What type of person has hester become

Nonetheless, he was initially content to marry her because he appreciated her youth and beauty. Chillingworth works as physician once he settles in the New England community. For, as our good Governor Winthrop, was made an angel this past night. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the forest, she impulsively takes off the letter and throws it away. When Pearl sees her mother without the letter, she reacts by screaming and crying until Hester puts the letter back on.

After many years, Hester returns alone and lives quietly in the same cottage she had previously occupied. She still wears the scarlet letter, and becomes a kind of wise woman who other townspeople can come to for advice. The narrator also describes a lot about his place of work, his job, his society, and himself, all of which contrast with the story he writes after he loses his job. She will not speak!

She does not reveal that Chillingworth is really her husband because she has promised him that she will not. Over the course of his illness, Reverend Dimmesdale grows emaciated, his voice sounds melancholy, and he often places his hand over his heart.

While ill, he seems haunted, depressed, and sullen. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. It's something that has been said since forever by well meaning parents and high school counselors and in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author reiterates this bit of advice to the characters as well as the readers: "Be true! Chillingworth the revenge monger was unwilling to reveal even his real name and intent, and Dimmesdale the sentimental and trusted pastor, was unable to reveal his dark secret.

That leaves Hester. In the beginning she was not only forced to be true to herself and the whole town, but to emotionally and mentally evolve. She had found her identity in the novel the day she stood on that scaffold. If given a choice, Hester would have rather worn the mark of shame than not, because the letter had transformed her into who she is.

The blood red letter may not be pretty, but it is immensely better than living a lie. By digging a little deeper into the novel, it's plain that Hester is the only one true in the entire book, both to her self and society. Hester and Hester alone had the courage to do what was right by showing who she really was. She let the events of the novel shape her like a ball of clay into the person she would become, instead of controlling events or resisting change.

Although many may say she didn't learn her lesson by wanting to run off with Dimmesdale, she had in fact learned her lesson thoroughly and by admitting her love she didn't make the same mistake a second time. The key difference between Hester and all of the other main characters in The Scarlet Letter is that she had nothing to hide.

These circumstances enabled her to get the courage to show who she really was. When Hester was forced on to the scaffold for all to see she made no effort at hiding the mark of sin on her chest with the very object produced by it.

She is true to her self and the town for making no attempt in hiding who she is, and for lack of a better metaphor, she quite literally wore her heart on her sleeve. After Hesters brief imprisonment, she gives some thought to leaving the town but decides against it.

Get Access. Powerful Essays. The Feminist Scarlet Letter. Read More. As we noted in our analysis of excerpt 1, the letter endows her with a sympathetic understanding of the failings of others, and it is that understanding that causes her neighbors to embrace her. In addition to emotional comfort, Hester offers the women who come to her a vision of a new social order that will rearrange relationships between men and women to the benefit of both. In what way is this new vision attributable to the scarlet A?

To develop that vision, Hester needed the intellectual space to critique Puritan society and to imagine another, more liberated way to live.

As we noted in our analysis of excerpt 2, the isolation the letter imposed on her gave her that space and allowed her to transcend the orthodoxy of Puritan New England. The scarlet letter makes it possible for her to achieve the emotional and intellectual depth that creates a role for herself within the Puritan community. Its function is ironic because it was intended to mark her as one to be shunned and exiled. As we have seen in The Scarlet Letter , seventeenth-century Puritan New England enforced private morality through public shaming.

We might think that such punishment is a thing of the past, but, in fact, public shaming has been making a comeback in recent years. In , for example, a judge in Cleveland, Ohio, sentenced a man who threatened two police officers to stand on a street corner several hours a day with a sign around his neck that not only apologized to the policemen but also proclaimed the man to be an idiot. Judges who have doled out such punishments argue that they are an efficient and inexpensive way to deal with low-level crime.

Critics maintain that they do not address the causes of criminal behavior. Do you think public shaming should become a standard punishment for lawbreakers in our society? Write an essay defending your position. National Humanities Center 7 T. Alexander Drive, P. Phone: Fax: nationalhumanitiescenter. Click here for standards and skills for this lesson. Background Questions What kind of text are we dealing with? When was it written?

Who wrote it? For what audience was it intended? For what purpose was it written? Close Reading Questions Activity: Vocabulary Learn definitions by exploring how words are used in context. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts.

She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they? Or, must she receive those intimations — so obscure , yet so distinct — as truth?

In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed , as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes, the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels.

Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint!

Again, a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life.

O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere? Close Reading Questions 8. Standing alone in the world, — alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected, — alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable, — she cast away the fragment of a broken chain. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before.