Hester vs Eve

“I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul” (Jean- Paul Sartre). The concept of original sin is the sin of disobedience committed by Adam and Eve, traditionally viewed as transmitted in its essential guilt and consequent penalties from Adam as head of the human race to all unredeemed humanity. Hawthorne creates Hester as an Eve-like figure to reinforce the concept of original sin and to converse the detrimental effects of guilt and sin on the human psyche. “In the view of the Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike” (Hawthorne 310). Hawthorn derives this statement from his belief of original sin. He models Hester Prynne after Eve or the fallen women. Eve’s sin results her from being banished from paradise, falling, suffering, but finally attaining salvation, just like Hester does throughout the novel. Hester moves to live in a cottage “on the outskirts of the town, not in close vicinity to any other habitation” (Hawthorne 81). By removing herself from society it allow her to contemplate human nature. She speculates “the doctrines of Puritanism is actually a quest for her value and position in a self-esteemed and patriarchy society” (Zhou Jing-Hang 18). Through Hester’s question human nature and society she becomes a “typical questing heroine, just like Eve, the most well known heroine of the questing kind in the western literature” (18). Hester’s sin alienates her from the rest of the Puritan community, allowing her to grow” intellectually and contemplatively. She speculates on human nature, social organization and large moral questions” (18). Hester’s sin manifests itself in many different ways transforming her.
Hester’s guilt slowly manifests itself into her physical being. She goes from being the most beautiful and most envied woman in all of the Puritan society to her hair never shining in the sunlight, she became man like. Once Hester