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Hester Prynne In The Scarlet Letter

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The novel, The scarlet letter by Hawthorne is written during the Romantic era and shows a huge impact of Puritanism in the private lives of the character. Unlike any other novel, readers are not introduced to a rake in his process to win both the damsel and her fortune. The main character figure of the novel is a lady who dared to go against the norms of the society and is being punished for it. However towards the end of the novel she changes the meaning of the letter “A” to respect rather than a stigma. Hester Prynne is the protagonist as she stands against the Puritan laws. Hester Prynne commits the crime of adultery and she alone bears the punishment for it, refusing to name the father of the child and at the end earns a place and name or herself in the society.
Hester Prynne is first presented as a sinner, a reprobate guilty of committing adultery. In her Puritan society, this was considered an aggression towards god and all his biblical teachings. So the societal view and opinion towards her was rather aggressive. She was considered vulgar for she had engaged in coitus whilst bound to another man in wedlock. These superficial descriptions of Hester are unfair and spiteful because it is not her follies that reflect who she is. With the whole of …show more content…

The Puritans were by far the most prudish and pedantic society in existence. “Puritan’s tolerance to sins against the Christian doctrine was very miniscule if any” (Weldon, n.d). On an apparent notice, Hester’s punishment was lenient but a closer inspection shows that the mental and emotional trauma of her punishment was crueler than initial anticipation. The magistrates wanted her and her sin to exist within their society hoping that this would bring unfathomable guilt to the male perpetrator and ultimately lead to him being brought to justice. So in hindsight, her punishment was more or less altered by this secret she hid within

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