"The Scarlet Letter" - Character and Motivation

Prompt #2 - Choose one of the three main characters and discuss his/her motivations throughout the novel. What is the final outcome for the character you are discussing, and what does the outcome suggest to the reader?

Hester Prynne, throughout the novel "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is motivated in her actions by the presence of the scarlet A, and her daughter, Pearl, who she genuinely starts to believe is the human embodiment of her punishment. Even though Hester attempts to do good deeds for others in her Puritan community and uses her skills as a seamstress to make a good living for herself, she is constantly living under the shadow of her past deed. Her daily reminders of her single sin are a constant motivator for her as the plot begins the thicken.

Hester, like all those living under the Puritan rules and regulations, finds most of her life centering around the church, even more so now that she has been shunned by it. Her isolation from the people of Boston and the religious figures is represented in her own geographic isolation. Her only salvation comes through her seamstress work, and her daughter, Pearl. This gives her both a reason to live and a permanent torment, and throughout the book Hester must struggle with balancing the joy she receives from them and  the guilt she feels for not living a life of complete modesty. This mixture of feelings is what motivates her in a pivotal point of the book, when she must go to Governor Bellingham and plead to keep Pearl in her possession.

Governor Bellingham and the rest of the upper class white men dictating how society must be run decide that Hester Prynne, the adulteress, can no longer keep her daughter if she is to have any hope for a good future. Hester must go to them, pleading, to explain how her daughter is just a human version of the scarlet A. This can't be an easy moment for Hester - in the very beginning of the book, she was motivated by her pride and anger at those who judged her without really knowing her, and now she must admit to these people that they have succeeded in making her life miserable. But motivated through her love for her daughter and for, as we later find out, her loyalty to Dimmesdale, she can overcome these barriers, admit that she believes Pearl to be a spirit sent by God to punish her, earn the guardianship of her child, and resist the urge of witchcraft.