Hester Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne has committed adultery, and her subsequent bearing of an illegitimate child has cast her beyond the pale of polite society. It is difficult for us, in the late twentieth century, to comprehend exactly what this means. She is permitted to remain in Salem, and to work among the townspeople and interact with them. But she is never to be allowed to forget for a minute the enormity of her sin. To reinforce this, she is obligated to wear on her chest a huge embroidered "A" at all times. This may, on the surface, seem like a peculiar punishment; everyone in town already knows Hester's story, and with Pearl in tow it would be difficult for Hester to act as if the thing never happened. But the …show more content…
"Whether one was saved or damned depended not on human action or the quality of one's life but rather on the inscrutable will of God. The Lord, according to the adherents of Puritanism, imputed His grace into the souls of otherwise corrupt people, thereby confirming their eternal salvation. This act of conversion became the central aspect of Puritanism, the single event that separated the saint from the sinner for eternity. Although in theory, a belief in these principles of predestination freed the saints from specific moral obligations in this world, Puritans expected believers to live godly lives on earth as a way of preparing for the comforts of heaven" (Carroll & Noble 30-31). And Edmund S. Morgan in his Visible Saints: A History of the Puritan Idea, observes that "A church, the Separatists insisted, must be composed entirely of persons who understood and accepted the doctrines of Christianity, submitted voluntarily to the church, and led lives free of apparent sin" (Morgan,
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