Nathaniel Hawthorne made us all together shutter in awe, silence in respect and shout in anger with his novel The Scarlet Letter. In this literary classic, a young woman, Hester Prynne, commits adultery against an unpresented husband. Forced to live the rest of her life in shame, she wears a Scarlet Letter on her bosom. While her partner in crime, a young clergyman named Arthur Dimmesdale, stays secret and walks in freedom. This lively unfairness develops throughout the book, as Hester’s long gone husband arrives in secret. Mr. Dimmesdale commits covered self-harm in regret of his adultery with Hester. While the public shame on Hester’s breast, the Scarlet Letter, gains a new meaning on every page. And, in the darkness, the revenge of the mysterious
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From Dimmesdale’s and her own adultery, a girl was born, an elf-like child named Pearl. After Pearls birth, and the placement of the Scarlet Letter on Hester’s chest, light flees from Hester, refusing to touch her. This absence of light is even noticed by the child of the adultery, Pearl, herself: “Mother, the sunshine [light] does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom” (144). This is while Hester still hides behind her sin, aware that it is exposed by the Scarlet letter on her bosom, (which Pearl also has noticed). Throughout the book, Hester changes, from the young woman defined and restricted by her sin, to someone willing to flee it all. Later in the novel, Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale meet in the woods. Hester talks Dimmesdale into running from their problems, while Pearl plays a little away. As Hester is persuading Mr. Dimmesdale, she casts the Scarlet Letter of her breast, resulting in the pouring down on her in a beam. “All at once, with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest” (159). This sudden pillar of light falling onto Hester shows that her sin, as the Scarlet Letter, defines her being. Therefore, when she takes it off, the light that before fled her, now flows upon her. This change, from light fleeing her; to light greeting her, shows that the light is a media for symbolizing and defining Hester’s sin, shown as the Scarlet
From Dimmesdale’s and her own adultery, a girl was born, an elf-like child named Pearl. After Pearls birth, and the placement of the Scarlet Letter on Hester’s chest, light flees from Hester, refusing to touch her. This absence of light is even noticed by the child of the adultery, Pearl, herself: “Mother, the sunshine [light] does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom” (144). This is while Hester still hides behind her sin, aware that it is exposed by the Scarlet letter on her bosom, (which Pearl also has noticed). Throughout the book, Hester changes, from the young woman defined and restricted by her sin, to someone willing to flee it all. Later in the novel, Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale meet in the woods. Hester talks Dimmesdale into running from their problems, while Pearl plays a little away. As Hester is persuading Mr. Dimmesdale, she casts the Scarlet Letter of her breast, resulting in the pouring down on her in a beam. “All at once, with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest” (159). This sudden pillar of light falling onto Hester shows that her sin, as the Scarlet Letter, defines her being. Therefore, when she takes it off, the light that before fled her, now flows upon her. This change, from light fleeing her; to light greeting her, shows that the light is a media for symbolizing and defining Hester’s sin, shown as the Scarlet