“Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.”

In this quote, Hawthorne is showing Hester is not someone who would run from issues that they face. By not leaving the ‘scene of her guilt’ she is owning up to the sins that she has committed and not showing that she has shame for what she’s done, but that she’s accepting it. This also applies to her refusal to remove the scarlet letter from her chest. If she would do so, she would be admitting that society has control over her destiny, and that her past is something she would gladly leave behind and forget. By wearing it with pride, she’s saying that she is not ashamed of who she is, and that she is okay with herself even in the judgmental Puritan times.