Character of Hester :
Character of Hester is one among the several masterstrokes in terms of character sketching that has been perfected by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his spectacular novel The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne is the flagbearer of all the iconoclastic characteristics promoted by Hawthorne in his novel. This beautiful, loving, resolute and nonconformist heroine of The Scarlet Letter serves as the authorial mouthpiece through which Hawthorne poses his ambivalent stance on the 17th century Puritan society. His novel presents a paradox when a progressive discourse of puritanism equates people, specifically men with autonomous voice but, on the other hand, its regressive narrative tries to relegate women to a very secondary position. Hester Prynne, the protagonist, is an example of a lonely woman subjugated by Puritan society, who fights back with the almighty force of her pure love and a sense of self-righteousness. The one man army, Hester Prynne’s character perfectly substantiates the peerless love and fearless strength of a woman.
If a single word must be used to describe the multidimensional character of Hester – a devoted mother, a genuine lover, an estranged wife, a socio-cultural criminal and many more – English vocabulary has no better term than ‘individuality’. Her subjective personality, her choices and rejections, her struggles and victories – all reverberate with her steel strong individuality. In the first chapter of the novel, we find that Hester Prynne is condemned to wear the Scarlet Letter ”A” on her chest as a permanent penalty of her adultery with Boston’s Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Instead of making it the subject of public humiliation and disgust, she made it out of the most gorgeous sparkling gold threads that caught everyone’s eye. This act proves that she neither considered her affair to be a crime nor let the verdict of Puritan laws calumniate her glorious love.
Hester Prynne emerges to be a New Woman : a heroic non-conformist, who – instead of adhering to the existing conventions – goes beyond the Puritanic norms, and in this process, she redefines her identity. She defies the stringent moral policing by initially engaging in an extramarital affair with the Reverend himself and afterwards by refusing to announce her lover’s name. She devalues the Puritanic obsession with ethics by taking the penalty and leaving the penance. But the most striking and overbearing defiance occurs when she makes the scarlet letter her celebrated ornament. Hester, solely on her individual strength and freedom of spirit, robs the derogatory connotation of adultery from the letter “A” and gives it a new meaning of Transcendence. According to Emerson, she is self reliant in her struggles in order to redefine her identity and this is when she seems to have transcended the barriers and obstacles of society.
Hester as a Transcendental figure draws our attention not only because she physically dared to break the Puritanic rules but also due to her psychological endurance. As James F. Cooper says that it is “hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them”, Hester’s mental fight was even harder without her lover and with their child, Pearl. Hester definitely epitomizes the new generation’s feeling of life and the consequent creative response in an altered emotional environment, as defined by Raymond Williams’ concept of “structure of feeling”. In the scaffold scene, she is forced to exhibit herself for hours on a platform with the emblems of her sin at her breast, her infant Pearl and the letter “A” she herself courageously embroidered. Hester refuses to announce the name of her child’s father. “Never”, she replies to them, ” it is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off”. She accepts bravely to endure his agony as well as hers. Many critics regard this action to be “revolutionary” and even a more tangible subversion is enacted through her silence instead of her verbal communication.
Thus, Hester’s unshakable trust in herself, her unconditional love for Dimmensdale and her profound devotion to her daughter, empowers her to resist and transcend the enforced Puritan conformity. She celebrates her individuality and wins over the societal restrictions. Brenda Coinapple in Hawthorne : A Life rightly declares about Hester that Hawthorne has created one of the most admirable heroines of American fiction.
