Hester Prynne: In and Beyond Discipline and Punish

Abstract

The essay is to explore how Hester Prynne accomplishes subjectivity-construction in the ordinate and harsh puritan community, full of discipline and punish. In the process of the subjectivity-construction, Hester Prynne not only confronts and surpasses the sin and the shadow of her own self, but also transcends and breaks the invisible web of the inhuman and tough regulations filtering in every corner of the puritan community. She accomplishes a near-perfect transformation from a sinning object despised and chastised by all the community members to a new feminine figure who regains their applause, respect and love in the end. Through the heroine’s glorious and admiring transformation, Nathaniel Hawthorne poses a suspicion upon the naive belief on the human nature: genuine and full of smiling aspects, upheld by the transcendentalists and prevailing at his time. He also chastises the inhuman regulations, disciplines and punish of the harsh puritan community which twist and crush the souls of the community members. But more important and inspiring point of the novel lies in that through the heroine’s glorious and admiring transformation and subjectivity-construction, Hawthorne reasserts the shining and glorious human nature of Hester Prynne, which reflects his humane concern towards the ones tortured, disciplined and punished by the prison-like society.