Hester Prynne Punishment In Scarlet Letter

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Have you ever thought of someone who had to stand in front of everyone and listen to people call them names and or spit at them? In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne this happens to the main character Hester Prynne. Her sin sums up some of the themes in the novel such as: guilt, sin, and women and femininity. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester takes her punishment, the themes of guilt and sin, and the portrayal of women in her society. In New England Boston Hester Prynne commits a sin of adultery with Arthur Dimmesdale. Her punishment is she has to wear the letter "A" for the rest of her life of her bosom. "On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes …show more content…
At first, when she gets her punishment the women think she is not taking it seriously. When she decorated the letter A it was kind of a slap to the face because they gave her this punishment and she decorated it the way she wanted and she took it with good care. Right when she got her punishment the women in the families taught there kids to laugh and throw rocks at Hester and Pearl."Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them; always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester's brow (Hawthorne 244). At the end of the novel the women changed their views on Hester because she took her punishment with the most respect she could. She became the arm for support and the character of the town because of the punishment she came out of. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester takes her punishment, the themes of sin and guilt, and the portrayal of women in her society. This novel shows us that you have to be strong and show everyone that even though you get a punishment you can come out of it with your head held