The Many Dissensions Of Hester Prynne
...the protagonist, Hester Prynne being constantly bombarded with conflict. From the beginning we see her embedded in these deep conflicts that define and shape her life. With their being so many conflicts in this novel, its source cannot just be singular. It must be from many different angles and sides that this conflict arouses from. In this essay I will be discussing the antagonists that plague Hester which are Society, Roger Chillingworth, and her own Pearl.
“Thus she will be a living sermon against sin” (60) were the fateful words spoken by Roger Chillingworth in the marketplace. This was the general feeling of the populace, that she would be a living, breathing billboard of sin. Thus she was mocked and scorned. To be made the subject of many sermons as the narrator points out that, “If she entered a church trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse.”(82) The Puritan society looks down upon Hester for her transgressions and feels that she is not even fit to interact with them. This is shown in the Bostonian viewpoint for the, “relentless vigor with which society frowned upon her sin” (80). There was no reprieve for Hester, for when she even tried to reach a hand to the poor and make clothing for them they, “often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succor them.” (82) The puritan society antagonizes her to the point of oppression. There is evidence of this when the needs of the individual conflict with the Laws of a Society. When Hester is meeting with Arthur Dimmesdale in the forest we see the needs of the individual come forth. She “undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter…(and)…took off the formal cap that confined her shoulders” (198) This act of rebellion was a clear sign of the oppression and conflict that had risen between the society and Hester Prynne....
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