Dealing With Guilt In The Scarlet Letter

Often, two people can commit the same sin, but deal with it differently. Guilt can be dealt with in two ways: publicly or privately. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale both commit adultery, and both Hester and Dimmesdale deal with guilt from the sin they committed in completely different ways. Hawthorne writes about dealing with guilt publicly and privately to show the emotional and sometimes physical toll of guilt based on how people choose to deal with it. Hester is forced to deal with her guilt in public. She couldn’t hide from everyone that she was pregnant and had conceived her baby out of wedlock. Everyone in town knew that she had committed adultery and she was forced to wear a scarlet letter and “show [it] in the marketplace” as her punishment (52). This made her an outcast to everyone. She no longer had any friends because no one wanted to be associated with her. She also faced harsh scrutiny wherever she went. In order to be able to live without people judging her every day, she moved to “the outskirts of the town...not in close vicinity to any other habitation” (74). While living out in her secluded cottage, Hester started doing charity work to keep her busy. She would make clothing for the homeless as a way of distracting
Although Hester is publicly shunned and punished, she finds a way to overcome her sin and move on with her life. Even though she is reminded of her sin every day, from her daughter Pearl and her scarlet letter, she found a way to look at her letter and “it meant Able” and it demonstrated how “strong...Hester Prynne [was], with a woman’s strength” (146). Hawthorne definitely finds it more difficult to live with sins alone. He expresses that through Dimmesdale’s character. Dimmesdale's guilt gets so bad that he has to torture himself, and he ends up dying because of the guilt from his