Hester Prynne: Analysis With Quotes

2 Page Analysis with Quotes Since the origin of literature, authors have turned to external means to explain the causes of guilt, shame, and conflicts. More recently, however, the authors of many notable works of literature have used Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytical approach to further analyze their character 's inner thoughts and desires to give reason for their faults and flaws. Psychoanalysis describes searching the subconscious mind to find the origin of all thoughts, behaviors, and desires. Freud believed that conflicts occur due to one’s repressed desires and inconsistencies in the id, ego, and superego. The id describes that part of one’s unconscious personality that includes primitive impulses and the repository of basic human …show more content…
In the novel, Hester Prynne serves as the manifestation of the id and the resulting the concepts of guilt and isolation, and the Puritan society in which she lives represents the superego. Hester knows the rules of the Puritan society, yet she intentionally violates a critical rule by having a child out of wedlock. Prior to the beginning of the novel, Hawthorne reveals that Hester did not love her husband and he sent her away to Boston and away from her family. After returning to the prison after completing her punishment, Roger Chillingworth seeks to encounter Hester face-to-face and she tells him she does not, nor ever did love him: “‘thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any’” (Hawthorne pg number). Since she no longer had a husband to love in Boston, she seeks to act on her repressed desires, to satisfy the primitive urges of her id, by engaging in a relationship with another man. Hawthorne insinuates that Hester did not have inherent control over her actions, so she herself should not have to undergo as extensive a punishment. Hawthorne believes that satisfying the id serves as a natural and a necessary human behavior, and should thus not be looked down upon. Instead, rather, he tries to illustrate to readers that the flaws of society need corrected before people punish others for acting on natural impulses. Hawthorne believes that sometimes people cannot control their emotions and desires, having sexual desires and passions are not something extraordinary, every person harbors such desires, it is something that can be found in the nature of every human being. Nonetheless, Hester’s id overpowered her superego, and she had an affair despite knowing its immorality in her