The Rebel

uestioning the power of love, as well as toying with human emotion Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter on struggle of a convicted sinner in a Puritan community. Hester Prynne, a woman who originated from Europe, is subject to a world of drama when she is convicted for adultery in a Puritan colony. Hester is a young beautiful woman who was married once before, but because of a complication in her travel to America is separated from her husband, Roger Chillingworth, for three years. Due to this separation Hester has an affair with an initially unknown lover, which results in a child. When she is convicted, the adulterer is subject to various punishments, enforced by the town superiors who ironically contain Hester’s lover, Arthur Dimmesdale. The purpose of the various punishments given to Hester is not fulfilled when her reaction proves to be unchanged. Hester’s vacant reaction sparks an attitude of malevolence and empowerment affecting her own personality.

Throughout the novel, Hawthorne gives Hester an unaffected attitude that characterizes her personality. When the community attempts to punish Hester through various punishments including a shaming among the town scaffold, an enforced dress code, and condemnatory scorn, Hester’s unique personality emerges. Hester stands, child in hand, atop the discomforting town scaffold; however, she seems unaltered by the opinionated wrath of the New England townspeople. Although, Further along in the chapter, it is clear that internally she is, to a degree, traumatized. This perspective is exposed to the reader when Hawthorne explains Hester’s remorseful thoughts, as well as describes her distressing visions. Hawthorne writes “Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street,” clearly showing that Hester, in fact, sees visions (40). Although Later the reader learns that these remorseful thoughts may not have been caused by