Hester Prynne is a Puritan woman and the novel’s protagonist. She was born in England but later moved to Amsterdam with her husband Roger Chillingworth. The couple was mismatched in both looks and temperament; where Hester was passionate, impetuous, and beautiful, Chillingworth was scholarly, reserved, and elderly. After moving to Salem, Hester had an affair with the town’s young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and gave birth to a daughter, Pearl. Hester is sentenced to wear the scarlet letter for this adultery.

Hester is sensitive and feels the shame of her punishment deeply, but she can never fully bring herself to believe her love for Dimmesdale is wrong. Furthermore, she possesses an internal sense of who she is and what she values that allows her to persevere and earn her living as a seamstress despite social ostracism. She draws strength from her identity as Pearl’s mother while also showing concern for the welfare of the poor and the sick. In ascribing these positive traits to a supposedly irredeemable “fallen” woman, Hawthorne implicitly uses Hester to challenge both 17th- and 19th-century gender ideology. In fact, the novel suggests that it is partly because she has “sinned” that Hester has such a keen sense of compassion; her personal experience of guilt and sadness lead her to empathize where others might condemn.