How to Overcome a Social Stigma Like Hester Prynne

Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity. 

~ Erving Goffman, sociologist

I first published this post last March after I finished reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Since then it has been picked up by searches more times than any other post on this blog. Originally it included the words, "shame punishment." Those two words have received the most hits. Other searches have contained the words, "social stigma overcome" and "deal with social stigma how to."

Condemned adulteress forced to wear a scarlet letter "A" as a badge  of shame.

....now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

What does the character of Hester Prynne have to show us about overcoming a social stigma? 

1.Walk tall.

Never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like...than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.

2. Take the heat.

Hester stood on her pedestal,

...with the hot, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring at [her] features...

3. Let unkind words roll off. 

The elder clergyman gave a long discourse on sin, pointing directly at Hester as the object of his lesson:

Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure... the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears.

And though often verbally assaulted,

she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient...

4. Keep a low profile.

She established herself with her infant child on the outskirts of town in a cottage,

  . . . not in close vicinity to any other habitation.

5. Stay busy. 

Skilled in needlework, Hester worked diligently to provide for her infant and for herself:

...she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle.

6. Help others.

Hester bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not infrequently insulted the hand that fed them.

7. Be patient.

Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne, there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to its worst usage...

Such helpfulness was found in her,-- so much power to do and power to sympathize,-- that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.

What became of Hester Prynne in the end?

Individuals ... had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. 'Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?' they would say to strangers. 'It is our Hester,-- the town's own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!'

What about you? Have you ever felt stigmatized?

What words of encouragement do you have for a person who is living under the burden of a social stigma?

Wondrous Heart of a Woman

Pondering Hester Prynne While at my Needle

Before I read The Scarlet Letter, I made assumptions about it. First, I assumed that it was a novel designed to draw the reader into a position of sympathy for adultery. Second, I thought that if a woman was condemned to wear a letter "A" sewn to the bodice of her gown and made to live as an outcast for the rest of her life, it would make no sense for her to stay around town.

As for my first assumption -- well, I needn't have worried. Regardless of whatever liberties screenwriters may have taken in depicting this American classic for the masses, there is not a hint of impropriety to be found in Hawthorne's words. It was also a relief to note that Hester Prynne was not quite the blatant adulteress that I expected her to be -- her husband was presumed dead when her indiscretion occurred.

And for my second assumption -- the question keeps coming up among my blog-friends, "Why did Hester stay?" Jeannette, at A Classic Case of Madness, wrote a thought-provoking post on it. You can read it here. I think it is a very good question. If you can't answer that question, The Scarlet Letter would be pointless. The plot would dissolve the instant she walked away.

Of course, she didn't walk away. She stayed.

I came to The Scarlet Letter expecting a novel about shame or "ignominy" as Hawthorne liked to call it; what I got was a novel about fortitude. Hester Prynne was the kind of woman who could have taken lemons and made lemonade. She took that letter "A" which was supposed to stand for "adultery" and over time, turned it into "A" for "able."

In chapter three, "The Recognition," we find a scene rife with conflict. The tension is coming from every direction: the sanctimonious townspeople, stern officials, the "figure on the outskirts of town," the crying baby, the "unadulterated sunshine," the ambivalent minister, and Hester's own conscience. 

Suddenly Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale is the one questioning Hester about the identity of the baby's father. (The reader already knows -- he is the father!) It's a tangled web. I was wondering, What in the world is this man going to say? Yet Hawthorne pulls the scene off brilliantly.

I'm not going to disclose all of the dialogue that ensues. It's the one scene in the book that brought me to tears. (Perhaps it was also all that tension mounting; I was bound to cry at some point.) He ends his interrogation of Hester with this:

Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak!

After pondering the novel for a few days, what I keep coming back to is this: "She will not speak!"  Perhaps she would not speak for the same reason that she would not leave: love. 

Yes I know that in our culture we've got love and lust all mixed up, saying "love" when we really mean "lust." And yes, some lust did occur in this tale about twelve months before the novel begins. But the fact is: I read a novel about adultery and it didn't make me feel dirty. Somewhere along the way -- perhaps in the prison cell where one would expect the seeds of bitterness to grow -- at some point she began to love him. Understand I mean agape love and not eros. Agape expects nothing in return:

My child must seek a Heavenly father, for she will not know an earthly one!

She expected nothing from Arthur, yet she chose to remain near him.

I remember something my aunt once said to me when I was in my teens: "When you become physically intimate with someone, you create a bond --  a rope-- that's very difficult to break; when you have a child with someone, the rope becomes an iron chain." It's interesting that Hawthorne used this same metaphor:

The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.

-spoiler alert-

Hester does eventually leave. But not until after Arthur has died. Several times in the novel she asserts that she has remained true to him.  

And as for her scarlet letter -- she wore it as proudly as a bride would have worn her wedding band.

Have you ever come to a novel with preconceived ideas which turned out to be false?

Do you have another opinion of Hester Prynne? Why do you think she stayed?