When women try to fling mud at Hester, as they are 'supposed' to do, because she is an adulteress, Pearl, the "imp," "who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight." (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 7) After giving birth to her daughter Pearl, Hester's early mode of opposition to society changes and becomes broader. Rather than simply show her resistance through sexual defiance, her defiance begins to embrace the entire Puritan structure of ruler. Her opposition becomes more internal, as she becomes more and more critical of societal standards beyond the purely sexual and material. When are still flashes of the old Hester, as when she sees her old husband, Chillingworth: "Be it sin or no,' said Hester Prynne bitterly, as she still gazed after him, 'I hate the man.' She (Hawthorne, 1850, Chapter 15) Chillingworth demanded that his wife accept his hours of religious...

He is bent upon revenge as his husbandly 'right.'
In her new life as the woman who wears the scarlet 'A,' Hester begins to show more attention for the care of the poor, and accepts her role within the community. She no longer shows the same sort of open defiance as she did before, for the sake of her daughter, although she continues to show resistance, through her displays of charity, and by refusing to name Pearl's father. By the end of the novel: "Her face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the quietude which they were accustomed to behold there." (Chapter 21) Yet this quiet moral integrity, even when not voiced as loudly as when Hester is still young, proves to be just as socially destabilizing as Hester's initial, passionate act of open, sexual defiance.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850. Online edition. [28 Oct 2006] http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/sl.html