Chapter 5: Hester's Creature In The Scarlet Letter

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Chapter 5: The difference was that Hester felt less torture during her emergence for the public humiliation because she was able to “man up” to the pointing fingers and overcome the negative feelings of torture, effectively converting her walk of shame into a “lurid triumph” (54). With nobody around for her last emergence, she soon realizes the horrors of reality where she must fight to survive every single day’s “heap of shame” (54). A dichotomy that is established between the townspeople and Hester due to the location of Hester’s cottage is that even though she was viewed as an outcast by Puritan society, people would still seek Hester’s service for “the finer productions of her handiwork” (56), or in other words, people still needed Hester’s help to expertly sew various garments. Hence, there was a love and hate relationship going on between the townspeople and Hester. Two reasons why Hester decides to stay instead of moving away to a different colony…show more content…
Hester’s desire to sew better is likely due to the fact that she enjoyed doing it and could “derive a pleasure… from the delicate toil of the needle” (57). Sewing probably kept her busy and gave her something to do in life as well. Hawthorne also alludes to Cain for Hester’s true motive for the sewing. The significance of the point is that Hester begins to realize that she was not the only one who sinned and that even the most trusted of individuals and closest followers of the Puritan law had sinned; the townspeople just did not want to admit that they themselves have also sinned. Chapter 6: The amount of time that has elapsed since chapter 5 is not exactly specified, but can be roughly estimated by Pearl’s ability to engage in “social intercourse”
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