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An Analysis Of Hester's Puritan Scandal

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An Analysis Of Hester's Puritan Scandal
Members of the clergy, and the towns people, see Hester as a criminal and source of scandal, a scandal that affects not only her personally, but the community as a whole. In this Puritan culture, marriage is viewed as one of the foundations of social order, and a crime that violates the bonds of marriage threatens order itself. The demand for punishment of Hester's crimes is evident in the words of some of the female spectators, who feel she has not suffered enough, that the civil authorities "should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead" (p. 162). The female spectators were very cruel when it came to Hester, even though she had only sinned once they thought it was not enough to just let her
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