What is Hawthorne's attitude toward Hester?

First, it
is important to distinguish between the narrator of and Hawthorne. A
narrator of a novel is just as much a construct as any of theand one cannot always assume that
fictional narrators express the author's personal opinions.

In the novel,
the narrator sympathizes with . Although she commits what would at the time have been considered
the sin of adultery, she atones for that single sin by living an exemplary life. She refuses to
ruin the life ofby uttering his name and she is a good mother to . Despite being an outcast, she
offers sympathy and solace to the women of the town and behaves in a manner that displays more
Christian humility and charity than that displayed by many pillars of the Puritan community. In
a way, her life stands as a rebuke to religious hypocrisy.