AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Letter scaffold12/31/2023 The first description of Hester notes her "natural dignity and force of character" and mentions specifically the haughty smile and strong glance that reveal no self-consciousness of her plight. There are "fantastic flourishes of gold-thread," and the letter is ornately decorative, significantly beyond the colony's laws that call for somber, unadorned attire. The irony is present in the elaborate needlework of the scarlet letter. On the scaffold, she displays a sense of irony and contempt. The reader first meets the incredibly strong Hester on the scaffold with Pearl in her arms, beginning her punishment. Somewhere during this period of time, their solace becomes passion and results in the birth of Pearl. While not a Puritan herself, Hester looks to Arthur Dimmesdale for comfort and spiritual guidance. When they left Amsterdam for the New World, he sent her ahead, but he was reportedly lost at sea, leaving Hester alone among the Puritans of Boston. She married the much older Roger Chillingworth, who spent long hours over his books and experiments yet she convinced herself that she was happy. What we know about Hester from the days prior to her punishment is that she came from a "genteel but impoverished English family" of notable lineage. With the scarlet letter and her hair back in place, "her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her." While her punishment changes her physical appearance, it has a far more profound effect on her character. Hester is only to have a brief respite, however, because Pearl angrily demands she resume wearing the scarlet A. Symbolically, when Hester removes the letter and takes off the cap, she is, in effect, removing the harsh, stark, unbending Puritan social and moral structure. When she removes the letter and takes off her cap in Chapter 13, she once again becomes the radiant beauty of seven years earlier. Her beautiful hair is hidden under her cap, her beauty and warmth are gone, buried under the burden of the elaborate scarlet letter on her bosom. In fact, so physically stunning is she that "her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped."Ĭontrast this with her appearance after seven years of punishment for her sin. ![]() ![]() Hester is physically described in the first scaffold scene as a tall young woman with a "figure of perfect elegance on a large scale." Her most impressive feature is her "dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam." Her complexion is rich, her eyes are dark and deep, and her regular features give her a beautiful face. Her inner strength, her defiance of convention, her honesty, and her compassion may have been in her character all along, but the scarlet letter brings them to our attention. ![]() ![]() While Hawthorne does not give a great deal of information about her life before the book opens, he does show her remarkable character, revealed through her public humiliation and subsequent, isolated life in Puritan society. What is most remarkable about Hester Prynne is her strength of character.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |