Her spiritedness and independence of mind, which contributed to her erotic rebellion, are displaced, and in many respects irrelevant, away from this specific moral community of faith. She returns older and, it seems, less ambitious about radical reform of the community. Yet her return is an exceptional act of independence. Her penitence is unfinished because her sin and its punishment were never a matter of the actions of an isolated individual. Her return signals her recognition of the deep interdependence between her self understanding and Puritan Boston" (Taylor 2005).
Hester and Dimmesdale reveal the sad limits of the human mind, even while they exhibit the resistant nature of human passion to mortal laws. Their resistance is not willed -- they are only obeying their unconstrained natures, and because it lacks intellectual weight, it is not effective. This notion of the undisciplined body is expressed in Hester's unconsciously willful expression, and Dimmesdale's physical sickness, which mirrors his moral sickness. But although Hester and Dimmesdale display physical modes of resistance, they are unable to be true nonconformists mentally and socially, as well as physically.
Ironically, as they resisted the teachings...
In world where only one religious interpretation may be expressed, conformity is epidemic, and new ways of thinking are almost impossible to achieve. Even the people most bruised and battered by Puritan society, in this case, Hester and Dimmesdale, still largely accept its tenants. And most tragically of all, Hester returns to Boston at the end of her life, like a moth to the flame.
Works Cited
Clark, Nancy Brewka. "Nathaniel Hawthorne: Hawthorne's Struggle and Romance with Salem."
The Literary Traveler. December 14, 2009.
http://www.literarytraveler.com/literary_articles/nathaniel_hawthorne_salem.aspx
Hunt, C. "The Persistence of Theocracy: Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter."
Perspectives on Political Science 38.1 (2009): 25-32. Research Library, ProQuest.
Web. 14 Dec. 2009.
Taylor, Olivia Gatti. "Cultural confessions: Penance and penitence in Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Fawn." Renascence, 58.2 (2005),
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