Scarlet Letter Dichotomy

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1850s, takes place in the Massachusetts in the seventeenth century. During this time, the land is dominated by a Puritan society and ruled by their strict beliefs. Hester Prynne, a woman originally from England, travels to Boston alone. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, is expected to follow, but manages to be captured on the sea by Indians. He comes back after two years to find his wife on display before the town. She is found guilty for committing adultery and forced to wear a scarlet letter on her breast as punishment. Hester refuses to name her partner in the sin, Arthur Dimmesdale, one of the town’s ministers. This romantic novel follows Roger, who vows to find the adulterer and seek revenge on him, and Hester and her daughter, Pearl, who live in isolation from the Puritanical community. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne weaves aspects of nature into the plot to provide outstanding imagery and symbolism. He effectively contrasts the rigid dichotomy between the harshness of the Puritan …show more content…
The rose-bush is described as being “on the threshold of our narrative,” (34) and presages Hester Prynne being treated kindly. Hawthorne’s “tale of human frailty and sorrow” follows Hester throughout the story from beginning to end. At this time in the novel, Hester is unjustly hated and isolated by the Puritans. The scarlet letter on her bosom symbolizes her sin and perpetuates the town’s hatred against her. By the end of The Scarlet Letter, it “ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too,” (179). Humans, like Hester Prynne, naturally possess positive and negative qualities. The Puritan society rejects the negative ones, but nature’s “fragrance and fragile beauty,” prevails over time and accepts