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Of course, Hester is a victim who could arouse readers’ sympathy. She married an old scholar whom she didn’t love. Two years ago, the husband had sent his wife alone across the ocean to the Massachusetts colony, but his ship has never been heard of again. In such situation, Hester, a young attractive widow was found guilty of adultery. Such crime was exposed before the public and she was punished to wear the scarlet “A” standing for humiliation all her life. But now we are not going to discuss the revivification and seriousness but the attitude that Hester held to face her fault and punishment.
People can’t help asking a question: Hester is not the only one to hide the truth. Why do you think her--the most hypocritical person in The Scarlet Letter? Really, in his novel, Hawthorne explored the hypocrisy of the social morality and the cheat of the religion in America by showing us the portrait of Arthur Dimondale and description of the partisans in that period. However, comparative to speak, Hester’s hypocrisy is more serious. This is because her disguise cannot be told and found by others easily.
IV. Hester’s Character
As every reader noticed, at the beginning of the story, Hester’s personality is accorded a vivid and in-depth description. Her pride and her beauty receive emphasis. It is her firm conviction that keeps Hester in Boston close to Dimondale all those long, sad years. All of the above proves that Hester is a heroine with tenacious existence consciousness.
4.1 Hester’s Feminist Consciousness
In the novel, Hester’s feminist consciousness is carefully depicted, reflected at the respect of her rebellious spirit, self-reliance and strong mind. There is no doubt that it is her feminist consciousness that endows her attractive character.
Zhang (20) argues women are undoubtedly dependents, first of their fathers, then of their husbands, and in case of widowhood, dependents of their sons, if they had any, or of any surviving male relatives. So women are under control of men, having no right of independence.
However, in the novel The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne shows us a brand-new female image-- Hester, who can do what the others cannot do. Although Hester suffers hardly from the shame of her public disgrace and form the isolation of her punishment, to her, she can never accept the Puritan interpretation of her act because she believes that her desire for love and freedom is not evil, on the contrary, it is her dignity and grace. Hester holds back her self-respect and survives her punishment with ever-growing strength of character. She defends herself through her own thoughts, and then become a new female image possessing qualities of rebellious spirit, self-reliance and strong mind. These qualities are just what feminism advocates. With this noble character, new women now dare to defy power and fight against the unfair rules that determine their lower status at that time. It is the feminist consciousness awakening them do what they have never done before; besides, this feminist consciousness highlights the worth of women to a great extent.
4.1.1 Hester’s Rebellious Spirit
Hester’s Rebellious Spirit shows her feminist consciousness perfectly. With this valuable spirit, she defies power and fights against the colonial rule combined by church and state.
The Puritan society in the 17th century America, with its freezing and self-denying rules cast disgrace upon the desire. Li (89) described that the Puritan membership in the Puritan community, after all, is based on the ability of that community to judge by external signs instead of the interior conscience of men. They cannot understand the heart of humanity.
The ideal society of Puritanism is Holy Community, so everyone at that time must do everything according to the rules of Puritanism. The rulers do not allow anyway breaking away with the Holy Community, let alone to revolt it.
Hester is a young and beautiful woman who has a baby with an unknown father. She is convicted to wear a scarlet letter A on her breast to suffer public shame on the scaffold. However, Hester rebels it by an action marked with natural dignity and strength of character. When she walked to the scaffold from the prison, she holds her head high; it seems that she wants to tell us that she is innocent.