There are a few different ways that scarlet letter can be interpreted. Hester has been able to reconnect to society and get through her troubled past. She has become a woman who devotes her time to helping the less fortunate and the needy gaining her more respect. Many people are starting to interpret the scarlet letter as “that is meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.” (Hawthorne, 113). This is saying a lot considering the Puritan people are very strict with sinners. When she was first given the letter, they told her that she would only ever be able to be forgiven by God. Now the people see her and the letter in a completely different way. Although Hester is being very kind to others, she feels different about the letter than the others do. …show more content…
She has changed from this very graceful woman who had a very beautiful personality into a woman who has become hardened. She is forever changed by the isolation she was put in and hatred the town had for her. She visited with Chillingworth and they begin to have a conversation about her new image. Chillingworth mentions that the townspeople are thinking about letting her remove the scarlet letter. Hester replies by saying, “Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature” (Hawthorne, 122). She reveals her feelings about herself in the Puritan society. She believes no amount of human forgiveness can take the scarlet letter away. Only God can forgive her and take away the letter. She is still holding herself accountable for her sin rather than the rest of the Puritan
However, after many years of performing good deeds for the community the scarlet letter, and by extension Hester, was met with less hostility. Her influence is so great that many citizens start to believe the scarlet letter “...[now] meant Able…”(Hawthorne
Many tend to focus on either the consequences of sins, or the causes of them. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist Hester Prynne is widely considered as the most controversial character in the piece. D.H. Lawrence’s criticism “On the Scarlet Letter” displays his views of how Hester Prynne is depicted, as well as how she should have been depicted, in the novel. Lawrence utilizes the literary devices of choppy syntax, biblical allusions, and satirical tone to emphasize his opinions on the characterization of Hester Prynne.
Thus the letter serves as a gateway into other people's secret crimes, and it acts as a focal point for the shame of the entire community. The letter thus can be interpreted as a symbol of shame shared by everyone rather than by Hester alone. The treatment of Hester worsens after she is displayed on the scaffolding. Her friends abandon her, and she must live in an isolated cottage on the outskirts of town. Even though Hester spends time helping to make clothes for the poor, they treat her badly in spite of her good intentions.
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
Yet, despite the heavy burden she has to bear, she acts more civil than most of the characters do in the entirety of “The Scarlet Letter”. Instead of her guilt and shame tearing her down, she chose to rise above it as seen in this quote; “she [Hester] repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will.” (50 Hawthorne) No doubt at this time, Hester’s heart is filled with pain and worry. After all, these were people she has known for some time and perhaps has even befriended.
We are all sinners, no matter how hard we try to hide our faults, they always seem to come back, one way or another. Written in the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us Hester Prynne and how one sin can change her life completely. Hester Prynne changes a great deal throughout The Scarlet Letter. Through the view of the Puritans, Hester is an intense sinner; she has gone against the Puritan way of life committing the highest act of sin, adultery. For committing such a sinful act, Hester must wear the scarlet letter while also having to bear stares from those that gossip about her.
The change led to the society change in their view of Hester. She had “so much power to do, and power to sympathie,--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by it original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength” (Hawthorne 146). The ‘A’ on her chest morphs its meaning to represent being able. Robinson, held his tongue for two years, but he could not, like Hester keep quiet any longer.
Although the community originally knew Hester as a disgrace, the town’s opinion of her changed over time as she began to do work for the poor and needy. After this shift in the town’s view of Hester, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet [letter] by its original signification” (111). Instead of Hester’s scarlet letter serving as a reminder of her scandalous sin, her peers “ had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as a token . . . of [Hester’s] many good deeds” (111). She became known for her charity and generosity, which caused the civilians to overlook her sinful behavior.
Although she is looked down upon by the society in the beginning of the novel, she is transformed into a symbol of strength, something typically reserved for men, towards the end of the novel. “The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength” (Hawthorne 146). Through her suffering, Hester had become an inspiring symbol of strength for the community.
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.”
In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)
Hester Prynne is the very embodiment of feminism because of her refusal to adhere to the societal norms, her independence in thought, and how the view of the society around her changes through the novel. One of the main reasons why Hester Prynne is an important and progressive feminist character in The Scarlet Letter is her refusal to follow societal norms or to be put down by her peers. A primary example of her refusal to be put down by her peers is when Hester brandishes her
Receiving the scarlet letter changed every aspect of Hester’s life. Especially at the start of the story, the letter symbolized the solitude and great suffering Hester faced just because of a letter placed on her bosom. The “A” also depicted how no one viewed Hester the same way as before her peccant actions. “…she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance” (Hawthorne 109). The pejorative community Hester lived in never saw Hester as the beautiful, young woman she was, but now, as a horrible fiend.
Adultery, Able, Angel. The Scarlet Letter is about a woman who can take a symbol that means one thing and changes it to mean the complete opposite. In this novel a woman named Hester Prynne had committed a sin of adultery and is forced to wear the letter “A” on her chest in remembrance of her sin. The story takes place in the mid 17th century in a Puritan town of Boston. The rest of the story is based upon trying to find out who the father of Hester 's baby is.