he issued from the prison" (Hawthorne 50). Hester is singled out as an adulteress, with the brand of her sin in the form of a scarlet letter 'A' on her chest. The three-month old child in Hester's arms is the living symbol of her sin. Adultery was a very serious sin to the Puritans because it is a violation of the Seventh Commandment, which was frequently punished by death. Hester's shaming is public. Her sin is paraded before all of seventeenth-century Boston to behold and wag their judgmental tongues. All of this isolates Hester from the rest of society. Hester, in a way, is condemned to a death-like existence. She is a prisoner in the world of the living.
Hester is placed on public display on the scaffold. Yet, somehow she manages to carry her head high regardless of the condemnations of her neighbors. It is as if Hawthorne believed that, in God's eyes
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