The women fear Hester for her sin for the same reason that men avoid, women are pitiless too, and children flee Reverend Hooper. They all fear that which they do not understand, and in turn are cruel to those who they believe to be social outcasts.
Midway into The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne writes "Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words. "The godly youth!" said they among themselves. "The saint on earth!" (SL pg140). When compared to his statement in The Ministers Black Veil, where he writes "I look around me, and, lo! on every visage, a Black Veil!"(MBV pg33) where Hawthorne is principally saying that every one of us is a sinner hiding our faults from the eyes of others, a parallel becomes apparent. The quote from The Scarlet Letter relates to how Dimmesdale hides his sin behind a veil of deceit from his congregation, who sees him as a "saint on earth" whereas in The Ministers Black Veil the veil manifests in physical form. This is significant because it demonstrates an important theme across much of Hawthorne's literature, which is constant human imperfection. Similarly, Young Goodman Brown includes a quote saying "The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds-the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveler, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors." (YGB pg107). This is an important quote because it show how kind, seemingly normal people can have blackness in their hearts.
