Hester Prynne: Hero Or Hero?

"The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before.... Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known of it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter (Hawthorne 1:164).” The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in 1850. Hawthorne creates a protestant society holding community values to be the standards, leaving Hester Prynne in a difficult situation. According to community values she’s a sinner, a wrongdoer, a atrocious person, however when looking at her own morals she could be considered a hero, a role model, an overall admirable person. Hester Prynne is burdened to wear the scarlet letter which stands for the deadly crime of adultery, but eventually symbolizes ambiguity. An individual's morality is not to be …show more content…
However throughout the book she struggles to come to terms with being a misfit within society and weather she is a moral person.“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!(Hawthorne)” She puts on a smile to subside how she really feels in the beginning. Although seemingly confident their hatred does hurt her deeper than led on. By the end of the book she has overcame other bitter and moved on living by her own code. “She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom (Hawthorne).” She didn’t realize how much the Scarlet Letter had held her back in life until set free from the symbol. Hester’s attitude is part of idealism defined as the attitude of a person who believes that it is possible to live according to very high standards of behavior and