What role does sin play in The Scarlet Letter?
In the Puritan community in 1640s Massachusetts Bay Colony where Hester Prynne lives, sin is perceived as a constant threat, one which the entire community must detect and punish or risk falling into sin’s snare. This justifies for them Hester’s brutal and prolonged punishment for the sin of adultery.
How does Hester accept her sin?
Hester, for whom the scarlet A is a mark of humiliation, willingly accepts this humiliation in lieu of drawing suspicion upon her partner in sin. Thus, Hester’s salvation lies in “being true” as Hawthorne exhorts in one of the final chapters.
What power does the scarlet letter give Hester?
“. . . she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts.” Hester is now able to empathize with others in a way that she couldn’t before.
Why is Hester compared to the Divine Mother?
She has accepted both her sin and her role as a single mother. Furthermore, she has empowered herself and has begun to truly represent Divine Maternity. Her embracement of motherhood and devotion to Pearl as well as her charity to others has allowed her to be redeemed.
What who does Hester see as she looks out at the crowd?
Roger Chillingworth
What is the Old Testament punishment for adultery in The Scarlet Letter?
Leviticus 20:10 states, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.” A 1641 Boston law provided for death as punishment (the scaffold then was used only for executions, not the pillory).
Why does Hester commit adultery?
As the years pass, Hester realizes that Roger Chillingworth, her husband under Church law, is not the man her soul is connected to. She realizes that Dimmesdale is her true husband and that the only time she committed adultery was when she gave herself to Chillingworth, a man she didn’t love.
How does Hester’s pastor Reverend Dimmesdale seem to react to Hester’s sin?
When the Reverend Dimmesdale calls upon Hester to name the man with whom she has sinned, he exhorts her not to be “silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him” because even if he were to be brought down from a high place, it would be “better than to hide a guilty heart through life.” Yet, when Hester refuses …