"Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon."
Such were the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne in reference to Hester, the main character of the Scarlet Letter, a woman publicly marked and shamed by her society for perceived transgressions against a moral code. Similarly, over 150 years after its publication, multitudes of us face the same public stigma and degradation due to the diagnosis of HIV: three letters much heavier than the sole 'A' Hester had to wear upon herself.
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