Imprisonment may be defined as putting someone in prison or jail as lawful punishment, but in reality imprisonment can occur in numerous different ways. One can be imprisoned by their emotion or the acts of others. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the main characters, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth and Pear are all imprisoned in their own unique ways. Their imprisonments all relate to one single sin, adultery committed by Hester and Dimmesdale.

Hester Prynne is a young beautiful woman living in a Puritan Community in New England whose husband is assumed dead or missing at sea. The environment she is living in and the sin she commits causes her be imprisoned in multiple ways. As the novel begins Hester is serving a sentence in jail. This jail sentence is the first example of imprisonment that Hester endures. While in jail she is physically...