Hester Prynne
Hester Prynne is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter. She is portrayed as a woman condemned by her Puritan neighbors for having a child out of wedlock. The character has been called "among the first and most important female protagonists in American literature".[1]
Inspiration and influence[edit]
According to popular tradition, the gravestone of Elizabeth Pain in Boston's King's Chapel Burying Ground was the inspiration for Hester Prynne's grave.[2] Scholar Laurie Rozakis has argued that an alternate or additional source for the story may be Hester Craford, a woman flogged for fornication with John Wedg.[3] Another story claims that Hester was modeled after Mary Bachiler Turner (fourth wife of well-known Colonial minister Stephen Bachiler) whose life in colonial Maine bore a striking resemblance to Hester's tale.[4][5] Boewe and Murphey (1960) posit that Hester Prynne is not based on any particular person but is a composite character based on elements and aspects of the lives of women in similar circumstances in the society.[6] But Berson (2013) adds that there was no law requiring a scarlet letter.[7]
Hawthorne chose his characters' names carefully, so that symbolism could be understood by the careful reader. Her given name Hester is of Greek origin and means "star".[8][9] The character of Hester is immersed in her community by her surname Prynne,[10] that of the famous Puritan leader and pamphleteer, William Prynne.[9]
In various film adaptations of the novel, Prynne has been portrayed by actresses such as Lillian Gish, Sommer Parker, Meg Foster, Mary Martin, Sybil Thorndike, Senta Berger, and Demi Moore.[11] In the cult television series Twin Peaks the name was also adopted as a pseudonym by the character Audrey Horne. Another literary figure using the surname Prynne is a woman who had an adulterous relationship with a pastor in the novel A Month of Sundays by John Updike, part of his trilogy of novels based on characters in The Scarlet Letter.[1] In the musical The Music Man, Harold Hill refers to Hester Prynne in the song "Sadder but Wiser Girl". He sings that he wants a girl "with a touch of sin", remarking "I hope, and I pray, for a Hester to win just one more 'A'."[12]