Change In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

What is change? Is change always for the better or does it end up hurting people? In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores how one grievous action can change how a person is viewed by society, how that person feels inside, or even how he examines the rest of the world. This change is not, however constant throughout this novel, the changes are in fact set on by Pearl. Whenever any character is near Pearl is when he or she changes because Pearl, herself, is a character of contradiction and change. Pearl is both happy and worry-free in a society that views her as the offspring of something truly awful. Thus Pearl causes her mother to change from a heretic and outsider to an essential and respected member of society, …show more content…
In the beginning of the novel Hester Prynne is considered to be the biggest sinner in her small puritan town. She has a three month old child, however “in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentleman, Master Prynne” (Hawthorne 94). Thus she must have committed adultery. In response the citizens of Boston decide to punish her, but instead of executing her right on the spot they decide, since they are not quite that vulgar, to only have her stand at the gallows for three hours and then banish her from the town forever. Also, and most important of all, Hester was sentenced to “wear a mark of shame upon her bosom” for the rest of her life (95). Such a sentence is a terrible punishment for anyone to bear. Furthermore, but Hester truly believes she is at fault and the sentence issued is a fair and just one, thus she is hurt all the more. However, as time goes on Hester comes to terms with her sin and the letter that would forever brand her because of it this is mostly due to the fact that her daughter Pearl is in Hester’s mind a being of pure good and could not be derived from evil. Towards the end of the novel she leaves Boston only to return and when she does “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of …show more content…
In the beginning of the novel Mr. Chillingworth is “a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books”(89). However, upon learning of Hester’s adultery, he is deeply saddened and eventually consumed by his need for revenge against the man who took advantage of his wife. In fact, he is so obsessed with finding this culprit he leaves everything that made him a great scholar and becomes worse than the evil which he so despises. Pearl’s growing relationship with Dimmesdale further infuriats Chillingsworth because he believes that sort of relationship should only occur between him and any of Hester’s children. When Dimesdale finds out his personal physician used to be Hester husband he realizes “now there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed and which grew still the more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him”(191). The transformation from scholarly to obsessive was a very easy line for Mr. Chillingworth to cross because even though at first he was only interested in Hester’s suitor’s identity, he soon became obsessed with torturing him with the perceived evil, which the suitor had committed. Chillingworth dies shortly after Dimmesdale and inferring that an obsessed person can lose all sense of self and instead