Scarlet Letter - The Individual

Scarlet Letter - the Individual vs. Society - Hester Prynne

Throughout the text the Scarlet Letter, the heroine Hester Prynne lives her life in opposition to her society. At first, when she is a young woman, her spirited and proud behavior sets her apart from the other Puritan girls. When she is married to Roger Chillingworth, her sensuality stands in opposition to his coolness. Chillingworth accepts the Puritan morals and values regarding human sexual behavior, presumably, while Hester's natural constitution stands in opposition to the idea that to love the material world, to love another human being in a physical and emotional fashion, is wrong. Hester expects love from the men in her life, and does not believe that a wife should be merely obedient and dutiful and keep her eyes focused on the world to come. Such an attitude stands against not simply the sexual and marital laws and mores of Puritan society, but to the life-denying nature of the elder's interpretation of the faith. To endorse Hester's view of life, the justification of the entire Puritan society would collapse.

Hester is described early on as having "impulsive and passionate nature" (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 2) When Hester first emerges from her prison, she is described as: "supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph." (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 5) She retains her sense of stubborn morality, that it is wrong to reveal the name of the other transgressor. "Madame Hester absolutely refused to speak.'" (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 3) Hester is disobedient, but through this disobedience she creates her own moral code, refusing to bring down what she regards as an unjust punishment upon the head of a fellow sinner. Eloquently, she confronts the supposedly wiser Puritan leaders: "Would that I might endure his agony, as well as mine...my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one!" (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 3) Pearl provides the reader with some idea of how Hester may have acted as a young girl. When women try to fling mud at Hester, as they are 'supposed' to do, because she is an adulteress, Pearl, the "imp," "who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight." (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 7)

After giving birth to her daughter Pearl, Hester's early mode of opposition to society changes and becomes broader. Rather than simply show her resistance through sexual defiance, her defiance begins to embrace the entire Puritan structure of ruler. Her opposition becomes more internal, as she becomes more and more critical of societal standards beyond the purely sexual and material. When are still flashes of the old Hester, as when she sees her old husband, Chillingworth: "Be it sin or no,' said Hester Prynne bitterly, as she still gazed after him, 'I hate the man.' She (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 15) Chillingworth demanded that his wife accept his hours of religious and scholarly study without question, and never showed her kindness or attention. He is bent upon revenge as his husbandly 'right.'