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Shame In Lydia Woodyatt's 'Power Of Public Shaming'

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Shame in the Face of the Public Consequences of crimes are often unfit or unjust, but public humiliation serves as a fit consequence to any situation. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Lydia Woodyatt’s “The Power of Public Shaming, for Good and for Ill,” and Herbert Wray’s “The Two Faces of Shame,” the authors convey the effectiveness of public humiliation. Public shaming is effective by impacting a person’s character through guilt and embarrassment. Public shaming became a way of reshaping human character. Lydia Woodyatt wrote, “But, like other aversive emotions such as fear, shame is functional to the extent that it encourages goal-directed behaviour and survival” (Woodyatt). Therefore, when someone is humiliated in the eyes …show more content…

Hawthorne declares, “‘But still, methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester has, than to cover it all up in his heart” (Hawthorne 131). In other words, Hester is fortunate in Dimmesdale’s eyes because she confesses her sins to the public; Dimmesdale bears his sin upon his heart. One’s indignity provokes more of a chance to change because a hidden guilt can weigh in on them. Woodyatt writes, “Taking responsibility can then lead to self-forgiveness and resolving our feelings of shame” (Woodyatt). In other words, Hester Prynne forgives herself for all of her sin; similarly, the common learns to forgive her too. Without forgiveness, a person drowns in guilt and shame, leaving no opportunity for reconciliation.
Ignominy transforms the mind of an individual and causes the betterment of the soul. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Lydia Woodyatt’s “The Power of Public Shaming, for Good and for Ill,” and Herbert Wray’s “The Two Faces of Shame,” the authors convey how mortification works to correct a person’s mentality. The act of public shaming proves to be effective by changing the character of a person through self-condemnation and

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