Penance - A Woman's Choice, Not a Sin

Women derive a pleasure incomprehensible to the other sex from that delicate toil of the needle to ester prynn. It might have been a mode of expressing and therefore soothing the passion of her life, she rejected it a sin. This morbid meddling of conscience was an immaterial matter. Betokened, it is to be feared. No genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong beneath. In this manner, hester prynne came to have a part to perform in the world. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them,. like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside and can no longer make itself seen or felt