Hester Prynne, and specifically her scarlet letter, exemplifies the Puritan perspective on women’s easily tainted natures that can remain hidden from the public. I was intrigued by the idea that Hester Prynne served to justify the weak moral character of all women. Throughout the reading, the narrator speaks to Hester’s complete loss of individuality where she begins to stand for the idea that women’s natures are more susceptible to sin. They argue, that “throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passions” (Hawthorne, 469). Her behavior was used as an example when one was speaking about women in general. Furthermore, there is a lot of anxiety from the other women in the town to even look at the scarlet letter on Hester’s chest; one would be corrupted by a quick glance. From the first chapter, the women of the town wished to punish Hester more harshly than the men as she had, “brought shame upon [them] all, and ought to die” (Hawthorne, 454). Hester could not be viewed as an individual who committed a crime but was thought to represent all women. Hester Prynne starts to doubt the nature of women herself from wearing her scarlet letter. She begins to discuss the idea that her letter has given her a sense of seeing others’ invisible scarlet letters. With suspicion that the devil was corrupting her, she started to believe the “outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne’s” (Hawthorne, 473). Her own wearing of the scarlet letter makes her skeptical of the character of all the women around her. Ultimately, The Scarlet Letter has given further insight into the anxiety that surrounds being a Puritan woman.