Scarlet Letter Passage Analysis Essay

In this passage from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne begins her life out of prison after being labelled as an adulterer. Accordingly, the author uses the narrator to illustrate Hester’s tormented psyche through the use of contrasts, ambiguity, and erratic syntax. Inviting the reader into

Hester’s thought process does not necessarily provide the certainty that she or the reader may long for.

The passage begins with Hester coming forth into the sunshine and out from the prison she had spent so much time in. But rather than Hester feeling happy to be free, she is distraught, something that is apparent through the descriptors Hawthorne uses. Her heart is,” sick and morbid” (2); her nerves are,

“supported by an unnatural tension” (5-6);

For example, “The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame” (14-16). To toil onward upon one’s accumulating years with drab misery sounds a whole lot more like living in prison than the life of a free person suggesting that from Hester’s point of view, she is just walking out of one jail cell and into another. Another example of irony is that in context of her adultery, it is as if, “over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester’s contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized…” (40-41) The mention of “the tempter of souls” is an allusion to

Satan and thus depicts an image of Hester living in hell. That being said, Hester still decides to stay where she committed her crime,” …so, perchance the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul…” These two ideas are inherently connected to Hester’s trauma but depict two different states,