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Wally Workhard
Ms. Tanier
Pre AP English II, Period 2
April 9, 2012
Hester Prynne: A Pillar Of Moral Strength in The Scarlet Letter
Character, morality, goodness: these are words that echo through American society. From
the founding fathers’ words to the election ads running on television today, America has
struggled with the changing meaning of morality. This struggle is reflected in all levels of
culture. Art, literature, history, entertainment, politics, and academia all investigate and explore
what it means to be moral in society. Today, many literary critics reanalyze works of classical
literature in terms of morality. These critics often use Harvard Professor Lawrence Kohlberg’s
stages of moral development to examine the moral stages of characters in classical literature.
One of the most interesting characters to reexamine in this light is Hester Prynne from Nathanial
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester struggles with both the consequences of her moral
decisions and the reaction of her community to these decisions. She walks a very American path
of trying to make decisions based on what she believes while still be accepted by her community.
Due to Hester’s willingness to sacrifice her personal comfort and social standing in her
community to uphold universal moral ideals, she clearly functions at the top of Kohlberg’s moral
stages.
Lawrence Kohlberg was a Harvard development psychologist who specialized in the
moral and social development of children (Reed). Kohlberg adapted the cognitive developmental
stages of French educational psychologist Jean Piaget who stated that all children develop
cognitively in the same order. “Jean Piaget's stages of cognitive development describe the
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intellectual development of children from infancy to early adulthood” (Reed). Some children,
according to Piaget, develop faster than other but all children go through the same cognitive
development stages. Piaget believed that understanding these stages was essential to educating
children. Today almost all preschool and kindergarten programs are based on Piaget’s ideas
(Reed). Kohlberg believed that moral reasoning, just as cognitive reasoning, developed in
clearly defined stages and that just as understanding cognitive development is essential to
education, understanding moral reasoning development is essential to raising moral adults.
Kohlberg defined three level of moral development, with each level having two stages.
According to Kohlberg, each person passes from stage to stage as they are forces to deal with
every increasingly complex social and moral issues. “The person who is growing, will look for
more adequate ways of solving problems. If he has no problems or dilemmas, he is not likely to
look for solutions. He will not grow morally” (Tanier). Kohlberg stated that the stages must be
passed through in order, but that not all people master all stages. According to Kohlberg, as little
as 25% of the population every reaches the highest stages on moral reasoning (Tanier). Kohlberg
believed that understanding the order of moral reasoning is essential to teaching moral reasoning
in our society.
Kohlberg’s first level of moral reasoning is level one, pre conventional, which is based on
the need to escape punishment or gain reward. At stage one, people perceive right and wrong in
terms of what is best for them. If something gets them out of trouble or gains them reward, it is
right. The idea that something should be judged in a non-self centered way is beyond them.
“Kohlberg … found that at the first stage, children base their answers simply on the likelihood of
getting caught… and Kids from 6 to 9 characteristically act out of self-interest” (Kantrowitz and
Namuth). At stage one reasoning, what is best for the individual is perceived as correct. The
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action is not what people in level one are concerned about; it is the consequences that matter.
People do not judge the morality of their actions; they base the rightness of an action on how it
affects them. Kohlberg states that most children between the ages of two and seven function at
this level (Tanier).
Kohlberg’s second stage is conventional. At this stage most people judge the correctness
of an action based on how it effects their position in their social group. The quest for reward that
is part of stage two is generalized into a quest for acceptance in a peer group (stage three: loyalty
to group) People in this level develop the need for acceptance from a peer group into a need to
support and protect this peer group (stage four: law and order). People in this level are most
concerned with social acceptance and following the rules. Kohlberg found that:
A person’s moral reasoning involves maintaining the expectations of one’s
family, peer group, or nation for one’s own sake regardless of the immediate
consequences, and a desire to respect, maintain, support, and justify the existing
social order. (Tanier)
Kohlberg discovered that at this stage people de-center and begin to see right and wrong in terms
of how an action affects either their peer group (stage three) or their society or government (stage
four). People see the effects of their actions on others and base their moral judgments on how
that action will affect their immediate peer group or their overall society. Kohlberg believes that
most adults function at stage four.
Kohlberg’s final level of moral develop is level three, post conventional. In this level,
people make moral judgments based on the moral correctness of an action, instead of how the
action affects either themselves or their immediate community.
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A person reasons according to moral values and principles which are valid and
applicable apart from the authority of the groups. Moral reasoning becomes more
comprehensive, reflects universal principles, and is based on internalized norms.
(Tanier)
This is the very highest stage of moral reasoning. Adults functioning at this level are truly basing
their actions on abstract moral ideas. What is best for them is no longer the final arbiter of their
decisions; instead they are concerned with what is morally correct. People functioning at this
level will knowingly do things that are not best for them personally because they perceive these
actions as morally correct. A fire man who runs into a burning building, a person who takes
responsibility for a mistake done as part of a group project, a whistle blower who reports his
company to the government for breaking environmental regulations: these are the actions of
people who function at stage five ( for the common good) and stage six (universal ethical
principle). Kohlberg found that only about 25% of the population ever achieves this level of
moral reasoning. Hester Prynne, one of the main characters in the Hawthorne novel The Scarlet
Letter, is one of the few literary characters who can be used as a model of how to achieve this
high level of moral reasoning.
Hester Prynne, one of the main characters in Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter ,
is an extraordinary woman. She bravely defies the wrath of the Puritan community she lives in to
protect the identity of the man she loves who abandoned her with a child (Hawthorne). Even
today, most women would not protect the identity of a man who left them to deal with the
aftermath of sex outside of marriage. The stigma of having a child outside of marriage has
lessened in today’s society but it still a difficult thing. Mothers must deal with not only the
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social judgment of having a child outside of marriage but also with the difficulty of raising a
child without the social and economic support of a partner. If this is hard to do today, it was
almost impossible to do in the Puritan society of 1640 where the novel is set. In this community,
the social norm was to conform to the very strict religious based rules. The religious community
was also the civil government in the Puritan communities of the 1640’s and in such communities
members did not defy the law. To defy the laws, regardless of how just or unjust they were, was
to risk exile from the community which was tantamount to a death sentence in the wilds of the
New English in the 1640’s.
Most people believed that to obey the rules of the church was to be moral, but Hester
Prynne defies both the community at large and the leadership of the church because she believes
that only God has the right to punish or forgive her. She willingly takes the punishment placed
upon her and instead of crumbling under it, she becomes the most moral, strongest member of
the community that rejected her and her child. She makes decisions based not on what will help
her avoid punishment, or gain her a reward nor does she makes her moral decisions based on
what will make the community accept her or by what is written in man’s rules, no she makes her
moral choices based on what she understands as morally correct. She is given several
opportunities to escape her punishment by betraying the lover who abandoned her, or by
accepting the community’s thanks for the way she generously fulfills the terms of her
punishment, but she refuses because she knows that her sin is not against her town, but against
God, and only God has the right to forgive her and remove her punishment. She makes choices
based on “Principles, no matter what the price” (Tanier). This is the definition of functioning at
stage 6 of Kohlberg’s levels of moral development.
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The first place Hester makes stage six moral decisions is when she is being punished for
her crime of adultery by the community. Hester is arrested when the community learns she is
pregnant despite the fact that her husband had been missing for two year. She is confined until
the birth of the child, when she is forced to publicly present the child (the symbol of her sin) to
the community and answer questions for the Governor and ministers of the Boston. Hester has
repeatedly refused to expose the name of the father of her child despite the promise of mercy
from the court. “’Madame Hester absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their
heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle,
unknown of man, and forgetting that God sees him”’( Hawthorne). Hester gains nothing from
refusing to expose the name of the father of her child. She chooses not to comply with their
request because she broke the law of God for love and only God had the ability to grant her
mercy. This is clearly an example of stage six moral reasoning where Hester is not concerned
about the personal consequences of her actions. She makes her decisions based on the higher
moral concept that only the person she sinned against has the power to forgive her.
In the same section of the novel, again makes moral Hester decisions based on level six
of Kohlberg stages of moral reasoning. When Hester is forced to stand before the whole
community after the birth of her child, Pearl, she is yet gain questioned about the identity of the
child’s father by the town’s elders and her personal minister. Her response is
“Never!” replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. Wilson, but into the deep and
troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. “It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take
it off. And would that I might endure his agony, as well as mine!.... “I will not
speak!” answered Hester, turning pale as death, but responding to this voice,
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which she too surely recognised. “And my child must seek a heavenly Father; she
shall never know an earthly one!”(Hawthorne)
Hester rejects the instructions of both the town and her religious leaders. In her Puritan
community this was unheard of because to reject the instructions of their religious leaders was to
court exile and often times death. “Each church congregation was to be individually responsible
to God, as was each person. The New Testament was their model and their devotion so great that
it permeated their entire society. People of opposing theological views were asked to leave the
community or to be converted”( Kizer) . Hester is risking being thrown out into the wilds by her
rejection of the instructions of her community leaders. She bases her moral decision far about the
pre conventional level of self interest and the conventional level of fitting in and defending her
society. She is willing to risk her life and the life of her child in exile because she believes that
her sin is between herself and God and the community does not have the right to ease her
punishment.
------------------- Several other paragraphs of evidence from the text would be here -------Literature becomes classical when it transcends the time and place in which it was
written. Hester, in The Scarlet Letter, transcends the boundaries of her creation due to the
complex moral issues she faces and the high level of moral reasoning she displays. Hester
embraces stage six moral reasoning with her defiance of the laws of her community. She
demonstrates the highest levels of moral reasoning by choosing to reject the wishes of her
community despite the fact that in doing so she gives up social acceptance and personal comfort
to do what she feels is correct. Hester’s fictional courage is seen reflected in the real life courage
of world leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. Her willingness to risk
her life for an abstract concept can be seen reflected in the real life heroism of fireman and
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policeman. Her understanding of what is correct verses what is convenience is reflected in the
real world courage of political protesters in the Middle East. One of the reasons The Scarlet
Letter with its hero Hester Prynne, is still discussed today is that it echoes issues that are still
driving American culture. The question of what is right verse wrong and when it is morally
correct to break a civil law are questions that American courts are dealing with right now. The
Scarlet Letter is not just a novel about a small Puritan community. It is a moving discussion of
the nature of morality that still resonates today.
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Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. enotes. enotes, n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2012.
<http://www.enotes.com/scarlet-letter-text>. text of the novel
Kantrowitz, B., and T Namuth. “The good, the bad, and the difference.” Newsweek 177.22: 48+.
MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. <http://search.ebscohost.com/
login.aspx?direct=true&db=ulh&AN=9105273142&site=src-live>.
Kizer, Kay. “PURITANS.” PURITANS. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Apr. 2012. <http://nd.edu/~rbarger/
www7/puritans.html>. proof of danger of not listening to the town leaders
Reed, Don Collins. “A Model of Moral Stages.” Journal of Moral Education 37.3: 357-372.
Print.
Tanier, Karen. “Kohlberg stages of moral development.” Collingswood High School. 5 Mar.
2012.
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