The Scarlet Letter: Hester Prynne

        Not long after marrying young to an elderly husband, Hester Prynne was soon left alone in the New England village.  After waiting two years for her husband’s return, she finds herself caught in a romantic relationship with, surprisingly, a minister in the Puritan community, and even has an illegitimate child. Throughout the story, Hester maintains her sense of pride, regardless of all the humiliation and shame she suffers through. She is forced suffer the ignominy of wearing a scarlet letter “A”, for adulteress, embroidered on her dress, which alienates her from the rest of the community. Despite being labelled as a “malefactress” (48) and a “woman who has bought shame” (49) upon all the other women, even after being put on show for all too see her indignity, she is able to stand tall, and not let others get to her:

“Yet there were intervals when the whole scene…seemed to vanish from her eyes...Her mind, and especially her memory… kept bringing up…the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her…Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself…from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality” (53-54).

        

       Though others may see Hester Prynne as a sinner, someone unworthy of sympathizing, I truly admire her strength, and sympathize her current situation. I believe the act she committed was purely out of loneliness, considering she was away from her husband for two years. That being said, I don't think this makes her act completely excusable, but if this had been done by a man, would the consequences have been different?