"She would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,--at her, the child of honorable parents,--at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman,--at her, who had once been innocent,--as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument."
As I was reading on this fine Friday morning, this quote stuck out at me. It struck me as very reminiscent of Eve from the Garden of Eden. Is Nathaniel Hawthorne insinuating that, in the colonists' eyes, Hester is now in the shoes of the most famous temptress in Biblical history? Is her carnal mistake on par with damning humanity to a life of innate sinfulness? Will she be as broadly infamous as Eve in the community because of the scarlet letter? In the same vein, is the baby's father the snake - or is the cross only Hester's to bear? I think that this is a case of Hawthorne's dark humor - he's pointing out the ridiculousness of the general overreaction. At least I hope he is...
xoxo Annie
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