Claim
Hawthorne suggests that despite its negative connotation, seclusion offers beneficial advantages by allowing self-evaluation and ultimately inducing self-improvement.
Quotes/Commentary
"People brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble." (146 Hawthorne)Lyall
Rachel Shi
"But this very burden it was that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad persuasive eloquence" (Hawthorne 80).
Additionally, Dimmesdale, through his lone suffering and self-seclusion, is able to deeply understand and connect with sinners who have, too, felt the weight of a lonesome burden. He realizes that it is better for the sinful to "be free to show [their] pain" than to "cover it up" and plays an important role in bringing people relief by taking confessions (76). His important role is why he continues to further isolate himself and live a deceitful life that he hates, since he realizes that "no good can be achieved by [him]" if he is viewed as "filthy"(74). Therefore, as much as Dimmesdale's self-inflicted isolation hurts him, only through his seclusion can he serve a greater purpose and bring solace to others.
Tianshu Wu
“Standing alone in the world...and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable—she cast away the fragment a broken chain. The world’s law was no law for her mind...She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the seashore, thoughts visited her such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England” (Hawthorne 247).
http://www.eco-artware.com/blog/several-shades-of-urban-foraging/
Hsing Chun Lin
"But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too" (234).
Jade Kim
Hester Prynne lived in total solitude. But she had to make a living; she had to survive and put food on the table for herself and her child. Thankfully, she was a skilled craftsperson. She sold her sewing works to other people to aid her and her child's survival. Through that, she, "Hester Prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. With her native energy of character and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off [...]" (56). She was a skilled person even before she lived in solitude. But her solitude forced her to work even harder to prove her worthiness because of others' unwillingness to be associated with her. The only way to achieve so was by being especially skilled at her craft so that the others will buy her work. And "with her native energy and character and rare capacity," and obviously her extreme hard work, she has achieved so. Ironically, living in solitude had perhaps be more involved in the world that has shunned her. In conclusion, living in seclusion made Hester Prynne work even harder to survive, therefore helping her better herself to survive within the society.
http://americanathebeautiful.org/collonial-williamsburg-its-not-just-history-geeks/
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