Permanently Warping Effects Of Sin In The Scarlet Letter

“Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, - stern and wild ones, - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (136). Hester Prynne, who is the main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, is the subject of this quote. She is sent ahead by her husband in England to settle in the colonies. He fails to arrive and following a few years of his absence, Hester falls into an adulterous relationship and conceives a child. This is a turning point in her life. The effects of her sin perpetuate throughout her life and in all aspects of her life. Her life is transformed from one of “antique gentility” (42) when Hester’s sin affects her social image and her emotional state. Hester’s change is an example of the permanently warping effects that a sinner’s offense has on him.

While standing on the scaffold in the first chapter, we learn through the flashbacks Hester has that in past she led a life of gentility and happiness. “Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarmi

Hester’s life is dramatically changed in the way she is treated by society. The general knowledge of her sin made her subject to public scrutiny every day. She was generally scorned and ostracized by the townsfolk when business took her into the city.

Hester’s sin also has a dramatic effect on her emotional state and her thoughts. When Hester firsts walks forth from the prison, she begins her life outwardly wearing her shame in the form of the scarlet letter and she “must sustain… or sink beneath it” (55).

Hester’s outlook for the future appears bleak. She has no hope of happiness for herself or her child. She is right to a certain extent. Her life following her sin is a hard one, and the difficulty takes its toll on her. “All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up… and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had she possessed any friends or companions to be repelled by it” (112). The trials and tribulations her sin has brought upon her leave their mark on her mentally and physically. “Much of the marble coldness of Hester’s impression was to be attributed to the circumstances that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought” (112). She is no longer the emotional, passionate young woman she was, but has grown and matured in the time since her sin. Hester assumes a freedom of speculation, “then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic” (113) but would be considered scandalous for a Puritan woman living in New England. “Our forefathers, had they known of it, would have held it to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter” (113). However, Hester Prynne “ha

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