Secret Sin In Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Scarlet Letter, wrote the story on how sin effects everyone. In the story, Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale were adulterers and had a child, named Pearl, to reflect their sin. When Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, came to America from Europe and saw Hester, he became the leech to Dimmesdale. Hester and Dimmesdale both had a scarlet letter “A” on their chest to show their sinful ways. In the book, Hawthorne wrote, “But in their great mercy and tenderness of heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom.” Hawthorne's choices in character development, setting development, and the structure of events contributed to the central ideas of secret sin, hypocrisy, and revenge …show more content…
Hester's punishment for her sin was to stand on the scaffold, which made her feel weak and ashamed. Once Pearl got older, Hester started to know her role in Puritan Society and not be as ashamed as she was before. The book states, “Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confined to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow.” Dimmesdale went from being a well-established minister to a sick man. The book states, “The physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment that, hitherto, had always covered it even from the professional eye.” Secret sin also affected Pearl by having her parents always being stuck with the evilness of