Hester Prynne Redemption In Scarlet Letter
In the novel, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hester Prynne is labeled as an adulteress throughout the Puritan community. Hester is forced by the Puritans to wear a scarlet letter A on her bosom. In an environment where religion and law are the same, Hester becomes the object of the community’s scorn. Although the Puritans punish Hester Prynne, causing her to suffer through her isolation, ironically, she achieves redemption for her sins.
The Puritans punish Hester. The fact that she had laid in the bed of a man, who is not her husband, calls for punish from the people who religion dictates life. The narrator says, “In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine … It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, … no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne’s instance… her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, …” (Hawthorne 38-39). In other words, Hester was isolated from the Puritan society. They treated her as less than a human, and often casted her off to the side in fear that she would taint their own souls as well. Hester on the other hand, although the Puritans had ridiculed her and sealed her of …show more content…
The narrator says, “Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made-up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be … looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. … people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. …. Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might”
The Puritans punish Hester. The fact that she had laid in the bed of a man, who is not her husband, calls for punish from the people who religion dictates life. The narrator says, “In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine … It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, … no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne’s instance… her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, …” (Hawthorne 38-39). In other words, Hester was isolated from the Puritan society. They treated her as less than a human, and often casted her off to the side in fear that she would taint their own souls as well. Hester on the other hand, although the Puritans had ridiculed her and sealed her of …show more content…
The narrator says, “Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made-up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be … looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. … people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. …. Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might”