I was honestly glad we were finished with the book, but I now have a different perspective on things. The Scarlet letter is a novel filled with drama, suspense, and pain. Hester is socially rejected for committing adultery. The punishment that she receives is that she has to wear an “A” on all of her clothes. I would expect anyone else who was given this punishment to wear the “A” with guilt and shame, but Hester does just the opposite of this by making the letter extremely beautiful by using golden thread almost wearing it with pride. Town’s folk looked at this as something wrong. They could not figure out why someone would be proud of an act so morally wrong like committing adultery. Hester wore the “A” proudly because she did not have sex with Dimmesdale out of pure desire, but because she felt an actual genuine connection towards him. No one in the town seems to take into consideration the fact that this was not all Hester’s fault. Chillingworth left her for three years and expected her to stay faithful to him throughout the entire time. She never got even a short letter from him telling her that he loved and missed her. She was expected to just go to work, church, and straight back home. Aside from Chillingworth, we can also blame Dimmesdale as well. It does not take one person to commit adultery and have a kid. But despite the logical statement that there has to be two people involved in order to have a baby, no one seems to focus on gossiping and trying to figure out who the father is. Women is this society are held to a higher standard than men, meaning that when the do something “bad” they are treated harsher than if men did the same thing. When town’s folk who talk bad about Hester, she would just ignore them and continue what she was doing before she heard them. Hester is the true hero of this novel. Despite all the hardship she was dealing with, she managed to push through everything and help give Pearl a semi-normal life. I do not understand how she kept the secret of who was Pearl’s daughter for so long, if I was her I would have already told at least one person, just to get it off my chest. Hester must have really loved Dimmesdale to be willing to have all the pity, shame, and guilt be reflected all on her, just to keep him from living the life she was living. She had to be extremely mentally and physically strong. Having to deal with rumors constantly evolving to be more and more vile about you, having your daughter not know who her father is, and loving someone who cannot man up and tell the world that he is the father would be extremely spirit draining. Dimmesdale in the end does admit to being the father, but soon dies. Wow thanks Dimmesdale? Needless to say that the blame for these events should be shared not just brought upon one individual. I do believe that an experience like this can go one of two ways for a person, it can cause them to be scarred for life, or it can be for the better and make them stronger as a person.
~Sayda Lavandera
~Sayda Lavandera