If we cannot accept our own identity, how are we supposed to accept and eventually love others just like us? In the novel The Scarlet letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn addresses the issue of accepting ourselves before we can accept and love others. Hawthorn expresses this issue through the relationships between his characters of Hester Prynne, Reverend Dimmesdale and Pearl. All three characters are bound to a single situation in which Hester accepts her punishment for committing adultery, and therefore has the ability to love others, in contrast Dimmesdale does not accept his part in Prynne and his actions and denies his love for Prynne and his daughter Pearl. Lastly Pearl, the consequence of Dimmesdale and Prynne's actions of adultery, is caught between the two worlds of Prynne's and Dimmesdale. It results Pearl's confusion in character, which in turns results in her inconstant acts of affection and introvert behavior.
            
             From the very beginning of the story Prynne is continuously criticized and attacked by the Puritan townsmen of Salem, who strictly believe in the words God, including the issue of adultery. Here Prynne is identified by the towns' people as a woman who has committed adultery with a mysterious man later revealed as Reverend Dimmesdale, and is being punished by wearing the Scarlet letter. It is expected of Prynne's reaction, like other similar victims of such cruelty, to wrath out at her assailants (the public) but instead, "she never battled with the public, but submitted uncomplainingly to it's worst usage; she made no claim upon it in requital for what she suffered; did not weigh upon it's sympathies" (Hawthorn pg. 157).
             Prynne actions can be explained, do to the fact that Prynne accepts her identity of being an adulteress. She honestly believes that her action was not wrong and there fore she freely accepts her punishment of wearing the scarlet letter and the cruelty that acc...