Hester Prynne Personal Standards versus Society

Hester Prynne: Courage and Integrity Incarnate The novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts the struggle of Hester Prynne in attempting to live by the standards set by her own internal guidelines. This creates a great deal of conflict as she is forced to confront the standards set by the Puritan society of Colonial America for what is considered decent behavior.

At the opening of the book, so much has already happened: Hester Prynne’s husband (Roger Chillingworth) was shipwrecked and captured by native people—many thought he had unfortunately perished. The town’s religious leader Arthur Dimmesdale offers Hester an understanding ear and shoulder to cry on, but this leads to an affair that results in the birth of Hester’s daughter Pearl, born out of wedlock.

Thus, it is very revelatory about these townspeople that they offer Hester very little understanding for the ways that she has suffered. Instead she is just condemned and meant to be humiliated for the rest of her life with a red letter A attached to the front of her dress. Hawthorne takes great pains to illuminate the exact nature of Hester’s struggle and to attempt to shed light on the quiet humanity and bravery connected to her living independently.

Hester’s bravery is exhibited in the fact that she made the scarlet letter an item of ornamental quality. The red letter was meant to cause her much shame. Instead of shirking from her punishment, and the act that caused it, Hester it seems, celebrated it. “On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A.

It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony” (Hawthorne, 49).

This is a very striking description as it demonstrates that Hester has no problem confronting her own humanity: she knows she sinned, but she no doubt has a sense of reason about her and knows that her “crime” is not as bad as so many others. The ornamental quality with which she created the letter A and wears it, means she does not hide from her affair. One could also suggest that she does not regret what she did, though she might accept the consequences of it.

The highly ornate and elaborate A also serves to suggest that she does not view her child as a mistake or shameful blight. Finally, the highly visible aspect of the letter A also acts as a juxtaposition to all the silence that Hester has to engage in. She remains silent to everyone in the town about Chillingworth being her husband. She keeps the identity of the man with whom she had the affair with a secret.

These acts of silence strengthen Hester’s internal sense of personal integrity and show the reader what a strong individual she is. While the town might declare that Hester has no virtue, the reader knows for certain that this is not true. So much of the novel demonstrates the quiet strength, integrity and resilience that Hester Prynne embodies.

As one scholar argues, “Although Hester suffers enormously from the shame of her public disgrace and form the isolation of her punishment, in her inner heart she can never accept the Puritan interpretation of her act as she believes that her desire for love freedom is not evil, but with dignity and grace. Hester retains her self-respect and survives her punishment with ever-growing strength of character” (Wang, 2010). No description could be more accurate.

While the people around her in the town would like her to feel shame (and would like her to be branded on her forehead with a scarlet letter), the reality is that Hester has an uncanny ability to embrace dignity and the courage of the human spirit.

For example, when Wilson cross examines Pearl and she explains that she was not made, but “…plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door” (Hawthorne, 167), at face value this just seems to embody the wild and uncanny nature that is Pearl.

However, the issue with this statement is we don’t know where Pearl came up with it: she may have come up with it on her own, or it may be something that Hester told her symbolically—or it might be something that she just sensed and inferred. This notion speaks to the spiritual core of humanity and the existence of the human soul. It tells suggests that beyond our corporeal bodies is a force that made all of us, beyond our bodies.

No doubt that Hawthorne is referring to God, but by today’s standards we might allude to the universe or a higher power. Ultimately, Pearl’s remark encapsulates the sense of a higher authority and higher.