... crowd want a harsher judgment impose upon her, while the town beadle proclaims the virtue of a society in which sin was exposed and punished. Hester Prune has sinned, and society places the scarlet letter on her breast as a reminder of this transgression. Hester Prune confesses to adultery in the marketplace. The scaffold as a place for confession is civilized and controlled by the townspeople. Ironically, it is ... an adulteress, she is forced to endure ignominy by her peers and is doomed to have the scarlet letter A bound to her heart. When she standing on the scaffold as punishment f...

• Word Count: 2453
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... a single mistake. The novel, first published in 1850, reveals the strict and severe ways of Puritan life that ruled New England two hundred years prior. At the same time, The Scarlet Letter, tells the story of one woman's struggle to find meaning in living after disobeying the highly regarded word of God. When dialogue is used in the novel, which is quite frequently, Hawthorne conveys ... Man" when Hibbins says, "Will thou [Pearl] ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father?" The mistress is even "present" in chapter 12 when Dimmesdale appears on the scaffold. Although Hawthorne wr...

• Word Count: 1296
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... in natural scenes". Nathaniel Hawthorne was an anti-transcendentalist and believed in the dark side of man, hence his dark romantic novel The Scarlet Letter. This allegorical novel depends heavily on symbol and character. The novel is chock full of symbolic dimension of images, characters, and descriptions. The Scarlet Letter defines the American Romanticist movement while using symbolic characters and places that give the book ... characters Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale for their overall purpose to the story and the symbolism. An important concept of romanticism includes a close connec...

• Word Count: 1687
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

... reading the book, you gather possible hidden meanings of Hester's scarlet letter. Although the sense of the meaning "adulteress" is constant, the metaphoric, emotional, and moralistic meanings of the scarlet letter vary from positive to negative interpretations throughout the novel The Scarlet Letter. The Puritan community was a dark, strict society, feeling indifferent to the humanity of the woman standing before them on the scaffold, with her infant daughter against her chest ... ordinary relations with humanity and inclosing her in a sphere by herself." (40) However, the people's att...

• Word Count: 1352
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School