Hester is made to publicly acknowledge her sin. A scarlet letter “A” is permanently placed on her dress to symbolize her adultery, and she is made to stand on the scaffold with her baby for several hours of public humiliation. This is her punishment, the heaviest that man can afflict upon her. Hester is to stand as a warning to others tempted as she was (Hawthorne 13). Hester becomes a soci

Man had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God as a direct consequence of the sin which man had thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven.(Hawthorne 14).

In complete contrast to Hester, Dimmesdale doesn’t publicly confess his sin, and it eats at him bit by bit. “He is not suspected by any of the townspeople. Even old Mrs. Hibbins, whose scent for moral carrion was as keen as that of a modern society magazine, can barely credit her own conviction. “What mortal imagination could conceive it!”, “ Many a church member saw I walking behind the music, who has danced in the same measure with me, when somebody was the fiddler! That but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister!”(Hawthorne 6). He is known as a very educated and pious man, loved and respected by all. This makes it harder for him to publicly confess his guilt. His health begins to fail, and his body is seized by nervousness. “Dimmesdale cares more for his social reputation than for anything else. His self respect, his peace, his love, his soul,--all may go: only let his reputation remain! And yet it is the selfsame false reputation that daily causes him the keenest anguish of all.”(Hawthorne 7). He hides behind his social position, and his profession. Not growing wiser or stronger, but paler and paler day after day. But he did not have the audacity to reveal his sin. His despair wore him down, because he had violated the dignity of his position, and had broken a law that his education had made more prominent than any other law in his soul. Yet he had neither moral courage nor moral honesty, with all his impressive piety to come forth and assert their sins and their mutual obligations. (Loring 2). He hints at his sinfulness to his congregatio

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