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When Hester Prynne finally stands on the scanffold, she is crowded by people who are sombre and grave. She does her best to support herself under the heavy weight of a thousand relenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrate upon her bosom. People don't insult her with terrible words, however, Hester feels much more suffocating in "the solemn mood of the popular mind". She is so uneasy that she even wants to be insulted by venomous words rather than to bear all those rigid countenances. She can repay with a bitter and disdainful smile at the multitude's scornful laugh. But encountered with such "leaden infliction", she feels that unless " shrieking out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scanffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once."(P48)
Although Hester Prynne tries to make the scarlet "A" as beautiful as an ornament and herself like a graceful grandeur dame, as one woman in the crowd describes:"the pang of it will be always in her heart." (P44)If all the things make Hester feel humiliating, the recognition of her husband in the market-place aggravates her bad feeling and even frightens her severely. Then when she is sent back to the jail, she is exciting and can't control herself and even hurt her poor little babe. When the doctor---in fact Hester's real husband comes in, she immediately become as still as death. After their talk, Hester promised to keep his real identity. This makes her not only guilty, but also crisis-ridden.
Hester Prynne's term of confinement ends, but not so as her sufferings. She comes out of the prison-door and comes forth into the sunshine, which"falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if ment for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast." (P68)She knows that a more real torture, when she begins the daily custom, comes. For the guilt she has committed, she is shut out from "the sphere of human charities". Hester earns her living by her excellent needlework, which is rather popular among people in the following years. However, it is never used to embroider the white veil which is used to cover the pure face of a bride,. This exception indicates the ever vigor with which society frowned upon her sin. In all her intercourse with society, however, there is nothing that makes Hes
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