As this past week has ended and a new one has begun, there have been a few moments that have made me connect my experiences to that of Hester Prynne. My mom told me to take the dog out. A few hours later I realized that I had forgotten to do the task that she had asked me to do earlier. A feeling of guilt spread all throughout my body, and I started to remember moments where I didn’t do a task correctly. This feeling of guilt is different for everybody. You may have not felt guilty if you had not taken your dog out. Just like Hester Prynne, her guilt was much deeper than just the guilt of not doing an everyday chore. Her guilt was shown to a town that knew everything that she had did, which is what leads me into this post.
“The scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had been treading since her happy infancy” (Hawthorne). At this point, Hester Prynne is realizing that her life has a “track along which she had been treading,” which makes you believe that her whole entire life has been filled with angst and problems “since her happy infancy.” Those moments when you feel guilty, you think the world is over, and everything is out of your hands. This is exactly what Hester Prynne is coming in to fruition as she is standing on the scaffold. She is feeling out of control and lost because she knows that the act that she has committed is beyond anything that she has ever done before. She starts to look back on her entire life and see moments where she could have done something differently, and this is where her guilt comes from. Guilt is one thing that we as humans come in contact with every day of our lives. But now Hester will have to live with that guilt until the day she dies, through the letter “A” embroidered on her gown.
On top of remembering her childhood, she also recalls her parents’’ faces: her father’s “with his bald brow, and reverend white beard” and her mother’s, “with the look of heedful and anxious love” (Hawthorne). So when she thinks of the crime she has committed the images of her parent surface. Hester sees her mother’s face which is filled with “heedful” and “anxious love,” because her mother loves her, of course, but the word “anxious” could indicate her mother disapproving what her daughter has done, and the affect that it has had on Hester in society. Hester Prynne has probably always wanted to live up to both of her parents expectations, but after seeing the image of them in her head, she feels as though she has not. And she has every right to, because at this point in her life everything is going wrong, and her guilt is taking over. As she stands on the scaffold of the pillory, she is reminded of what she has done wrong, not only by the disapproving crowd, but also by the images of her past in her head. We all have tried to live up to our parent’s expectations but sometimes we fail.
Everyone fails in life, and everyone makes mistakes that they wish they could take back. But once someone has made that mistake, guilt always rears its ugly head and takes over their body. Hester Prynne realizes the horrible mistake that she has made, but she is excepting her punishment whole-heartedly. Many people feel guilty for different things and certain scenarios. For me I felt guilty for not taking my dog out and doing any chores that my mom asked me to do, but for someone else, those things may not bring guilt to them. Guilt kicks in over anything and everything, but it helps us to grow as a person. Hester Prynne is taking her punishment and her guilt, and is learning from it all just like we all should learn from our mistakes in life.
The Scarlet Reader 