Scarlet Letter Alienation Quotes

Hester Prynne's guilt is the result of her committing adultery, which has a significant effect on her life. Hester is publicly seen with the scarlet letter when she first emerges out of the cold

Dimmesdale is a symbol of dishonesty and is a self-centered individual; he knows what he must do in order to make it honorable but lacks the courage and confidence to make himself public. In the Scarlet Letter, Hester tells Dimmesdale that the ship for Europe leaves in four days. He is delighted with the matter of being able to "fulfill his public duties" and give his Election Sermon before leaving. Although from this disdainful act, he worries that the congregation may notice the features found in Pearl’s face may be identical to his

Hester and Pearl venture into the forest in order for Hester to talk with Dimmesdale in order “to make known to [him]...the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy” (125), hence, she wanted to warn Dimmesdale of Chillingworth. Pearl goes with Hester because she was was the “companion of all her mother’s expeditions”(125), regardless of how inconvenient it may be to Hester.

Pearl, devil child or human? The Scarlet Letter, is a fictional novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, it takes place in Boston in the 1800’s. It is about a woman named Hester Prynne, who is an adulturist, a clothes designer, and a mother to Pearl. Hester committed the crime of being an adulturist with Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale doesn’t take the consequences of being Pearl’s father, he is a coward, and a sinner till the end where he finally confesses.

Arthur Dimmsdale is first described as being "a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be sensibly and a vast power of restraint." (pg. 50 Hawthorne).

Hester is somewhat, alienated because she would refuse to tell the name of the other adulterer. When she is released from prison and asked to stand on the scaffold, she is asked to tell the name of the other adulterer. Hester is in love, and because of that love, she chooses to stay in the town of Boston and has to always wear the scarlet “A” on her chest, so long as she lives in Boston. She, herself says this when standing in front of the people of Boston, "I might face his agony

Hester Prynne is constantly thinking negatively about herself, thinking that because she has a visible sign of her sin that she is worse than everyone else. In this passage Hester is beginning to realize that although she may be a sinner, she is no more of a sinner than other people that do not have a reminder on their chest. Hester appears to be more of an optimistic Romantic in this passage rather than a brooding Romantic because even though some of the word usage appears to be negative it is really Hester thinking more positively about herself and her sin.

“On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him." Chapter 1, pg. 46

Both Dimmesdale and Hester committed adultery, something that is frowned upon in the Puritan community, breaking a law that is usually punished by death. In this case, Hester was humiliated and shamed in public, having to wear the letter “A”

Hester Prynne’s ability to sustain her stability and strength of spirit is the express result of her public guilt and penance. She was Arthur Dimmesdale’s partner in adultery, but she is used by Hawthorne as a complete foil to his situation. Unlike Dimmesdale, Hester is both strong and honest. Walking out of prison at the beginning of the novel, she decides that she must “sustain and carry” her burden forward “by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink with it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief” (54). Hester openly acknowledges her sin to the public, and always wears her scarlet letter A. In the forest scene, she explains to Dimmesdale that she has been truthful in all things except in revealing his part in her pregnancy. “A lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side” (133). Even Dimmesdale himself realizes that Hester’s situation is much healthier than his own when he states, “It must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart” (92-93). This life of public shame and repentance, although bitter, lonely, and difficult, helps Hester retain her true identity while Dimmesdale seems to be losing his.

Hester's punishment for this action is that she must wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her bosom.

Through Hester Prynne’s captivity of sin, as depicted by the scarlet letter on her chest, Hester is granted freedom to observe and live a life of her own choosing as well as grant that for her illegitimate child, Pearl. Hester Prynne is held physically captive by the scarlet letter which binds her to sin and the town’s public knowledge of her adultery: “Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast […] as the figure, the body, the reality of sin,” (95). Hester is obligated to be both excluded from the community, but to be ridiculed and scorned daily by it as well because of the physical depiction of captivity upon her chest. The scarlet letter, however, is what grants Hester Prynne freedom: “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness. […] The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” (237-238). Hester uses her sin to her advantage and takes her freedom to do right by the community which has thus judged her and becomes a nurse. Hester is also free to disclose at any time

Hester was publicly shamed in a scaffold in the marketplace of the colony and also has to bear a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her chest representing her sin. During this, Dimmesdale becomes ill and is treated by a physician who is Hester's

At the time when she sailed from England to the new world, Hester Prynne was married to one Roger Prynne, who was to be known later as Roger Chillingworth. The plan was for her to sail first, with Roger to follow when his affairs were in order, but for unknown reasons Roger never made it to the new world. With her spouse missing and presumed dead, as a young and beautiful woman she found herself slipping into sin which led to her pregnancy. This being a Puritan community that saw God over every law of the land, Hester's condition was interpreted an act against God and she was to be punished for it. Her punishment consisted of wearing a red letter "A" across her dress for the rest of her days. This was a signal for the townspeople to view her

The Scarlet letter sheds much light on the theme of isolation strait from the top when Hester Prynne gives birth to her daughter, Pearl, in prison. Pearl is the result of Pre-Marital Sex, and while the father is unknown at this point, it later is revealed that Arthur Dimmesdale is Pearl’s father. Forced to wear a large “A” on her chest for the rest of her days as a reminder of her sin of fornication in the Puritan Society, Hester Prynne becomes outcast by her peers. “ Measured by the Prisoner’s experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon.” Even though Hester is surrounded by people, she is all alone. She is being paraded through the streets, as an example for others to not follow her ways. Hester’s isolation encourages her to stand up and not be ashamed of her actions, but to take pride in them.