In sum, the main plot of the novel is this: Hester Prynne is a women living in seventeenth-century New England. She is convicted of committing adultery. At the beginning of the novel, Hester is forced to wear a scarlet letter, A, on her dress as a sign of her guilt. She steadfastly refuses to reveal the identity of her adulterous partner. However, her husband eventually realizes who her lover is and takes revenge on him. Eventually, her dying lover publicly admits his part in the adultery. Primarily the nove

The figure of the wife ideally contains the biological female, the obedient daughter (and perhaps sister), the faithful mate, the responsible mother, and the believing Christian, and harmonizes all the patterns that bestow upon her these differing identities. But if the marriage starts to founder, then the identities and role fall apart or come into conflict… For without anything or anyone necessarily having changed place or roles (in social terms), the action of adultery portends the possible breakdown of all the mediations on which society itself depends, and demonstrates the latent impossibility of participating in the interrelated patterns that comprise its structure. (Egan 26) Hawthorne’s insistence on making Hester suffer for her transgression of the female role by seeking and enjoying sex, points to the fears of “evil” women that have been held over time. What the act of adultery represents in the novel is the fact that a different kind of sex can exist. Unlike sex in the seventeenth-century marriage, which served either the purpose of procreation or simply to satisfy male passion, adultery asserts that there is pleasure in sex for women. Hester finds this pleasure and risks everything for it; this makes her the perfect symbol of the “whore.” As mentioned earlier, the primary viewpoint of the novel is that Reverend Mister Dimmesdale is not really responsible for his own sins. This is because Hester “seduced” Dimmesdale in the forest. However, an alternative, feminist viewpoint is available. This is according to Prynne who is the “activating agent” in the forest, increasing Dimmesdale’s culpability for his most serious fall…Dimmesdale’s gravest sin cannot be laid at Hester’s feet at all” (Pimple 257)

Hester Prynne becomes an angelic practitioner of good works and adviser to women, and her daughter Pearl, we are told, is now able to ‘grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever to do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.’ The return of Hester as a domestic angel, like the novel's refusal of her earthly reunion with Dimmesdale, has long struck readers as Hawthorne's failure to honor the independent spirit of his heroine, his capitulation to nineteenth-century

Some topics in this essay:
Hester Prynne, According Egan, Scarlet Letter, Mister Dimmesdale, Prynne Throughout, World Dictionary, Hester Prynne’s, According Carpenter, hester prynne, scarlet letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, hawthorne 185, refuses reveal, own integrity, public confession, committing adultery, romantic interpretation, novel hester, independent spirit,