In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, a sinner, is mistreated by the Puritan society. Hester Prynne is publicly humiliated as a punishment for her transgression against one of the Ten Commandments, adultery. Hester is force to stand in front of the town on scaffold which symbolizes “The Day of Judgement” for three hours as the crowd tries to bread her down with criticism and shaming words. After her release, “the scene was not without a mixture of awe, such a

Hawthorne rejected the idea of Puritanism. “Hawthorne cannot accept their theology of sin, or inhumanity towards sinners, or refrain, for all his tolerance, from underlining the grimly repressive and joyless nature of their world”(Lee 24).

Fear was the motivation that drove the Puritans to exclude Hester Prynne from society. This society was afraid that it would fall apart “in a land where iniquity is searched out and punished”(68) if they did not seek out those individuals that were immoral in their eyes. Their fear and wickedness drove them in their quest to do what they felt was right. Everyone could be glad it was not he or she(Smith 350).

The public humiliation is not Hester’s only punishment. Hester must wear the letter “A” embroidered on everything she wears as a reminder to everyone that she has committed adultery. Thrown out of town and is no longer a community member. The society made her face all these tests and suffer all these punishments because she was an insult to them; she was an individual and that scared them(Buitenhuis 30): “These ‘perfect’ Puritans threw her out of their lives because she was not a drone to their ways, but a distinctive person”(Buitenhuis 10). Punished already by living outside her community, the people were still not satisfied with this punishment and chose to pass their negativity on to their offspring. “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”(83). The mothers of the children in the community would point her out and tell their childern not to be like her. They would use her as an example of the consequences of being and individual and going against society’s rules. “Children to young to comprehend wherefore this women so be shut out from the sphere of human charities…coming forth along the pathway that lead town ward; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious fear”(85).

s much always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame of a fellow creature”(63). The society seemed to delight in her punishment, thinking they had cleansed the town, thereby leaving a “pure” so

Some topics in this essay:
Letter Hawthorne, Day Judgement”, Hester Prynne, , Hawthorne Puritan, Scarlet Letter, Ten Commandments, scarlet letter, puritan society, hester prynne, letter “a”, letter hawthorne, scarlet letter hawthorne, community individuals test, sewing skills, community people, chance hester, rejected idea, society hester, individuals test limits,