Hester’s Changimg Character

Before her public penitence in the scaffold, Hester is shown as a strong-willed and impetuous young woman. In this same scene, she shows a sense of irony and disdain. This is seen in the elaborated scarlet letter A on her bosom, which "seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity" (51). Later on, she is said to be "the image of Divine Maternity." With the baby in her arms, she looks angelic; yet she's standing there because of sin, and the child is the result of it. Fu

rthermore, the fact that she has an affair also suggests that she once had an extremely passionate nature.

Hester takes up, once again, control of her own identity, and in doing so, she becomes an example to others. By the novel's end, Hester has become a protofeminist figure to the Puritan community. The shame attached to the scarlet letter is long gone. She returns to her home, where had been her so-called sin and penitence. "But (...) the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence, too" (238). Even the townspeople come to her and recognize that her punishment was unfair. What Hester undergoes is more similar to reconciliation than penitence. She creates a life in which her punishment and the scarlet letter become a symbol of knowledge gained rather than failure or condemnation. She has learned how to live with dignity and pride again. It is ironic, too,

Some topics in this essay:
Hester's Love, Scarlet Letter, Divine Maternity, Hester Prynne, , scarlet letter, throughout novel, hester prynne, hester undergoes,