"The drama is really the drama of the patriarchial society's need to control female sexuality in the most basic way," says Evan Carton, literature professor at the University of Texas, Austin. Hester Prynne is also the object of a cruel and shadowy love triangle between herself, her minister lover, Arthur Dimmesdale, and her husband, now called Roger Chillingworth.
In the self-righteous eyes of the townspeople, she is the ultimate example of sin. She's forced to stand in shame before the mass of Puritan citizens, enduring their stares, their whispers and their contempt. The adultery she committed when her husband was thought lost at sea leads Boston's Puritan authorities to brand her with the bright red "A" of the title. She's the embodiment of deep contradictions: bad and beautiful, holy and sinful, conventional and radical.Īt first glance, Hester may seem more victim than heroine. Hester Prynne, protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterwork The Scarlet Letter, is among the first and most important female protagonists in American literature.
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