How does
being isolated
affect your
public and
private life?
Character Dimmesdale Puritan
Society
Quote 1
Walking in the shadow of a
dream, as it were, and
perhaps actually under the
influence of a species of
somnambulism, Mr.
Dimmesdale reached the spot,
where, now so long since,
Hester Prynne had lived
through her first hour of
public ignominy. The same
platform or scaffold, black
and weather-stained with the
storm or sunshine of seven
long years, and foot-worn,
too, with the tread of many
culprits who had since
ascended it, remained
standing beneath the balcony
of the meeting-house.
(137)
Setting Quote 3
It may be, that
his path-way
through life was
haunted thus, by
a spectre that
had stolen out
from among his
thoughts.
(178)
Quote 2
The young divine, whose
scholar-like renown still
lived in Oxford, was
considered by his more
fervent admirers as little
less than a Heaven-ordained
apostle, destined, should he
live and labor for the
ordinary term of life, to do
as great deeds for the now
feeble New England Church,
as the early Fathers had
achieved for the infancy of
the Christian faith. About
this period, however, the
health of Mr. Dimmesdale
had evidently begun to fail.
(111)
Quote 1
In this manner, Hester
Prynne came to have a
part to perform in the
world. With her native
energy of character, and
rare capacity, it could
not entirely cast her
off, although it had set
a mark upon her, more
intolerable to a woman’s
heart than that which
branded the brow of
Cain. In all her
intercourse with society,
however, there was
nothing that made her
feel as if she belonged
to it.
(77)
Summary
Judging from the quotes,
it is apparent that
Dimmesdale is not living
through himself
physically. He seems to be
stuck in a world of
longing, and due to the
isolation caused by his
previous affair with
Hester Prynne, Dimmesdale
has become a person of
self torture, seclusion, and
deep unconscious thought.
Summary
The illegitimate child
Hester Prynne had was
the source of Hester’s
isolation. Her
straight-laced
community of Puritans
compelled her to
constantly be aware
of the sin she
committed in having a
child out of wedlock,
and ever since the
birth of Pearl, they
were alienated from a
normal life in their
town.
Quote 2
The founders of a new
colony, whatever
Utopia of human
virtue and happiness
they might originally
project, have
invariably recognized
it among their
earliest practical
necessities to allot a
portion of the virgin
soil as a cemetery,
and another portion
as the site of a
prison.
(43)
Quote 3
Full of concern,
therefore,—but so
conscious of her own
right, that it seemed
scarcely an unequal
match between the
public, on the one
side, and a lonely
woman, backed by the
sympathies of nature,
on the other,—Hester
Prynne set forth from
her solitary cottage.
(93)
Quote 1
Hester Prynne remained constant
in her resolve to make known to
Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk
of present pain or ulterior
consequences, the true character
of the man who had crept into
his intimacy. For several days,
however, she vainly sought an
opportunity of addressing him in
some of the meditative walks
which she knew him to be in the
habit of taking, along the shores
of the peninsula, or on the
wooded hills of the neighboring
country. There would have been
no scandal, indeed, nor peril to
the holy whiteness of the
clergyman’s good fame, had she
visited him in his own study;
where many a penitent, ere now,
had confessed sins of perhaps as
deep a die as the one betokened
by the scarlet letter.
(171)
Quote 3
She decided, moreover,
that he had a right to
her utmost aid. Little
accustomed, in her long
seclusion from society,
to measure her ideas of
right and wrong by any
standard external to
herself, Hester saw—or
seemed to see—that there
lay a responsibility upon
her, in reference to the
clergyman, which she
owed to no other, nor to
the whole world besides.
(148)
Scaffold Hester Prynne
Quote 2
After her return to the
prison, Hester Prynne was
found to be in a state of
nervous excitement that
demanded constant
watchfulness, lest she should
perpetrate violence on
herself, or do some halffrenzied mischief to the
poor babe. As night
approached, it proving
impossible to quell her
insubordination by rebuke or
threats of punishment,
Master Brackett, the jailer,
thought fit to introduce a
physician .
(65)
Quote 1
From this intense consciousness
of being the object of severe
and universal observation, the
wearer of the scarlet letter was
at length relieved by discerning,
on the outskirts of the crowd, a
figure which irresistibly took
possession of her thoughts. An
Indian, in his native garb, was
standing there; but the red men
were not so infrequent visitors of
the English settlements, that one
of them would have attracted
any notice from Hester Prynne, at
such a time; much less would he
have excluded all other objects
and ideas from her mind. By the
Indian’s side, and evidently
sustaining a companionship with
him, stood a white man, clad in
a strange disarray of civilized
and savage costume.
(55)
Summary
Hester Prynne’s
isolation seems to
have had a more
emotionally distorting
effect. Coming from
the obvious isolation
she faced within her
community, Hester
develops a skeptical
outlook on her Puritan
society and the
mistreatment of
women that she was
oblivious to prior to
her affair with
Dimmesdale.
Quote 2
In fact, this scaffold constituted
a portion of a penal machine,
which now, for two or three
generations past, has been merely
historical and traditionary among
us, but was held, in the old
time, to be as effectual an agent
in the promotion of good
citizenship, as ever was the
guillotine among the terrorists of
France. It was, in short, the
platform of the pillory; and
above it rose the framework of
that instrument of discipline, so
fashioned as to confine the
human head in its tight grasp,
and thus hold it up to the public
gaze. The very idea of ignominy
was embodied and made manifest
in this contrivance of wood and
iron. There can be no outrage,
methinks, against our common
nature—whatever be the
delinquencies of the individual,—
no outrage more flagrant than to
forbid the culprit to hide his
face for shame; as it was the
essence of this punishment to do.
(51)
Quote
Summary
The scaffold
symbolizes a place
where people must
address their
personal issues in
front of society.
The public nature
of this showing
causes a person to
seclude himself from
society and enter a
state of reclusion.
3
With a convulsive motion he
tore away the ministerial
band from before his breast.
It was revealed! But it were
irreverent to describe that
revelation. For an instant
the gaze of the horrorstricken multitude was
concentred on the ghastly
miracle; while the minister
stood with a flush of
triumph in his face, as one
who, in the crisis of acutest
pain, had won a victory.
Then, down he sank upon
the scaffold! Hester partly
raised him, and supported
his head against her bosom.
Old Roger Chillingworth
knelt down beside him, with
a blank, dull countenance,
out of which the life seemed
to have departed.
(240)
Essay In today’s modern world it is more and more normal to see people
having relations with others that they are not married to. This is
because of the way that society has come to accept it as a fact of life.
As opposed to the treatment of extramarital affairs nowadays, Nathanial
Hawthorne draws a connection between the way society views Hester
Prynne and the isolation that she is forced into. He displays the way
that puritan society shuns those who are unfaithful to their spouses, and
the way Hester Prynne becomes a secluded being because of her fear of
being around people, and the way they might treat her.
From the very beginning of the novel we are introduced to a Hester
Prynne that has been pushed away from society. Even though we do not
get to see the way she was before her affair, Hawthorne gives good
insight into her life. We know that she was a very pretty woman, who
was desired by many. This leads me to believe that she was a social
person and a person who was happy with where she was in life. Once she
had been sentenced by the elders, we see a very different person. Hester
starts to doubt herself, and her community. She can’t help but be
skeptical about what she is going through. She has become a very
internal person who does a lot of thinking, but doesn’t share much. All
of her skepticism spawns from the fact that she has become isolated
from society. She does not have enough touches to everyday life, or even
life in general to reassure herself about the life that she is living.
The isolation drives her into a state of seclusion that she can’t get
away from. She almost forgets how to interact with people, and she
surely forgets how act as a woman under puritan rule. She goes beyond
what a normal woman would ever do in puritan society. She oversteps her
bounds with deep thought, and contemplation about her surroundings.
Without having been isolated from her people, Hester Prynne might have
been a normal woman. This, however, was not the case; her isolation
dragged her deeper into a shell that separated her from reality. Isolation
is what changes people. Everyone is a product of their environment, and
when one lives in an isolated environment everything about who they are
is shaped by that isolation. Just like Hester Prynne, we can’t escape the
fact that without other human interaction our minds take us where we
would never go, and change who we are privately and publicly.