a mockery of. Yet she feels she cannot leave. This town “had been the scene of her guilt, and … should be the scene of her earthly punishment” (Hawthorne 56). Hester connects with the Puritan ideals and believes her sin is so terrible that she needs to try to worsen her suffering. Her guilt would be even worse if she were to move elsewhere, where no one knows of her evil. Therefore, she stays and is ostracized. Hester’s isolation forces her to be alone with her thoughts, causing her to contemplate life.
She begins to transform internally. The legitimacy of the principles Hester formerly believed in is diminishing. Her thoughts are becoming more progressive than those of the Puritans. Previously, Hester felt an unbearable pain when Pearl touched the Scarlet Letter. Now she is unfazed by it. Hester recognizes that she is “standing alone in the world … hopeless of retrieving her position” in society (Hawthorne 107). She does not feel the same connection to Puritan society anymore, which frees her mind from some of the agony she has been going through. Hester’s mindset is so far ahead of her time that “the world’s law [is] no law for her mind” (Hawthorne 107). Hester does not, however, attempt to share these thoughts. It would be lethal to reveal such enlightened beliefs among Puritans; they would likely consider her a witch or an agent of the devil. Instead, Hester continues to keep to herself, slowly growing further from her
community. With her new intellectual ideas, Hester feels she has grown out of Puritan society. Although she still wears her badge of shame, Hester is no longer as distressed by it. She is now impervious to the ridicule from the townspeople. The revelation of her sin allowed her to suffer, and then move on from it stronger than before. Contrastingly, Dimmesdale is in absolute agony until the day he dies. He never has the chance to reflect on his sin. Instead, he suppresses his pain, rendering him “powerless to go” (Hawthorne 127). Dimmesdale never loses contact with Puritan society, therefore does not have the capability to move past it. Hester, however, has ventured far beyond the Puritan limit with “the Scarlet Letter [as] her passport into regions where other women dared not tread” (Hawthorne 128). Her stigma allowed her to experience a place unknown to those in her society. The adversities in Hester’s life “had been her teachers … and had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (Hawthorne 128) by Puritan standards. Hester’s enlightened outlook and ability to move past her sins would be seen as an abomination, which is why she feels the need to physically move on. While in the forest with Dimmesdale, she removes the A off of her clothes and throws it away. The symbolic significance of this is incredible. Hester quite literally disposes of her stigma, embodying her desire to move on. The atypical adversities of her situation cause Hester to detach intellectually from Puritan society. Through pain and misery, Hester becomes a unique, progressive woman.
The most obvious subject of punishment that Hester had to cope with is wearing the scarlet letter. "By the point which drew all eyes and, as it were, transfigured the wearer. . . was the scarlet letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom" (51-52). Hester wrought the scarlet letter before she stood on the scaffold. When Pearl asks her why she wears the letter she replies that she wears it for its gold thread. Hester wears the letter for many years, even after the people in the community care anymore, so that she will be fully forgiven for her sin.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s well known novel, The Scarlet Letter, extensive diction and intense imagery are used to portray the overall tone of the characters. In particular, Hester Prynne, the wearer of the Scarlet Letter, receives plentiful positive characterization throughout the novel. Hester’s character most notably develops through the town’s peoples ever-changing views on the scarlet letter, the copious mentions of her bravery, and her ability to take care of herself, Pearl, and others, even when she reaches the point where most would give up and wallow in their suffering.
Although Hester and Pearl are isolated for a while after their punishment (85), the Puritan society’s view of her changes in chapter 13. In chapter 13, Hester is shown to have become a servant of the community, and, rather than scorning her, the community praises her as holy (134). Even the symbol that embodies her punishment, the scarlet letter A, transforms into a symbol of her holiness, being interpreted by the people as meaning “Able” (134). In chapter 24, the story’s conclusion, Hester mentors young women, furthering the idea that she brings redemption from her sin by using her lessons to help others
Despite the public shame she has experienced and many years of wearing the intimation of her adulterous sin, Hester Prynne remains proud and displays her letter boldly. Anyone that did not possess quite her level of emotional stamina and pride would have surely decreased in character and may possibly even lose all hope in life, but Hester proves to be very different. Instead of reacting to the humiliation and remarks of the commons in a hostile manner, Hester instead ignores these things and focuses her mind more toward memories of years past, as she did while standing on the scaffold for the first time. Hawthorne thus uses her young, spriteful daughter, Pearl, to represent the emotions that Hester either cannot, or chooses not to, display openly to others. In chapter 6, Pearl is described as showing “a love of mischief and a disrespect for authority,” which frequently reminded Hester of her own sin of passion. Similarly, in Pearl’s games of make-believe, she never creates friends. She creates only enemies – Puritans whom she pretends to destroy. It is a rare occurrence that a child so young in age should think such thoughts of morbidity, thus strengthening the evidence of Hawthorne’s use of Pearl as a display of Hester’s thoughts – thoughts of retaliating against the Puritans for ...
As Hester wears the scarlet letter, the reader can feel how much of an outcast Hester becomes. When walking through town, “…she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet letter and passed on” (Hawthorne, 127).She believes that she is not worthy of the towns acknowledgments and chooses to ignore them. The guilt that now rests in Hester is overwhelming to her and is a reason of her change in personality.
In Chapter 13, “Another View of Hester,” Hawthorne opens a window through which we glimpse Hester’s internal conflict. She has long been contemplating the “dark question” (144.25) of whether or not “existence [is] worth accepting” (144.26), and she has concluded that it is not. The image of our heroine here is troubling as it seems she has lost all semblance of hope in the possibility of triumph over the scorn and humiliation the public has inflicted on her. Her depression is so strong that she wonders if would be better “to send Pearl at once to Heaven” (145.14). Furthermore, she has not only lost hope for her own life and optimism for her daughter’s future, but she has also lost faith in society in general, especially regarding the place of women. She feels the whole system is beyond repair and that the only way to mend the cracks in the foundation is to have the entire structure “torn down and built anew” (144.32-33). Only after such a drastic reordering takes place can women take a more fair position in the world. This middle portion of Hester’s story represents a definitive low-point; her misery here certainly rivals and likely surpasses that which she felt while standing in front her peers on the scaffold in the beginning
As Hester makes her way to the platform, a visual image is brought forth that illustrates “ She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, …… because its existence,therefore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon (Hawthorne 54).” Pearl has been exposed to her surroundings that are now far more than being held in a cell as a hostage. The puritan society is waiting for the two sinners to reveal themselves and express the type of crime they have committed not only against marriage but against god himself. Hester has exposed a delineate biography expressing how the people must see Pearl in clear pristine eyes with no connection to her sin for the idea that, Pearl is her given fruit by God , however she must not receive nor take in any of the humiliation nor the disgrace that has been given by the puritan people to Hester. She has transmitted and exposed the sentiment of emotion and affection which is something that Hester will never be able to do for the conviction of her sin. Pearl must imbibe and comprehend the mental conclusion that her world will be considered and compared to her mother's actions as civilian but she must break the spell and perfect her soul to reflect that her mother's sin has nothing to do with her ability to reach or accomplish the unexpected. Therefore, the violation or sin made by Hester Prynne should not apply to pearl for hallucination that she must project herself as a person that is honorable and dominant without having her mother's sin dictate her life. As a result, in the last moment of the paperback Pearl has become a virtue of loyalty to the upper class as a person to follow thy footsteps in exceeding her
When Hester Prynne becomes pregnant without her husband, she is severely punished by having to endure public humiliation and shame for her adulterous actions. Hester is forced to wear a scarlet “A”on her breast for the rest of her life. (1.) She lives as an outcast. At first, Hester displays a defiant attitude by boldly march from prison towards the pillory. However, as time goes on, the public humiliation of her sin weighs heavily upon her soul. “An accustomed eye had likewise it’s own aguish to inflict. It’s cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always th...
The narrator notes her change in morals and beliefs: “She had wandered… much amiss” (180). This passage describes Hester’s state of mind and morals after seven years with the scarlet letter. Compared to Dimmesdale, Hester is much wilder, yet also much better adjusted to the weight of her guilt. She has accepted what happened and uses that acknowledgment to shape her views. She has become stronger, more untamed, and more removed from society. Not only does society reject her, but her crime forces her to question morals and dive into her wilder nature. Religion and law no longer work as simple guidelines for her life. Her act is considered a sin, but out of it she got freedom, love, and Pearl. After being cast out, she now looks at society and its rules—the things most people conform to—from a more negative, outsider perspective. The letter gives her a chance to be independent and find what she believes in as opposed to what she's been told to believe in. She rejects society through both these rebellious views, and also through her actions upon coming back to the community. She helps women in the community by offering support and counselling. In such a male dominated society, this is an important step both towards feminism and away from the
Hester's sin is that her passion and love were of more importance to her than the Puritan moral code, but she learns the error of her ways and slowly regains the adoration of the community. For instance, 'What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast thou forgotten it?';(Ch.17: 179). Hester fully acknowledges her guilt and displays it with pride to the world. This was obvious by the way she displays the scarlet letter with elaborate designs showing that she is proud. Furthermore, she does not want to live a life of lies anymore when she states 'forgive me! In all things else, I have striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity save when thy good--the life--they fame--were put in question! Then I consented a deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten the other side!';(Ch.17: 177). Hester learns from her sin, and grows strong, a direct result from her punishment. The scarlet letter 'A' was as if a blessing to Hester changing her into an honest person with good virtues. Fittingly, she chooses to stay in Boston with Pearl although Hawthorne admits, ';…that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame';(Ch.5: 73). She is trying to stay and face her consequences instead of running in the other direction. Most people would leave a town where they are looked upon as trash the scum of society. Finally, the colonists come to think of the scarlet letter as '…the cross on a nun's bosom';(Ch.
Public shaming was a common punishment for criminals in the 19th century, however, it is not as common today. Public shaming is not an effective way of punishment for many reasons. Although the offender may have done something wrong, shaming them publicly can harm them in many ways. According to Dana Canedy, guilt is more humiliating than shame, which is what the culprit will feel after what they have done. Another thing that public shaming can result in the wrongdoers privacy being violated. In the article, “Florida 'Scarlet Letter' Law Is Repealed by Gov. Bush”, the man who stole the money was forced to put a sign outside of his house, admitting that he had stolen the money. This violates his privacy because he feels insecure every time someone
Hester's social life is virtually eliminated as a result of her shameful history. She is treated so poorly that often preachers will stop in the street and start to deliver a lecture as she walks by. Hester also begins to hate children, who unconsciously realize there is something different about her and thus start to follow her with "shrill cries" through the city streets.
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.)
When one analyzes the punishment inflicted upon her, it may seem harsh and cruel, especially for a Puritan society. It seems that Hawthorne agrees with this as well. Throughout the novel, it seems apparent that Hawthorne feels that the punishment Hester received was harsh and self-degrading. When one commits a sin, they should understand their mistake, receive their blame, and receive a "slap on the wrist." However, the punishment Hester received was far worse emotionally. Wearing the letter made Hester the talk-about of the town. When she walked through the marketplace, she received scornful looks, as if society was rejecting her for her wrongdoing. Hester was now living on the outskirts of town, isolated from neighbors and trying to communicate with her daughter Pearl.
Within the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a puritan woman is sentenced by local authorities to undergo public shaming for committing what was seen as a grave crime. During puritanical times, public humiliation was often used as retribution for criminals and delinquents to repent the crime they committed and to send a message to the surrounding community; moreover, such a punishment is still carried out by judges to this day. Today public humiliation may not take on the identical forms, techniques, and methods that were used in the past, but it still exists and plays a huge role in modern society. Publicly humiliating a person is an uncivilized practice for the present-day courts and federal system to participate in, especially