It's tempting to say that Hester Prynne is a character for whom we ought to have great sympathy; she is placed in a tenuous position as a woman alone in an American colonial province in the 17th century. However, Hester ought better to have packed up and left town once she realized she was pregnant. She was not raised Puritan, had married a scholar who didn't follow the Puritan faith, so she never had been firmly entrenched in its teachings. Why stay? Living with the dour group for a month would acquaint anyone with the depth of their religious fervor, as well as their inflexibility regarding moral matters. She ought to have known better than to have stayed in such an unyielding, unwelcoming, inhospitable place.
Hawthorne tells the reader on page 47 that "...the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful," highlighting the fact that the Puritans were interested more in punishment than in loving support. This alone should have made her want to leave the society forever. The argument may be made that she was a woman alone with a child in an inhospitable place on a wild frontier. Though this argument is solid, it doesn't hold water when one considers that she was willing to marry an older man and move to a completely foreign shore before the novel opens. She is an adventurer, and adventurers don't give up. One might also suggest that she is staying in town in order to remain close to her lover. While there is sufficient evidence to support this view, there is even more, overwhelming evidence to support the fact that wishing to stay near her lover is also a wretched decision. The man allowed her to rot in prison for at least eight months without ever coming forward to own his own part in the affair. The man isn't going to miraculously turn into an upstanding citizen, or become a strong partner in life. Also, consider the vengeful figure of Roger Chillingworth. Staying around after he shows up is ludicrous. The man is obviously out for revenge, which leads me to my next point--revenge in this novel is the only option as far as I'm concerned. But that's a topic for another post.
--Ms. P.
Hawthorne tells the reader on page 47 that "...the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful," highlighting the fact that the Puritans were interested more in punishment than in loving support. This alone should have made her want to leave the society forever. The argument may be made that she was a woman alone with a child in an inhospitable place on a wild frontier. Though this argument is solid, it doesn't hold water when one considers that she was willing to marry an older man and move to a completely foreign shore before the novel opens. She is an adventurer, and adventurers don't give up. One might also suggest that she is staying in town in order to remain close to her lover. While there is sufficient evidence to support this view, there is even more, overwhelming evidence to support the fact that wishing to stay near her lover is also a wretched decision. The man allowed her to rot in prison for at least eight months without ever coming forward to own his own part in the affair. The man isn't going to miraculously turn into an upstanding citizen, or become a strong partner in life. Also, consider the vengeful figure of Roger Chillingworth. Staying around after he shows up is ludicrous. The man is obviously out for revenge, which leads me to my next point--revenge in this novel is the only option as far as I'm concerned. But that's a topic for another post.
--Ms. P.