The Scarlet Letter

Hester is punished publicly for their sin by the placing of a scarlet letter on her breast, while Dimmesdale does not confess to the sin and is spared public scorning for it. Instead, Dimmesdale must seek inner redemption through physical beatings and praying, with little success. The opening scene also introduces to us, Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband who had remained in England, leaving her to travel to America on her own. Chillingworth extracts a …

…Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it, …and so would the next; each its own trial”(73). It is only with remarkable strength that she endures such ridicule and toil. And although is she is “lonely…[and] without a friend on earth who dare[d] to show himself”(75), Hester chooses to remain in the Puritan settlement, despite the fact that she is, “kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation”(73). Rather, “her sin, her ignominy