Change In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'

Improved Essays
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” –Socrates. This quotes talks about that when your trying to change, you don’t want to waster all your time on changing the past, but start putting effort onto starting to change your future. This quote has to do with Hester because, even though Hester is being humiliated and judged because of what she did, she still makes the best out of situations. For example, despite the that A that she has on her chest, she still goes out and gives food to the poor, and knits clothes for them. Three ways in which Hester has changed, is when she takes off the scarlet letter, her personality has changed, and when Hester learns what she did was wrong and accepts what she had done. The first way in which Hester changes is when she takes off the scarlet letter. Hester takes off the scarlet letter when she and Dimmesdale are in the forest. They talk about leaving with Pearl. When they’re talking about it Hester says, “Let us not look back”. So once she said that she removes the scarlet letter and gets tossed into a stream. Hester says let us not look back and then removes the …show more content…
Hester was being more active in the community and helping people out. Hester has been a bit more carrying since Pearl’s birth. She brings food to the poor, she helps the sick, and she knits the poor clothing, or anyone who needs clothing. Each day people are beginning to interpret that “A” that she has on her chest no longer as an “adulterer” but as “able”. Hester has become stronger since she got out of prison with her three month old baby. Pearl is what keeps Hester alive, she is what she wakes up to each morning. Hester has become less helpful to people. Hester is the one who is really killing Dimmesdale, but not letting him tell Chillingworth that he is Hester’s lover. Every day that goes by is more guilt that Dimmesdale has to take

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Hester has removed the scarlet letter from her clothing, “...she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves.” (192). After removing the scarlet letter, she feels as if she is a new person, even though the town now knows about Dimmesdale being the father of Pearl. Hester has learned how to find the good in a bad situation. She realizes that making one bad mistake does not make her a bad person.…

    • 1087 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hester became someone who was looked at with “reverence”, meaning that she was deeply respected as well as “sorrowed over”. Despite how she started out, people came to respect her for putting up with the letter for so long, and perhaps pitied her loss of the man she truly loved, as well as the life she once knew. In the Scarlet Letter, not only did the symbol change, but Hester changed as…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Pearl refuses because this is all she knows of her and since her mother wears the a on her chest and always had she doesn't understand why it's not there and doesn't know what it means because she's a child. Pearl seems to see the letter on her mother's chest as a metaphorical lack of sunshine on her mother's life. She thinks that all grown women wear a scarlet letter and once she sees others do not she doesn't want to accept the symbol as being something to do with sin. She thinks it's a part of her mother, so she wants Hester to put it back on. Hester has worn this letter A on her chest to stand for the crime she committed and once in the beginning she's ashamed to wear it because who wants to wear something around all the time to let people know you've committed adultery?…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The other argument is that public humiliation is a good and it's changed Hester mentally other than physically. ‘’Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom; Mine burns in secret. (Hawthorne 188). Arthur Dimmesdale says this to Hester and thinks she has changed because she acted different from when she stranded on the scaffold. This quote also shows how Dimmesdale thinks if he shows everyone what's on his chest they would feel better about the secret he has kept.…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Her fancy threading of the scarlet letter is an act of defiance, showing that she’s a bold person. Even though the occupants of the town expected her to come out of her prison to be “dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud” (Hawthorne 51), she had astonished everyone with her spirit, which she expresses through her attitude of her punishment. Hawthorne’s syntactic descriptions of people’s views of Hester creates an image of an empowering woman who appeared strong and confident despite having been stained with a defiling reputation. Hester’s beauty seems to parallel with her strength and humbleness, which does not break with the constant battering and demeaning words of her…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Scarlet Letter Analysis Hawthorne wrote the Scarlett Letter to convey an important moral “Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred” (Hawthorne 231). Some characters in the novel battled with themselves and hid their sin from the world.…

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Only years later when Dimmesdale is not in good health due to the malicious intent of Roger Chillingworth does she attempt to leave with Dimmesdale and Pearl. It was not for her happiness which caused the need to abandon Massachusetts but Dimmesdale 's health, and although the aspects of leaving with the other two bring her spirit back, Hester 's happiness was never the priority. Furthermore after Dimmesdale passed away and Hester left with pearl, she still came back. Hester continued to wear the Scarlet Letter " And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hester reduced the amount of prejudice that her town formerly had for adulterers. In the beginning of the novel, the goodwives of the town, specifically the older ones, were disgusted by Hester and what she had done. Some of them believed that her punishment was not nearly enough, “this woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die” (49). Years later, respectable people of the town were wearing clothes “wrought by her sinful hands” (80). When Dimmesdale revealed his own version of the scarlet letter on his chest, the town realized that the blame can not be put on the woman alone, “we are all sinners alike” (254).…

    • 1554 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hester is only to have brief respite, however, the town is demanding that she wears the Scarlet “A”. With the scarlet letter and her hair back in place, “her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a grey shadow seemed to fall across her” (156). While her punishment changes her physical appearance, it has a far more profound effect on her character. You meet Hester on the scaffold with Pearl in her arms, beginning her punishment.…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hester slowly begins to lose all hint of her persona as the story continues, that's unfortunate. the bright persona of Hester changed into exceeded onto Pearl as the story continues, even though Pearl seems to be greater intellectually gifted than her mom. This complete quote is describing the scarlet letter on her chest and the way it has taken the whole thing away from her. this example of characterization describes Hester’s withering character thoroughly, and it’s all due to the scarlet ‘A’.…

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hester has worked for seven long, hard years to regain her prosecutors’ approval. Hester has regained the trust of the townspeople but that is only part of her path to full forgiveness, to gain forgiveness Hester must move on from her sin. After Dimmesdale’s death near the end of the story, Hester moves away with Pearl. At the inauguration ceremony for the new Governor, Hester thinks to herself; “‘Look you last on the scarlet letter and its wearer!’ . . . ‘Yet, a little while, and she will be beyond your reach!’”…

    • 1157 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Hester demonstrates her strength by her ability to bear the shame of confessing her sin and wearing the scarlet letter, the way she deals with her…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the novel, the Letter had shaped Hester’s identity as it became “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread” and strengthened her “by years of hard and solemn trial” (177, 154). However, because of her charitable work and distinct personality, Hester is able to mold the meaning of the Scarlet Letter; at one point it “it meant Able” and became viewed upon “with awe, yet reverence too” (151, 219). As she transformed the meaning of the Letter, Hester also come to accept it. After Dimmesdale’s death and her brief disappearance, Hester returns to her cottage on “her own free will” as she recognizes that “here had been her sin; here, here sorrow and here was yet to be her penitence” (219). After her return, “people brought all their sorrows and perplexities” to Hester and “besought her council” (219).…

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    During the seventeenth century adultery was considered an immense sin in Boston and those who committed adultery were to be punished. In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne we are introduced to a young woman who has committed adultery and now has to wear a scarlet letter upon her bosom, throughout the novel we get to see the development of her and the people she is closest to change. In the novel there are four main characters Hester Prynne, Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. We see the characteristics of these four unfold, as Hester becomes resilient even after all the ignominy she has gone through , Pearl turns out satisfactorily in the end even though many believed she was a child of a demon, Dimmesdale…

    • 1606 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout The Scarlet Letter, the common townspeople’s’ perception of main character, Hester Prynne, evolve in tandem to her perception of them and makes Hester’s feelings evident in the eyes of the reader. Additionally, this evolution happens in three intricate steps. Near half-through the novel, the town’s perception of Hester is quite strident. This was during a time when Hester was surely heart-broken and upset to see that everyone “with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished.”…

    • 1099 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays