The Scarlet Letter is one of the first novels ever written to feature a strong female character as the lead role. Hester Prynne is punished for committing adultery against her ex husband Roger Dimmesdale. She is to be punished for seven, horrific, lonely years of her and her daughter, Pearl, lives. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne is punished in three different ways. One of the three types of punishments Hester is going through is imprisonment. She is arrested on a charge for adultery against her ex husband, Roger Dimmesdale.
Not only is she having to remain inside prison walls trying to pass time, she is having to take her care of her daughter, Pearl while she is an infant until roughly seven years. She is able to come out once a day with Pearl but even then, she is being publicly embarrassed by all the towns people because everybody knows what she did. During Hester’s time in prison, she speaks with her estranged husband, who has taken an assumed name (Shmoop Editorial Team). Hester wants to keep Chillingworth’s identity a secret from this “estranged husband” but at some point, it has to come out of her mouth.
Hester is wanting to also keep her secret lovers identity a secret as well. Is it Chillingworth himself or some other guy that doesn’t even get mentioned in the book? So after all that is going down at the prison, Hester decides to sew for a living to help support Pearl and herself. She sewed the letter herself to show everybody what she did and wore it on her chest everywhere she went, but that’s something that will come up later in the essay. The next type of punishment for Hester is the scaffold displayed publicly in front of everybody so that they may see her.
Whenever Hester was given her daily freedom from the prison, it seems like she would wind up at the scaffold. The scaffold is always being used and occupied by Hester and even Dimmesdale himself. There are three scenes in which the scaffold is being used by Hester and Dimmesdale, two of them coming in the first eight chapters of the book. The first scene is when Hester is standing on the scaffold with baby Pearl in her arms while the crowd, or townspeople, are ridiculing her for what her crime was.
While Hester is standing on the scaffold, a sermon is delivered to the towns people, which is out of the rdinary in my opinion. The second scaffold scene involves Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl all at night. Dimmesdale is standing on the scaffold in the middle of night and lets out this wild scream which causes Hester and Pearl to find out where exactly this strange noise came from. Since Pearl is still little, after what she is seeing with her mom, asks if the minister will come and deliver a sermon at noon the next day. As things settle down, Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl gaze into the sky and a meteor comes rolling through the sky.
An ironic point that Hawthorne describes was when the meteor forms in the shape of the letter “A”, like on Hester’s dress. The third and final scaffold scene consists of all the characters in the book. The scene comes along on Election Day for Boston’s next mayor. This could arguably be the most powerful and dramatic scene in the entire book. All in this one particular scene, Dimmesdale regains his identity, Pearl gains her humanity, Chillingworth loses his victim (Dimmesdale), and Hester loses her dreams (Cliff Notes).
Dimmesdale reveals his own scarlet letter. Thankfully, Dimmesdale escapes Chillingworth’s tortuous ways so that he may once again, live in peace. After Dimmesdale escapes, Chillingworth has nothing else to do, shrivels and dies (Cliff Notes). The last method of punishment for Hester is wearing the Letter “A” on her chest, the most obvious out of the three. Hester commits adultery against Dimmesdale and gives birth to his daughter, Pearl. The letter is given to Hester way before the book even starts.
She is to wear this everywhere she goes because it’s on her bosom (or chest). The book rolls on and in about chapter sixteen is when things start to clear up. Hester is in the forest with Pearl and she asks her mom where she got the letter from. Hester tells her that it came from, what the book is referring to, “the black man”. What’s unique about the letter is that is embroidered in her dress and surrounded by gold. Although the book never actually specifies what the letter means like word for word in a sentence, we all know what it means, adultery.
Everybody sees the letter on her chest so they know exactly what she did. Hawthorne made her last name Prynne because it could rhyme with sin and adultery is a sin according to the bible itself. In chapter sixteen, Hester and Pearl are out in the forest and Pearl grabs this eel grass and forms it in the shape of an “A” on her chest, just to be like her mom. Hester is to where this letter on her dress everywhere she goes. Everybody is making sure that she gets what she deserves for her sin, adultery.
In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne is punished in three different ways. She was punished through imprisonment, standing on the scaffold in front of the towns people, and wearing the letter “A” everywhere she went. Based on what the book provides us with, Hester committed adultery against Dimmesdale. Today’s society has differing opinions on adultery, but living with such a choice may be easier in today’s world than what it was four hundred years ago. People may find it easier to live with such a “sin” in today’s world.
