Written by Anon
“Measured by the prisoner’s experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon” (Hawthorne 46).
During Hester Prynne’s humiliating leave from the prison house in Chapter two of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses a simile to compare Hester’s present pain to the hypothetical pain of her entire society physically running over her heart. The Puritan society throngs at the marketplace to witness Hester’s shame; she is being punished for intercourse out of wedlock. The verb form of the word “throng” refers to a crowd jamming and pushing, usually tumultuously and violently, to fill an area. The action of the crowd thronging to see her for the purpose of ridiculing her constricts and overwhelms Hester, antagonizing and creating a claustrophobic effect for the reader. Hawthorne goes on describing the simile, using the words “flung”, “spurn”, and “trampled” to describe the actions hypothetically done on Hester’s heart. To fling means to throw forcefully, to spurn means to vehemently reject something, and to trample means to tread on and crush. The words invoke a connotation of violence and bitterness. The severity of the injuries sustained on Hester’s heart is forcefully communicated to the reader, concocting emotions of distress and despair. The vehemence of Hester’s society is illustrated completely using the aforementioned words. The severity of both their definitions and their connotations eventually force the reader to feel beyond sympathy for Hester, but rather, empathy.
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