Winthrop

Sin easily leads someone astray from what is morally right. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlet Letter, the adulteress Hester Prynne lives life in sin. When her sin has time to fester, Hester is often left with feelings of loneliness and resentment from everyone around her. After years of rejection and judgement from the townspeople, she loses sight of morality and strays into a moral wilderness which is a strength and a weakness. Caring for others but not oneself can lead one into…

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a provocative and beautiful novel which takes place during the 1680s in Boston. The Scarlet Letter dives deep into topics such as adultery and the darker side of magic that would be deemed taboo at the time of its original publication. Hester Prynne and her daughter, Pearl are two main characters in the novel and noticeably go through a constructive metamorphosis and growth together as a mother and daughter unit as the years go by. Hester evolves as a…

Hester is one of the main characters of the novel, and she makes a large change after the puritan community shuns her for committing adultery. Before her adultery, she had a defiant character and her own mother often had to help her control her personality. Even as she is coming out of the prison, Hawthorne describes her rejection of the town beadle by saying, “she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own…

During the Medieval time period, it is evident that women were customarily discriminated against as well as, oppressed by and sanctioned by a certain role within every society. However, the Medieval time period comes with it’s very own historical female figures that set out to renounce and bend these gender roles and social norms regardless of the consequences and social scrutiny that was laid out by the men of their time. It is palpable that religion played a major role in the development of…

The Scarlet Letter, created by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 is story about a strong young women named Hester Prynne who is being punished in front of her entire Puritan community in Massachusetts Bay Colony for committing adultery with a town minister. Because of her sins committed, she is now sentenced to wear a scarlet letter A on her bosom to mark her shame because of her choice to have a love affair with a minister named Arthur Dimmesdale. Throughout the whole story, Hester can be seen as a…

The Scarlet Letter a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the nineteen centuries the age of reason, while written about the seventeen centuries. Nathaniel Hawthorne used his perception of the age of reasoning to give his audience a new view of the seventeen centuries. Nonetheless during that time the settlers wanted to be pure under the eye of God they also wanted to have all sorts of benefits. That is not only in the novel like that but it is also implemented in the actual time period.…

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” The battle between cultural demands and Hester’s personal desire, Hester wishing for a life where her negative actions are nonexistent, suggest that author agrees with yielding to societal demands, and while he clearly states that the power of personal desire and the power of a community are both mighty, near the closure of the novel Hawthorne confesses that the power of a Puritan community can not be bested by the power of personal…

The scarlet letter was appointed to Hester as a punishment for her sin of committing adultery. It was supposed to shame her, but it also humbled her and transformed her to be more caring. By being an outcast, Hester had found her rightful place. She never begged for sympathy, but instead did good deeds. Since Hester cared for the poor and earned respect from the community, “many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was…

The veil of guilt Hawthorne’s story “The Minister’s Black Veil” symbolizes guilt. Everyone sins, therefore they have guilt. Some people do not feel guilty for their sin, unlike the Minister, he took it past “normal”. It showed physically rather than emotionally like most people. Hooper also felt it emotionally he has seen it on his face every time he looked into a mirror, Hooper would shudder when he has seen his reflection. So the people weren’t the only ones that thought that the black veil…

The Right to Judge In the book, “A Scarlet Letter”, it seems that many people were quick to judge Hester for the things they thought she did. Whether what the people thought about her were true or not, they quickly made up their minds about who they thought she was. During the time period of this book, adultery was one of the most shameful crimes that could have been committed. The town’s perception of Hester after her adultery makes it hard for her to live a life of normalcy. One of the…