The Role Of Hester Prynne In The Scarlett Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the twenty-first century, feminism is viewed as a very controversial subject, ranging from not knowing what feminism truly is, to thinking that men are truly superior. This miss-knowledge of the subject could be from many factors, such as societal misinterpretation, but is likely because many are not exposed to true feminist personalities found in classical writing. These personalities exist quite often, but very few as powerful as Hester Prynne, a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester was a young woman who moved to America in the seventeenth century to create a new life for herself. While waiting for her husband she committed the “great sin” of adultery. She was discovered of this great sin when she became pregnant …show more content…
Hester was found to be a very stubborn woman, as she refused to tell the men in charge the information they requested in order to punish the father of the child. While being questioned by Dimmesdale, Hester was asked who the father was, but she refused to give a name. She was even told that she would be able to remove the letter from her blouse but she still would not give a name for the father. While Hester was required to survive through the harsh punishment given to those who commit great sin Dimmesdale, the town minister, who was later revealed to be the father or their daughter Pearl, repented his sins and believed that he should be punished as much as, if not more than Hester. He spent his nights locked in his house angry at himself for not confessing his sins as well as wishing he had taken the equal punishment with Hester when her sin was revealed. Eventually he publicly reveals his sin himself saying “I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood ” (Hawthorne 201). Dimmesdale knew his sin was a crime, and tortured himself for it. While confessing his sins to the public, he opened his shirt to reveal a scarlet A, which, though unseen, was as significant to him as Hester’s scarlet letter. This prominent character created another example of a true feminist, as he believed that the punishment between them should be equal as they both committed the same crime. Dimmesdale is considered a modern feminist because he wants equality between the punishments for both genders. This need for equality between the genders punishment was not often found in puritan society, and Hawthorne creating this character in his work shows how prominent his views of feminism were in his