Scarlet Letter & the Rapture Term Paper

" This seems powerful evidence that she has not accepted Puritan gender roles, but instead, is defending and helping to uplift the man who got her into this situation, and who is looked up to as a spiritual leader, while she is a spiritual outcast. The contrast is striking between the two, yet she is the strong one.

There was neither "irritation or irksomeness" in Hester (124) and the "blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor." On page 128, more back-up to the fact that she made the most of a bad situation, and emerged in effect thumbing her nose at the Puritan fanaticism that put her to public shame: "...Her life had turned in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought... [and] the world's law was no law for her mind." On pp. 233-234, readers learn that "through the remainder of Hester's life, there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land...[and] as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel...women...in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced or erring and sinful passion...came to Hester's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy!"

That shows that Hester rose above the twisted values of the society in her time, and in fact became strong enough, by repudiating Puritan values, to actually become something of a hero to women who sought to find strength in their time of weakness and sorrow.

References

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter: A Romance. New York" Libra, Incorporated, 1960.

Reynolds, Sheri. The Rapture of…