Morality And Punishment In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Morality and Punishment in The Scarlet Letter In The Scarlet Letter both Hester and Dimmesdale commit a terrible sin. They are both punished for the sin adultery but they were punished in different ways. Hester became pregnant. This was something that she could not hide so she was publicly punished. She was able to cope with this sin. Dimmesdale chose to keep it a secret and suffer alone in private. It was a lot harder for him to cope. Their punishments and how they cope are all things that lead up to the moral of the story which is be true to yourself and let others see your true self. As soon as it was known that Hester committed adultery she was thrown in jail. She was locked in the jail for months until Pearl was born. Hawthorne wrote “On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread …show more content…
Hawthorne wrote “The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated on her bosom (Hawthorne 64).” This shows that there were many people throughout the town that stared at Hester and her scarlet letter. All of the people staring at her obviously made her anxious because Hawthorne wrote “Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude - each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts - Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the lead infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once (Hawthorne 65).” Standing on the scaffold was very hard for Hester. She was trapped on the scaffold with hundreds of people staring at