Hester's Child Should Not Be Punished By Punishment

Throughout history, committing a crime is followed by punishments. In the book The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a young woman by the name of Hester Prynne has a child which represents the evidence for her sin. Her husband and herself decide to move to Boston. She arrived first and awaited for him to appear. Months went by and everyone including Hester Prynne had come to conclusion that her husband had passed away on the way to their new homeland. Hester and her husband's marriage was not out of love, but more of an arranged get-together. It was finally put together that Hester's infant did not belong to her husband, but another man. She had fallen in love with another individual. In the age of the puritans, this is referred to as a sin. Eventually, her husband arrived to Boston undead. By both biblical and civil law, the father of Hester Prynne's child should be punished by death, however, this is wrong because love should not be punished and no harmful crimes were committed. …show more content…
In Anna Quindlen's opinion piece states, "But if my daughter had been clubbed to death… I would with greatest pleasure kill him myself." This would be considered a reasonable reason to put another to death. A purposely planned out murder is different from falling in love with a married women. First off, she assumed her husband was gone and she didn’t love him. Killing the man she fell in love with would make no sense. In the book, the pastor says, "speak out the name!" Hester replies with, "Never" (Hawthorne 64). She loves this man because she does not want to put him at risk of death so she refuses to speak his