Do we like them?

Do we like Hester Prynne?

A character from The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Our score: 9 out of 10. Yes, we'd back her. She faces public shame with dignity, raises her child alone, and keeps showing kindness to the town that punished her.

Hester Prynne lives in a strict Puritan settlement in 17th-century Boston. The novel opens with her standing on a scaffold in front of the whole town, holding her baby daughter Pearl. She has been sentenced to wear a scarlet 'A' on her dress for adultery. The magistrates demand that she name the child's father, and she refuses.

Hester is proud, skilled and stubborn. She is a gifted seamstress, and she embroiders the letter so beautifully that it almost becomes a statement of defiance. She lives on the edge of town, supports herself and Pearl, and gives her needlework and charity to the same people who shun her. Over the years the town's view of the letter slowly shifts, and critics often read her as an early figure of independent womanhood.

We give her a 9 because she bears an unfair share of the blame with courage and honesty, protects the people she loves, and never turns bitter or cruel. She loses a point because her silence and her unwillingness to act sooner let some painful situations drag on. She is also less a fixed heroic type than someone shaped by the pressures around her, which makes her more human.