Because Hester's daughter Pearl is the result of adultery, she is seen as someone to be avoided by the Puritan community. The Puritan idea and tradition in society abhorred sin. Hawthorne states, "Be true! Be true! Be true! Show the world freely, if not your worst, at least some trait from which the worst may be inferred!" (Hawthorne 387). To be true is to be honest as we are all sinners. Puritans, however, are not outwardly happy people. They do not accept or forgive people who do harm or commit sins. Hester's letter "A" was meant to be a symbol of adultery and sin, but it doesn't mean that to her. Hester discards the meaning of the A as adultery, shame, and sin. The stitching of the “A” on his clothes shows that he is not ashamed of the negative sign letter. Hester feels somewhat liberated from her sin, but it is not because she is publicly chastised. Hester stood very ladylike on the structure wearing the scarlet A. He wasn't ashamed. Hawthorne writes of Hester: "She had wandered, without rule or guide, in the moral wilderness. Her intellect and her heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she wandered as freely as the wild Indian in his woods . the scarlet letter was her passport to regions where other women dared not venture. Shame, desperation, loneliness: these had been her teachers, severe and wild, and they had created her