Pearl pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the head-piece smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Hester looked, by way of humoring the child and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance.

Little Pearl-who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armour as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house-spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate. Chillingworth's sin was tormenting Dimmesdale almost to the point of death Dimmesdale's was abandoning Hester to lead a lonely life without the man she loved. The narrator supports Hester's innocence and instead points the finger at the novel's two real sinners: Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. Hester's transformation of the scarlet letter's meaning raises one of The Scarlet Letter's most important questions: What does it mean to sin, and who are the novel's real sinners? Hester's defiant response to her punishment and her attempts to rekindle her romance with Dimmesdale and flee with him to Europe shows that she never considered her affair with Dimmesdale to be a sin. Hester is spared execution only because the Puritans of Boston decided it would benefit the community to transform her into a 'living sermon against sin.' But just as Hester turns the physical scarlet letter that she is forced to wear into a beautifully embroidered object, through the force of her spirit she transforms the letter's symbolic meaning from shame to strength. As a result, the Puritans maintained strict watch over themselves and their fellow townspeople, and sins such as adultery were punishable by death. Puritan preachers depicted each human life as suspended by a string over the fiery pit of hell. The Puritans believed people were born sinners.

Sins of the father quote meaning