Mckeeble Binn Jackson ENGL 2112 Professor Perry Guilty Pleasures of Hester Prynne In The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne One could only imagine what Hester Prynne life was like in this era of Puritans belief and religion. Hester was a woman who had emotions like many of today’s women. A feeling of wanting to be wanted. By being a woman who had committed a great sin in the eyes of the bible and the puritans, Hester had to deal with the shame of being in love, the shame of guilt she had to endure, and the loyalty she gave to the ones she loved. It is to be question if the two men that were in Hester’s life actually had any feelings for her before, during, and after these set of events that took place. Hester being a lonely women in an unknown land had many temptations. One temptation was the need or want of sex. She was a young women of course and having being married before knew the feelings and desires that come with having such a physical attraction to the opposite sex. One can be sure she was not the only soul there to be doing such a mischief, but perhaps the only one to get caught. Hester gave birth to a little girl by the name of Pearl. The question to everyone would be “Who was Pearl father and where could he be”, because Hester was alone with no man in the home. Hester, of course, would not give up this information out of loyalty one could presume. Hester was pressured and pressured but to no avail would she speak. . When confronted about who had fathered her bastard child by the prosecuting courts she remained silent. When accosted by her husband, of whom was thought of had met some unfortunate faith, (but remained a mystery man to the town’s people whom did not know this person to be Hester husband), she refused to tell him who fathered little Pearl.
"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!" cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before. "That little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy breast."
"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!"
"Speak, woman!" said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold, "Speak; and give your child a father!"
"I will not speak!" answered Hester, turning pale as death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. "And my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know an earthly one!" (Norton Anthology, pg. 488) No matter how much they badgered Hester she did not bulge. The importance of keeping this anonymous man from the scandal proves she loved this man and did not want to humiliate him like she was being humiliated nor cause any additional shame on little Pearl. Guilty was what Hester was in the eyes of the Puritans, and Puritan government punished her in a way that all would know her crime. [It was Puritan asceticism] which fixed the scarlet letter to the breast of Hester Prynne, and which drove Arthur Dimmesdale into a life of cowardly and selfish meanness, that added tenfold disgrace and ignominy to his original crime.
To have borne a child out of wedlock would be admittance of guilt of adultery and fornication. It is sad alone that Hester had a child but to do it while being married to another man was downright disrespectful to her husband, weather dead or alive, and her child. Women in the Puritan faith were considered pure, clean, and holy. For a man and woman to commit such sexual acts then they should become one in a union of matrimony. Since Hester had committed such an act of ungodliness she was sentenced to a lifetime of wearing the “Scarlet Letter of an ‘A’ on her chest to be seen by all so that all