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영어

The Scarlet Letter presents us with a heroine who has suffered from undeserved punishment forced by a Calvinistic community. This paper aims to trace how she is affected and transformed by the moral pressure the Puritan society inflicted upon her. Hester seems to have accepted the judgment, living a calm and serviceable life outwardly, and yet inwardly she couldn’t transcend her heartfelt conviction that she had not sinned. In the course of seven years Hester grew ever more alienated and became what she had not been at first, a rebel and a social radical. Dimmesdale himself is also a victim: he, as a pastor, symbolic of Puritan society, punishes himself as a sinner, thus practicing sadistic persecution such as vigil, flagellation, and fasting. Hester’s antinomian free thinking led her to reject and flee the society. Her attempt to escape, however, is frustrated not only by Chillingworth’s interference but also by the minister himself, who is Puritanism itself Hester has resented inwardly. Duplicity and concealment are somewhat inevitable in a legalistic society. To grow into a more liberal society Boston may have needed sacrifices of numerous, unknown prophetesses like Hester.