Ignominy in the Puritan Community Essay

The title of Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter refers to the literal symbol of commiseration that Hester Prynnes confederacy forces her to wear as a reminder of her criminality. Though the word disgrace is example in sympathetic passages that describe Hester Prynnes disgrace as an adulteress and out-of-wedlock mother, its use at the equal time reveals an extremely critical verbal description of Hesters society Hawthorne finds that what is truly disgraceful is the way the biotic union relishes and exploits the opportunity to retaliate one of its members. Through powerful diction and imagery describing Hesters sin and through and through saintly representations of Hesters beauty and wholeness, Hawthorne reveals his benevolence toward Hester. The narrator commiserates with Hester when the reader first encounters her walking to her daily earthly c one timern shaming upon the marketplaces scaffold.He writes, her beauty shone out and made a halo of misfortune and ignomin y in which she was enveloped (50). The word halo suggests an angelic, even saintly quality, compared to the sin for which she is being publicly disgraced as punishment, making her circumstance more composite plant than simply one of punished sin. That she is enveloped by disgrace implies that her shame derives more from her surroundings than from her sin Hawthornes use of misfortune also demonstrates the narrators sympathy toward Hester, again suggesting that her disgrace comes as ofttimes from the communitys display of her sin as from the sin itself. Hawthorne portrays Hester sympathetically yet again in her encounter with Chillingworth in the prison. The disguised physician declares Hester to be a statue of ignominy, before the people (68). Ironically, Chillingworth, in the role of a healer, here admonishes rather than helps Hester. His words, intended to threaten and punish Hester, in fact, spark sympathy for her in the reader.Similarly, later in the novel, while Hester and Dim mesdale talk in the forest, briefly away from the opprobrium of the prude community, Hawthorne describes how Hester Prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy (170), on her return to the settlement. The use of the words must and again reveal Hesters continual forced compact to wear and be a symbol of shame in her community, and show again the narrators sympathy toward her. The fact that she is burdened by disgrace illustrates the extreme weight of her painful, shunned experience, thus establishing the cause for the narrators sympathy for Hester. As Hawthorne shows empathy regarding Hester as she leaves the prison, he also condemns the harsh experience inflicted on her by the community, The actually law that condemned herhad held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy (71).The words terrible ordeal non only when reinforce the narrators sympathy toward the protagonist, but also suggest that the narrator is judging the community, not Hester. By revealing the communitys enjoyment and cruelty in punishing Hester, Hawthorne criticizes the Puritans ideas of justice and mercy through two assertive diction and direct communication with the reader. When A campaign of impatient(predicate) and curious schoolboys stare at the ignominious letter on her breast (52), the reader sees the eager pleasure and excitement witnesses experience from Hesters circumstance. Here Hesters disgrace has become both an pleasure and an educational device. The narrator continues with, she perchance underwent an agonyas if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and step upon (52). With this description, Hesters pityingity is maintained, even when the community, all of it, objectifies her as a teaching tool.The image of her heart flung, spurned and trampled upon demonstrates both the narrators sympathy toward Hester and animosity toward Puritan society, regardless of the age of the member. Shortly after his description of the schoolboys c allous treatment of Hester, the narrator continues with a harsh account of the scaffold and pillory once employed upon it, that instrument of discipline that represented the very ideal of ignominy (52). The pillory reflects the nature of the communitys sense of justice, and the narrator finds it extremely harsh. The word ideal, often associated with perfection, suggests that the pillory signifies the ultimate desired put of ignominy public shame from which the sinner cannot turn away.Next, it would seem that Hawthorne speaks out directly and emotionally to the reader, declaring, in that location can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature, whatever be the delinquencies of the individual, no outrage more gross than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame (52). Hawthorns use of word methinks suggests his bruising personal address on this issue of cruelty he weighs in powerfully against the malice of the Pilgrim community that punishes Hester, even if it has no t subjected her to the pillory. The word no implies Hawthornes view that this punishment is an absolute violation of human decency on the part of any community that turns a criminal into a victim by inflicting the use of a pillory. The letter A Hester must wear shows that the Puritans have depersonalized Hester as part of her punishment for committing adultery.The Puritan community is again portrayed as disgraceful when John Wilson, the eldest man of the cloth of Boston (60), step forward above the scaffold where Hester continues to stand. He had carefully fain himself for the occasion (63). Clearly, the words carefully prepared show Wilson relishing the public opportunity to punish Hester. He delivers to the community a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter (63). His repeated reference to the blood-red letter underscores his depersonalization of Hester in her disgrace, without any consideration of her human suffering.The w ord ignominious reflects as much about the opportunistic clergyman and the punishing Pilgrim audience as it does about Hesters sin. The narrator continues, So forcefully did Wilson dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the peoples heads, that it simulated new terrors in their imagination (63). The length of this sermon, and the nature of Wilsons rolling delivery show the clergymans intention to hammer his message into the crowd and fire up its punishing judgment.Hawthorne continues to criticize the community as he places Hester historically at the site where she was first disgraced. The narrator notes, If the ministers juncture had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she go out the first hour of her life of ignominy (211). Implied is the idea that the power of public shaming by the community causes her to remain. Specifically, by noting that the scaffold is where the first hour of her life of ignominy began the author criticizes the community by revealing that Hester did not experience ignominy until being publicly disgraced on the scaffold, even though her sin had been move many months prior.With his use of the word ignominy, Hawthorne repeats throughout The Scarlet Letter the cruelty, judgmental attitude, and narrow-mindedness of Puritan society. He portrays Hesters community as condemning sinners mercilessly, refusing to accept ideas that are foreign to their ways of living or thinking. In this way, the townspeople depersonalize Hester, suggesting that she and her disgrace are one. Hester is seen as her sin, not as a complex human being with complicated, still unknown, circumstances.