Drapier's Letters

Literary Criticism of Hester Prynne as Repressed Artist in the Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne is a great woman artist who is repressed. She has a burden of shame displayed proudly on her chest. The scarlet letter shows more than the sin. It shows the isolation and disdain on a person. Hester is a being of great value in intellect and beauty being repressed by her own community. Nathanial Hawthorne brings in tragedy of a woman. It’s about the important life of this particular character and the…

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel persistently brings to light the idea of one forgiving themselves of their looming sins, and also using their good works to help lighten the load created by said sin. Conversely, religion, specifically Christianity, states that sinful humans must obtain their redemption from the only thing capable of offering true redemption, which…

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter portrays a profoundly psychologically encompassing tale of heartache and struggle in a Puritan society during the mid-nineteenth century. The characters in the novel exhibit an array of emotional and physical responses caused by the guilt, the public and self-condemnation, and the retribution of their sins. The adulterous act committed by Hester Prynne and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale became the catalyst for the resulting grief felt by all in the small…

Throughout time people are observed becoming offended by the same types of images, for the same reasons. Although societal convention and practices might change throughout time and between locations, there are clear trends in what the populous finds to be offensive. Madame X was a painting by John Singer painted in 1884. This painting features and attractive woman in a long, sultry, dress. She is posed looking away, but also stepping forward. This portrait was considered one of the most…

J.D Salinger uses color within the book Catcher in the Rye to help him establish and bring out themes appropriately. Color is a good symbolic element in books because characters often go through many physical and emotional changes that color helps represent. In the entirety of the book, Holden is symbolized by many different colors because of his actions and emotions. J.D Salinger used the colors red, green, blue and yellow throughout the book to symbolize different events that took place. For…

In the novel , The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the symbol of the letter “A” changes due to feminist ideas from adultery, to able, to angel, and finally to the independence of her daughter. Body 1 Hester was forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest to show that she had committed adultery. The scarlet letter is a sign of her sin, so that everyone is able to see and judge her for what she did. Women in this town were expected to follow strict rules and be very religious.…

The image Fringe by Rebecca Belmore and Sammy Baloji’s, Untitled from the Memoire Series are both similar and different. To begin with, Fringe is an image in which an aboriginal woman is shown with her back to the audience, with a deep red slash running from her right shoulder to her left hip. The figure in Fringe also expresses to the viewer that the woman has not been destroyed but she is indeed wounded, but she is healing. The image is a visual record of how deep is the cut of the…

The matter surrounding the virginity of women in the book Chronicles of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez conveys a message of the value of purity and the unrecognized power of the community’s women through Angela Vicario's refusal to fake her deflowering on her wedding night. The prominent irony that accompanies the town's strong stance on women’s virginity before marriage is perpetuated by the women in the town through their practice of faking virginity in order to keep the structure…

and had a child while still being married to her long, lost husband. As a punishment of this sin, Hester has to stand in front of the whole town on a scaffold while holding her baby, Pearl, as described in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne uses items such as the scaffold and the forest to symbolize different turning points in the novel as well as to describe how Puritan society was in the 1600s. The scaffold plays a huge role in the novel by symbolizing as sin and shame…

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne displays how one sin can ruin the lives of many. His purpose is to show how holding in a sin and not being truthful can haunt you and lead to your end. Hawthorne uses several rhetorical device to convey this message, including: antithesis, anaphora, and metaphor. Throughout the text, antithesis is commonly used, especially comparing life and death. For example, Dimmesdale states “Many, many poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only…