He is dressed in a strange combo of traditional European clothing and Native American dress In the crowd Hester spots her husband who sent her to America but didn't follow her Puritan doctrine views reality as merely an obstacle to a world beyond this one
Each scene shows a different character taking the first step to a sort of emersonian self reliance that would come to replace Puritan ideology as the American ideal Hester's physical isolation in the scaffold only manifests an internal alienation that predates the beginning of the plotįirst of three scenes on the scaffold. Her appearance is described as more distinctive than conventionally beautiful suggests she was already unique before all of this The fact that the townspeople focus more on the scarlet letter than the child underlines their pettiness and failure to see the more real consequences of Hester's actions She is a sign of a larger more powerful order than that which the community is attempting to assert Pearl highlights the insignificance of the community's attempt at punishment.
Pearl makes the scarlet letter redundant in that it is she and not the fabric that is the true consequence of Hester's actions The fact that she is a woman with a past means that despite what the Puritan community thinks, the can't be defined by a single action The figure of Hester also offers various options for interpretation In the end, the rosebush isn't given a definitive interpretation Rosebush and Hester resist the fixed interpretations that the narrator associates with religion Hester simply accepts the sin and its symbol as part of herself, just as she accepts her child She is criticised for the ornateness of the A which suggests her pride in her sin rather than shame In many ways her sin originated in her acknowledgment of human need for love following her husbands unexplained failure to arrive in Boston and probable death Unlike the townspeople, Hester accepts her humanity rather than struggles against it The townspeople don't see their own potential sinfulness in Hester but as someone whose transgressions outweigh and obliterate their own errors The public nature of her punishment makes her a scapegoat and gives the townspeople a chance to demonstrate or convince themselves of their own piety by condemning her as loudly as possible. Beadle reinforces this when he calls for a "BLESSING ON THE RIGHTEOUS COLONY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS, WHERE INIQUITY IS DRAGGED OUT INTO THE SUNSHINE" His smug self righteousness suggests Hester's persecution is fuelled by more than the villagers quest for virtue Public gatherings present the Puritan belief that sin not only permeates out world but that it should be actively sought out and exposed so it can be punished publicly.
Belief fits into the larger Puritan doctrine emphasising the idea of original sin (idea that all people are born sinners because of initial transgressions of Adam and Eve) The world has already fallen, and colonists establish prisons and cemetery's for they know evil and death are unavoidable. Introduce Hester and explore the theme of sin with its connection to knowledge and social order
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