The Scarlet Letter follows Hester Prynne, a woman whose husband had stayed behind while she traveled to Boston. While in Boston she has an affair with the towns minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and gives birth to her daughter Pearl. This introduces the main plot of the novel. Hester is forced to wear a letter A on her gown and becomes ostracized by the townspeople for committing adultery. She struggles to live as everybody in the town dislikes her. She also is having a hard time keeping her daughters real father a secret. He meets with Hester who promises not to tell anyone who he really is. He is asked to take care of the now sick Arthur Dimmesdale, the man he suspects to be his wife’s lover. Roger, wanting revenge, decides to torment Arthur. …show more content…
She is an outcast forced to live on the outskirts of the town. She is an independent woman who cares for her daughter Pearl alone. Hester is a round and complex character whose change throughout the story is well discussed by the narrator. She starts out as an outcast struggling to live with her daughter. She is bitter towards the town that shamed and ostracized her. She also feels a great burden from the scarlet letter she is forced to wear, yet she is too proud to let others know. As the story progresses, she becomes stronger and more compassionate; she eventually redeems herself. She learns to view herself in a more modest manner. Hester’s main conflict is external. She had an affair and was accused of committing adultery by the town. She struggles to live with herself and does not know what her true identity is. “But in lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the worlds scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too (Hawthorne 225).” At the end of the novel, Hester finally learns to accept herself for what she really is. She no longer views the scarlet letter as a burden of shame. Instead she feels empowered by it as it gave her the experiences she needed to grow and become a better person. Hester Prynne was faced …show more content…
He is an antagonist of the story. He is deeply plagued by his consciousness about his immoral affair with Hester. He feels guilty because he is keeping the truth from his congregation and letting Hester suffer alone. He is a round character who is able to change in the end. He decides to redeem himself by confessing to the crowd in his last sermon. However he only does this near the end of his life. During most of the time he spent living, he was a hypocrite and acted deceitfully. His conflict is within himself; it is internal. He feels guilty for having an affair with Hester and keeping it a secret. As a result, he punishes himself physically, going to great lengths to try and rid himself of guilt. He lives his life hiding the truth from others, while watching Hester struggle to come to terms with the truth. The height of the hypocrisy in the situation comes when Dimmesdale tells Hester, "Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him-yea, compel him, as it were-to add hypocrisy to sin (Hawthorne 58)?" Arthur says this when he wants Hester to reveal his name as the adulterer. He cannot bring it upon himself to confess and instead wants
This shows how ungrateful and judgemental her society is. All things considered, through these many skills Hester accomplishes, the meaning of the scarlet letter, embroidered on her chest, changes in meaning from ‘adulterer’ to ‘able.’ This eventually leads to women looking up to her and going to her for advice. As a result, “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too” (Hawthorne 257). Hester’s experiences living with society, as they looked down upon her, eventually changes the way society looks at people and the choices they make.
He takes up the alias “Roger Chillingworth” to disguise any connection he has to Hester and to aid in his plan of revenge he has for Pearl’s father. Reverend John Wilson and the minister of her church, Arthur Dimmesdale, question Hester of the father’s identity, but she refuses to name her lover. As Pearl grows up, her behavior becomes more unruly; it is used as a motive for
1. A. Hester Prynne is a very bold and daring person. She is one that accepts her sin and doesn’t let it necessarily take over her life. She has a very wild, desperate and defiant soul and has a flightingness of her temper and her actions she is some times very capable at keeping in her emotions. She is one that tends to disobey society, she dresses pearl up on a scarlet dress with gold designs to show that she is also the scarlet letter. B. Arthur Dimmesdale is very ashamed of his sin that he committed but he does not want the people to know that he committed adultery
Hester Prynne was suffering the most in the book “The Scarlet Letter” that Mr.Dimmesdale couldn’t relate because the strong independent women had to suffer through punishments, promises, and responsibilities. Hester Prynne is a beautiful young lady as described in “The Scarlet Letter”, but what a puritan village made her suffer through changed the women she was before the scarlet letter was attached to her chest: “Her sex, her youth, and the richness of her beauty came back from what men call the irretrievable past” (Hawthorne 321). She was once known to be a gem of god until the puritans punished her in harsh ways. Because of the Scarlet she lost everything almost instantly such as the village putting her in her own world where she felt
This made Hester view her daughter Pearl as evil because she was born out of wedlock and the Puritans of the community made sure Hester knew the shame of Pearl’s origin. This also made Hester a stronger person because she realized that this was a lesson she could teach to Pearl so that she would not repeat what her mother did. When Hester came to this realization, she became a better woman for herself and
The Scarlet Letter shows the church unaccepting of Hester and Pearl because of adultery. Finally, in The Scarlet Letter Hester realizes that all of her struggles are finally coming to ease. After the shamming has stopped, Hawthorne says, “Hester strong, calm, steadfast enduring spirit almost sank, at last on beholding this dark and grim countenance of inevitable doom…” (Hawthorne 241). In the end of The Scarlet Letter Hester has moved on along with the townspeople and she is finally being accepted in society.
She is a beautiful, young woman who has sinned, but is forgiven. Hawthorne portrays Hester as "divine maternity" and she can do no wrong. Not only Hester, but also the physical scarlet letter, a sign of shame, is shown as a beautiful, gold and colorful piece which
The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, was published in 1850. It focuses on the life of the main protagonist, Hester Prynne, living in a Puritan community. Both Yamin Wang and Maria Stromberg offer insight into The Scarlet Letter and analyze multiple aspects of the story.. Both Wang and Stromberg claim that there is an underlying ideology hidden in the texts of the book. Wang approaches the story from a feminist approach and states that Hester represents the feminism in the Puritan community, and she analyzes the Puritan’s outlook on women in their society.
Everyone in the community saw Hester at her weakest point, therefore her character and abilities could only grow from there. The power of the Scarlet Letter has provided Hester with a new found freedom for
Hester dislikes the fact that the “scarlet letter” may be perceived as a sign of weakness, and instead learns to be empowered by the “A”. Ultimately, Hester actively made a positive impact on the community and proceeds to raise pearl, her child, without any assistance from Roger or Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester exemplifies her independence through her ability to maintain financial stability while raising her daughter and working. Hester eventually morphs the public's view of the scarlet letter into something positive. The narrator says, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification.
Nonetheless, it will be hard; Hester is steadfast to make her daughter Pearl, have a life, just like any other ordinary child. Hester is a remarkable, but peculiar character,
The narrator states, "Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not to speak" (Hawthorne 138). Nevertheless, his moral development continuously stays at Stage 1 "Obedience and Punishment Orientation" because yet again his actions are selfish. He is more considerate about his
She is brave and does not deny that she sinned. She realizes that she needs to let go of the misery that the scarlet letter has brought upon her. Rather than letting it define her, Hester uses the letter. She helps out in the community. It does not define who she is.
The townspeople “[began] to look upon the scarlet letter as a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” This quote exemplifies how sin is not a death sentence for Hester. Through hard work and charity it allowed the rigid Puritan society to see her as something different, and as someone who would not let society define who she was. Hester, thus, was not only able to change herself, but also the image in which society viewed her by working hard to benefit the public. Likewise, the scarlet letter which was supposed to represent sin was instead “fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.”
Throughout the novel, Hester is fraught by the Puritan society and her suffering is an effect of how evil society is. Hester continues to believe that the crime she committed was not wrong and she should not be punished for it. Her desire to protect and love Dimmesdale, turn her into a stronger person and become a heroine in the book. Although society still views her as a “naughty baggage” (Hawthorne 73) and is punished for her wrongdoing, Hester never thought to take revenge on them, yet she gives everything she has to the unfortunate and leaves herself with very little. She continues to stay positive no matter what society has for her.