The story of The Scarlet Letter tells about an issue, which at first seems to be clear: a woman committed adultery and was punished for her sin, and any attempt to deny her guilt would seem a demonstration of moral relativism. Clear at first glance, the story begs several questions which touch on the issues of morality and humanity.
The cornerstone of this discussion is the global question of all times about whether the punishment by law is a tool for reform or revenge. It is interesting to analyze The Scarlet Letter from this point of view.
Hester was obviously punished for her crime. But her guilt can be hardly compared to this punishment. First of all, the key point in this discussion is the following: does the adultery affect the whole society? If not, the law has no authority to punish for it. If yes, this also begs several questions. Firstly, it is necessary to define what Hester’s sin consists of. Is their couple full of passion and respect? It can be hardly seen from the first moments describing relations of Hester and her husband. It is not difficult to guess that her feeling toward Dimmesdale was the first real passion in her life. Thus, her sin consists even not exactly of committing adultery, but of having been not able to predict the further crash of the family which is not built on the real feelings.
However, the punishment seems to be too strict for the juvenile carelessness. In fact, in a society where the moral principles and the Biblical postulate have a prevailing position, self-condemnation is already a strong punishment. As the principle of philosophy claims, only the inner contradiction can be a source of development and growth. That is why the punishment did not reach its aim of reform: Hester managed to deal with her status and turned the scarlet letter of her sin into a bright accessory, a symbol of her passion and strength.
The story of The Scarlet Letter reminds me of the Biblical story of the Original Sin. This begs the question, whether a human or the whole society has a right to take the function of God and to punish the sin.
Puritan tradition implies keeping the devout way of thinking and behavior. However, the people who formed the protagonist’s environment forgot about one of the main postulates of their religion, which says not to judge other people. The ability to understand and forgive is a much stronger weapon than deaf emphatic piety. The benefactor of forgiving and giving the second chance is the basis of and humane society.
In the second scene, author summarizes, “Yes these were her realities—all else had vanished” (Hawthorne 114). This small hyphen seems to be a huge insuperable precipice between the past, full of love and sensuality, and the future misery and despair.
However, this story tells about one more destiny affected by society: Hester’s daughter Pearl. The shadow of the scarlet letter does not promise any possibility for the future prosperity and future of a small girl. This unmerited punishment contradicts the concept of humanity, which gives priority to the rights of every person. In fact, causing the suffering of an innocent human is a sin, which seems much stronger than the protagonist’s adultery.
The strong and bright metaphoric image of a rosebush and a prison building, which runs through the whole narration, contrasts the blossom of sensuality with the cold shade of pitiless authoritarian restraint. The heavy wooden door of the prison embodies not only the severe inhumane law but as well strict and merciless spirit prevailing in the society. Trying to punish for the crime, the society committed the biggest crime of inhumanity.
Bibliography
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. London; New York: Everyman’ Library, 1969. Print.
“Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself with a crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it presses too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of the spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or the another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.” (Hawthorne & Robinson, 1954, p.274).
These words throw light on the way adopted by the minister, Dimmesdale who repents for his deed against Hester and his daughter Pearl. The very strict social setup and his social position as a minister prevent him from acknowledging the reality that Pearl is his daughter in Hester. The imprisonment of Hester for adultery was the other reason for his self-torture and psychological distress. Here Hawthorne presents Dimmesdale as a light-hearted person who is incapable of bearing the stigma of his ‘crime’, torments physically and mentally. The novelist thinks that crime is for the iron-nerved persons who are wise enough for a choice.
These sorts of people are either ready to put up with all the problems or fling it off by exerting their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose. But regarding the feeble and the most sensitive, they shall continually be lamenting over the same issue or another which are intertwined with the first. Such light-hearted people, like Dimmesdale, defy their guilt and engage in vain repentance. Concerning the remorse of Dimmesdale, it is understood that he is partially willing to acknowledge Pearl as his daughter, but the other half of his mind does not allow him. These two extremes are the cause of his psychological as well as physical suffering and it is the same issue that takes his life away. He could not bear the pressure of the moment when he revealed the fact.
“Silly Pearl,” said she, “what questions are these? There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of the minister’s heart? And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the sake of its gold thread.”(Hawthorne & Robinson, 1954, ed.2, p.336)
These lines are from the ‘Forest Walk’ chapter of the novel where Hester scolds her daughter, Pearl for questioning the burned “A” on the minister’s chest. The seven-year-old child, Pearl finds its similarity with the scarlet letter hanging on her mother Hester’s neck. Regarding Hester, it is the greatest secret of her life that should not be revealed to anyone, even to her daughter. Pearl’s question makes her angry or pretends to be, and she warns her daughter, “Do not tease me; else I shall put thee into the dark closet!.” (Hawthorne & Robinson,1954, p.338) To cover her secret from her child, she wears a mask of temper that keeps Pearl dumb.
Then Hester tries to pacify Pearl’s questions by telling that there are a lot of things that are beyond the comprehension level of children. Her nervousness and anger reveal the disturbed state of her mind, especially when she asks the question, “What know I of the minister’s heart?” She suspects whether Pearl will find any similarity with the burned “A” on the minister’s chest and the scarlet letter she wears. To get rid of Pearl’s suspicion, Hester says that she wears the scarlet letter for the sake of its gold thread. Hester does not like anyone questioning the matters connected with the scarlet letter and the burned “A” on the minister’s chest, which, as she thinks, would cause the loss of her identity.
When analyzing both quotes from the novel, one can find a kind of similarity in the character of the minister Dimmesdale and Hester. Their inability or hesitation to reveal the secret of their relationship to the public is revealed. It may be because of the effect of other factors, like the societal as well as communal restrictions to acknowledge a woman who was punished for adultery.
After attempting a reading of the novel, one feels that Dimmesdale could repent his action by publicly announcing Pearl as his daughter (though he does it much later) without torturing himself.
References
Hawthorne, Nathaniel., & Robinson, Herbert Spencer. (1954). The scarlet letter. Plain Label Books. Web.
The novel The Scarlet Letter (1850) represents a mixture of themes such as love, passion and sin which have a great physiological impact on readers. Nathaniel Hawthorne appeals to emotion of readers and their clear imaginary through complex characters and themes. Thesis Nathaniel Hawthorne appeals to emotions of readers portraying deep psychological experiences of the main herein, Hester, and her perception of sin and guilt based on Puritan traditions and values.
The novel tells a story about a woman committed adultery but kept secret the name of a father of her child. She was imprisoned for adultery and the letter “A” in her arm symbolizes unfaithful behavior and her sin. Hester give s birth to a girl, Pearl, but has to escape to another town because of shame and guilt. “She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison” (Hawthorne 2007, Chapter 2).
Readers are faced with the psychological importance of sin from the introductory chapter where Hawthorne “sets up the interrelations of masculine anxieties, feminine identifications, and authorship as subjects for consideration” (Derrick 35). This produces guilt – which is itself a mixture of fear and disgust of self. Then there is the background to friendship as a whole – enter affection, a moderated form of love. The theme of sin is depicted through emotional sufferings and experience of the main heroes of the novel: Hester Prynne, her husband Roger Chillingworth and Hester’s lover, Dimmesdale.
Hester is the only fully admirable character in “The Scarlet Letter”. Quite apart from her ‘elegant figure’ and ‘dark and abundant hair’ Hester is the only character in the book big enough to sustain a conflict, with the harsh Puritan world, equal to Hawthorne’s own. In a book without heroes, Hester is a unique literary heroine who has to carry the love story all by herself full of sin and guilt. Hester Prynne, a married woman with a missing husband, could have been sentenced to death for adultery (Coale 32).
To render the opening scene even more operatic and instantly thrilling, the contrast between Hester’s condemnation and the splendor of the scarlet letter, between her dignity on the scaffold and the deadly crowd full of biting old women, she is beautiful, with “dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam’, and “deep black eyes” (Hawthorne 2007, Chapter 2). She is condemned always to wear the letter “A”.
In this novel, Hawthorne vividly portrays morals and traditions typical for Puritan society and preached by members of this society. The narrowness of Puritan life and thought is vividly brought out by the little space Boston occupies between the wilderness and the ocean. Almost all the action is constricted, taking place between any two of the four main characters. Hester’s only companion is her mischievous, provocative daughter Pearl – an emblem of the ‘lawlessness’ in her mother’s suppressed nature. As Hester stands at the Boston’s square about to be castigated for her sin by two leading clergymen, who demand the name of her lover, Hester is horrified to see in the crowd Roger Chillingworth, her shriveled, twisted-looking old husband (Coale 31). He has been a captive of Indians in the wilderness.
The feeling of sin is supported by the town chorus that is murmuring against Hester, her silently frenzied husband staring at her, the young ethereal-looking clergyman, frightened and trembling Arthur Dimmesdale, is also compelled to demand the name of her partner in crime. Since there seems to be no one else in this crude settlement likely to interest Hester Prynne, it is obvious from the double-edged aria he has to sing at her that he is the man. The letter itself is a symbol that reminds readers about sin and guilty throughout the novel. “Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.
To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin” (Hawthorne 2007, Chapter 5). The Letter, as a sign of guilty, is an integral part of Hester body and personality (Coale 34). Hawthorne shows that a simple accusation for a person is enough to be admitted of guilt, even if this guile cannot be proved. For instance, in the beautiful scene in the forest, ‘A Flood of Sunshine’, that marks the loving reconciliation of Hester and Arthur, she frees herself of the letter, unpins her hair, finally persuades him to leave the settlement with her.
Hester shows a great courage and inner strength which helps her to resist cruelty and oppression of the society. The gritty feel of the novel also gives an added realistic mood and that might signify the reality of everyday life. The theme of solitude creates a feeling of guilt being one of the reasons that her sexual freedom does not take her very far. Despite her efforts to escape the rituals of femininity, Hester seems fated to reenact them, even though, as Hawthorne recounts these scenes and revises their conventions.
Hawthorne ‘s mastery of such details is consummate, as befits someone deeply versed in the then comparatively new discipline of social anthropology. It is assumed that everyone knows what is ‘virtue” but that no-one will blow the whistle so long as the proprieties are observed. As in the novel life is shown to be a perpetual observance of rites in which nothing much happens but everything has meaning and consequences.
Works Cited
Coale, Samuel Chase. Mesmerism and Hawthorne: Mediums of American Romance. University of Alabama Press, 1998.
Derrick, S. D. Monumental Anxieties: Homoerotic Desire and Feminine Influence in 19th Century U.S. Literature. Rutgers University Press, 1997.
Nathaniel Hawthorne is characterized as a writer deeply concerned with the Puritan values instilled in him as a result of his upbringing in nineteenth century New England. Although the area was no longer dominated by the Puritans of the past by the time Hawthorne was writing, many of the same ideas still surfaced and became the primary themes of Hawthorne’s novels and short stories. In the short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, Hawthorne examines the concept of sin and evil as he tells a relatively simple story of a young man and the young woman he falls in love with. In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne tells the story of a young woman living in a Puritan community who becomes pregnant even though her husband has never been seen in New England. The way that the community dealt with this transgression of marital bonds comprises the bulk of the story, in which it is finally revealed that the highly respected Reverend Dimmesdale was the father of the child. Although the setting of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is in Padua, Italy and The Scarlet Letter is set in New England, the two tales explore similar concepts of good and evil as they are revealed through the various characters introduced – Dr. Rappaccini, Beatrice and Giovanni in the short story and the townspeople, Pearl and Hester in The Scarlet Letter.
Rappaccini’s Daughter
In “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, Dr. Rappaccini is a mysterious sickly man who keeps a garden filled with unearthly beautiful flowers that each contains deadly poison. In this environment, he has brought up his lovely daughter by sustaining her on the products of this garden. As a result, Beatrice has become a deadly poison herself. From his first introduction, then, Dr. Rappaccini is presented in terms intended to link him with traditional concepts of evil. He is described as a “tall, emaciated, sallow and sickly looking man, dressed in a scholar’s garb of black” (Hawthorne). Although his face appears intelligent and well-educated, his expression is further described as one that “could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart” (Hawthorne). As more is learned of him, it is discovered that his life study has been dedicated to producing the most deadly poison in the world. His studies have not prevented him from conducting cruel experiments on even those who might be expected to have been most precious to him, like his own daughter. Professor Baglioni tells Giovanni that Dr. Rappaccini’s patients “are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dear to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard-seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge” (Hawthorne). His willful imprisonment of his daughter by making her poisonous and his attempted kidnapping of Giovanni through the same methods prove Rappaccini’s evil nature in that he is willing to destroy life for no purpose other than because he can. Rappaccini is the strongest element of evil in the story because he willfully creates a situation in which his own daughter is poisonous to all other humans on earth, forcing her to live a life of isolation.
The Scarlet Letter
This same element of evil, as in forcing an individual to live a life of isolation, can be found in The Scarlet Letter. The women watching Hester come out of the prison at the beginning of the story talk about how she is receiving a very light punishment in ‘only’ being forced to wear the letter and to stand on public display. One woman insists that the letter should not be a removable mark on her gown, but instead a mark in her skin. “The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch … At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead” (Chapter 2). While another woman attempts to convince the others that Hester’s mark is quite deep enough, another woman quiets her with the remark that even a brand in the skin is not enough. “What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown or the flesh of her forehead? … This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book” (Chapter 2). Although the men around them seem to feel the women are being overly harsh, Hester’s punishment is not complete with a jail sentence or the probationary term of life under the scarlet letter. She is also required to stand on public display for a certain amount of time under the silent and accusing glares of the townspeople and will be forever isolated from the remainder of her society. “These Puritans insisted that they, as God’s elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to God’s will as revealed in the Bible. This union of church and state to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism direct and exclusive control over most colonial activity until commercial and political changes forced them to relinquish it at the end of the 17th century” (Noll, 2004). This aspect of the scene illustrates how the darker side of human nature will always want to give greater physical punishment as a means of guaranteeing that the individual suffers. Although Hester’s punishment is long-term and severe, the women want it to be greater because they want to actually see her squirm in torment.
Comparison
In depicting The Scarlet Letter scene in this way and in comparison with “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, Hawthorne seems to be attempting to communicate the idea that evil is anything that operates in opposition to compassion for the feelings of another. However, there is a significant difference between the two stories in that the women of Hester’s world are not intentionally trying to create a world in which the product of their creation becomes poisonous to humankind while that is the express purpose of Rappaccini. Although the end effect is the same, the women seem to be operating under the belief that they are upholding a higher moral code.
The concept of evil
However, the concept of evil is not as simple as black and white. Hawthorne illustrates this through his portrayal of more innocent, yet still touched by evil, characters such as Beatrice and Pearl. In both of these characters, Hawthorne illustrates the concept of original sin. Although Beatrice is pure and good in every way, she is also a potent poison that kills upon the touch of her breath. “From the outset Beatrice is, as Hyatt H. Waggoner has suggested, the very embodiment of the central Christian paradox – angelic but corrupt, beautiful but damned. The poison in her system – the token of her corruption – brings death into the garden” (Male, 1954: 101). In her second appearance in the story, the girl is seen to pluck a flower from the most beautiful bush in the center of the garden and drops of liquid fall from it onto a lizard’s head at her feet, killing it almost instantly. “Beatrice observed this remarkable phenomenon, and crossed herself, sadly, but without surprise” (Hawthorne). In this action, Beatrice is seen to be as pure and pious as the next girl, but still deadly in her most innocent actions. Not able to be tainted by anything other than the flowers in her father’s garden, Beatrice has become deadly in life as the Bible indicates woman is deadly to the soul. This is described more clearly when she encounters an insect that flies into the garden from outside: “while Beatrice was gazing at the insect with childish delight, it grew faint and fell at her feet; – its bright wings shivered; it was dead – from no cause that he could discern, unless it were the atmosphere of her breath” (Hawthorne). Her touch on Giovanni’s hand on his first visit to the garden results in small purple handprint on his skin that causes a “burning and tingling agony in his hand” that Giovanni still fails to relate directly to the lady: “Giovanni wrapt a handkerchief about his hand, and wondered what evil thing had stung him, and soon forgot his pain in a reverie of Beatrice” (Hawthorne). While she is considered evil because of her deadly effect on other creatures, she is also seen to be pious and kind-hearted in her concern over others.
Pearl, Hester’s baby, is also symbolic of original sin. She is first seen as an infant in Hester’s arms, having spent the earliest days of her life on earth already in prison. Hawthorne introduces her as “a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartments of the prison” (Chapter 2). Thus, the very beginning of her life is associated with the sort of prison and isolation that will characterize much of the rest of her life. Because of her fatherless status, she is not permitted to play with the other children of the village as she might ‘taint’ them somehow. Her clothing, too, continues to remind the reader and the townspeople of her association with original sin in that Hester kept her “in a crimson velvet tunic of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered in fantasies and flourishes of gold thread” (Chapter 7) that was very similar in color and embellishment to Hester’s scarlet letter. However, it remains true that, like Beatrice, Pearl is completely innocent of her creation. Like Beatrice, Pearl is a beautiful child full of tremendous potential, but, unlike Beatrice, she is not as ready to love, perhaps because of her treatment by those around her.
Existing somewhere between the innocent evil of Beatrice and Pearl and the much more malevolent forces of Rappaccini and the townspeople, Giovanni and Hester Prynne are active yet unintentional participants in the evil that touches them. Giovanni is presented as a normal human being whose inner poison is brought out to greater effect as a result of his association with Beatrice. The beginning of Giovanni’s taint of evil in the form of poison is first indicated when he is visited by Professor Baglioni, who suspects the truth about the Rappaccini family. Baglioni asks Giovanni about the strange odor in his room. “It is faint, but delicious, and yet, after all, by no means agreeable. Were I to breathe it long, methinks it would make me ill” (Hawthorne). From this hint, Giovanni begins to notice other signs that he is becoming as poisonous as the lady he loves. This suspicion grows as fresh flowers he bought from a nearby market begin to wither in his presence and his breath, after trying twice, manages to kill a spider working in his window. Upon making this discovery, Giovanni accuses Beatrice of having made him poisonous on purpose despite his own knowledge of her innocence. The narrator makes the comment that Giovanni’s memory of Beatrice’s true nature “had Giovanni known how to estimate them, would have assured him that all this ugly mystery was but an earthly illusion, and that, whatever mist of evil might seem to have gathered over her, the real Beatrice was a heavenly angel” (Hawthorne). However, Giovanni is not able to estimate his feelings and he begins shouting accusations at her that are not justified. “Thou hast done it! Thou hast blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself” (Hawthorne). In Beatrice’s death, though, the contrast between the evil imposed on her and the evil adopted by Giovanni is brought forward. She says, “Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?” (Hawthorne). While Beatrice carried the original sin of birth in the form of her poisonous body, Giovanni carried this same sin within his very soul as he allows it to become active in his initial pursuit of Beatrice and then in his ready condemnation of her.
Hester, too, actively participates in the evil that leads to her ruin. At the opening of the novel, she has already given birth to her illegitimate child after having loved the highest pillar of morality her society has to offer out of wedlock. Because Pearl is the product of what is presumed to be a loving relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale, it is understood that Hester was a willing participant in Pearl’s creation. Hester’s offered a chance to get rid of her scarlet letter if she will name the father of her baby, but Hester has already been damaged beyond repair. She tells Reverend Dimmesdale that he will never be able to remove the letter: “It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony as well as mine!” (Chapter 3). That Dimmesdale hasn’t reached out to save Hester already illustrates to Hester that his love for her is not sufficient to carry them through any future difficulties and forces her to come to grips with even greater isolation. In spite of the love they supposedly felt for each other, after Pearl’s birth, Reverend Dimmesdale could not even be seen to associate himself with Hester because she was a fallen woman. “All Hester’s strength, intelligence, devotion avail neither her lover nor herself” (Maclean, 1955: 13). While she remains trapped within her society, Hester has no option but to continue this type of existence, but she is finally given a chance to remove herself from this society with the inheritance of her daughter and their removal to Europe. However, Hester chooses to return to her lonely cottage and to continue wearing her scarlet letter by the end of the book. “Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it–resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom” (Chapter 24). Like Giovanni, Hester is scarred for life as a result of her own conscious choices made not in malice, but for love.
Conclusion
In both of these stories, then, Hawthorne compares the concepts of original sin, as it is either acknowledged and lived with as well as possible (in Beatrice and Pearl) or as it is unwittingly invited in the name of love (as in Giovanni and Hester), against the true concepts of evil, as it is present in Dr. Rappaccini and the townspeople in their apparent adoration of punishment and destruction. Beatrice is considered evil because her original sin in the form of poison is immediately evident on those she comes into contact with, but her soul remains pure, innocent and dedicated to good just as Pearl remains an innocent child throughout her story but is shunned because of her own association with original sin. Giovanni is considered neutral at the beginning of the story because he is so much like everyone else, but the fact that he becomes poisonous to the soul of the lovely girl illustrates that his attempts to hide the idea that he was also tainted with sin has only made his sin the greater of the two. Hester’s sin will not remain hidden, but is also brought about as an unintentional side effect of an attempt to find love and happiness in an imperfect world. Finally, Dr. Rappaccini, in his avid devotion to developing his highly toxic daughter, can be seen as an example of actual evil in that he is willing to doom those he loves to eternal isolation and sadness for the sake of his own pleasure and knowledge. This is strongly comparable to the townspeople in The Scarlet Letter as they also seem to be thirsting for the pain and destruction of one of their own.
Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Name of book. Name of Editors (Eds.). Place of publication: Name of publishers, date of publication: page numbers of story.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1992.
Male, Roy R. Jr. “The Dual Aspects of Evil in ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter.’” PMLA. Vol. 69, N. 1, (1954): 99-109.
Maclean, Hugh N. “Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter: ‘The Dark Problem of this Life.’” American Literature. Vol. 27, N. 1, (1955): 12-24.
Noll, Mark A. “Puritanism.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2nd Ed.). Walter A. Elwell (Ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company, 2001, p. 857.
In the fictional novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne, the story is told of a young Puritan woman who finds herself pregnant with the minister’s child at a time when she is married to a man who has been missing for seven years. As a punishment for her crime, the community determines that she should be doomed to always wear a scarlet letter A on her bodice to announce to all who see her that she is an adulteress. The only way they will allow her to remove the letter is if she names the father of her child. However, naming the father would mean bringing down the pillar of the community in the form of the minister, who has himself decided to remain silent. The story begins following the child’s birth and her mother’s incarceration period and ends well after this child is grown up and the woman has returned to her old community. Most of the story takes place while the child is still very young, though, as Hester’s true husband arrives in town, swears her to secrecy regarding his identity and begins tormenting the guilty man whom he’s already identified. The story was written in the nineteenth century, but there is a great deal of information provided within the text about the earlier lives of the author’s ancestors, making it a somewhat historical novel in that it reveals something truthful about the past. However, it can also be considered a psychological novel because it explores the deeper motivations and ideas of the characters who struggle with their beliefs and the rigid constraints of their community. However, it is perhaps most interesting to read the book from a feminist perspective as Hawthorne reveals the particular constraints and impossible standards that have been traditionally imposed upon women as he centers his story upon the main character of Hester Prynne. The incredible complexity of this book thus provides something for everyone whether they tend to be more inclined to read from the historical, psychological or feminist perspective.
Historical perspective
It is commonly assumed that the Puritans kept a very strict social order that infiltrated every element of their lives and was supposed to reflect on the level of their individual spiritual righteousness. People who were considered closer to God, such as those who served within the church, were automatically assigned a higher social status than individuals who were considered closer to sins, such as those who were diseased or women. The story of Adam and Eve was justification enough to adopt a social position that women were naturally closer to evil than men while the idea that the farmer had to divide his attentions between God and field meant he was not as close to God as men who spent more time serving the church. This strict hierarchy was considered to be an important moral obligation. “These Puritans insisted that they, as God’s elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to God’s will as revealed in the Bible. This union of church and state to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism direct and exclusive control over most colonial activity until commercial and political changes forced them to relinquish it at the end of the 17th century” (Noll, 2004). Understanding the depth of this concept makes it easier to understand why Reverend Dimmesdale could not continue to associate himself to any degree with Hester after Pearl was born. Hester was already impure simply because she was a woman, but she is greatly more so because of her highly public fall. The Reverend can’t even spend much time with the child he knew was his daughter because Pearl is also doubly defiled. She is female and she is a child born without a father in violation of her mother’s marriage vows and the laws of God. All of this is completely in keeping with the historical facts of life within a Puritan town.
Although people living today have an easy time just picking up and moving to a new location when things get bad, this wasn’t as easy for people living in Hester’s time. Hester’s story takes place when the European living sites of people were still termed colonies and were slowly making their way into the forests. Not only were these colonies still very close to the untamed wilderness, but they were infringing on the traditional lands of the indigenous people, the Indians. Although Hester could have made it from her village to another one, and there are hints in the story that she did just that through the many lonely years that she served the sick and dying in her own quiet way, it is unlikely that she could have escaped the persecution of her community simply because they did all depend upon one another and thus her story was known throughout the New England area already. “New Englanders evolved an intricate web of interdependence to meet the demand for labor, working for neighbors who sold their labor in return” (Jones, 1853). More than this, though, would have been the practical problem of finding a place to live. “Building homes and establishing farms required intensive and often backbreaking toil” (Jones, 1853) in the days before ready apartment complexes and were activities only undertaken by men. Women were constantly under the care and guidance of men unless they were somehow disgraced, leaving Hester with no real choice other than to stay where she was and learn to accept her neighbors’ judgment. The same factors that kept Hester in place though are the factors that kept her alive and relatively free to move about her community. The early colonies needed all the people they could get in order to maintain their populations and perhaps grow, even when that person had sinned. At the same time, everyone who lived there needed to contribute in some way to the overall welfare of the colony. Hester was allowed to live because she was contributing to the preservation of the group, even if they didn’t approve of the way she was doing this and was left free both because she couldn’t go anywhere anyway and that way she could contribute to the community.
Psychological perspective
With an idea of the historical perspective of the story, it is possible to discover a deeper psychological understanding of characters such as Reverend Dimmesdale as he reacts to the psychological manipulations of Roger Chillingsworth. Hawthorne takes time to let Chillingsworth inform Hester all about his vast knowledge of the workings of the human mind. Looking at his eyes, Hester remembers that “those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner’s purpose to read the human soul” (Ch. 2, at the end). When the two of them are sitting in Hester’s jail cell and Hester refuses to tell him who the father of her child is, he tells her he will be able to find the answer himself. “Believe me, Hester, there are few things whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought–few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery … There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him … Sooner or later, he must needs be mine” (Ch. 4, toward the end). Almost immediately Chillingsworth recognizes the minister’s guilty actions for what they are and he designs a way to put himself into constant association with the weaker man with the express intention of slowly torturing him for his transgressions. He does this in a very indirect way in which he constantly wages psychological warfare on Dimmesdale by feeding him a regular diet of vague accusations, supposedly innocent teasing and dropped hints that never fully reveal whether the doctor knows the secret or not. These eventually drive Dimmesdale to his death.
The terms used to describe the reverend when he first appears in the story do not sound overly strong or as capable of withstanding the kind of treatment Hester receives at this time. “Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister – an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look – as of a being who felt himself quite astray, and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own” (Ch. 3, near the end). Although Hester has no choice but to accept the judgment of her neighbors, being unable to keep her child hidden forever and obviously without her husband since her arrival many years earlier, Dimmesdale can escape human judgment as long as both he and Hester keep quiet. However, this attempt to hide his secret inside himself eats away at his conscience until he is no longer able to survive. Throughout the seven years that pass between Hester’s trial at the opening of the story and his own death, the reverend is afflicted with a number of mysterious ailments in his chest region forcing the constant attendance of a personal physician and tormentor, Roger Chillingsworth, the secret husband of Hester. Even when he finally gives up and wants to admit to his sins, he is unable to do so all alone and calls on Hester to lend him the strength he needs to make his final confession. “Hester Prynne … in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what – for my own heavy sin and miserable agony – I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me!” (Ch. 23, toward the end). Even in this statement, Dimmesdale recognizes that Hester may still choose not to acknowledge him the way he chose not to defend her so many years ago, understanding that her strength is much greater than his own.
Feminist perspective
This finally brings the reader to the feminist perspective as Hester emerges as the strongest, most righteous character in the story. Although she is described in her younger days to have had “an impulsive and passionate nature” (Ch. 2, near the end), Hester is never given a great deal of control over her own life and the decisions that will most closely affect her. In spite of this, she somehow manages to seem to be in control of everything she does within the story. An early example of this is the revelation that she never had any say in determining who or even whether she would marry. She didn’t want to marry the old doctor and never loved him, yet she was forced to marry him anyway and was shipped away to the colonies to prepare their home for him. She makes all this clear as she speaks with Chillingsworth in her jail cell: “’Thou knowest,’ said Hester – for, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame – ‘thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any’” (Ch. 4, just past halfway). Her wild nature is shown in her father’s apparent decision to get her married before she brought disgrace to the family as well as her affair with the town’s leading minister when she risked getting pregnant. However, the events of the novel serve to tame this nature into something still strong yet more thoughtful and compassionate for her fellow man.
Hester reveals her strength and independence from her first appearance in the novel as she acknowledges the changes that have taken place in her. Although she is offered a chance to remove the letter by naming the father, Hester informs the town that the steel has already entered her soul and nothing, not even removing the letter, will ever take that away. She says, “It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his [the father’s] agony as well as mine!” (Ch. 3, near the end). In making this statement, looking directly at the father, Hester is also admitting that she has more strength than the reverend and expresses her first sense of compassion for the trials he has ahead of him. She refuses to allow the censorship of the town to break her and simply finds a way of living within herself and the part of her society that has been left open to her. She chooses to remain where she is in order to stay close to the man that she loves even though she knows she can never be intimate with him again in spite of the way her neighbors vilify her again proving a great strength and determination (Ch. 5). She proves to be quite capable of supporting herself and her daughter by hiring out her sewing abilities and compassionately provides public assistance to those most sorely in need of it, all while keeping her deep secrets and maintaining rigid control over her internal wild spirit that still shines forward when called forth at Dimmesdale’s death.
Conclusion
Beginning with a historical perspective of the book, the reader is able to gain a deeper understanding of how the characters in Hawthorne’s book viewed the world around them. It provides an idea of the types of social restrictions that might have forced these characters to act as they do. This leads one into a psychological perspective in which one begins to analyze behavior and what the characters are doing to each other intentionally or unintentionally on a mental or spiritual level. This type of analysis reveals the great weaknesses found in the men of the story and the tremendous resilience and strength of the ‘weaker’ sex represented by Hester. The feminist perspective this calls forth begins to reveal the degree to which Hawthorne can be associated with the proto-feminists who were attempting to call attention to the often-no-win situation women were placed in even in his own time. While there is no hope for any other outcome given the restrictions of the society and the psychology of the individual characters, Hester stands as a constant signal of truth to her heart and her strength of character is always acting on her beliefs regardless of what society thought.
References
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. (1992). The Scarlet Letter. New York: Alfred P. Knopf.
Jones, Abner Dumont. (1853). “Cotton Mather.” The Illustrated American Biography. New York: J. Milton and Company.
Noll, Mark A. (2001). “Puritanism.” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (2nd Ed.). Walter A. Elwell (Ed.). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company.
Adultery has always been one of the most complicated issues concerning the relationships between a man and a woman. Surprisingly, this topic passed the time-testing and still evokes quite considerable conflicts and debates.
With countless interpretations in literature and other arts, this problem and everything that it triggers has been depicted in the most colorful way in The Scarlet Letter, the novel by Hawthorne and in No Name Woman, the short story by Kingston.
Compared to the novel by Hawthorne, Kingston’s short novel shows that nothing has changed since the times when women were branded for committing adultery – the society is still just as deaf and blind, unwilling to sympathize with the others and realize the difficulties which those people had to pass through.
Taking a closer look at the way Hawthorne depicts the tortures of the poor woman, one can see clearly that people are attacking the fallen one with the savage-like amusement.
Though this can be explained by the cruel and uncompromising spirit of the ear, it is still hard to believe that the false morals and the environment created by the church influenced people so hard and squeezed the last drops of sympathy out of their hearts. There is definitely more than meets the eye in these violent attacks and the scornful negligence of the poor Hester Prynne.
As the storyteller mentions, the people in Salem were eagerly accusing the young woman without even trying to understand what happened indeed. With their striving for what they call “justice”, the people of Salem forget about humanity and sympathy: “Man had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself” (108).
The book shows clearly that the treatment of adultery was more than intolerance – it bordered hatred and despise. With the pathetic morals and even more pathetic attempts to seem virtuous, these people accused the victim, knowing no mercy. As Lawson claims, “I have also suggested that a woman, not being a public persona, has not had a reputation either to protect or display in the same way.
Yet her reputation was never completely unimportant” (302). As the plot of the story unwinds in front of the reader, it becomes more and more evident that the most ardent adepts of virtue turn out to be the most sinful people. However, it cannot be denied that the rejection, which she was constantly getting, did have an effect on her vision of the world – it became blurred and almost grey, like a sky on a rainy day.
Hester’s refusal to search for compassion and her unwillingness to feel the joy of life once again is what the stings of the spiteful tongues led her to:
Women desire a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. (Hawthorne 102)
Because of the strain which Hester cannot help feeling, she becomes more and more desperate. As she continues her life journey, she feels that it grows increasingly unbearable. However, it must be admitted that the woman is carrying her burden with outstanding decency and pride. No matter what the crowd might say, she is going to take it for the sake of her daughter and her own life.
Compared to her, the nameless woman in Kingston’s story creates an impression of an intimidated and despised. In spite of the fact that this woman lives in quite different era with the ideas of women emancipation spreading all over the world, she is still oppressed and intimidated, in contrast to Hawthorn’s heroine, so willful and determined.
There must be certain reason for such changes, which is, perhaps, the growing strain within, resulting in the need to stone the sinful woman and enjoy watching her suffer.
Kingston depicts her character as the one that has given up for the mercy of the crowd and is unwilling to fight. Both characters have to take terrible rumors about their life and their adultery, yet Hester takes them with an evident scorn, whereas No Name Woman leaves them unnoticed because of her despair.
She is a shame, a “disgrace” for the family from this time on, and people have the right to neglect her, No Name Woman thinks.
In addition, people’s violence turns out to be even more striking in her case. Brutal and cruel, people tried to make her fear – and they succeeded; they were hunting her like an animal and making her realize her own uselessness:
At first they threw mud and rocks at the house. Then they threw eggs and began slaughtering our stock. We could hear the animals scream their deaths-the roosters, the pigs, a last great roar from the ox. Familiar wild heads flared in our night windows; the villagers encircled us. Some of the faces stopped to peer at us, their eyes rushing like searchlights. The hands flattened against the panes, framed heads, and left red prints (Kingston 2)
Thus, it must be admitted that the attitude towards the women who have committed adultery did not change for better since the times that Hawthorne described; moreover, the negative attitude towards women committing adultery increased.
What strikes most about the situation depicted by Kingston is that people are ready to convince a woman of a sin without even trying to find out what made her step on the slippery slope of adultery and deception. The atmosphere of constant rumors enhances the tension, and the poor woman feels even more miserable when realizing that people have already created their version of her life and her sins.
It is clear that the pressure which the neighborhood puts on the nameless aunt, haunting her with their constant scorns, is much more than a man can take.
It is completely clear that even the little girl in the story considers the secret which her mother trusted her in a dirty and shameful thing; the girl cannot perceive the idea that her aunt is no worse than any average villager in their homeland. Even after the death of the woman, the entire family cannot accept the fact that No Name Woman ever existed – until the girl makes them do so:
Not only does No Name Aunt’s family not acknowledge her death, they decide not to acknowledge her life. […] Kingston is unable to do this, though, until the authoritative discourse of her mother, bringing it with the words of her father, the village, and the Chinese culture gives way to the internally persuasive. (Chua 12)
This is another example of how cruel the society can be and what pains it might take to prove someone not guilty to a bunch of the blind, deaf and dumb. Making it clear that the false moral is still reigning in the world, Kingston continues the topic raised by Hawthorne to come to a sad conclusion.
In spite of the evolution and the spiritual progress, people still possess the speck of the ancient times when stoning for a sin was considered an act of righteousness. Inherited from the ancestors, this is the very thing that deprives people of sympathy.
Considering the above-mentioned pieces, one can assume that people’s attitude towards the women committing adultery changed for the worse since Hawthorn created his touching and shocking story. Priding themselves on their virtues which actually prove just as false as their morals, people continue stoning the sinful ones, forgetting about their own sins.
It seems that the time has come to recall the famous “If any of you is without a sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Tracing the attitude towards adultery in the two stories, one will obviously notice the fact that together with the scorn and despise, people started resorting to physical abuse, which is the case for the No Name Woman.
Such lame attempts to prove their superiority break the life of the poor woman completely and leave her breathless outside the boundaries of society. “The villagers are watchful” (3) Kingston claims, and this is the hard truth the poor woman has to live with. The villagers are watchful. Keep your eyes open, and be as brave as Hester, otherwise even death will not bring you peace.
Chua, Soon-Leng, and Margaret Poh Choo Chua. The Woman Warrior: China Men. New York, NY: Everyman’s Library, 2005. Print. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1998. Print.
Kingston, Maxim Hong. “No Name Woman”. The Woman Warrior: China Men. New York, NY: Everyman’s Library, 2005. Print. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 2005, 1- 17. Print.
Lawson, Annette. Adultery: An Analysis of Love and Betrayal. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1988. Print.
The tales in the Scarlet Letter possess several mystery elements. For instance, Hester’s lover is not directly mentioned. Mystery is also experienced in the way Hester, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth undergo punishment. In addition, full information about the Puritan’s colonial attitudes is not given. This leaves the reader thinking.
Setting
The physical setting of the novel represents the Puritan’s beliefs and lack of development. First, we get to know that the prison and the town scaffold are the most important buildings in town as they are frequently used by the Puritans for religious purposes. Second, the Bay Colony of Massachusetts is likened to an island in the midst of wilderness, indicating that the place is undeveloped
Plot Analysis
First, the market place is described. Second, Hester encounters her husband. Third, Reverend Dimmesdale keeps his secret. Fourth, Hester and the Reverend plans to run away. Fifth, the Reverend gives his Election Day summon.
Sixth, the Reverend confesses his sin to the public before he collapses and dies. Finally, Hester finds her way back to Boston. Basically, the novel starts with the initial situation followed by conflict, climax, suspense and conclusion.
Characters
Hester
She is a very powerful woman who is imprisoned for committing adultery. She is ashamed publicly for her adultery act and she is forced to wear a scarlet with the letter ‘A’. While in jail, she embroiders the scarlet letter so as to translate her punishment into a meaningful experience.
Pearl
She is the daughter of Hester, who is born out of adultery. She represents all that Hester gave up when she committed adultery.
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale
He is a likeable minister of the word. He commits adultery with Hester.
Roger Chillingworth
He is a brilliant scholar and husband to Hester. He is also vengeful as he decides to take revenge on the Reverend
Governor Richard Bellingham
He had served as a governor of the Bay colony of Massachusetts for many years.
Reverend John Wilson
He judges Hester for her adultery act at the beginning of the novel.
Mistress Hibbins
She is a sister to Governor Richard Bellingham and a witch.
Themes
The themes discussed in this book include: alienation, revenge, women and femininity, compassion and forgiveness, hypocrisy, guilt and blame, justice and judgment, isolation, the supernatural, fate and free will, and man and the natural world.
Point of View
The narrator pretends to be unbiased, though it is clear that he does not agree with the Puritans as he frequently criticizes the Puritan society.
Style
The writer has used diverse vocabulary in writing the novel. For instance, words like ‘ignominy’ and ‘cogitating’ have been used. The writer also uses long sentences separated by commas in writing the novel. Shmoop University describes the novel’s writing style as ornate, formal, thorny, biblical, shadowy and comma-loving (1).
Persona
The persona in the novel is a third person omniscient narrator.
Images, Metaphors, Schemes
Images, metaphors and schemes that have been used in this novel include: the prison door, Pearl, the scarlet letter, the red mark on Dimmesdale’s chest, the Meteor, the black man, the forest and the wilderness.
National Mythologies or Ideologies
The Puritans were centered on the idea of purity and believed that God was omnipotent and that salvation was predestined (Hawthorne 2). They related worldly success to salvation. Sins were heavily punished in the Puritan society.
Cultural Context and what transfers to today
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s is of great historical significance as it contains many insights that are relevant to contemporary readers. For instance, young people who are deviant and stubborn can relate to the themes of alienation and breaking rules.
In this view, the novel can be explained as a story of a woman who was heavily punished for letting the heart to rule her. Hester’s experiences can stimulate sympathy, Dimmesdale’s hypocrisy can provoke disgust, and Chillingworth’s revenge can arouse anger among readers.
Among the practices in the novel that are experienced in our current society are rules and punishments. However, the extent to which some crimes like adultery should be punished still remains a controversial issue. Technology has also advanced over the years.
Work Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Plain Label Books, 1850.
Shmoop University. “Learning Guides to The Scarlet Letter.”(30 Sep. 2008) Web.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter depicts the narrow moral restrictions placed on sexuality in Puritanical America. Adulteress Hester Prynne suffers prison and public scorn, and must raise the child of her affair with the minister Arthur Dimmesdale alone and unacknowledged. Critics have speculated that the narrator of The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne himself, the “artist and author that…comes before the public to condemn the sins of his generation and project his own future fulfilment”. Many critics understand this novel to depict Hawthorne’s personal struggles against the establishment and the stifling social mores of his day.
The Scarlet Letter has been called “Hawthorne’s struggle to justify romantic art in a culture dominated by pragmatic concerns” and critics point to “correspondences between the writer of the text and his artistic rebel, Hester Prynne, both…can be seen as subversive artists who must enter “the market-place” with a scarlet letter, signifier of pride and shame, achievement and alienation”.
Critics describe adultery, the subject matter of the novel, as a metaphor for Hawthorne’s artistic position in the community; the character of Hester Prynne the adulteress is often viewed as “a nexus for complex issues of vocation and gender Hawthorne had to confront at the moment of composing his novel and sketch”. In the same manner that Hester Prynne stands defiant against a community that judges her expression of love as sinful and her child as possessed by sin, art in Hawthorne’s day stood firm in its endorsement of the value of romantic love, and was viewed as equally dangerous.
This essay asserts that the role of the narrator in The Scarlet Letter functions more as social critic of the Puritanical values that founded the United States; the narrator of The Scarlet Letter represents Hawthorne’s belief that the principles of Puritanism, devoted wholeheartedly as they were to the eradication of sin, the physical instrument of the Devil, remained counter to the spirit of life that invariably reveals itself through sexuality, romantic love, and the natural world.
Analysed as a thematic treatment of sin, critics have categorized The Scarlet Letter as the battle of the human spirit to balance romantic love and community-mindedness. “Sin and Sorrow in their most fearful forms are to be presented in any work of art, they have rarely been treated with a loftier severity, purity, and sympathy than in Mr. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The touch of the fantastic befitting a period of society in which ignorant and excitable human creatures conceived each other and themselves to be under the direct “rule and governance” of the Wicked One.
Puritan Boston may aspire to lock down their life force for the perceived betterment of society; however, the spirit of life will not be caged by the societal impositions of monogamous marriage, prison, or social ostracization. It is definitely Hawthorne’s voice; however, he imbues the narrator with a caustic, critical perspective on most if not all descriptions of the community that imprisons Hester Prynne. Thus the narrator of The Scarlet Letter promotes the idea that romantic love remains a necessary expression of life, as opposed to an expression of Satanic evil, and that sin itself has been misconstrued and misinterpreted by the Puritan community.
In its obsession with vice, the Puritan moral majority mistakenly assume that they can control sin through public censure and ridicule such as that that befalls Hester Prynne. Yet the raw passion that forms the basis of life can never be controlled. In Hawthorne’s view, which he argues through the narrator when the Bostonians reject Hester Prynne, the narrator argues, they reject life. Evidence for this reading exists in the difference between the type of description that the narrator applies to the Puritan community and that which he affords the natural world and Hester Prynne.
The narrator of The Scarlet Letter begins almost immediately to apply a different tone of description to the Boston community that punishes Hester Prynne and contrasts it with descriptions of nature as well as Prynne herself. Note the tone of the description of the congregation outside the prison anticipating the release of Hester Prynne as “a throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments”.
Similarly, Hawthorne’s narrator describes “the founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison”. Immediately, we recognise the narrator’s judgement of Puritanical Boston as a failed Utopia; in other words, if Boston were indeed a Puritan Utopia, why then the need for “the black flower of civilised society, a prison”? We see Hawthorne’s voice coming through the narrator in this example to point to the hypocrisy and paradox of the Puritan moral stance.
Witness a similar judgement implied in the narrator’s description of the beadle, “like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender”. Hawthorne’s narrator consistently applies stifling descriptors to echo the stifling oppression of the Boston Puritan community.
Contrasting these heavy dark oppressive descriptors in the first instance, in the second instance we see the narrator’s application of a wholly distinct form of description when discussing the natural world. Showcasing the rose bush that grows at the entrance to the prison, the narrator imbues it with a warmth and compassion that sharply contrasts the cold scorn imposed by the Boston Puritan community. The narrator’s describes the “wild rose-hush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him”.
The implied compassion of the natural world to Hester Prynne’s indiscretion remains another important function of the narrator. The narrator consistently describes the natural world as an empathetic friend to Hester Prynne, and also consistently offers support for the affair between her and Dimmesdale, not to mention their daughter Pearl, through the generous and lush descriptors the narrator applies to these characters.
A close reading of the narration of The Scarlet Letter divulges Hawthorne’s thematic interplay between the Boston Puritans and the natural world, and the narrator definitively sides with both Hester and Pearl as embodiments of the passionate expression of life. We see this in the description of one of Pearl’s forays into the forest when the narrator describes the sunlight as “linger[ing] about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate”. Hester Prynne, who suffers the same social ostracization as her mother, finds similar “approval in a natural environment,” when she throws the letter onto the ground.
The narrator describes Hester Prynne’s life-affirming action as consecrated by heaven itself. “All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the grey trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy”.
Similarly, in this same chapter, consciously labelled “A Flood of Sunshine,” the union between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale receives a warm endorsement from the natural world via the narrator’s description: “Such was the sympathy of Nature – that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth – with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly-born or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world”.
The natural world, as implied by the narrator’s description, understands why Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale neither characterize their relationship as adultery, nor as a sin, and why the fact that they risk eternal hellfire, according to the Boston Puritan community, is not enough for them to repent – because romantic love is an expression of life. The lovers do not express contrition, remorse, or confess their transgression in this scene, and the narrator’s radiant description supports a reading that forgiveness need not be asked for or acquired in this case.
When Dimmesdale agrees to Hester’s plan to escape Boston and begin again in Europe as a family, Hester renounces the scarlet letter and also allows her hair to cascade freely down her back, an expression of freedom and sexuality. Hester cries, “The past is gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it had never been!” Nature itself endeavours to support these lovers as they flout “the sin [they] have committed and intend to commit again. The narrator – we may call this figure Hawthorne – seems to insist that love and nature are insuperable values, [and] that morality has nothing to say to them”.
When the narrator describes Hester Prynne singly, we also witness the same warmth, generosity and benevolence applied to Hester Prynne as he gave the descriptions of the natural world. “Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out”. In the same instance, when Hester Prynne emerges from the prison, the narrator makes a note of her “the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity”.
Again, the narrator consistently attaches vivid, vibrant descriptive language to parallel the life-affirming soul that is Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne and her daughter Pearl – through the narrator’s description, as well as their repeated proximity to the natural world in the novel – ostensibly become the personifications of the spirit of life: indomitable, unapologetic, and self-actualized, needing no approval or backing from the Puritan Boston community.
By placing these two communities together yet describing them so differently, the narrator – and Hawthorne, by extension – successfully portrays the Puritan Boston community as antithetical to life, and Hester Prynne and Pearl as emblematic of life. Hester Prynne thus becomes the “moving principle of life which different societies in different ways may constrain but which in itself irresistibly endures. Her story is an allegory of the passion through which the race continues. She feels the ignominy which attends her own irregular behaviour and accepts her fate as the reward of evil, but she does not understand it so far as to wish uncommitted the act which her society calls a sin”.
In conclusion, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter the narrator operates as a means to further Hawthorne’s criticism of the Puritanical values that underlay the Boston community represented in the novel. The narrator of The Scarlet Letter represents Hawthorne’s belief that the principles of Puritanism focused solely on the eradication of sin, cut themselves and their community off from the spirit of life by condemning romantic love and all expressions of passion as instruments of sin. Hawthorne’s narrator argues rather that life invariably expresses itself through sexuality, romantic love, and the beauty of the natural world.
Bibliography
Egan, K Jr., ‘The adulteress in the marketplace: Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter’, Studies in the Novel vol. 27, no.1, 1995, pp. 26-31.
Donoghue, D, ‘Hawthorne and Sin’, Christianity and Literature vol.52, no.2, 2003, 215-228.
Hawthorne N, ‘The scarlet letter’, Hamilton and Company, London, 1851, p. 59.
The Athenaeum ‘A review of ‘The Scarlet Letter: A Romance’, vol. 1181, 1850, pp. 634.
Van Doren, C, ‘The Flower of Puritanism’, The Nation, vol. 111, no. 2892, 1920, pp. 649-650.
The Scarlet Letter is a romantic fiction story authored by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The story is set in Puritan Boston during the 17th century from 1642 to 1649. The play tells of a woman Hester Prynne whom passion draws to a young pastor causing her to have an adulterous affair with him where she conceives a daughter named Pearl.
Hester is humiliated in public for her actions and forced to put on a scarlet letter as a symbol of her sin and evil deeds. Hawthorne explores many themes in the story including guilt, sin, evil and legalism. Symbolism is also present in the story with a strong example being Pearl.
The following is an analysis of the character Pearl in the story The Scarlet Letter where more focus is put on her character (traits, personality and qualities) and what she represents/ symbolizes in the story. It also analyzes the nature of her relationship with her mother Hester.
Pearl first appears in the first scaffold scene as an infant and reappears again at the age of three and later on at the age of seven. She is described as a beautiful flower that is growing out of soil full of sin (Hawthorne 89).
She was named Pearl because her mother purchased her with the only treasure she had when she feared that her husband must have been killed by the Indians. However, Pearl inherited her mother’s moodiness, defiance and passion. Her very being does not like the Puritan society strict rules which make her defiance of the rules. She is very mischievous and this makes Hester worried about her.
Pearl’s personality in the play is described as determined, imaginative, intelligent, obstinate and inquisitive. Pearl has mysterious mixture of moods; she can show signs of happiness in a minute and then suddenly change to being gloomy and silent. Pearl has high and fierce temper and she possess so much bitterness and hatred inside her at a tender age.
She has unusual behaviors and that is why she is often referred to as elf-child, imp, and airy sprite, in the play (Hawthorne 110). Governor Bellingham compares Pearl to “children of the Lord of Misrule,” while some of the Puritans views Pearls as “demon offspring” because of her weird behaviors which greatly worries her mother (Hawthorne 109).
Hawthorne describes Pearl as an “imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants (Hawthorne 94).” Pearl is however aware that she is different from other people and that is why when Hester tries to teach her the ways of God she says “I have no Heavenly Father (Hawthorne 95)!”
Pearl seems to be stubborn and arrogant at a tender age. When Pearl was three years old, she pelted the scarlet letter using wildflowers and in frustration her mother Hester asked her, “Child, what art thou (Hawthorne 178)?”
But in return Pearl insisted she wanted to know the origin of the letter. This clearly shows the kind of relationship that Pearl had with her mother. Pearl actually tormented her mother with her evil actions but despite it all Hester still loved her daughter.
Pearl is not a realistic character in the story The Scarlet Letter because she is a complicated symbol of passion and love actually an adulterous act. She is a symbol of Hester’s greatest sin and shame and at the same time she symbolizes her mother’s treasure.
This means that Pearl is her Hester’s punishment and at the same time act as her consolation. Pearl is a symbol that keeps Hester aware of her evils and sins. She also makes her mother aware that she cannot escape from her evil deeds what the Puritans terms as sinful nature (Hawthorne 82).
In conclusion, the story The Scarlet Letter clearly explores the themes of evil, sin, frustration, guilt and passion. Hawthorne has used symbolism in different ways to clearly bring out the dramatic and romantic part of the play. Pearl and the scarlet letter are good examples of symbolism used in the book while Hester’s actions, life and the hard time she faced in Puritan community shows the evil, legalism and frustrations in the play.
Bibliography
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Norton: Public Domain Books, 1992. Print.
Nathaniel Hawthrone’s ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’ and ‘The Scarlet Letter’ share many common elements in the scope of themes, characterization, style, and symbolism. First, both works have a decisive focus on the interpretation of sin and guilt. The Scarlet Letter depicts the supposed sin committed by Hester Prynne as an act against the social and religious standards of the time. The socially imposed punishment is explored as the isolation Hester endures while Dimmesdale remains free but instills psychological distress in him (Hariyanti & Nurhayati, 2017). Hooper in The Minister’s Black Veil, upholds the belief that everyone living in society is capable and has committed sin. Hooper’s sin is assumed to be specific by the townspeople and this terrifies the society which is more likely to hide sin than confront and fix it as is suggested by Puritan ideology.
Both works criticize the approach by which the Puritan society measured sin, guilt, and values. In The Minister’s Black Veil, Hawthorne depicts how the veil of Hooper does encourage the Puritans to act in very traditionalist behaviors, such as paying more attention to sermons, fearing for the wellbeing of their souls, and rejecting everyday pleasures (Johansen, 2019). However, Hawthorne notes that the Puritans do not gain anything from their newly found state of a kind of ‘gloom’. The Scarlet Letter criticizes the Puritan community by comparing the punishment suffered by Dimmesdale and Hester being unequal, which Hawthrowne found to be a misuse of the Puritan ideology as well as human judgment.
In the Minister’s Black Veil, Hooper is first introduced as a preacher of high regard, who is approachable. However, with the introduction of his veil, his demeanor and his perception by others takes a dramatic turn. This change is especially impactful considering the town in which the story is set is incredibly resistant to change. As such, they interpreted the veil of Hooper as an inherently negative thing which was associated with sin or evil. However, as the reader is able to see into Hooper’s thought process, they are able to recognize that he wears the veil as a form of atonement of a past act that he is ashamed of. In spite of his self-imposed isolation, Hooper continues to serve the community as a minister, likely due to his loyalty to his belief despite his past. Hooper is characterized both by his own actions and the interpretation of them by the townspeople. His veil becomes a symbol for secrets and appearance in contrast with reality.
Both works employ a significant amount of symbolism, though it is especially relevant in the characterization within the Scarlet Letter. For instance, Hester is referred to as beautiful with rich complexion and elegance. The townsfolk, on the other hand, are described as sad-colored, gray, and hooded. This description creates a contrast between Hester and the population of the town, and it depicts Hester as beautiful despite her status as an adulterer. Additionally, Pearl, Hester’s illegitimate daughter is referred to as an elf or fairy, which further expands on her mysterious and isolated nature in comparison to the townsfolk. Hawthorne also compares Pearl to a flower to expose her frailty, both from an emotional and physical side. The style and symbolic imagery in both works approach the societal response to sin in different ways, but both address how the townsfolk do not adhere to their own values in a way that is adequate.
Johansen, I. K. (2019). Guilt and Sin in American Puritan Society in Hawthorne’s Short Stories. [Unpublished bachelor’s thesis]. Norwegian University of Science and Technology.