The Scarlet Letter: Hester's Attitudes
Beginning of paper
Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne's book The Scarlet Letter, Hester's
attitudes toward her adultery are ambivalent. This ambivalence is shown by
breaking the book into three different parts. In each part her attitudes
change significantly.
Hester starts by seeing her act as a sin that she i ....
Middle of paper
.... chapter five Hester's attitudes are the same but Hawthorne shows
that these attitudes are not stable and are susceptible to change. Hester
moves to a cottage on the outskirts of Boston, but because her sentence
does not restrict her to the limits of the Puritan settlement, Hester could
return to Europe to start over. She decides to stay because she makes
herself believe that the town "has been the scene of her guilt, and here
should be the scene of her earthly punishment" (84). This belief ....
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Word count: 908
Page count: 4 (approximately 250 words per page)
