Hester Prynne Isolation In Scarlet Letter

Imagine a world where everywhere you turn there are judgmental eyes looking to see the wrong that you do. This essentially causes you to feel isolated and since no one wants to be around you also have to live in confinement. This is the case for Hester Prynne, the main character in the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Because of the Puritan community that she lives in, when she commits the crime of adultery Hester is thrown into the pit of isolation. She is forced to wear a scarlet A on her chest to represent the evil inside of her, yet she does well. The only person the town condemns her to communicate with is her daughter Pearl and this is not your normal five year old. She is on multiple occasions described as an angel but she has a side that makes her …show more content…
When forced to live in isolation, and with a child that seems to know her wrongdoings at such a young age, Hester seems to change into a better person. The community says that she is predestined to go to hell because of her actions, but that does not stop her from being the best human she can possibly be under the circumstances. In The Scarlet Letter the A is much more than a punishment or symbol for adultery or ability; it represents who Hester is, causing her to suffer in ways she never expected In the beginning, the letter was a curse on Hester, meant to punish and cause her to inflict so much self-pain that floggings or physical abuse pales in comparison. Most of the pain to Hester is self-inflicted, because she decides that she will not run from the punishment no matter how gruesome. Hester is so strong willed she decides to,” work out another purity than that which she had; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom” (55). She decides that if she can hold out, and take any and all punishments