Who suffered the most?

[nominal]

I would say Pearl, the lack of the father, basically no friends, and she was just weird.

[morgane]

I wouldn't say Pearl suffered that much. As you say, she's quite weird and doesn't really seem to need friends. And by the way, what kinds of friends the horrible Puritan children woumd have made anyway?
I wouldn't say that Hester suffered either. I think that since she's such a proud woman, she could overcome the stigma of the scarlet letter. Remember, she resumes it at the end of the novel. Well, she may have suffered, because she would have liked to make her life with Dimmesdale, but wasn't allowed to.
I would say that Dimmesdale suffered the most. Indeed, what he did with Hester was for him a sin, something that was completely contrary to his moral and religious beliefs and I think that his being torn between religion and love was unbearable for him. That's why he tortured himself physicaly and that's why he dies at the end.
Anyway, that was my spur-of-the-moment reaction when I first read your post!

[Cata]

I wouldn't say that Hester suffered either. I think that since she's such a proud woman, she could overcome the stigma of the scarlet lette

What? I wasn't going to say anything about the other stuff but I don't get this. I thought the whole point was that she used her suffering and wrongdoings, her sin, to make herself a better person, which goes against Puritan thinking. Am I off here?

I'm not very far in the book either, I'll admit...

[morgane]

I don't think you can comment on the ending of a novel if you haven't finished reading it. At the end of the novel, Hester is not a "better person" as you wrote. She's just the same as she was at the beginning, only she represses her true feelings. Remember, she organizes secret meetings with women like her, i.e. "fallen women". So I wouldn't say that she's become "a better person" from a Puritan point of view.

[LambentMoonight]

I also agree that she did not make herself a better person because Hester did not need to change herself to fit the society she was living in. Instead the community sort of changes around her BECAUSE of her non changing character. She wears her letter everyday and through her good works and her sweet nature the community starts to see the letter A as something other than adultry. It really brings up the individual vs. society topic. I don't think that Pearl suffered much. She was one of the happiest characters in the book. She had no cares, just a wild child who loved her mother and did not want to make friends with the other Puritans. The character who suffered the most was Dimmesdale in my opinion because he had the weight of the whole community on him. He was both the individual and society. He struggled to keep up his image in the community but he felt the weight of his sin against God at the same time of loving Hester and wanting to take her hand with Pearl and walk freely about the comunity. His character was split in so many ways that I could feel the burden myself, and I was only reading about him.