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the most. The actions of Pearl, Dimmesdale and fate all return the letter to Hester. They give Hester back both of what made her the sinner and the able. They also
gave her a chance to fully reconcile with Dimmesdale and her community. In the end, the pain that Hester received when she refastened th eletter to her bosom was
paid back in full.
4.4.1 The Meaning of “A” Symbol
4.4.4.1 Different meanings of the scarlet letter “A”
The changes of the symbolic Meaning of the Scarlet Letter “A” In this novel, the scarlet letter “A” changes its meaning many different
times. This change is significant. It shows growth in the characters, and the community in which they live. The letter “A” begins as a symbol of sin. It then
becomes a symbol of alone and alienation, and finally it becomes a symbol of able, angel and admirable.
4.4.4.2 Adultery
The letter “A”, worn on Hester’s bosom, is a symbol of her adultery against Roger Chillingworth. This is the puritan way of treating her as a criminal,
for the crime of adultery. The puritan treatment continues, because as Hester walks through the streets, she will be looked down upon as if she is some sort of
demon from hell that commits terrible crime.
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This letter is meant to be worn in shame, and to make Hester feel unwanted. “Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here
should be the scene of her earthly punishment…pg.74” hester is ashamed of her sin, but she chooses not to showed it. She commits this scene in the head of
passion, and fully admits it because though she is ashmed, she also receives her greatest treasure, Pearl, out of it. She is a very strong women to be able to hold up
so well against what she must face. Many will have fled Boston, and seek a place where no one knows of her great sin.
Hester chooses to stay though, which shows a lot of strength and integrity. Any woman with enough nerve to holold up against a town, which despises her
very existence, and to stay in a place where her daughter is refered to as a “devil child”, either has some sort of psychological problems, or is a very though
woman.
4.4.4.3 Alone and Alienation
The scarlet letter “A” also stands for Hester’s lonely life in New England. After she is released Hester lives in a cottage near the outskirts of the city. “it had
been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of
that social activity which already marked the habbits of the emigrans.” p.75 Hesters social lives is virtually eliminated as a result of her shameful history.
Hester comes to have a part to perform in the world with her native energy of character and rare capacity. “However, there was nothing that made her fills as
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if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word and even the silence of those with whom she came to contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished,
an as much alone as if she in habitat another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than therest of human kind. She stood
apart from moral interest… seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart” p78 Hester has no friends I the worlds, ad little Pearl is the only
companion of her lonely life, so the scarlet letter “A” also is a symbol of the words “ alone “ and “alienate”.
4.4.4.4 Able , Admirable, and Angel
