Drapier's Letters

The Scarlet Letter tells the tale of a woman named Hester Prynne, who has an illegitimate child, Pearl, with one of Boston’s well-known ministers, Arthur Dimmesdale. Set in Puritan New England in the 1700s, the environment encircles the Puritan beliefs as well as the Puritan government. Caught by the town when her pregnancy starts to show, Hester is sentenced to prison time and public humiliation for her adultery. As she raises Pearl she encounters her eccentric behavior and wild actions in…

The justification behind the concept of punishment takes many different forms. In Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the primary rationale behind the Puritans’ punishment of Hester Prynne, the accused adulteress, is retributive, in proportional to the nature of the transgression. The Puritans intend their punishment of ostracism and forced visibility of the letter “A” to match Hester’s crime of adultery by shaming her with a sense of damnation. However, ironically this punishment brings an…

is to be perceived is distorted. In Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, a woman named Hester Prynne commits adultery with a minister named Arthur Dimmesdale and only she is publicly scrutinized. Although this seems advantageous for Dimmesdale at first, this held in guilt destroys him and is reminded of his sin whenever he sees Hester with the scarlet ‘A”. The fallacies of human morality become the centerpiece of The Scarlet Letter and showcase the battle between one 's true feelings and the…

hypocrisy , it is still something that tells a lot about that person. In The Scarlet Letter, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale allows his weakness to society to overpower his ability to avoid falling into the abyss of hypocrisy when he is faced with the predicament of dealing with his sin of committing adultery alongside Hester Prynne. Dimmesdale embodies the concept of hypocrisy on many occasions throughout The Scarlet Letter, representing how Puritan ideals as a whole were…

Nonconformity in The Scarlet Letter In the Romantic period, philosophers, artists, and authors emphasized the idea of individualism. They thought that it was better for a person to be unique as opposed to being a conformist to society. Romanticists also encouraged the support of new ideas as opposed to traditional ideas. The author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a Romantic author, and he used these Romantic ideals in his works. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses Hester and…

Each and every character throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, progressed in their own, unique way; although, Pearl developed the most in delightful and corrupt manners. During this entire novel, Hawthorne presents both good and evil, which certainly varies within the characters over time. This is explained in Hugo McPherson’s analysis of The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne’s rejection of the Calvinist view of human nature, however, does not lead him to espouse the cause of man’s…

Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne helps the reader understand the actions of the Townspeople through giving an understanding of the time period and the setting. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s piece The Scarlet Letter narrates a story that is based in the New England Colonies during the mid-17th century. During this time the puritans were running from religious prosecution and came to the New World to further reform The Church of England. The Town is a setting in The Scarlet Letter that is…

this time of self-imposed hiding and transition, the caterpillar awakens and transforms into this beautiful butterfly. A change is a like a restart at something, it can change you for the better, just like it did for Hester Prynne. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us the past can define people, but it’s time that can change us into pleasant things. Hester will show us in the beginning of the novel how she was symbolized as the…

Chillingworth is one of the darker characters in this story. He is devoured by his insatiability and childishness which consider him to be how he is. He thinks about nothing other than himself, and in spite of the fact that he was once hitched to Hester, he couldn 't care less about her enough to share a large portion of the fault for the introduction of Pearl. The quote says that the power was "sufficient to draw in the full quality of his resources," implying that it was sufficient to devour…

todays world are driven by revenge and lust, in the same way that Roger Chillingworth’s sins were driven in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel. Because of his demanding and vengeful ways, Roger Chillingworth is one of the greatest sinners in The Scarlet Letter. Through his forceful ways, Roger Chillingworth sinned in marrying Hester Prynne. Hester admits that, from the beginning, she knew she did not love him. However they were still married, if not out of love, out of force. Hester says to…