Retribution is defined as “A just deserts perspective that emphasizes taking revenge on a criminal perpetrator or group of offenders” (Schmalleger, 2014, p. 341). This is the oldest form of punishment and is based solely on an emotional reaction to a transgression of sorts. Retribution is synonymous with revenge and retaliation, all based off the idea of just deserts. The phrase “just deserts”, comes from an archaic meaning of the word desert which means what one deserves. Schmalleger defines it as “A model of criminal sentencing that holds that criminal offenders deserve the punishment they receive at the hands of the law” (2014, p. 341) An aspect of retribution can involve shaming.
It takes real love to take the punishment upon her. Hester could have given pearl and herself a better life and a life without infamy of the scarlet letter depict on her bosom. She shows strength in which she followed through and continued to her word by not speaking his name. A weak individual would have easily given up and taken the easy way out by revealing there “fellow sinner”. Nathaniel Hawthorne fulfills the writer’s principle through Hester and Pearl’s intricacy of religious mentality.
Maria is a seventeen year old girl who is independent and has many responsibilities. In the film Maria Full of Grace, Maria is first seen working in a factory that produces rose bouquets. Maria bandages her fingers over the cuts of the rose thorns. The music is sad and gives the viewer the feeling that Maria longs for more. Maria lives with her mother, sister and baby nephew in a small town in Columbia.
She realizes her talent in needlework and begins to support herself by sewing. Even though her artsy embroidering defies the Puritan dress code, it was requested for christening gowns, burial shrouds, and officials’ robes. As years elapse the town’s respect for Hester flourished. Hester became less alienated from the society and began to use her kindness to feed the poor and care for the sick. The townspeople’s view of the scarlet “A” upon Hester’s breast had changed as well, “Many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification.
Evans 1 Jason Evans ENG 4U1-40 Mr. Burke 10/02/13 A Guilty Conscious A guilty conscious can eat away at a person’s soul and it is extremely difficult to break free from if the guilt is kept inside. Throughout the novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are signs that lead to confession being the best choice. The use of Dimmesdale keeping his guilt a secret, the natural world and townspeople pressuring the characters to release their guilt, and Hester being a public figure for people to judge makes it obvious that confession is the best choice rather than keeping sin inside. Therefore, it is wiser for an individual to confess their sin. According to the novel, the best way to deal with sin is to confess
Dimmesdale loses himself in this falsehood, forgetting who he truly is, and assumes two distinct identities: one while in the public eye and another while in privacy. Yet Nathaniel Hawthorne does not paint an entirely miserable portrait of humans. The Scarlet Letter features the character Hester Prynne, a woman who also sins. But unlike Goodman Brown and Mr. Dimmesdale, her sin is discovered by her community. Resultantly, she becomes an outcast from society, and this allows her to think for herself and remain an individual, avoiding the dreadful trap of hypocrisy and lies that emerge from hidden sin.
She just shoved in her clothes, her jewellery, her perfumes” (page 281) shows her to be a vain, desperate creature who strives to give her life some purpose but is looking in all the wrong places. The passage “She joined the CWA, mixed with Corrigan’s leading ladies, helped cater for events and joined all the amateur pleared-skirt sporting fraternities and committees” (page 97) emphasises her desire to be a well-thought of and active member of the community. However her materialistic values are shown to be void and meaningless: “... she dragged that empty suitcase to her vanity table. She stole it from me, but she had nothing precious of her own to pack in it. She just shoved in her clothes, her jewellery, her perfumes” (page 281) shows her to be a vain, desperate creature who strives to give her life some purpose but is looking in all the wrong places.
Societies’ perception of a person can be very subjective. In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a woman named Hester Prynne has a baby out of wedlock with the minister of the town, Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale feels a tremendous amount of sorrow and guilt in his soul for not publically repenting his sin as Hester Prynne was forced to do. When Dimmesdale does decide to repent, the townspeople choose to turn a blind eye to what happened even though they witnessed it with their own eyes. Hawthorne creates the characters Dimmesdale and the townspeople to show how society only believes something about a person that isn't the whole truth because they want to make that person seem like a good person, even when they find out he’s
Gilman shows this when the woman of the story says “I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already”. She also shows that woman at this time didn’t really do anything for themselves, “Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able - to dress and entertain, and order things”. The woman in the story is believing in the social norm and what her husband belittles her to be. She feels that she is a burden to her husband because she dislikes the wallpaper and continues to complain about how much it bothers her. He refuses to change it making her blame herself for not being able to cope with the “dull” and “flamboyant” yellow wallpaper.
What he does is completely un-Christian like and he hurts the students at Lowood emotionally. Helen Burns’ form of Christianity is too meek and passive for Jane and although she does admire Helen for making this choice, the forgiveness and tolerance for everything is not what Jane is looking for. When Jane reaches the Rivers’ household, Hannah the Rivers’ housekeeper tries to turn her away even though she is begging. Jane tells her, “if you are a Christian, you ought not consider poverty a crime.”