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1
TWAYNE'S MASTERWORK STUDIES
Robert Lecker, General Editor
The
Bible:
A
Literary Study
John H. Gottcent
Moby-Dick: Ishmael's Mighty Book
Kerry McSweeney
THE
C A R L E T
s
T T
L E
A
E R
Read
L
]
i
n g
SINA BAYM
m
TWAYNE PUBLISHERS BOSTON
A Division of G. K. Hell & Co
«
1
The
Scarlet Letter:
A Reading
Nina Baym
Twaynes Masterwork
No.
Copyright
©
Studies
I
& Co.
1986 by G. K. Hall
All Rights Reserved
Published by Tivayne Publishers
A
Division of G. K. Hall
70 Lincoln
All quotations
Edition, vol.
1,
Street,
& Co.
Boston, Massachusetts 021
1
from The Scarlet Letter are taken from the Centenary
published by the Ohio State University Press, 1962. Letters
quoted in "The Critical Reception" are taken from volume 16 of the
Centenary Edition, Letters 1843-1853 (1985), 311-12 and 421.
Copyediting supervised by Lewis DeSimone
Designed and produced by Marne
Typeset
B. Sultz
10114 Sabon with Cloister
in
Display type by Compset, Inc.
Printed on permanent! durable acid-free paper
and bound
in the
United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baym, Nina.
The scarlet letter.
(Twaynes masterwork studies
;
no.
1)
Bibliography: p. 109
Includes index.
1.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. Scarlet
I.
PS1868.B39
Title.
1986
II.
letter.
Series.
813' .3
ISBN 0-8057-7959-4
ISBN 0-8057-8001-7 (pbk)
86-9774
Contents
Chronology of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life
The Historical Context
xiit
The Importance of The Scarlet Letter
The
Critical Reception
xxi
A READING
1.
WHAT? THE STORY
On
The
the threshold
plot thickens
'
A
'
1
story begins
Plot and structure
2.
WHERE? THE SETTING
The
historical setting
and
the symbolic
'
'
30
The marvelous
The
narrator
3.
WHO? THE CHARACTERS
The Puritans
Hester
'
'
Pearl
'
Dimmesdale
52
Chillingworth
'
Hawthorne
as psychologist
vii
xriii
4.
THE SCARLET LETTER
IN
THE SCARLET LETTER
83
5.
THEMES
IN
THE SCARLET LETTER
93
6.
THE SCARLET LETTER
AND "THE CUSTOM-HOUSE"
Bibliography of Selected Primary
Works
Bibliography of Selected Secondary
Index
About
the
114
Author
VI
101
116
Works
109
HI
Chronology of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life
1801 2 August:
In the
seaport town of Salem, Massachusetts, Nathaniel
Hathorne,
Sr.,
from
a seafaring family
himself, marries Elizabeth Clarke
and
Miriam Lord and Richard Manning, an up-
children of
and-coming merchant. The couple moves
orne's
a sea captain
Manning, one of nine
widowed mother and
Hawthorne,
Jr.,
added the
his
w
two
with Hath-
in
(Nathaniel
sisters.
to his family
name when
he began to publish.)
1802 7 March:
Manning Hathorne, their first
is away at sea.
Elizabeth
born
child,
while Nathaniel Hathorne
1804 4 July:
Nathaniel born. His father
is
away and does not
again
return until October, remaining in Salem only briefly.
1808 9 January:
A
third child,
is
at sea.
Surinam;
home
Maria Louisa, born. Nathaniel Hathorne
March: Hathorne,
in
about seven months
for
Hathorne returns
nings,
1813
among whom
to
of yellow fever, in
he has been at
life,
total.
July:
Elizabeth
to live with her natal family, the
her three children are to
Grandfather Manning
moves
Sr., dies
seven years of married
dies,
Man-
grow
up.
and Uncle Richard Manning
Raymond, Maine,
to
manage
family property
there.
1813-1815
A
foot injury
active play
this
is
slow to mend, keeping Nathaniel from
and friendships
time he develops
a
for
about two years. During
love for reading, especially storv
books.
1818
Elizabeth and the children
thaniel returns to
move
to
Raymond
Salem during winters
also.
but misses the wilderness and freedom of Maine.
vii
Na-
tor schooling,
THE SCARLET LETTER
1K21
Enters
Bowdoin College
his distress, his
1
825
1825-1837
in
mother and
Much
Brunswick, Maine.
sisters return to
to
Salem.
Graduates from college and returns to Salem. He has decided to
become
a writer.
Lives at
home
Salem
eral
in
(his
grandmother, as well as sev-
aunts and uncles, have died or
works
name and
New
of his
He changes
at his writing.
moved
out)
and
the spelling of his last
reads widely in contemporary periodicals and
England
which he uses
history,
most successful
stories.
this period,
he sends his
Athenaeum
to
as the basis for
Somewhat
sister
some
reclusive during
Elizabeth to the Salem
withdraw the books and magazines he
wants to read.
1828
Anonymous
publication of Fanshawe:
novel. In later
sister
1830-1837
Elizabeth
A
Tale, a short
he never mentions this work; only his
life
knows or remembers
that he wrote
it.
Begins to publish tales and sketches, anonymously,
in
periodicals.
1836
American Magaand Entertaining Knowledge, in an at-
Edits, with sister Elizabeth's help, the
zine of Useful
tempt to establish a
1837
literary career.
Writes, with sister Elizabeth's help, Peter Parleys Universal History, another attempt to support himself as a
literary
1837
man.
Brings out Twice-Told Tales, a selection from his previously published sketches and tales, under his
The book does not
sell
well but
it is
own name.
widely and favorably
reviewed. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, a gregarious social
reformer and fellow Salemite, seeks him out and begins
to introduce
younger
1838
him
sister
to people in her circle, including her
Sophia.
Nathaniel and Sophia become secretly engaged. Begins
to publish in a
new
political journal, the
United States
Magazine and Democratic Review; most of
published
between
1838
and
1845
his
appears
in
work
this
magazine.
1839-1840
Financial security through literary projects having thus
tar failed
him, Hawthorne accepts a political appoint-
Chronology of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life
ment, obtained through friends
as
1841
measurer of
salt
and coal
Democratic
in the
party,
Boston customhouse.
at the
Publishes Grandfather's Chair, a history, for children, of
New
England from the Puritan settlement through the
Revolution, which he had written while working at the
Boston customhouse. From April to November
the experimental
Brook Farm community
bury, Massachusetts,
discovers that he
is
lives at
West Rox-
hoping to find a way to sup-
still
without
himself
port
at
giving
up
his
goals;
literary
too exhausted and distracted to write
there.
1842 9
July:
Marries Sophia Peabody. Moves to Concord, Massachu-
where he
setts,
know major
movement
lives at the
figures
Old Manse and comes
to
American Transcendental
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Tho-
and Margaret
reau,
the
in
Fuller,
among
others.
expanded edition of Twice-Told Tales
as Biographical Stories for Children.
for periodicals, but
is still
He
A
second and
issued, as well
is
writes regularly
unable to make
a living as a
writer.
1844 March:
A
daughter, Una, born. Later in the year poverty forces
the family to break
his
1846 June:
A
up
who have moved
ents,
mother and
sisters in
son, Julian, born; a
and
tales,
briefly:
Sophia goes to her par-
to Boston; Nathaniel returns to
Salem.
new book
of collected sketches
Mosses from an Old Manse, published.
autumn
the family settles in Salem,
accepts
a
political
appointment
In the
where Hawthorne
as
surveyor
in
the
customhouse.
1849 June:
A new
from
administration dismisses Hawthorne
political
the
customhouse. July:
death
of
Hawthorne's
mother. September: begins to write The Scarlet Letter.
1850
Moves
to
Lenox, Massachusetts; meets and becomes
friends with
Herman
Melville and has considerable in-
fluence on the writing of
at the
end of the
lished by the
who
will
year.
Moby-Dick, which comes out
March: The
Scarlet Letter
Boston firm of Ticknor, Reed, and
is
pub-
Fields,
remain Hawthorne's American publishers for
the rest of his
life.
ix
THE SCARLET LETTER
1851
Moves
to
and
third
West Newton, Massachusetts. May: Rose,
last child,
Seven Gables
Twice-Told Tales
House of
born. Publishes The
of stories and sketches),
(a collection
and True Stories from History and Biography
set of biographies, for children, of
1
852
Moves
Book
for Girls
children),
and
second
Romance
(a
A Wonder-
novel),
and Boys (retellings of classical myths for
campaign biography of his college friend
a
Franklin Pierce,
States. July:
(a
famous people).
Concord, Massachusetts. Pub-
to the Wayside, in
The Blithedale
lishes
the
The Snow- 1 mage and Other
novel),
(a
who
elected president of the United
is
his sister
Maria Louisa
is
drowned
in
a
steamboat explosion.
1
853
consul
Pierce.
1853—1857
Tanglewood
Publishes
book of
classical
at
Tales for Girls
myths
Liverpool, England,
Has hopes
and Boys,
a
second
Appointed
retold for children.
by President Franklin
at last of being financially secure.
Lives in England during consular service. Keeps extensive
notebooks but finds
it
impossible to do any sus-
tained and publishable writing.
1857-1859
Pierce
is
not reelected, and Hawthorne's term as consul
He
ends.
lives in
Rome and
Marble Faun, which
ward
will
Florence, beginning
be his
the end of this period
last novel, in
Una becomes
with malaria and almost dies. The family
is
The
1858. To-
seriously
ill
permanently
affected by this near tragedy.
1859
After Una's recovery, the family returns to England,
where Hawthorne completes and publishes The Marble
Faun.
1860
Returns to the United States and the Wayside, which he
buys and remodels. The Marble Faun
is
published
in
the
of
fic-
United States.
1860-1864
Tries unsuccessfully to write another long
tion,
work
producing drafts and fragments of three different
romances.
He
also prepares
and publishes essays on Eng-
land drawn from notebook materials. His health begins
to
1863
fail.
Our Old Home, collecting his English essays, is pubHe dedicates the book to Franklin Pierce, an un-
lished.
Chronology of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Life
wise although loyal personal gesture
Civil
in the
War, when the Democratic party
is
midst of the
much out
of
favor in the North.
1864 19 May:
Dies
away from home while on
a brief vacation with
Franklin Pierce. Buried on 23 May.
xi
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804-1864
Portrait by Charles
Courtesy of the Essex
Osgood,
I
X40
Institute, Sal.'m,
Mass.
The Historical Context
Viewed from one
thorne's adulthood
perspective, the nation during the years of
—
say,
from 1825 to
his death
—enjoyed
consensus and cultural harmony; viewed from another,
in
turbulence and conflict.
of the
same English or
the Mississippi River
towns
(in
On
it
Haw-
ideological
was mired
the one hand, Americans were mostly
Scottish ethnic background; they lived between
and the Atlantic Ocean on farms or
1840 only Baltimore, Philadelphia,
New
had populations above 100,000) sharing agrarian,
egalitarian values; they
in
small
York, and Boston
free-enterprise,
were passionately nationalistic
and
—protectionist
with respect to Europe, expansionist with respect to the American
continent.
hoped
ury.
If
few people were
for simple
rich,
few lived
in
deep poverty; most
comfort and material security rather than great lux-
They tempered
their individualism with strong
community
values;
they were optimistic believers in hard work, education, and the inevitable
On
connection between virtue, moderation, and success.
the other hand, Americans were divided between slave and free
states,
were engaged
continent's Native
massive relocation and extermination of the
in
American population, and were torn between an
economy based on ownership of land and one based on
money.
In
the 1840s reform
movements
community experiments sprang up
proliferated,
control of
and Utopian
across the nation, signs of social
malaise. Schisms within the established religious denominations, and
new
sects also
appeared
in
tional religious behavior
the established churches.
great numbers; evangelical and highly
emo-
began to replace the more sedate practices
The
of
political party structure, reflecting con-
Xlll
—
THE SCARLET LETTER
changed
stant realignment of interests,
in fifty years
from the opposi-
Democratic Republicans, to Whigs versus
tion of Federalists versus
Democrats, to Democrats versus Republicans (along with various
shorter-lived third parties); the
Democratic party evolved from the
money
"progressive" party of business and
to the "conservative" party
of landowners and slaveholders.
During Hawthorne's
were three wars
lifetime there
(the
War
of
1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War), constant skirmishes in
and opponents of
the border states between defenders
and
slavery,
continual violence between settlers and Indians on the frontier. Severe
economic depressions
of
work and
sent
1815, 1837, and 1857 threw thousands out
in
numerous displaced farm
families into rapidly ex-
panding urban slums, there to mingle uncomfortably with newly
riving immigrants
Englanders especially
tive region for
to
new
left
lives
the
poor
and smallholdings of
soil
on the celebrated
frontier, all
moralistic approach to
ular
and cosmopolitan
intellectual
life,
life's
New
problems,
New
England, with
lost
York City
out to the
—
—one
by 1850
lishment of the Constitution
less
for
which
religious
and
much more
sec-
its
as the center of the nation's
while the South retreated ever more into
aratist culture. Already,
their na-
too often only
meet conditions of disease and extreme physical hardship
they were completely unprepared.
ar-
New
from Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia.
its
own
sep-
than sixty years after the estab-
could hear, side by side with
expressions of the most intense national boosterism, the lament that
Americans had
lost their sense of national
the original values that
In the early years of the
nineteenth century,
a boy, the profession of authorship
underwent
England and America. Instead of being
men producing
purpose and had rejected
had made the country so promising.
a limited
number
when Hawthorne was
a dramatic
a matter of
change
in
educated gentle-
of expensive copies of their learned
writings for a small circle of like-minded subscribers, authorship took
on the shape that we know today: that of
the largest possible
profit, to
number
a business
designed to
sell
work
for
of mass-produced copies of a
anyone who could be persuaded
the result of increased literacy
and
to buy. This
phenomenon
leisure in the general population,
The
Historical Context
along with tremendous improvements and economies
facture
and distribution
—was greeted with mixed
in
book manu-
feelings
by the
lit-
erary establishment in England. But in America the idea of a nation of
readers accorded well with democratic aspirations.
During Haw-
thorne's youth, therefore, the profession of authorship
was being held
out by cultural leaders as a
way
and immense
to achieve fame, fortune,
two important
popularity while contributing to
patriotic enterprises:
enlightening the masses and establishing the United States as a nation
of culture and taste.
But as a profit-making business, publishing was
new masses
of readers than a follower, for
work, they wouldn't buy
like a
it.
if
The most
less a
leader of the
people didn't expect to
successful kinds of pub-
lication
became
or form
—types of writing that had never before been accorded high
the newspaper, the magazine, and fiction in any shape
status.
Fiction, indeed,
tan leaders,
had always been despised and condemned by
who saw
it
as dishonest
and
and
distracting;
it
Puri-
had also
been dismissed as useless by such Enlightenment figures as Benjamin
Franklin. Yet in the nineteenth century
the
American appetite
for fiction
it
appeared to observers that
had become simply
insatiable.
The
transformation of fiction from a despised genre to the favorite reading
of the day involved,
its
quality
creased.
among democratic Americans,
and value. As
From
fiction
a reassessment of
became more popular,
and 1820s, through the comic and melodramatic
Charles Dickens
of William
in
in the
1840s, novels (and fiction more generally) were
about human nature and
scribed as artists. But
great British writers?
society.
In
A dreamy and
better than
life,
For the
knowledge and wisdom
first
time, novelists were de-
where was the American novelist
to
match the
Hawthorne's youth only James Fenimore
Cooper seemed even remotely
Dickens.
ironic realism
the social protest fiction of Eliz-
increasingly accepted as major sources of
most
social novels of
the 1830s and 1840s, and then the
Makepeace Thackeray and
abeth Gaskell
prestige in-
its
the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott in the 1810s
a
candidate for a place beside Scott or
ambitious young man,
who
loved fiction
could indeed have fantasies of glory.
XV
al-
THE SCARLET LETTER
Nevertheless, American publishers, for
all
grand
their
were not
talk,
notably supportive of American writers. Since there was no international copyright,
was much cheaper
it
for
them
books from
to reprint
abroad than to pay royalties to American authors. During the very
years that
many were
sometimes as
if
loudly calling for a national literature,
it
seemed
publishers were supplying American readers with
works by writers of every nation except
their
own. Only
a handful of
highly popular writers managed, during Hawthorne's lifetime, to
make
a
good
through their writing, and they did so by being
living
extremely productive. The profession was not geared for authors
worked slowly and
carefully, or
whose
who
creativity alternated with long
periods of gestation.
Commonly,
imaginative writers would augment their
therefore,
earnings through editing or magazine journalism, or by political ap-
pointments. The poet William Cullen Bryant, for example, was chief
editor of the
in
New
York Evening Post for almost
fifty
years beginning
1829; Edgar Allan Poe worked as reviewer and editor for more than
a half
City;
dozen magazines
in
Charleston, Philadelphia, and
James Fenimore Cooper was the United
New
States consul at
from 1826 to 1833; Washington Irving held diplomatic posts
and England. And Nathaniel Hawthorne
pointments
at the
in his turn
was
in
York
Lyons
Spain
to hold ap-
Boston customhouse, the Salem customhouse, and
as United States consul in Liverpool.
Hawthorne began
his literary career writing short pieces,
which he
published anonymously in a variety of periodicals. "Secret" publication of this sort
was
quite usual, not because writing
was an
unacceptable profession, but because authors did not want their reputations tarnished by unpopular apprentice work.
ries
Not
until their sto-
had received favorable notice did they come forward
names, as Hawthorne did when he collected
1837 volume Twice-Told
Tales.
As
tales
a steady but
in their
and sketches
own
in the
slow worker, he did
not write a long piece of fiction before The Scarlet Letter, and
though
after that he
the
on
toll
planned to write long
his energies
was too great
fiction only, he
al-
found that
to sustain the pace of a novel
The
Historical Context
every year or every other year. Thus, he had to
making
a living
from
abandon
his
hope of
literature.
Appropriately, therefore, one can locate The Scarlet Letter in
as
Hawthorne's attempt to
realize the possibilities of authorship in a
country that accorded high status, but
writer; to blend the time-honored
entertain with
support, to a professional
little
power
of fiction to enchant and
newly recognized capacities for psychological and
its
social analysis;
day
its
and
to contribute to the national
life
by providing,
within the boundaries of a popular form, a thoughtful contemporary
examination of the Puritan heritage. In
point: secure in his creative
powers
his career
it
occupies a turning
after a long apprenticeship, he
turned from the safer, slighter short form to the challenges and
re-
wards of the novel.
The publication of The
Scarlet Letter inaugurated a period of con-
siderable productivity for
lished in the next
set in his native
two
Hawthorne, with two more novels pub-
years.
The House of
Salem but incorporating many characteristic elements
of the marvelous, dealt (as does
The
Scarlet Letter in a different fash-
ion) with the long-term effects of crime
Blithedale
eled
the Seven Gables (1851),
Romance
and
guilt
on two
families.
The
(1852) took place in a Utopian community mod-
on Brook Farm, chronicling the destruction of the reformers'
dreams and ambitions by
their
own human
shortcomings.
Hawthorne's acceptance of a consular appointment and
Europe had the unintended
The impact of Europe on
his
move
to
effect of terminating his literary career.
his consciousness
was exhilarating but
also
overwhelming, and consular duties along with sightseeing and family
responsibilities
absorbed
all
his energies.
His
last
completed novel,
The Marble Faun (1859), was another fantasy about
and
its
their effects
on history and the human psyche.
characters were
young American and
It
guilt
and crime,
was
set in Italy;
Italian artists.
When Hawthorne returned to the United States he felt displaced and
He had grown accustomed to life in Europe and was made
alienated.
uncomfortable by the war atmosphere that had transformed American
life.
He began work on
three different novels,
two of them dealing
THE SCARLET LETTER
with the return of an American of English descent to the old country,
a search for the "elixir of life," a drink that
and one about
would
confer immortality. Although his active literary career had essentially
ceased in
1
852, and although his only lukewarm support of the North
War
during the Civil
alienated the critics, he
death as Americas foremost
man
of
was acclaimed on
his
letters.
The Importance of The Scarlet Letter
When
thinking about what
we mean when we
we should remember
a masterpiece,
call a literary
work
that ultimately such judgments
do
not have absolute or objective validity, but depend on a cultural consensus, usually elaborated by those
what
it
means
—
—
a literary
author
work
is
one culture
work might
traces of individuality in a
for high praise; in another
specific
are specially trained, about
for literature to be "great." In
simple example
ture
who
is:
cul-
that cannot be identified as the creation of a
status.
tend to require for something called a literary masterwork
a display of great craftsmanship, indicating that the
net, ode, tragedy, or
and
it
immediately classified as the product of a "formula"
"mastered" the chosen medium, whether
adoxically
to give a
—notably our own, Western, modern
and dismissed from consideration for masterwork
What we
—
disqualify
comedy;
—transcends the
it is
striking originality,
rules of craft that the
us, the text
which
—almost par-
author has mastered;
clear traces of an individual sensibility in the
and probably more important to
author has
novel, short story, son-
work. Beyond
must make
this,
a powerful
emotional and intellectual impact, provide a rich reading experience,
and leave behind
perhaps a new
works we return
our past experience and
a larger understanding of
way
to think about our lives. In the case of the greatest
to
them time and again
in
our minds, even
not reread them frequently, as touchstones by which
world around
us.
of readers, by
The
These conditions have been
Scarlet Letter.
XVlll
we
if
we do
interpret the
satisfied, for
generations
—
The Importance of The
Literary
Every
skill.
critic
has acknowledged that
that
is
more
stately
command
and
less
plot
its
virtually perfect in
who
its
Scarlet Letter
has written about The Scarlet Letter
is
concisely elaborated in a structure
pacing and symmetry; and that
colloquial than
is
now
the
norm
style
its
—displays
a rich
of linguistic resources, including an extensive and precise
vocabulary, diverse sentence structure, modulations in tone, and a
from attention to the
striking variety of rhetorical devices ranging
sound of words on through complicated development of
speech, images, and symbols.
gain an enlarged sense of
and with the challenge of
Originality.
tell,
nor
into
it
is its
The
To read The
what
The
one does not have to read
treatment of the aftermath of adultery
original; those familiar with literary history will
precedented
in its
approach, and that
unconventional the work
the
way
is
know
extremely
it is
Those who are not experienced readers
tate.
is
to
do with language,
Scarlet Letter does not take long to
plot very complicated; but
its
Scarlet Letter carefully
a true craftsman can
telling a story.
story of
to realize that
figures of
will
that
is
far
highly
un-
it is
difficult to imi-
recognize
simply because of the surprises
it
how
puts in
of reading, as the expected developments do not occur.
Among its most original features are the development of characters
who are partly realistic and partly stylized, and whose inner states of
mind
are considered far
The
traces of
more important than
an individual
sensibility.
their outer actions.
Once The
Scarlet Letter has
been read and absorbed, a reader can easily recognize other works by
Hawthorne, can even
his
identify individual sentences as the product of
hand. Not only the elaborate yet quiet
setting, situation, characters,
characteristic of this author
and concerns
and no
be extracted from the mixture and,
we
call
style,
in
but configuration of
The
Scarlet Letter are
other. Yet, individual elements can
when we
see
them
in
other writers,
them "Hawthornian." In transcending genres Hawthorne
vented his
own
in-
genre.
Emotional and
intellectual impact.
The emotional impact
of the
novel rises from our engagement in the situation of the major characters,
our appreciation of
their
dilemmas, and our reluctant accep-
tance of their destinies. In the interweaving of choice and fatality
XIX
—
THE SCARLET LETTER
Hawthorne's narrative approaches tragedy. The
rises
from the
impact
intellectual
difficulty of assigning clear praise or
blame
to anyone,
and the consequent necessity of working our way through the myriad
implications and ramifications of the situation
character taken separately, and
together. This
a cast
is
why
of characters.
—the situation of each
the situation that
all
make
of them
book achieves so much depth with so small
the
The
work
intellectual
Hawthorne demands
that
of us enlarges our understanding and distinguishes The Scarlet Letter
from entertainment that leaves us unchanged, although of course
if
Hawthorne would
no entertainment
in
The
not have expected us to read
it.
Certainly part of the "craft" involved
there were
in a
masterwork of
Scarlet Letter
is
the achievement of a satisfying piece of
lives.
For hundreds of thousands of readers
fiction
entertainment.
Touchstones for our
since 1850, the four important characters in
ter
The
—Hes-
Scarlet Letter
Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Pearl
have become part of their mental landscape.
sively vengeful
man, they
they hear of an obses-
If
will think of Chillingworth; a beautiful
wild child will remind them of Pearl; reading about a respected
ber of the
community exposed
but
mem-
for a secret sin, they will think of
Dim-
mesdale; and finding themselves in conflict with authority, scorned by
public opinion for doing
tify
As
what they
men
themselves (whether they are
for the
symbol of the
status as shorthand for
believe to be right, they will iden-
or
women) with Hester
scarlet letter itself,
it
Prynne.
has achieved a kind of
any negative labeling imposed on an individual
by his or her surroundings.
A work
that
makes
this
kind of impact on
our self-understanding cannot be anything but important.
Finally, readers usually
expect American masterworks to
something about the country, or
at least to reflect
of being an American. Typically,
tell
them
about the meaning
Hawthorne does not so much
"tell
us" about America as provide the framework within which certain
questions
may
be raised and their answers attempted. His examination
of Puritanism, of
community
Scarlet Letter touches
authority,
on themes
and of individualism
at the center of
American thought.
xx
in
The
American history and
—
The
Critical Reception
Many works
thought to be
literary classics in their
appeared from view while other works ignored
surfaced as classics in later times. The Scarlet Letter
American
literary
remained
also
In fact,
James
it
works
in print
constantly from
first
one of the three partners
the self-doubting author to allow
rather than in a
mixed
thorne thought
it
work was
was:
it
him
was
it
It
was he who persuaded
as a single separate
it
had been
enthusiasm was particularly
Field's
truly "defective" in just the
was not
intense
way Haw-
and dark, sun-
a mixture of bright
and
when
published
in the firm that
to publish
and shadow, humor and pathos,
shine
preferred. Rather,
appearance to the present.
collection of short pieces, as
Hawthorne's original intention.
striking in that the
re-
one of the rare
is
as a classic even before publication,
Hawthorne's works, read the manuscript.
work
dis-
day have
that, recognized as a "classic" at once, has
was recognized
T. Fields,
time have
in their
the taste of the time
as
single in
stress
its
on the dark,
the somber, the gloomy.
It is
throw any cheering
light,"
friend at the time that he finished the
far
which
"positively a hell-fired story, into
possible to
from realizing
his
own
intentions
its
own way
found
it
almost imto a close
work. The sentence suggests that
—which were
to write
The
pleasing and popular, with plenty of variety
stubbornly gone
I
Hawthorne wrote
in the creation.
something
Scarlet Letter
had
Thus, when he read the
conclusion to his wife, he was jubilant to discover
how
deeply
it
af-
fected her. "It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous
headache^which
the
same
may
A
letter.
calculate
I
look upon as a triumphant success!" he wrote
"Judging from
on what bowlers
"ten-strike"
it
its
effect
on her and
in
the publisher,
I
call a ten-strike."
was, so far as Hawthorne's reputation was con-
cerned; for with the publication of The Scarlet Letter he
elevated to the position of the nation's foremost
the popularity that he greatly desired
—
man
was
of letters. But
for financial reasons
cause he had always thought of writing as a
way
instantly
and
of establishing
be-
com-
THE SCARLET LETTER
munity with an audience
The book did not
sell
—did not come with
much over 13,500
and Hawthorne's death thirteen years
ed to
copies between publication
later; his total royalties
more than $1,500. Even allowing
little
sum cannot be regarded as a
owed his continuing reputation to
this
any other work.
this or
amount-
for the uninflated dollar,
significant success.
Hawthorne has
which
the appreciation with
a small
to
The
into being during the 1840s
and
but influential audience has responded to his work, above
all
Scarlet Letter.
Such an audience had
was
chiefly
composed of
come
first
literary critics
who wrote
for
magazines and
newspapers. They had appreciated his 1837 Twice-Told Tales enough
to induce
him
to republish the
had approvingly read
new
his
work
in
an expanded edition
in
writings as they appeared in John L.
O'Sullivans United States Magazine and Democratic Review
1840s; and welcomed the 1846 collection Mosses from an
These
critics
were hoping to find an American writer of
distinct national flavor,
1842;
who was good enough
to be
in the
Old Manse.
fiction
with a
proposed
seri-
ously as an equal to the great English and French novelists of the
among whom were
1840s,
Charles Dickens, William Makepeace
Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas.
James Fenimore Cooper had
doned
from favor because he had aban-
fallen
popular Leatherstocking
his
series
and other
to write polemical novels strongly critical of
Catharine Sedgwick,
who had
torical novelist in the 1820s,
because he believed
in the
had abandoned novel writing
pee
in
for didactic
importance of a "unity of effect" that was
and promising
arrival
in a single sitting.
on the
literary scene
Herman
with Ty-
1846, had quickly become too wild and metaphysical for con-
temporary
work
his-
1849) refused to write novels
in
only attainable in works that could be read
Melville, a recent
American democracy.
been thought equal to Cooper as a
Edgar Allan Poe (who died
tracts.
historical subjects
critical taste.
that critics
flexible
if
The
Scarlet Letter
had been looking
for,
they could safely announce
In addition, a political
before he began
work
it
was not
quite the kind of
but they were prepared to be
as a
major American novel.
scandal had broken around
Hawthorne
just
on The Scarlet Letter: his patronage appointXXll
The
ment
at the
gardless of
Critical Reception
Salem customhouse, which had been assured to him
which party was
re-
power, was terminated when the Whigs
in
beat out the Democrats late in 1848.
A
highly respected literary
man
thus found himself unemployed, with a family to support, in 1849;
and Hawthorne accompanied the
long prefatory essay (called
satirical
account of
life in
The
text of
Scarlet Letter with a
'The Custom-House")
customhouse
the
that provided a
as well as his dismissal.
This topical material assured that the book would be well publicized,
even though
critics
might concentrate on "The Custom-House" rather
than The Scarlet Letter;
it
assured that reviews of the book would be
widely read, and not only by people interested
in literature.
ready to defend the author, others to defend his being
Some were
fired.
Some
people approved of his putting his reactions into print, others thought
it
unseemly of him to have done
House" gave Hawthorne wide
so. But, in
any event, "The Custom-
publicity.
In fact, regardless of their political alignments, leading critics of the
day generally reviewed The Scarlet Letter very favorably, concentrat-
on
ing
and formal perfection,
its stylistic
sight into the
human
soul,
its
its
intensity of effect,
"pathos and power,"
its
its in-
mixture of
solemnity and tenderness, severity and sympathy. While they might
have preferred a work of more humor and playfulness, they found
in
and hap-
The
Scarlet Letter a tragic essence
pily
ranked Hawthorne with leading nineteenth-century European au-
thors.
The
hostile reviews
orientation,
couple
who deemed
— immoral
came from
critics
major
writer,
with a strong religious
— an adulterous
in itself regardless of the author's treatment.
too sympathetically,
among
a
the author's choice of subject
of these thought, in addition, that
ity
worthy of
in a
manner
Hawthorne had
likely to
Many
treated his sinners
encourage similar immoral-
readers.
Hawthorne's subsequent novels were compared
course with The Scarlet Letter.
A number
as
a
matter of
of critics preferred The
House of the Seven Gables. So did Hawthorne, who wrote in a letter
that it was "a more natural and healthy product of my mind/' and
that he "felt less reluctance in publishing
Letter because
it
was
a
more
cheerful
xxin
it"
than he did The Scarlet
book with
a
more varied
tone.
THE SCARLET LETTER
Over
time, however,
The
Scarlet Letter
thorne's
own
self-analysis
came
one that
best of his works, as well as the
to be recognized as the
— notwithstanding
—most represented
his literary
Haw-
methods and
concerns.
In the
decades after Hawthorne's death a group of prestigious Bos-
ton-based literary
tors
were
at
critics
worked
American
as the foremost
work,
tirelessly to
writer.
certain extraneous fac-
canon
chiefly the desire of these critics to develop a
of national literature centering on
when Houghton
maintain his reputation
Once again
Mifflin, a
New
England
writers. In the 1880s,
Boston publishing company, began to put
out elegant editions of the "major" American writers, Hawthorne was
among
the
first
to be featured.
The
success of this effort of critics and
publishers can be measured by the fact that beginning with
James, whose long essay on Hawthorne appeared
in
aspiring novelist-critics, including James, William
Dean Howells, D.
H. Lawrence, Jorge Luis Borges, and John Updike, have
to
Henry
1879, numerous
felt
engage with and write about Hawthorne's achievement.
the need
And
every
general critical study of American literature includes extended discussion of
Hawthorne and The
Scarlet Letter.
James described The Scarlet Letter
tive writing yet
put forth
approach often repeated
as
much with
ticular sensibility. "It
the very heart of
weak than otherwise;
realism of research"
it,
he took an
through the years, identifying
England culture
belonged to the
New
historical novel in the
in criticism
New
general
as "the finest piece of imagina-
in the country." In assessing
soil,
it
as with the author's par-
to the air;
it
came out of
England." While denying that the work was a
normal sense
there
—
is little
— "the
elaboration of detail, of the
James added
there, not only objectively, as
but subjectively as well ...
historical coloring
rather
modern
that, nevertheless, Puritanism "is
Hawthorne had
in the
is
tried to place
very quality of his
own
it
there,
vision."
By
"Puritanism" James did not imply any particular theology, but rather
the intellectual, allegorical quality of the work,
element of cold and ingenious fantasy,
cacy,"
New
which he attributed
its
what he
elaborate imaginative deli-
to the passionless reserve of
England temperament.
XXIV
called "its
Hawthorne's
The
During the
Critical Reception
last thirty years of the
nineteenth century literary
critics
elaborated on an idea of fiction as inclining either to a realist or to a
romantic practice, and Hawthorne came to figure as the ultimate
mantic.
The
difference between these
stituted the fiction.
The
realist
worked
ginning with observed facts of
in the
human
to be truths of
between these truths and the imagined
in the relation
truths; the
two modes was not
was assumed
of subject matter, which
choice
but
life,
facts that con-
inductively, like a scientist, be-
and working from them
life
ro-
romantic worked deductively,
to his
in the reverse direction, be-
ginning with certain truths and using the facts of his story to illustrate
them.
A
might explain why Hawthorne could lean
distinction like this
so heavily
on the
allegorical
and yet create
fantastic, the supernatural, the symbolic,
a sense of truth as strong as in
any
and the
realistic
novel.
Over
tion
time,
came
institution of
American
and perhaps inaccurately, the tradition of American
to be associated with
The
fiction.
Scarlet Letter as the very fountainhead of a truly
(This
an ironic development, since Hawthorne
is
often claimed that his imagination
for the romantic.) In
Scarlet Letter
its
the realist
Dean Howells,
was un-American
as often as
it
was defended,
later nineteenth
for
numerous
century set themselves firm-
camp, among them such important
a great
in its preference
American novel The
role as the quintessential
was attacked
important novelists of the
ly in
admirer of Hawthorne
critics as
who
William
nevertheless re-
garded him as an influence to be overcome. But every essay that
icized
The
The
crit-
Scarlet Letter for excessive fantasy or lack of realism
testified to its
zon.
fic-
romantic practice, which led to the
continuing and powerful presence on the literary hori-
Scarlet Letter continues to be accepted without
an indisputable fictional masterwork of the pre-Civil
this recognition underlies all criticism in the
argument
War
Hawthorne and The
emphasis, viewing the novel
the fascinating psyche of
its
less in
Scarlet Letter
and
and
twentieth century.
Between the turn of the twentieth century and World War
discussion of
era,
as
had
II
much
a biographical
for itself than as an index to
author. Behind a variety of up-to-date
psychological theories such criticism actually returned to the question
XXV
THE SCARLET LETTER
that the earliest reviews
Hawthorne
had
whether the author and
himself:
gloomy. The concern
sively
human
particular
raised, the question that
in
The
Scarlet Letter with the isolation of
on
and
secrets
Hawthorne's personal
of
works were exces-
his
beings from the larger society and the reasons for
that isolation, as well as the focus
expressions
who had
member him; some
in
died almost before
in his
man
in
that the critical
A
critics dealt
by arguing that he was not
balanced
him from
youth; others in the oppressive
Another group of
ity
both his
demand
The
critics
Some found
it
Hawthorne could
in
re-
life
active play at a crucial
New
and
for cheer
his
morbid, but was a well-
works;
still
1
the
is,
others maintained
and balance was naive and narrow.
Scarlet Letter obviously
thorne's "ambiguity,' that
England heritage.
with Hawthorne's supposed morbidin the least
powerful way of accounting for the differing
a reading of
and
an allegedly eccentric and withdrawn mother;
others in the foot injury that kept
time
were taken as
guilt,
maladjustment,
searched the biographical records for explanation.
the absent father
had so worried
way
in
critical
responses that
produced was to
which he makes
stress
it
Haw-
difficult or
impossible to extract a clear and particular "message" from his work.
Studies of the
means by which such ambiguity was achieved became,
1950s, the chief
in the
The upshot
way
of investigating the text
of such studies
was
itself.
a supplanting of the
view of
Haw-
a technique for impos-
thorne as romantic allegorist (since allegory
is
ing single, clear meanings) with the idea of
Hawthorne
as symbolist.
less interested in
Hawthornes
In line
with such a change,
critics
grew
use of earlier sources (Milton, Spenser, John Bunyan, and the like) and
more
interested in his influence
on
later writers;
where he had often
been thought of as creating a deliberately archaic kind of
was now
perceived
in the
fiction,
he
opposite light: as the forerunner of various
modern techniques. An important 1957 study by Charles
Symbolism and American
Literature,
made
this
Feidelson,
point especially
strongly.
Some
critics,
accepting the notion of Hawthorne's personal isolation
its
causative
power
shortcomings
in society
rather than in the
in life
and
in his
xxvi
work, attributed
man. More
his situation to
specifically they
The
Critical Reception
pointed either to his dissent from the obligatory optimism of midnineteenth-century America, which required belief in progress and hu-
man
perfectibility as articles of faith, or to his difficult situation as a
"serious" artist in a society that loved trivia. In such interpretations,
as
"blame"
shifts
from Hawthorne to
psychological to the sociological, and
stood not as an explorer of general
This
society,
Hawthorne begins
human
it
criticism a desire to fold the particular
work
The blending of an
in
The
its
earlier idea of
Hawthorne's "romantic"
strongest and
most
presumed
work had
American and
gorical novel
as
Its
Tradition.
prime goal to establish a distinction between
its
British fiction.
Chase called The Scarlet Letter an
whose "allegory both
Puritanism" and whose theme
involved in the
social
influential statements
Richard Chase's 1957 study, The American Novel and
This
The
into a larger field of in-
Scarlet Letter with a later sense of his
purpose received one of
in
in criticism of
shares with the biographical
Scarlet Letter in the last forty years, but
method
to be under-
truths, but as a social critic.
probably the most important development
is
quiry.
emphasis veers from the
abandonment
is
in
alle-
form and substance derives from
the "loss or submergence of emotion
of the
Old World
Again, however, the characteristics of the
cultural heritage."
work
itself
came
into play
because interpretations of The Scarlet Letter as social commentary
ambiguity any more than could the
could not escape the
text's
biographical criticism.
Where one
Hawthorne:
A
Critical Study)
fashioned conservative
who
critic
(e.g.,
Hyatt Waggoner
in
might present Hawthorne as an old-
did not believe in
human
goodness, and
who
exploited Puritanism as a corrective to his age, another
(e.g.,
D. H. Lawrence
in Studies in Classic
critic
American Literature) might
argue with equal force and passion that The Scarlet Letter was a pro-
found although disguised attack on an emotionally impoverishing and
hypocritical
American moralism.
Hawthorne's ambiguity entered Chase's interpretation, too,
in that
Chase decided Hawthorne had not committed himself as to whether
the loss of the
Old World heritage was good or bad
Following Chase, any number of
in
critics
America, 1969) to Michael Davitt
for Americans.
from Joel Porte [The Romance
Bell
{The Development of Amer-
THE SCARLET LETTER
Romance, 1981) have interpreted The
icon
whose form
ciety
particularly "American,"
is
from an alienated perspective that
and professional
work
Scarlet Letter as a
whose point
reflects
is
to criticize so-
Hawthornes personal
situation.
Along with the
The
interest in assimilating
more
Scarlet Letter to
general inquiry, biographical and social criticism share an approach to
the
work
different
as an entity to be "interpreted." This
from that prevailing
work was considered
in relation to its ability to
encoding a message for the
tions, not as a text
The many
view to "the text
itself"
and correct "meaning"
Two
The
for
engage reader emo-
have also shared
is
who
have
this preoc-
come up with
a
Scarlet Letter.
questions have especially preoccupied them.
Hawthorne's worldview
strikingly
where the
intellect to decipher.
cupation with interpretation and have attempted to
basic
is
time,
second half of the twentieth century
critics in the
restricted their
approach
Hawthornes own
in
One
essentially religious or secular,
is
whether
whether he
thinks that his characters have "sinned" in the sense of breaking a
divine
commandment
a social law.
A
or whether, instead, he thinks they have broken
second, connected question
Hawthorne sympathize
with, and
vary widely; there are those
who
is:
which characters does
why? Answers
see Hester as
to these questions
an out-and-out secular
heroine standing up for the individual against arbitrary authority, and
those
who
see her as a religious sinner, adding pride
original trespass.
Those who are committed
Hawthorne take The
of the inner
life;
strength rather in
and anger
to her
to a secular reading of
Scarlet Letter as a powerful psychological study
those committed to a religious reading find
Hawthornes
its
rejection of his characters' rationali-
zations, his adherence to an ethical absolutism based
on
belief in a
human desire.
so many different,
firm divine order that takes precedence over
The
fact that critics
fensible, readings of
ter
of
could come up with
The
Hawthornes ambiguity, but with
contemporary
critics
linguistic texts;
yet de-
Scarlet Letter eventually led again to the mat-
now
a
few new
believe that ambiguity
because language
ing the language in which critics
itself is
make
XXVI 11
is
twists.
inescapable
Some
in all
inherently unstable (includ-
their arguments),
no "interpre-
The
Critical Reception
tation" can ever be definitively established as the right one. Even those
who
prefer to think of language as
the world of a
complex
and
to be so resonant
more
The
Some
is
many
simply
will
elements in the mixture. For ex-
sensitivities to different
ample, in recent years feminist
it
bound
is
responses will be overly
personal, and hence "unauthorized" by the text, but
because
agree that
Scarlet Letter
rich in connotations that different readers will
necessarily have different responses.
be based on
may
solid than this
fictional text like
critics
have turned to The Scarlet Letter
one of the few acknowledged American masterworks
War whose main character is a woman. A feminist perspective allows one to see how Hawthorne was concerned, in
developing Hester, with the question of the status of women in society,
as well as the different commitments men and women tend to make
from before the
Civil
to romantic love. Since romantic love serves Hester so badly, they can
Hawthorne's
identify a previously unnoticed aspect of
social criticism:
the idea of romantic love as a trick to ensure the willing subservience
of
women
to the social system. This feminist perspective responds to
elements truly there but completely invisible to those looking only for
a theological statement in the novel.
Perhaps, then, the most exciting thing about The Scarlet Letter
we can
not that
translate
meanings; though
each reader
a
it
into a core meaning, but that
dead work
if it is
in a slightly different
not read,
way, just as
each other. The elusiveness of the text
for
its
are
human
ways
in
our
own
life
for
thus the essential reason
all,
The
Scarlet Letter creates a
way, indeed that each of us
at different points in
our
anarchistic subjectivity here; rather
lives.
we
We
were,
we would
message, and
it
may
would have no capacity
XXIX
world that we
enter in differ-
do not surrender
work
never return to a masterpiece after
reading.
their
to an
recognize that interpretation
not the "last word" in an encounter with a great
its
to
beings do for
skimmed and discarded when we have extracted
"message" once and for
each enter
it
comes
continuing fascination throughout the years. Unlike simpler
works that
ent
is
it
is
of
full
it is
to
move
of literature.
we had
is
If
learned
us after the
first
WHAT?
THE STORY
When
we
begin to read a novel
through words.
on
its
own
If it
we
enter an imaginary world created
works, the novel persuades us to accept that world
terms, for the duration of the reading, no matter
mote or farfetched that created world may
out of our surroundings
rative art.
We
is
part of the
leave the real world,
immense
more or
how
be. This ability to
re-
lift
us
attractiveness of nar-
less quickly,
more or
less
comfortably, partly with the aid of conventions about fiction learned
so long ago, and so often repeated, that they have
fectly natural.
titled
No
"real world," for
chapters; yet a novel without
come
example, comes
in
to
seem per-
numbered or
them would seem unnatural. While
depending on such shared conventions, however, each novel
unique, and must instruct readers specifically in
world. Thus every good novel, whether a
or a would-be classic,
tells
us
how
it
intensely than in the opening pages.
how
also
to live in
its
of transient popularity
should be read, and never more
If it
with readers at the beginning, the novel
end.
work
is
does not establish rapport
may have no
readers at the
THE SCARLET LETTER
ON THE THRESHOLD
The
In
Scarlet Letter a very brief
and two longish paragraphs
tence,
opening section
—
is
—one separate
set apart as a first chapter.
sen-
Such
emphasis, for an amount of prose that would normally be simply part
of a longer chapter, says something about the pacing of the whole
work:
novel will proceed deliberately, with pauses along the way.
this
Indeed, in the
arrest, as a
to begin.
we
sentence
find ourselves present at a
crowd of people waits
our
If
book work
we
first
who
we too
will
be put
are these people?
in a
where are we?
of them, that a story engages the attention
The
we are inclined to let the
mood of anticipation. And
if
and the more or
implicit raising of questions,
less
and
It is
through the
delayed answering
interest of
sentence does say something about where
first
of
something to happen, something
fictional senses are keen,
its spell,
will ask:
for
moment
we
its
readers.
are:
it
pro-
— "sad-colored
vides
the description of the people's clothing
steeple-crowned hats" — and
reference
garments and
clues in
gray,
"wooden
edifice"
in
and
with iron spikes" (47).
er,
door "heavily timbered with oak, and studded
a
Men
don't wear steeple-crowned hats any long-
nor are buildings made with doors
but was
in the past;
it
like the
when
that, like us,
The
first
"some
we know
does
fifteen or
Any
next
twenty years after the settlement of
set in present
the action of his story.
time for any reader.
sentence goes beyond intimations about historical time and
this
tell
us something about the kind of world
list
we
are
by mixing straightforward description with connotative
terms that imply attitudes.
giving us a
sified
are
Hawthorne was addressing an audience
that
was never
place and begins to
in. It
this are settled in the
was not contemporaneous with
Scarlet Letter
The
We
the narrator refers to "the forefathers of Boston" and
locates the action
the town." So
one described.
the past to Hawthorne's contemporaries?
doubts a reader of today might have about
paragraph,
to a
its
of colors.
It
uses the phrase "sad-colored" rather than
The impression created by
the term
is
inten-
by the description of the door: heavily timbered, studded with
iron spikes.
Even
we recognize an atmosphere
antagonism. And we recognize that we
this early in the story
of sadness, of oppression, of
What? The
must read not only
for historical detail, but also for
sphere; perhaps the
mative than the
Story
mood and atmosphere
will be
even more infor-
detail.
The atmosphere continues
to build in the next sentence,
human
colony, whatever Utopia of
which be-
"The founders of
gins the second paragraph of this brief chapter:
new
mood and atmo-
a
and happiness they
virtue
might originally project, have invariably recognized
it
among
their
earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a
cemetery, and another portion as the
where
sentence, placed
immediately that
we
purpose (and even
if
it
new
are in a
we
site
of a prison" (47). This one
performs a number of tasks.
is,
did not
colony, founded for
know what
It tells
us
some Utopian
a "utopia" was,
we
could
conclude from the terms "virtue" and "happiness" that the colony had
been founded for
But
idealistic reasons).
in this colony, like all others
(says the narrator), certain inescapable realities
selves very early on.
Death and crime, the
virtue,
have forced the founders
alistic"
group of
idealists
—
to
in
question the possibility of
of
The
Scarlet Letter
may
antithesis of happiness
and
— unless they were a particularly
"re-
modify
all
is
it is
their plans.
Utopias,
At once, then,
is
it
puts
and suggests that the "story"
be about things going wrong
Utopia. Such an interpretive frame
ting itself;
have manifested them-
not inherent
in a
projected
in the historical set-
created by the connotative words in which the setting
conveyed.
The reader can
the
first
tence,
also recognize a
change
to the second sentence of
though
the scene,
is
it
contains
it
—descriptive—
contains
some
of interpretive commentary. Thus,
will
move
freely in
procedure from
"The Prison-Door." The
some words suggesting an
mainly expository
reverses the emphasis;
in narrative
we
first
sen-
interpretation of
in its nature.
The second
exposition, but consists mostly
recognize that this narration
and out of the action,
will
supplement the action
with various kinds of commentary ranging from opinion on the spe-
way
cific
action
to large-scale generalizations
about universals.
The
action, apparently, will be strongly mediated by
commentary pro-
all
the
vided by a narrator who, rather than concealing himself, will regularly
stress his presence.
THE SCARLET LETTER
Why
should a writer create so prominent a narrator?
for the reader,
to
and
a sign of
themselves?
tell
Through such narrators
though
it
though not
were
skill in
was conventional
It
time to have narrators
as
more
who
Isn't
better
it
appear
stories
Hawthorne's
for the novel of
the novel-reading experience
is
was presented
where the
storytelling experience,
a
if
conversed freely with their readers.
a character in the action,
transaction. But
the writer,
storyteller,
a crucial figure in the narrative
Hawthorne may have had
particular reasons for de-
ploying a highly visible narrator in The Scarlet Letter, reasons that
made
it
wise to establish the narrator's presence as quickly as possible.
time period and culture of his story
First, the
come
quite distant to his audience, requiring a
may have
good deal of explana-
make these comprehensible. Second, the story
tell may have been sufficiently unconventional to call
making sure that the readers knew how to respond.
tion to
In just
two sentences Hawthorne has conveyed
what readers
are to read
are to expect in
it.
the sentences,
a
Reflecting on
The
Scarlet Letter,
we may suppose
that
The
a long
book
by word.
speak
—of
it is
and thus how they
has packed into
all
is
going to be
the time. This
is
not
one to be unpacked word
not to be read for the action alone, but also for the
and resonances
—the
narrative
embroidering,
so
to
that action.
The second paragraph goes on
The "new colony"
(the
for extra help in
Scarlet Letter
to be dipped into, but a short
And
implications
that he wants to
a greal deal about
how much Hawthorne
compressed work with a greal deal going on
already be-
is
to specify the setting in
Boston, about twenty years after
colony was established
in
1630).
Isaac Johnson, King's Chapel. For
We
it
more
detail.
was
settled
read the names Cornhill,
most of us these
allusions cannot
do more than supply the impression of accuracy, encouraging
that the narrator
is
well informed.
We would
a belief
prefer to take a historical
guided tour from a trustworthy person, and a few such specific
refer-
many of them might proconfused sense that we are not reading a novel
research has indicated, by the way, that Haw-
ences inspire the requisite confidence. (Too
duce boredom, or a
after
all.)
Scholarly
thorne did turn to historical sources for information of
this sort,
even
What? The
Story
though he does not always follow them. The references to the layout
of early Boston are correct.
The paragraph
and continues
also goes
work
its
which the action
is
to imply
more about
the action to come,
of creating an interpretive perspective through
to be viewed.
Why would
a prison.
on
The building we stand
people have assembled
in front of
in front of a prison
is
door?
For no other reason than to see the door open, which means to see
we know
who
has been put in prison. We wonder who, we wonder why, and we
wonder for what reason the person is coming out. And since we
know that stories always have conflict we sense the outlines of a
someone come
out. So
that the story
is
about someone
—
—
conflict,
between the person
Now
outside the door.
are
we on? For
a story
in the prison
—
this
we know from
have become natural to us
telling that
the focus of audience sympathy.
to be the person
the story
is
and those
whom
the story
It is
is
others, assembled
comes up; whose
a crucial story question
side
the conventions of story-
—always has an actor who
is
usual for the focus of sympathy
"about," and
we
already
know
about the soon-to-emerge criminal. Although
seem natural, since an audience probably consists
in the
it
that
would
main of law-
abiding citizens, for sympathies to be against the "criminal," a number
of strategies in the paragraph prevent this "natural" flow of sympathies
from occurring.
For one thing, there
stony silence
the prison
it
is
the crowd. In
its
sad-colored clothing and
does not invite reader sympathy. For another, there
itself,
especially the door.
The prison and
its
is
the door are de-
scribed in such forbidding terms that a reader can hardly avoid begin-
ning to
feel
sympathy
for the
unknown
gloomy, old, heavy, oppressive, hostile,
ugly.
prisoner.
The
They
are dark,
descriptive words, by
association and contiguity, seem to refer out and back to the crowd;
crowd and prison become one; we sense
to this prisoner.
An
port the prisoner,
world unified
only to weight the balance a
—
—does not leave the creation of sympathy
But Hawthorne
use)
if
a
in hostility
impulse of fairness creates the inclination to suplittle
more
evenly.
or the narrator (whichever term one prefers to
entirely to an
assumed
audience instinct for fair play, or to a dislike for ugly buildings
and
THE SCARLET LETTER
drab crowds.
He
unsightliness,
moving from
goes quite far
its
ugly architecture to the equally unap-
pealing vegetation growing around
etable imagery the
metaphors and
of
first
elaboration of the building's
in his
what
it.
Then, there
will turn
similes, as the prison
itself
flower"?
evil
it
It is
ugly,
a plant, the "black
we
think of a "black
unnatural (there are no black flowers
it is
Here we see
is evil.
in na-
which
a subtle confusion introduced:
—the prison, or the crimes that have necessitated
We now
this veg-
out to be almost countless
becomes
flower of civilized society" (48). Well, what do
ture),
from
rises
is
it?
see that this narrator, as well as interrupting his story for
various sorts of commentary,
is
given to elaborating his narrative
through images and metaphors. Such metaphors are more than
literary
We
decoration; they carry a good deal of information about the story.
are not surprised, then,
when
the metaphoric
mode
continues, and
we
discover that beside the prison door there grows "a wild rose-bush,
covered, in this
month
wild rose bush
is
of June, with
delicate gems,"
its
and that
to be interpreted as a token of nature
s
this
sympathy
with the prisoner.
wild rose bush, with
In the contrast of the
adding a second metaphor to the
turned metaphorically into an unnatural flower
civilization
— Hawthorne
(or prisoner
and crowd)
beautiful, also wild
sets his conflict
into a
much
Hawthorne "saying"
necessarily; his
we
will feel
work
larger context.
The
rose bush
is
ugly, also civilized
is
—another kind
to
do
this
that civilization
at this point
sympathy
"natural" impulses to
way
—the black flower of
of rhetorical de-
has a heart to pity and be kind; civilization, apparently, does not.
vice)
Is
and the prison,
between prisoner and prison
and natural; the black flower
and unnatural. Nature (personified
flowers turned (by
its
into gems,
first)
is
is
unnatural, hence bad?
to create a frame within
for the prisoner, against
feel
Not
which
what might be our
antagonistic toward a criminal.
What
better
than to associate the prisoner with the natural and the
beautiful?
An
especially perceptive reader, even a reader
coming
to
The
Scarlet Letter with
(if
this
were possible)
no prior information about
6
•
its
story
What? The
Story
whatsoever, might begin to think that the prisoner could, maybe, be a
woman. The
association of flowers and gems, youth and beauty, with
the prisoner sets
The
up
dim
this
possibility quickly
becomes probable when the rose bush
with one particular historical prisoner
Women
who happened
to be a
linked
is
woman.
criminals are sufficiently rare as to pique our curiosity; and
Hawthorne has been
the imbalance
community and
prisoner
is
power of
the
describes her
to Cornhill
creating between the
the prisoner
is
power of
greatly intensified
if
the
the
female.
Anne Hutchinson
is
does the adjective "fragile."
possibility, as
—
is
—the "sainted" Anne Hutchinson,
woman
no "ordinary"
and Isaac Johnson go
by,
We can
criminal.
perhaps; but
let
references
Anne Hutchinson
so important a figure in early Puritan history that
Hawthorne expected
as the narrator
we can assume
know something about her. HutchA brilliant
was one of the few women religious leaders
his readers to
inson had migrated with her husband to Boston in 1634.
and
a kind
woman,
she
of the age, although of course she had no "official" status in a society
that did not allow
women
any kind of public
office.
to be magistrates or ministers, or to hold
At
first
her
home was an important
for informal religious discussions but, rather quickly, she
fell
center
out of
favor with the Puritan leaders.
There were two reasons for
New
own
this. First,
the Puritans
had come
to
England, not to practice religious tolerance, but to create their
theocracy, a society organized according to
what they believed
to
be God's commands. In such a society absolute orthodox) was a necessity,
and
in fact the
later in history
Puritans
became
a tolerant people only
much
than the time of The Scarlet Letter, only when so main
non-Puritans had settled around them that they had no choice. They
saw
the intellectual position that Hutchinson developed as a kind of
The name of her heresy (and
heresy.
anity)
is
are not
antinomianism, and
bound by
most serious
it
it
goes back to earliest Christi-
consists of the doctrine that Christians
the moral law. Regeneration and salvation
issues to Puritan Christians
— were
which external laws had nothing to do. Since the
— the
inner matters with
first
generation of
THE SCARLET LETTER
was
Puritan leaders
certain that Puritan laws coincided with divine
commandments, Hutchinson's views were completely unacceptable
to
them.
The second reason
ened the state
that her preachings threat-
ways. To begin with, the Puritan leaders did
woman
step so far out of her supposedly God-given
not like to see a
place as subordinate to men.
A
was
for opposition
in several
position that
is
And
indifferent,
if
they had doctrinal concerns as well.
not opposed, to law certainly under-
mines a society to which laws are
essential.
strongly encouraged independent reading
saw Hutchinson and her
Too, although the Puritans
and study of the
large following as the nucleus of a state with-
an alternative to the government they were constructing.
in a state,
know who, among
This view was certainly enhanced by her claim to
was saved and who damned. The upshot was
the colonists,
Hutchinson was imprisoned,
and
in
Island,
Bible, they
tried, instructed to recant (she did not),
1638 expelled from Massachusetts Bay. She went
and then to
New
that
York, where,
her family were killed by Indians
in the
first
Rhode
to
winter of 1643, she and
— an event that the Puritans saw
as
divine retribution and confirmation of her errors.
Obviously a reference to such a prisoner as Anne Hutchinson greatly intensifies
and those
had any
the aura of conflict between those
who
break
role to play
it,
may
enforce the law
simply because Hutchinson denied that law
where the soul was concerned. Carried
further, Hutchinson's position
necessarily, but
who
be,
on the
side of those
law has judged the criminal, but
saying that criminals are right?
who
Not
who
necessarily
isn't
break the law. The
judges the law?
be allowing for the possibility that they
a possibility allows us to
a step
can be seen to imply that "right"
Is
Hawthorne
—but he does seem
may not
be wrong.
And
to
such
sympathize with the still-unknown prisoner
without feeling guilty of breaking a law ourselves.
What, then, of the word sainted
referring to
Anne Hutchinson?
Doesn't that clearly show where the narrator's sympathies are? Perhaps. Saint
is
a
word
that the Puritans used with a special meaning,
to refer to a person thought to be
one of the
elect,
be saved (the Puritans emphatically did not believe
•
8
•
chosen by
God
to
in salvation avail-
What? The
able to
ployed
word could be used during
the
all);
Story
a person's lifetime. If
accord with Puritan usage, "sainted"
in
word
represent Hutchinson's
in this
for herself, or her claim to be "sainted"
whether she followed the law or not, or the view of her held by
members
of the community.
so to speak, a free-floating
It is,
definitely attached to the narrator's
using
it
in his
own
we meet another
voice, he
em-
paragraph could
own
voice; or,
might be using
crucial aspect of
the narrator
if
ironically.
it
some
word not
is
Here, then,
Hawthorne's method, spoken of by
literary critics as his "ambiguity."
This term
is
used to refer to the immense difficulty one has
trying to find out exactly
where he
—the human author—stands on
words
particular moral or philosophical issue because his
of being understood in
when
two or more ways.
a
are capable
In part, the
extreme
compression of Hawthorne's method creates ambiguity as a by-product; but, in part, the
ambiguity cannot be other than intentional. For
observe that not only does Hawthorne use the
word
ously; his linking of the rose bush with Hutchinson
nation offered for
how
merely survived, but
the bush
came
is
the
technique of alternative explanations
pose of such a technique
and hence
where
sainted ambigu-
only one expla-
it is.
It
might have
might have sprung up under her footsteps be-
it
cause she was "sainted." This
ties
to be
is
first
in
many
of
The
instances of the
Scarlet Letter.
The pur-
obviously to introduce multiple possibili-
is
meaning open.
to keep
So our desire to find out exactly what Hawthorne means and where
he stands
may
be misguided, or at any rate
lectually, morally,
and ours
it
may
be thwarted.
and philosophically, Hawthorne keeps
—open; but so
far as story values are
who
is
meant
we might have on
which
it
is
this
to
engage our sympathies. Any lingering doubt
point cannot survive Hawthorne's final gesture,
to pluck a flower
from
to us, the readers, as the
that
we may
we have no
may be, as the
concerned,
choice but to take the emerging criminal, whoever she
character
Intel-
his options
his
metaphorical rose bush and offer
"symbol of some sweet moral blossom"
find along the track of the story.
The
last
two sentences
of the chapter redirect our attention from the story proper back to
status as a
work
of written fiction.
The
its
direct address to the reader;
THE SCARLET LETTER
the placing not only of the criminal, but of the narrative
itself,
on the
threshold of the prison door ("the threshold of our narrative, which
now about to issue from that inauspicious
"tale of human frailty and sorrow" (48)
portal"); the reference to a
—
novel
not
is
real,
not
itself,
life
prison.
all
these remind us that a
but a special cultural act requiring
cooperation between reader and narrator
gotiated.
to be successfully ne-
if it is
Without such cooperation the narrative cannot get out of
The narrator appeals
is
to our sympathies, then, not only
behalf of the prisoner, but on behalf of The Scarlet Letter
its
on
itself.
A STORY BEGINS
"The Prison-Door" has prepared us
for a plot centered in a conflict
—most
between the Puritan settlement and an individual
an
—whom
has decreed a criminal.
it
focus of the action
individual
we
still
is
need
may
well
come
likely a
has also suggested that the
It
to be the question of
But a framework
really a criminal or not.
specifics: particular events
and be acted upon. The plot begins
in
wom-
is
whether
this
not a story;
and particular agents
to act
chapter 2, "The Market-Place,"
which particularizes the action within the terms that "The Prison-
Door" has
ical
created.
Throughout the chapter
contrasts between the lawgiving social
rhetorical
and metaphor-
body and the errant
indi-
vidual continue.
"The Market-Place" opens by returning us
to the scene of the
first
sentence of "The Prison-Door," essentially reiterating the content of
that sentence.
certain
"The grass-plot before the
jail,
in
Prison Lane, on a
summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occunumber of the inhabitants of Boston; all with
pied by a pretty large
their eyes intently fastened
on the iron-clamped oaken door"
(49). In
the course of the next several pages the Puritans are repeatedly and
emphatically characterized
sympathy:
acter
is
in
terms that must deprive them of reader
their faces are "petrified" in a
marked by
"severity"
"meagre" and "cold." The
"grim rigidity"; their char-
and "solemnity";
women
•
10
in
•
the
crowd
their
sympathies are
are "hard-featured,"
What? The
Story
"self-constituted judges," "iron-visaged," "unkindly-visaged"; the
are "stern-browed";
town beadle
and
their entire
system
whose business
(the official
is
men
aptly personified by the
is
who
to administer the law),
emerges from the prison "like a black shadow," his "grim and
grisly
presence" representing "the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic
code of law"
(52).
As part of the strategy of generating sympathy
ing reader antipathy
pones her entrance
chorus of
women
the criminal
is
for Hester
by creat-
toward the Puritan community, Hawthorne posthe has shown the opinions held of her by a
until
spectators.
indeed (as
Through
we
we are informed that
woman, that her name is
their talk
suspected) a
Hester Prynne, that her punishment involves some kind of marking
that she
must wear on the bosom of her gown. As the
as an indirect channel of information, their
her sets us against them.
They
the magistrates' leniency; they
manner of
are dismayed by
compete
women
talking about
what they
to suggest
to
its
these
all,
fullest extent, says
women,
and ought to
woman
if
their
die." If the
law
is
has
not applied
"the ugliest as well as the most pitiless" of
"let the magistrates,
thank themselves
interpret as
punishments of ever
greater severity, culminating in the judgment that "this
brought shame upon us
serve
own
who
have made
of no effect,
it
wives and daughters go astray" (51-
52).
—except
— are
The women
for Hester
for one, the only
old, ugly,
not crimes, there
is
and
one
who
expresses sympathy
and though age and ugliness are
pitiless,
no doubt that such
characteristics
make
the
wom-
en seem witchlike, resembling antagonists of moral virtue more than
representatives of rectitude. Their inhumanity
is
made
contrast within the group between these hard-featured
clearer by the
women and
the
compassionate young mother. Their conversation makes clear that
Hesters has been a
short,
dale's
is
it
sin especially
has been a sexual
connected with their sex, that,
(Their talk also introduces
sin.
name; an exceedingly clever reader
will suspect
in
Dimmes-
— since the story
— that "Rev-
obviously not going to have a large cast of characters
erend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor"
in the action.)
•
11
•
may have
a role to play
THE SCARLET LETTER
Now,
finally
(though
tor
is
no
in fact
later
Hawthorne been
so economical has
than the sixth page of the text,
in his
allowed to make her entrance. Her
preparations), the malefac-
gesture epitomizes the
first
between herself and the settlement, and
conflict
true beginning of the story.
arm
off the beadle's
— "she
On
sense
in this
it is
repelled him, by an action
marked with
natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open
as
by her
if
own
and might; she
The community
free-will" (52).
is'
is
if
by her
and since the purpose of the
make
two
questions:
who
Moreover, there
is
(as yet
free will.
make
undescribed)
Within
her character
mark
is
to efface
her subservient to the Puritan system, a struggle
between Hester and the system
it,
strong through law
own
the boundaries of the possible Hester will strive to
her character, to
air,
strong through character. She has no choice but to
accept her punishment, but will do so as
felt;
the
the threshold of the prison she shakes
will
win
And
immediately established.
is
this battle?
with
and how?
no doubt that the manner
in
depicted identifies her as a heroine. Physically, she
which Hester
is
is
a beauty: tall,
with a figure of perfect elegance, glossy hair, a marked brow and deep
black eyes, ladylike, characterized by stateliness and dignity. Her
beauty shines out, even in her misfortune.
And one cannot
help but
admire the courage with which she faces the crowd, moving along
—which shows that
— "and yet haughty
"with a burning blush"
keenly,
not insensitive
is
a
would not be abashed" (52—53). This
weak
so
as to be destroyed
dense as to be unaffected by
To
call
Hester a heroine
is
not,
she feels her situation
smile,
we
and
a glance that
recognize, a character
by what has happened to
her,
nor yet so
it.
is
not to claim that she has no
faults.
A
character with no defects tends to be uninteresting, and an uninteresting character cannot long be acceptable as a hero or heroine. In ad-
— we know
—often takes an odd turn
dition, perfection
life
since
full
well that
in fiction,
it
doesn't exist in real
with the "perfect" character
increasingly appearing to be self-righteous, cold, or even hypocritical.
In fact, this
is
just
what seems
to be
certainty that they are "right"
would be
if
they had
some
happening with the Puritans;
makes them
less attractive
their
than they
doubts. Thus, a degree of taultiness in
•
12
•
What? The
Story
Hester, far from disqualifying her from a heroine's role,
more
suitable for
Can we
see
makes her
it.
any
fault in Hester at the beginning? Well, she has
an illegitimate child, and even
behavior, though
it
may not
our
in
far
more emancipated age such
be considered blameworthy,
viewed as an occasion for praise.
had
seldom
is
Hawthorne's nineteenth century
In
sex outside of marriage was, though not a criminal act,
generally
still
accepted as a sign of moral defect, and the nineteenth-century narrator
is
when he
careful not to praise Hester, even
suggests that a Catholic
might have been reminded of divine maternity by the spectacle of Hester
and her
the
image of
child. Here, in contrast to the "sacred
motherhood" that Mary
most sacred quality of human
world was only the darker for
for the infant that she
At the point
at
the scaffold,
fall,
behavior,
it
is
life,
sinless
the taint of deepest sin in
working such
woman's
effect, that the
beauty, and the
more
introduced Hester's background
gives us
and memories
may
make the
un-
is
as she stands
enough of her past
but though this history
does not necessarily
lost
{56).
Hester's fantasies
Hawthorne
stand her
this
had borne"
which she
known. Following
was
offers, "there
on
to let us under-
explain or even excuse her
behavior "good."
If
Haw-
thorne invites us to judge Hester's judges, such an invitation does not
logically require us to accept her
cumstances
may
own
self-judgment. Extenuating
The key question
extenuate, but they do not excuse.
for a twentieth-century person at this point, trying to understand
to take this story,
sort of
is
whether sexual
activity
moral or criminal judgment
answer to
this
question
is
not
clear.
at
What we
ing to put his story back in Puritan times,
how
should come under any
In
all.
cir-
The
Scarlet Letter the
can say
when
all
is
that, in
activity
choos-
was
self-
evidently thought to have a moral dimension and to call for social
judgment, he has allowed the question to be opened.
Hester comes from a family of "antique gentility," which has fallen
on hard times
stone, with
a
healthy glow
— the
"paternal
home"
is
a
"decayed house of gray
poverty-stricken aspect." Full of girlish beauty and
—
a
normally sexed individual (Hawthorne does not
share the nineteenth-century view that holds that
•
13
•
women
should have
THE SCARLET LETTER
no sexual
feeling)
— she married "a man well stricken
pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes
slightly
deformed" and with
moss on
ily's
a
crumbling wall"
whom
her
in
years" of "a
dim and bleared," who "was
was
life
(58). In other
"like a tuft of green
words, because of her fam-
had made an unsuitable marriage, which gave her
poverty, Hester
neither emotional nor sexual satisfaction. This history leads inevitably,
Hawthorne
we
accept this much,
and
I
fair,
Even the magistrates
suggests, to her present situation.
find out in chapter 3 ("This
woman
and doubtless was strongly tempted to her
youthful
fall" [63]).
have said that the action of the story begins with Hester's gesture
in repelling the beadle's
arm. In one sense
having begun about a year
earlier,
it
may
course that has had
months
its
vivid light of
day"
(52).
To
turned aside
the extent that a fictional action begins
a system of
prior,
unnarrated act marks the beginning.
middle of things.
harmony or
at least equilibrium
medias
is
disrupted, this
And Hawthorne
res," as the
phrase goes
is
—
thus
in the
another sense, however, by putting the precipitat-
In
Hawthorne makes
ing cause of the action outside of the story proper,
clear that his interest
is
repercussions. This'
experience than in
from the too
face
its little
when
starting his tale proper "in
sexual inter-
illicit
baby of some three
visible result in "a child, a
who winked and
old,
be thought of as
with the commission of the deed
that has set the settlement against her, the act of
its
is
its
—and ours should be—
means
less in the
also that his interest
deed than
less in the
is
in
physical
emotional, mental, and moral aspects. The be-
ginning of the story in this sense would be neither the sex act nor
who
Hester's rebuff of the beadle, but the birth of Pearl,
able sign of the act. Thus,
about the law:
commit
is it
Hester's crime
is
Hawthorne has introduced another question
the act, or the sign of the act, that matters?
a crime that
interesting that the
the undeni-
is
nobody knows about, does
it
matter?
It is
and dwells
named, the
stand
how
letter.
at length
on the object
for
which
his
scarlet letter. In his presentation of the letter
it
we
most
community's way of responding to the "sign" of
by labeling her with another sign, the
Along with Hester and the people, Hawthorne introduces us
to Pearl
If
briefly
book
we
is
under-
can become the heart of the conflict between Hester and
14
What? The
the Puritans,
ing that
and how
Hawthorne
Story
can come to absorb the rich texture of mean-
it
will eventually attach to
drabness and gloom of the scene as he has depicted
that
is
a
Amid
it.
the general
(notwithstanding
it
summer morning and the sun is shining brightly) the letter
strikingly exotic object, made of "fine red cloth, surrounded with
it is
a
an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread," done
with enormous
fancy" on the part of
from the
showing
artistry,
rest of the
creator (53).
and inclosing her
human
mind when they sentenced her
sphere by herself" (54)
in a
not what the magistrates had
is
wear
to
quickly makes clear. "Why, gossips, what
make
of our godly magistrates, and
as the chorus of
it,
is it
but to laugh
a pride out of
luxuriousness, artistry, fancy
—enter
make
to
Hester and the Puritans, and provide a
it.
what we may
it
In terms of plot,
call
to
The question
of
the
alent to the question of
earlier questions
—who
whose "reading" of
how we
win
community
is
acter to win,
we
think
more
would
be:
it
clearly
would
there
tory
must be many
would
Hawthorne
in
how
— become
is
we want
a chance.
her.
A
the
We
know,
planning to take account of
13
•
main char-
at least,
what
community
romantic reader
any novel audience
•
be
a person of unusual strength,
this
hope.
to
—
of which
— might hope that the
consist in her taking the letter off entirely. As
is
these:
will that victory
consist in forcing the
admit that they have misjudged
proud of?
stronger than the individual, the
is
— we hope—that she has
her victory
and how?
win; but since
and since Hester
to be, or a
are to interpret the letter. So our
the letter will win, and
likely to
it
to be
this battle,
achieved? Since the community
see
what Hester did becomes equiv-
are to assess
will
we
"meaning" of the
of,
how we
about
for thinking
as
a
—
worthy
gorgeous,
contrast between
—
punishment,
the magistrates planned
"pride" — something
be ashamed
or something
is
women
in the faces
they,
terms
new
a
new context
what she has done and what they think of
the initiation of a struggle for
what
New
gentlemen, meant for a punishment?" (54).
letter
rela-
being to a symbol.
But, certainly, such a gorgeous letter
in
Hester completely apart
sets
It
community, taking "her out of the ordinary
tions with humanity,
changing her from a
its
and gorgeous luxuriance of
"fertility
we
vic-
shall sec,
THE SCARLET LETTER
THE PLOT THICKENS
The
story
and
interest of
The
enhanced
Scarlet Letter are both
chapter 3, "The Recognition," by the introduction of two
and the new plot elements associated with them. Up
acters
conflict has been only
ter
conflict
when we meet some
carried forward in
is
lawmakers, rather than the law-abiders
in
is
represented by those
power, the authorities,
The
who
ecclesiastical,
—
in action.
who
is
have shaped
point
and the
character, those
its
(50), for
amongst
acts out
whom
Haw-
religion
whom "the forms of authority
to possess the sacredness of divine institutions" (64).
felt
political figure
set-
men.
whose near association
and law were almost identical"
this
—the
epitomized by two figures, one po-
thorne's statement that these are "a people
were
From
into the background,
are, of course,
leadership of the colony
and one
litical
the
"The Recog-
of the officials of the settlement
on the Puritan people (women) fade
tlement
char-
now
between the prisoner and the imprisoners, Hes-
and the Puritans. This
nition"
new
to
in
The
Richard Bellingham, identified as the governor of the
is
colony (actually, the historical Bellingham's terms as governor of Massachusetts
do not
fit
Hawthorne's time scheme), and John Wilson,
called the eldest
clergyman of Boston (although, again,
historical fact he
was
in his fifties
during the decade
in
when
point of
the action
of this novel takes place). Without troubling ourselves unduly about
why Hawthorne chose these two figures out of the range of historical
possibilities, we can say that the economy of his story demanded a
minimum use of characters with the greatest efficiency, and that he
therefore settled
on one representative
for each of the
two branches of
the Puritan oligarchy.
And what does Hawthorne have to say of their abilities to judge
Hester? "Out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy
to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should
be
less
capable of sitting
disentangling
towards
its
whom
in
judgment on an erring woman's
mesh of good and
Hester Prynne
Hawthorne does not go so
evil,
now
16
and
than the sages of rigid aspect
turned her face" (64). As usual,
far as to say that
•
heart,
•
Hester
is
without blame
What? The
she
an "erring"
is
woman,
Story
her heart a "mesh of good and evil"
— but
he again invites us to judge her judges.
Bellingham and Wilson give a focus to the previously undifferen-
mass of the Puritan crowd; these are the men who judge and
tiated
we meet them, however, we have also found out
that Hester's husband is, unknown to everybody except Hester herself,
on the scene; and we quickly learn what complication his arrival porpunish Hester. Before
tends.
It
turns out that the father of Hester's child
community and
is
not
that she has steadfastly refused to
anonymous husband makes
known
to the
name him. The
clear that his business will be to identify
the father: "It irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity
should not, at
known!
cation
— he
is
munity
least,
will be
stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be
known!
—he
will be
known!"
(63).
The compli-
thus a second focus of struggle between Hester and the com-
—they want her
expanded into
strikingly (and in
all
name
to
a struggle
the father and she resists
—which
is
between Hester and her husband. Rather
probability quite inaccurately, as a historical rep-
resentation of Puritan procedure), the chief topic of the public dia-
logue between Hester and the magistrates
unknown
lover.
Perhaps needless to say at
name
ly
this point, Hester's
helps to increase reader esteem for her.
standing up, even at the
the magistrates.
that
is
It
shows
moment of her
clearly that her
not selfish ("And would that
as mine!" [68]).
Hester:
it
the identity of the
is
And
it
I
shows her courageous-
It
misdeed proceeded from love
might endure
field in
unknown
his agony, as well
which
lover
who
to consider
is
escaping
exposure and punishment for doing the same thing that Hester
This
unknown
we know
it
is not unknown to us. Certainly
we know that it is Dimmesdale. Permember of the crowd names him for the
as
over
is
soon as
a
second time ("she hath raised a great scandal,
Master Dimmesdale's church"
[61]).
I
promise you,
would not possibly
•
give so
17
in
godly
For our grasp of Hawthorne's
techniques leads us to see that in a story with so restricted a
characters, he
did.
lover, to be sure,
long before the chapter
haps
his
greatest humiliation, against
opens a whole new
puts her in contrast with the
concealment of
much
field
of
space to Dimmesdale
THE SCARLET LETTER
And
it
he were not an important character.
is
unfilled. Again, the idea that Hester's lover
so clearly
fits
into the issues that
Why
seems inevitable.
only one part that
is
should be a clergyman
Hawthorne has
make
not
there
raised that the choice
lawmaker and
a
one
a lawbreaker
person? The continual references throughout the chapter to Dimmesdale's responsibility, as her minister, for Hester's soul,
become deeply
ironic.
Now,
we have
too,
a second plot line as well as a complication of
on the question — not of the
— but on the exposure of that
identity of
Hester's plot, a line that turns
we know
the lover, which
knows who he
ter
is,
but will not speak. Dimmesdale knows
is,
but also will not speak. The Puritan community
in
by
his
man
apparent purity. The husband, a
have "a strange, penetrating power, when
to read the
human
Do we
readers
want
and an
aesthetic sense of
Hester
it.
aloft
is
it
carries the
love;
and preaches
It
self-hatred
does not
in the
fair.
burden of her shame and
name
if
tell,
her lover
name
if
peace to do so (when,
soul's
seem to
call
is
Hester, the scorned
and protects
keeps his secret
is
a masterpiece of
she thinks
clearly, she
will
dou-
be good
full
if
of
she
he certainly will not, since he lacks the courage to face
it
himself.
to prevail
of Hester and
will
it
would be
she gave him away), while making clear to her that
the lover's identity can "properly"
where he
purpose
at her.
dale to disclose
is
eyes
regard and esteem
idol,
exposure. In terms of the logic of the story, there
justice
alike
his guilt
Dimmesdale, the community
ble-talk, urging her to provide the
own
their owner's
symmetry would
does not seem
His "sermon" asking her to
for her
whose
humiliated and isolated on the pillory; Dimmesdale
of the entire community.
him out of
he
the identity exposed? Certainly, a moral sense
on the meetinghouse balcony, secure
woman,
of learning,
was
who
completely taken
is
soul" (58), will try to discover that identity.
of justice
for
Hes-
identity.
—
come
out,
The ending of
calls for a situation
Dimmesdale
in
the
only one
and that
is
the story, that
where the
for
is
way that
Dimmes-
to say
—
if
relative positions
community have been
be "marked," and she exonerated.
18
is
reversed:
What? The
Story
PLOT AND STRUCTURE
By the end of the
they take up
less
first
three chapters of
action, complicated
it,
relationships between
brought
all
Letter— together
—Hawthorne has begun an
The
than a tenth of the novel
Scarlet
on
the characters
stage, established
and among them, and provided
a
frame of met-
aphor and commentary within which to understand and evaluate what
is
taking place. All of this has been accomplished in what
dramatic point of view, the novel's
fines of a single
A
scene
—that
is,
from
is,
a
within the con-
dramatized action.
stage designer could place the prison
the scaffold
on one
side of the stage
and
on the other without unduly distorting Hawthorne's spa-
instructions: "it
tial
first
was no
great distance, in those days, from the
prison-door to the market-place" (55). Better
ability to dissolve the
still,
cinema, with
its
boundaries between the inner and outer worlds,
could follow Hawthorne's shifting points of view, beginning with a
long shot of the crowd, zooming in on Hester and her scarlet
letter,
then adopting her perspective as she makes her journey to the pillory,
which, "measured by the prisoner's experience
a journey of
some length"
sciousness to
show
(55),
and
finally,
.
.
.
might be reckoned
moving
inside her con-
her memories in a series of overlapping and
shift-
ing images. Neither film nor play can replicate the crucial role of the
narrator, but to approach
abstract
its
Chapter
Among
must be
Scarlet Letter as a scenario helps to
narrative skeleton.
"The Interview,"
4,
of time and place to the
1-3.
The
first
a separate scene but the contiguity
is
scene suggests
its
connection to chapters
other things, "The Recognition" has implied that there
a meeting
between Hester and her husband, and
in
terview" this meeting takes place. After this chapter there
in the action, establishing the first
The chapter
Chillingworth
gives the
is
husband
is
"The
a
In-
break
four chapters as a unit.
a
name
(although of course Roger
an assumed name) and a profession. The meeting of
Hester and Roger shows the two coming to an accord with each other:
or,
more
accurately,
it
shows Chillingworth announcing
19
that "between
THE SCARLET LETTER
thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced" (75). This easy mutual
forgiveness has
roots in indifference. Hester has never loved Chil-
its
lingworth and evidently any love he might ever have
no longer.
(It
we might
was,
worth's interest in
knowing
sought gold
less
he
alchemy.
.
.
as
.
have sought truth
I
Thou
this
(75).
secret
books; as
in
is
from the father of her
and cast me
the
to keep the plot
child.
of him in connection with her. She hesitates, asking:
thyself openly,
have
his identity secret,
Apparently Hester does not understand his purposes; she
nounce
I
name? Not
wilt not reveal his
will
all
intensely reiter-
is
And —
mine"
the action needed
—he makes Hester swear that she keep
is
moving
above
in
the identity of the lover
man,
ated: "I shall seek this
for her exists
felt
purely selfish love.) But Chilling-
say, a
still
thinks
"why not
an-
off at once?" (76). Chillingworths
equivocating answer makes clear that she and her child are not the
on
reason, and he goes
business.
"Enough,
to suggest that his motives are
my
is
it
purpose to
live
and
die
none of her
unknown"
(76).
Pressured both by her sense of duty to Chillingworth and by his threats
of
harm
to the lover, in a distressed
and exhausted mental
takes the oath even though she feels
And
the oath
is
it
a mistake. Chillingworth
now
is
exchange, he has had to give up his
which, within the frame of
abandon an
make
identity
is,
clear that this has
this novel,
is
come"
and
his
however
(76).
new one
The
differences
to him: "Let, therefore, thy
partially, to
whom
modify
his
To
no
husband
tidings shall
between Chillingworths old identity
are that in his old character he
imperfectly, with love
original identity,
and Chillingworth 's words
be to the world as one already dead, and of
ever
own
of the lover's
it,
that of Hester's husband.
in a sense, to die,
happened
Hester
free to stay in Bos-
ton and attempt to solve the "mystery," as he calls
identity. In
state,
wrong.
to be
was
in
connection,
and warmth; he was required, however
behavior by reference to the behavior of others.
Images of the household
fire
and
its
warmth
characterize his descrip-
life. His new identity denies him all possibility of
human connection and frees him from all responsibility to other human beings. He is now accountable only to his own obsession.
Here, then, we have a second instance of a person denying the va-
tion of their married
•
20
•
What? The
of the moral law where he
lidity
the motives of his
own
heart.
If,
her attractiveness as well as our
romantic love,
ly felt
we
Story
is
concerned, giving himself over to
for
any number of reasons, including
own
personal susceptibility to strong-
are inclined to justify a character like Hester,
we
hence to take an antinomian position ourselves, what are
when
the
same kind of behavior, implying
adopted by a character
same
the
to
do
ethical stance,
is
Chillingworth?
like
For thematic purposes, then, Hester's oath makes Chillingworth
pits
him
to discover the identity of the lover
and
into a kind of double of Hester, while for plotting purposes
against her, since his aim
hers
is
to conceal
it.
is
In plot terms, therefore, Hester
are adversaries in a struggle
whose
object
is
it
and Chillingworth
We
Dimmesdale.
must
anticipate another meeting between them.
And, since we are talking now of meetings, what about one between
Hester and Dimmesdale? Where, indeed,
most novels?
In a fascinating,
ually reminds us of the love story that
that novels will be about love
purpose.
Though nothing
to think that
it
is
the love story that propels
low-key way The Scarlet Letter continit is
not.
Our
very expectation
and romance works here
in the early
to
Hawthorne's
part of the novel gives us license
can possibly be a romance, the shadow of novelistic
convention colors our reading. That, and the combined force of Hester's
desire
and our acceptance of her
ing a story to desire
Hester
is
very
much
what our
in love
as heroine, for
it is
part of read-
favorite character desires. Clearly,
with Dimmesdale, which
is
to say that she
desires him.
Of
course, love stories can have sad endings as well as
happy ones,
and the conclusion to "The Prison-Door" has told us that
story with a "darkening close," a "tale of
(48).
But
a
way
as a
happy one; and
a sad love story
at all! Therefore,
odds that The Scarlet Letter
it
frailty
we
is
this
is
a
and sorrow"
sad love story can be, for readers, as pleasurable
from no love story
so
human
in its
own
quite a different matter
continue to expect against the
will reveal itself to
be a love story.
And
does, with this twist: that the love story cannot be separated from
the matter of the revelation of Dimmesdale's identity as Hester's lover.
After the
first
four chapters the novel
•
21
•
is
plotted as a sequence of
THE SCARLET LETTER
reunions between Hester and Dimmesdale, with material between
meeting
Gov-
such encounters preparing for them.
First, there
ernor Bellingham's house, late in the
summer some three years after
This is when the magistrates are
the opening of the action (chapter 8).
thinking of taking Pearl
them.
Much
away from Hester and
is
a
in
she goes to argue with
of this scene, like the chapters that precede
it, is
devoted
to bringing out Hester's character, especially her increasing self-suffi-
ciency and readiness to stand up to authority; and to developing her
relation with Pearl as well as the character of the child. In
Pearl will
tween Hester and Dimmesdale;
such a complication, for she,
affair,
due time
emerge as a significant complication of the relationship be-
has also put an end to
had there been no
Pearl, she
in
an important sense she already
is
the incarnation of her parents
In that there
it.
would be no
scarlet letter
the story's cause, and there can be no
is
meeting between Hester and Dimmesdale without
lost Pearl, she
is
1
who
would have reacted
her. If
Hester had
violently by turning to witchcraft,
thus validating the authorities' view of her. This
chances of changing the meaning of the
letter.
would have ended her
She must keep the child
to keep her struggle going.
The scene
Dimmesdale
in
Bellingham's house also gives us our
since the early scaffold scene; he
center of the stage until chapter 9.
this
As
in the
is
first
not to
exposure to
move
to the
scene at the marketplace,
meeting between Hester and Dimmesdale, taking place under the
eye of authority,
is
characterized by duplicity and concealment on the
part of both lovers, although for different reasons. Hester conceals for
Dimmesdale's sake, Dimmesdale for
Dimmesdale argues on
his
Hester's behalf.
own.
The
In his ministerial role
surface betrays no hint of
the true relations between the characters, although the possibility of
rupture
is
apparent to the reader and creates a certain amount of sus-
pense. Chillingworth
truths
is
there too, another watchful eye from
whom
must be hidden.
The second meeting (chapter
fold, in
May, nearly four years
meeting,
in real
12) takes place at night
on the
scaf-
after the episode at Bellingham's. This
time seven years from the beginning of the action,
occurs only halfway through the novel. During this encounter,
•
22
•
when
What? The
Story
Hester and Pearl stand beside Dimmesdale and share his
mock
pen-
ance, Hester realizes the depth of his suffering and the extent of his
deterioration.
Her
Chillingworth
is.
realization leads to a decision: she will
We
have seen,
in
him who
tell
Dim-
intervening chapters, both
mesdale's decline and Hester's remarkable growth in self-sufficiency,
both of which are necessary to the decision that Hester takes
ter 13,
"Another View of Hester."
In chapter 13,
chap-
in
however, Hawthorne
goes further than he did in his earlier consideration of Hester, making
which Hester has become her own law. This
a point of the extent to
is
development
a crucial
reunion
since, in the climactic
in the forest,
Hester will present herself to Dimmesdale as an alternative to Puritan
law.
Hester figures her decision
language that has heroic echoes: she
in
what might be
"resolved to meet her former husband, and do
power
The
for the rescue of the victim" (167).
from the point of view of traditional
mesdale
is
like the captive
stories,
who
combat
Chilling-
can
now
from
his
He
guards the prison.
frame
—he
really has
first
much
a wizard as he
as
is
rather quickly dispatched, in
no power over Hester
own
despair,
moved
and
18, 19) takes place in the forest
the novel
this climactic
soon
she
meeting (chapters 17,
after her talk
is
speeding up). So far as she
is
Hester has intended no more than to
lingworth
is
with Chillingworth
of rescuing
in control of
tell
—the pace of
her
own mo-
Dimmesdale who
Chil-
so that he can take whatever action seems appropriate to
extricate himself
own
— and
is
from himself.
quickly,
(which occurred soon after the midnight scaffold scene
ger.
a
is
proceed to the heart of her mission, to rescue Dimmesdale
Hester has
tives,
Dim-
will sally
worth, the dragon or wizard (and he
this fairy-tale
interesting:
maiden and Hester the knight who
out to do battle for him. Naturally, she must
physician)
her
reversal of sex roles,
most
is
in
from the physician's clutches. That
Dimmesdale goes no
But she finds a
man
is
further than to alert
so demoralized that she
is
to say, her idea
him
to his dan-
impelled, by her
strong and active nature as well as by his direct appeal ("Be thou
strong for me," "advise
me what
to
original intention. First she advises
•
do"
him
23
•
[196]), to
go
far
beyond her
to leave the Puritan settlement,
THE SCARLET LETTER
suggesting (as symbolic alternatives) that he go west to the wilderness,
or east to the Old World.
Dimmesdale
to a
is
man whose
rejects
both suggestions: "thou
knees are tottering beneath him!
not the strength or courage
difficult
ter!"
world, alone!"
Here
is,
And
left
me
I
must
answers (198). At
this point,
it.
woman
"Thou
shalt not
plummet
go alone," she
And
yet,
for
all
if
the
to the other plot lines? Certainly
community, which has been slowly
and
again; once
in love to
with the lovers united, or reunited, The
what happens
Hester's standing in the
There
then he repeats the word: "Alone, Hes-
Scarlet Letter certainly reveals itself as a love story.
lovers run off together,
die here.
to venture into the wide, strange,
evidently, an invitation difficult for a
and Hester does not refuse
refuse,
of running a race
tellest
rising, will
she will be typed as a sinful, fallen
woman.
And
as for
Dimmesdale, the plot tending toward
his
of his identity as Hester's lover will be abandoned: the
be able to deduce
it,
but he will not have confessed
The
is
to say that, as the love story behind
it
also reveals itself as the adversary of the
Letter
is
trying to
tell,
ting an act that sets
which has
one
at
it
own
disclosure
community
himself.
Scarlet Letter reveals
main story that The
will
Which
itself,
Scarlet
do with the aftermath of commit-
to
odds with one's
society.
The
fact
is
that
running away from society cannot possibly resolve the issues that such
a plot has raised.
Apparently the love story requires, for
claims of society altogether.
society,
it
is
not possible
And
although
(at least
its
it is
fulfillment,
denying the
possible to rebel against
not in the world that The Scarlet
Letter has created) to deny society's causal
and constitutive
role in
life.
Hester and Dimmesdale are where they are, as they are, not only because of what they did but equally
their
— perhaps more—because of how
deed was viewed and marked by
society.
The
idea of a love with-
out context, which glimmers beautifully before Hester and Dimmesdale in the forest,
is
a delusion.
Such a delusion
is
what conventional
love stories give their readers. Their validation of love requires the
removal of love from any social milieu. There
24
is
no way,
at this late
What? The
Story
point in The Scarlet Letter, to extricate Hester and Dimmesdale from
their social milieu.
And,
within the context of the society that encloses them,
in fact,
their love idyll
cannot be seen as anything
their initial act,
whatever we may wish to
thing with "a consecration of
while the
know
passion, this time they
"sin" (or whatever)
first
and
sin,
crime, or some-
as Hester says (195). Their
time they were carried
first
perfectly well
what they
was unpremeditated;
deliberate. Seven years, the narrator says,
moment, which
except a repetition of
it:
does over again what they originally did, with
joint decision to flee
this difference: that
own,"
its
else
call
much
represents a point of
The
are doing.
one
this
away by
is
self-aware
have only tended to
this
greater separation from
society than either, each alienated in a different way, has reached before.
The
story has thus arrived at
But, for the
in
what
is
surely
one of the great moments
other) literature, Hester
moment romantic
hair,
and
reverts at
its
removes the
free.
at just this point,
from her gown
(the
And from
this
leads to the opposite of
woman
that she
where the liberated love story
from the further depths of the
height, Pearl returns
forest
in the forest, after all, the lovers are
point on the plot begins to descend from the
apex, and the forest scene takes
When
idyll,
any
once to the beautiful and happy
where she has been playing. Even
not
scarlet letter
American
(or
in
readers have been waiting for) and the cap from her
had been before. And
reaches
point of greatest tension.
its
the lovers in the forest seem free to act out
without regard for consequences. In accord with that
their idyll
and
moment,
what
its
place in the story as an event that
the lovers (or at least Hester) intended.
Hester resumes wearing the
and puts on her cap again,
letter,
the lovers (less enlightened than the readers
who have
been told by the
that this tale has a darkening close) believe that
narrator, after
all,
their setback
only temporary. They leave the forest with plans to
to
is
Europe on the next available
to a full stop,
however,
chamber; and on
his
until
ship.
The
forest scene does not
Dimmesdale has
safely returned to his
walk home (chapter 20, "The Minister
Maze," which nicely balances chapter
•
25
13,
sail
come
in
a
"Another View of Hester")
THE SCARLET LETTER
there
is
plenty of evidence that freedom for
as
is
for Hester. This chapter,
it
lovers, helps to guarantee that
mantic love
will
him
which so
not the same thing
is
not be desolated at the failure of the lovers' joint
Much as we tend
herself, we cannot see
project.
to
want
for
in
Dimmesdale what she
We
her?
two
clearly contrasts the
even the most intense devotees of ro-
for the protagonist
learn in this chapter that the minister
what she wants
sees.
Does he love
was delighted by news
that the next available ship will not leave Boston before he has a
chance to preach
his election
sermon. His "priorities," as
today, don't accord with an ideal romantic love,
first
suggestion that "love"
Dimmesdale decides
can
I
any longer
to sustain,
live
way
in
we might
this
is
not really reciprocal between them. As
to soothe" (201).
what
is
is
shown thinking
Not
a
"neither
is
she
is
thought of doing anyhim. Here
in the relationship for
which the love story
Hester's creation, built
say
not the
without her companionship; so powerful
—so tender
thing for her; only
is
go with Hester, he
to
and
doubly a delusion:
it is,
is
a second
perhaps, purely
from her desire on the sands of Dimmesdale's
weakness. In refusing to be a love story, The Scarlet Letter
may
be a
critique of the idea of romantic love.
Approaching the conclusion of The Scarlet
schematize the plot thus
far.
There
Letter, let us stop to
a beginning of four chapters; a
is
middle of sixteen chapters, punctuated by a key scene
book and of the middle
the midpoint of the
ters
ter's
remain. The introductory section
oath (chapter 4)
when
of
the
—which leads
main characters
Dimmesdale from
is
in
chapter 12
section as well.
Four chap-
concluded by an action
— Hes-
to the middle section of the
book
are united in a plot concerning the rescue
his intolerable hypocrisy, via the revelation of his
identity as Hester's lover. In structural terms, Hester
of this story, Chillingworth the antagonist, and
is
the protagonist
Dimmesdale
able object that both are struggling to possess.
the desir-
How, we might
ask,
does Hester's desire to protect Dimmesdale represent a desire to possess
him? The one seems so
course, protection
is
a
altruistic, the
form of possession and,
mesdale's ultimate confession does indeed
Remember, though,
other so
that this plot
•
is
mean
as
we
selfish. But,
shall see,
of
Dim-
that Hester loses him.
framed within the larger narrative
26
•
What? The
Story
of Hester's struggle with the Puritan community. In that narrative, her
desire to possess
Dimmesdale represents
a delusion
from which she
needs to be separated.
After sharing Dimmesdale's night vigil on the scaffold (chapter 12),
Hester realizes that Chillingworth has discovered Dimmesdale's iden-
and
tity
is
using his knowledge to cause harm. She thereupon decides
to break her oath, precipitating the climax of the
19),
which,
the forest
ing
is
tells
him who Chillingworth
a joint decision to leave
This forest scene occurs
(chapters
17—
She meets with Dimmesdale
in turn, leads to the finale.
and
book
is;
in
the upshot of this meet-
Boston and go back together to Europe.
second half of the middle, or about
in the
two-thirds along. Thus, as well as dividing the story into carefully
proportioned beginning (one sixth), middle (two-thirds), and end (one
sixth),
we can
divide the story into thirds, in half,
of four chapters each. Manifestly,
The
and
into segments
Scarlet Letter has been carefully
constructed with an eye to symmetry and proportion, that
is,
with an
old-fashioned sense of beauty and order. Sad, but beautiful: like the
letter that gives
it its
name
—and not
In the three chapters that
return to the marketplace
come
coincidentally.
after
"The Minister
where the action began. This
dication of symmetry: in fact, the opening, middle,
of the action are
all set in
Chapter 12, however,
scaffold scenes, since
serted,
another
in-
on the
dark mirror of the
first
scaffold.
and
last
takes place at night, with the marketplace de-
Hawthorne
when he has Hester
is
Maze" we
and closing scenes
the marketplace and center
a sort of
whereas the other two occur
significance.
22,
it
is
in a
in daylight,
on occasions of public
stresses the fatality of his design in chapter
stop at the foot of the pillory and remain, kept
there by "an irresistible feeling" (242).
And
assembles around her to stare at the scarlet
as she stops there, a
letter,
crowd
exactly as they had
done seven years before. "Hester saw and recognized the self-same
faces of that
group of matrons,
who had
awaited her forthcoming
from the prison-door, seven years ago"; again she stands "in that magic circle
to
of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed
have fixed her for ever" (246). Once more,
sion, Hester
is
in a
as
low place and Dimmesdale
•
27
•
on that other occain a
high one, once
THE SCARLET LETTER
again he
preaching to an infatuated multitude. The whole story
is
seems to have circled round, to have returned hopelessly to
nings at the very
But escape
their plans
is
moment
already undermined, for Chillingworth has learned
and intends
go along. To go through the world together
to
with Chillingworth would obviously be no escape at
moment,
then,
Hester
it is
dale as from her scarlet
her great illusion; he
who
is
not the
mind) an imaginary man. Yet
Dimmesdale
needs rescue, as
all.
At
this last
much from Dimmes-
For Dimmesdale, her great love,
letter.
letter all these years. It is a
real
begin-
its
of escape.
man
it is
she imagined, or he
for his sake that she has
wonderful twist to the
also
is
(in
her
worn
the
is
plot, then, that the
rescues her from her infatuation.
He
is,
in fact, a
dying man; the great sermon he just preached has drained almost
the
act
life
—
own
aid
his
remaining
He
has just enough energy for one more
long-delayed confession.
soul,
him
him.
in
in
and he
calls
carrying
it
upon
all
It
an act performed to save
is
Hester's physical
whatever
out. But,
his
and moral strength to
his motives,
it
frees Hester,
as well as Pearl.
Dimmesdale's death on the scaffold
is
not the end of the novel. For
and dilemma may hold (and presumably
all
the interest his character
all
the important characters in a novel should be interesting), he
the
main character
sion"
in this fiction. In a
Hawthorne covers
a space of
Chillingworth dies and leaves
depart for Europe; and,
sumes
letter
life in
all
finally,
his
chapter simply
many
money
not
"Conclu-
which time
to Pearl; Hester
and Pearl
Hester returns alone to Boston,
re-
her isolated cottage, and continues to wear the scarlet
even though "not the sternest magistrate of that iron period
would have imposed
it."
Now,
"the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma
which attracted the world's scorn and
bitterness,
of something to be sorrowed over, and looked
reverence too" (263). This
earlier years,
when
is
and became
upon with awe,
not quite what Hester had
in
a type
yet with
mind
in
her
she had embroidered the letter with fantastic flour-
ishes of gold thread;
it
cannot be said that she triumphs, on her
terms, over the community. But perhaps her
And
titled
years, during
is
certainly, she has traveled far
•
own
own
terms have changed.
from the position of scorn and
28
•
ig-
What? The
nominy
Not
Story
that she occupied in the opening scene.
in the
same sense that
Pearl's story has a
Is this
a
happy ending?
happy ending,
parently she has made an aristocratic marriage somewhere
Not, perhaps,
at the
her,
beginning,
Europe.
any sense that a romantic reader can comfortably
in
accept. But Hester has certainly
have changed
in
for ap-
changed the Puritans more than they
and more than anybody might have dared
when
all
were so firmly
29
set against her.
to
hope
WHERE?
THE SETTING
tvery
fiction
must locate
action and characters in a world that
its
we will no more accept Gothic characters in a
than we will accept realistic characters in a Gothic tale.
them;
Letter
Hawthorne
terizes
it
in
creates a
world that
"The Custom-House" essay
where between the
the Imaginary
may
real
—
life,
behaving
in
be
—neither
is it
In
The
Scarlet
as he himself charac-
some-
world and fairy-land, where the Actual and
itself
who
with the nature of the
are only partly imitative
ways somewhat removed from the ordinary,
seem natural. The important point
not "realistic," as
—
as "a neutral territory,
meet, and each imbue
other" (36). In such a world characters
of real
exists
fits
novel
realistic
we understand
is
that while
the term
The
Scarlet Letter
—and was not intended
is
to
a pure fantasy.
THE HISTORICAL SETTING
Within the
first
few paragraphs of the work Hawthorne seems to
establish the action quite specifically in place
lonial Boston,
among
the
first
generation of Puritan
emigrated from the Old World to the
would
later
and time.
New
be born there). The topography
•
30
•
(as
is
We
settlers,
opposed
are in co-
those
to those
who
who
precise: the first prison
Where? The
is
Setting
"in the vicinity of Cornhill," the cemetery
and round about
"on Isaac Johnsons
goes on to say, was to become "the nucleus of
all
the congregated
sepulchres in the old church-yard of King's Chapel" (47).
know what
does Hawthorne seem to
shown
research has
lot,
his grave," a spot that subsequently, the narrator
had Caleb H. Snow's
reliable
he
is
talking about; scholarly
know, and that
that he did
work
of 1825,
Not only
A
in all probability
he
History of Boston, the
Metropolis of Massachusetts, on his table for reference as he wrote
The
Scarlet Letter.
He had
New
read widely in
England history during
Salem between 1825 and 1837, but
it is
his sojourn in
impossible to say
The
of that reading, carried out so long before the writing of
Letter,
he remembered. Apparently he did not take notes
read, so
seeing
how much
we can
only
tell
what he did with
what
it
composing The
cates that in
book) Joseph
aspects of the record impressed
in his fiction.
Comparison of
him by
details indi-
Scarlet Letter he used (along with Snow's
The Annals of Salem, from
B. Felt's
Scarlet
when he
Its First
Settlement
(1827); editions of Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana
(1702) and Wonders of the Invisible World (1693); and probably an
1825 edition of John Winthrop's History of
James Savage
New
England, edited by
(the only text that identifies Mistress
ernor Bellingham's
Hibbins as Gov-
sister).
Every working writer quickly learns that a text must contain specific
details
if it is
to
make any impression on
a reader at
all;
and from
his
opening reference to the "gray, steeple-crowned hats" worn by Puritan
men
(47) to his description of Puritan holiday pastimes
matches,
in the differing
fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire," "a
friendly bout at quarterstaff,"
broadsword" (231)
do.
And upon
tered through
—
"an exhibition with the buckler and
Hawthorne
investigation,
The
— "wrestling-
we
is
doing what a good writer has to
find that the details that he has scat-
Scarlet Letter are not only striking
and picturesque,
but basically accurate.
Yet,
when we
becomes
it
is
try to place the story exactly in time, the
illusory, precision vanishes.
"some
fifteen or
twenty years
•
31
accuracy
Hawthorne begins by saying that
after the settlement of the town"
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
(47)
—
one might
a careful gesture,
since five years of history can
after he
makes
working
say, in the direction of uncertainty,
make
a
several mistakes that are
closely with
historical
tremendous
difference. There-
most curious
One
references.
for
one
event within the confines of the action, for example,
is
the death of
Governor Winthrop. This takes place on the night of the
vigil,
when, standing on the
who was
datable historical
scaffold, he sees a great
A
minister's
Snow
in the sky.
and other sources say that Winthrop died on 26 March 1649. But
Hawthorne, who omits the
(the next
day
year, carefully places
the Sabbath [157]) in "early
is
it
on
May"
a Saturday night
(147).
While
offer-
ing reasons for the change in the month, scholars seeking for certainty
have chosen to assume that the year should be taken as a fixed point
in the narrative,
although one might logically argue that one deviation
from the record undercuts
all
other certainties.
But taking June 1649 for the third scaffold scene
it
occurs about a
cal
month
after
Winthrop's death
—
—
as
we must
since
creates chronologi-
problems. Hawthorne repeats several times that seven years have
elapsed between the opening of the story and
its
culmination; there-
we must date the first scaffold scene in June 1642. This is what
many scholars have assumed, but it will not work. First, Bellingham,
fore
governor of the colony
the election of
nor at the
May
in
1641, was defeated by John Winthrop
1642; thus he would no longer have been gover-
story's opening.
(He was again elected governor
and from 1665 to 1672, but neither of these dates
either.)
in
in
fits
1654,
in
the chronology
Second, Anne Hutchinson had been expelled from the colony
1638, a mere four years previously, and was not to die until 1643.
The
reference to her as "sainted"
would thus seem premature,
unless
the term has a specific and highly ironic theological reference, taking
Hutchinson as one of the Puritan
sachusetts Bay
fifteen or
Colony was
elect.
Most
crucially, since the
1630, and since
settled in
twenty years after the settlement," 1642
is
we
Mas-
begin "some
simply too early;
crude arithmetic shows that the action must start between 1645 and
1650, with the third scaffold scene taking place between 1652 and
1657. Thus, though Hawthorne has given us a five-year leeway for
the initial action,
it is
a
leeway that definitely excludes the one specific
•
32
•
Where? The
event
we can
that
Setting
chronologically,
fix
death
the
Governor
of
Winthrop.
There are different ways of thinking about
Most obvious
is
some of
tory right, he also got
it
this fuzzy
a novelist
what we would
indeed, since even historians
much
of any
human
is
demand
rightly
make
being that his
Another approach
mistakes,
work be
to say that, even
it
we can
detail,
we do not need
And
of a historian.
seems to be asking too
error-free.
though Hawthorne was
may have
a
liable
was working with
to error like the rest of us, nevertheless, since he
historical sources, each deviation
of his his-
wrong. With so much correct
he succeeds in evoking the sense of the times, and
from
chronology.
Hawthorne got much
to say that although
purpose behind
and
it;
then attempt to fathom the purpose in every case. Attempts
have been made by Hawthorne scholars, and they have taken two
directions. First, critics suggest that
torical record for technical reasons
Hawthorne departed from
—
to keep his plot
the his-
smooth and
the
narration economical. Bellingham, for instance, did live at one margin
Dimmesdale
of the marketplace, so that in his midnight vigil
really
could have seen him looking out the window; to bring several governors into the story and develop each character might dissipate
tense effect; therefore,
among
chose this one. Similarly,
if
several possible governors,
he wanted to end the minister's story at the
and
scaffold in June, thus echoing the initial June scaffold scene,
also
wanted
to speed
up the pacing toward the end, he would do
to put the midnight vigil later in the year than the
when Winthrop
its in-
Hawthorne
month
he
better
of March,
New
actually died. In any case, given the
if
England
climate, even an anguished minister might have thought twice about
spending most of the night outdoors.
Other scholars, however, quite reasonably point out that Hawthorne might as well have put the right governor
as the
wrong governor
in the right place,
in the
and that
wrong
place,
a rationale for his
deviations should be sought in a historical rather than a formal intention.
For example, there
reside in her brothers
er,
as only
is
no authority
for having Mistress Hibbins
house (assuming that Bellingham was her broth-
one source does); she had
•
33
a dwelling of her
•
own,
as well as
THE SCARLET LETTER
a
husband,
witch
in
1654. She was imprisoned
until
1656.
A
formalist critic might say that
as he did for the sake of
counter that he did
show
it
economy, while the
two
that these were
thorne
"historicist" critic
same
sides of the
The
and claims that Hawthorne uses
vice of his historical intentions,
which are
would
is
—
to
from
coin, inseparable
the historical world
critic,
in the service of his fictional intentions.
these priorities
Hawthorne placed her
law and Puritan crime
to connect Puritan
each other. For the formal
1655, executed as a
in
Haw-
used by
historicist reverses
his fiction in the ser-
to provide a searching
com-
mentary on the early Puritans.
There
The
way
a third
is
and
Scarlet Letter,
of interpreting Hawthorne's use of history in
this
encompasses both approaches above, even
though they might seem incompatible with each other. This
sume
Hawthorne meant
that
we
know,
all
meant
to as-
evoke the world of the
specifically to
first-generation Puritans, but also
than that. As
is
any precision greater
to avoid
historical division into generations
is
useful
but necessarily imprecise at best since people are continuously being
born and growing
We may
old.
suggest, therefore, that Hawthorne's
deviations from the record are designed, not to produce specific historical insights,
but rather to generalize his history into an account of
an entire generation's experience. Since there
as "the" experience of
is
no such
thing, really,
"one" generation, Hawthorne has produced a
composite, and as part of that composite he has carefully
possible for us to
The
Scarlet Letter.
we can
get
come up with
a
sound chronology
it
im-
for the events of
They take place sometime between 1640 and 1660;
no more
precise than that.
But having accepted some degree of historical purpose
let Letter,
made
we must
in
The Scar-
notice that Hawthorne's representation of key
nets of Puritan theology
is
wrong. Here
I
refer
te-
not to the after-the-fact
judgments and analysis of the narrator, which are clearly of the nineteenth century, but rather to the religious beliefs and practices of the
seventeenth-century characters themselves. In the
first
place, the char-
acters
seldom speak of God, and of the twenty-one occurrences of the
word
in
The
unorthodox
Scarlet Letter, close to half of
— from
a
Puritan perspective
•
34
•
them
are used in rather
—circumstances,
as
when
Where? The
Setting
Hester argues that she has a right to Pearl because
The word Providence, which we
to her.
characters and narrator alike
God
gave the child
find fourteen times,
more often
is
used by
in a secularized nineteenth-
century sense of "fate" or "destiny" than in the Puritan sense of a
specific divine intention or intervention.
There are no references to any particular personage of the
Trinity,
whereas the idea of the Trinity and the separateness, yet oneness, of
its
members was
basic to Puritan thinking. There are
no
biblical ref-
erences, whereas the Puritans constantly quoted Scripture. There are
no references
pit" (in the
two
to grace, a concept that obsessed them; only
ences to salvation
and one
refer-
to redemption; only one to "the infernal
sermon that Wilson preaches on the day of Hester's hu-
miliation [68]).
The concept of
the chosen, or elect,
who were
also
called "saints" by the Puritans, a concept closely tied to the idea of
Reverend Wilson's imagined dream about
grace, figures only once (in
and the only election referred
the "glorified saints" [150—51);
The
the political variety.
ritual of testifying publicly to a
experience before admission to church membership
once only, when Dimmesdale, returning from the
maiden "newly won" to the
is
is
of
conversion
also
forest,
to
mentioned
encounters a
faith (219).
Dimmesdale's public confession, which claims certain salvation for
him,
is
— from the Puritan point of view—simple
theology was rooted
in
two
am's disobedience to God's
of the
Book
heresy. For Puritan
related doctrines. First, original sin:
command
(related in the
of Genesis in the Old Testament) had
opening chapters
marked
cendants as sinners. The idea was not that people were
capable of sinning:
sinned
—they
it
was, more austerely, that
all
Ad-
all
all
his des-
weak and
people had
were born sinners. Second, predestination:
in fact
God had
picked out certain people to save, and had done so from the beginning
of time. Therefore, nothing a person might do could affect his or her
candidacy for salvation.
Puritans,
It
was
all
already ordained. Christ, to the
had come to earth to redeem only those who were "elected"
or "predestinated." Behind these doctrines lay the tremendous
and respect that the Puritans
stressing the
felt
awe
for divinity, which they expressed by
enormous gap between God and humankind. To imagine
•
35
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
you could be "good enough"
that
front to divine majesty.
know who
poses well enough to
was
saved,
who
in the
that
was an
af-
you understood God's pur-
who
should, and
also presumptuous. In fact,
condemned
cularly
to "deserve" salvation
To imagine
should not, be
Anne Hutchinson was
for claiming that she
had been enlightened
parti-
as to
colony had been elected. For the original American Puri-
were the heart of religious
tans, these difficult doctrines
Evidently, neither of these doctrines functions in
The
belief.
Scarlet Letter;
indeed, on occasion they appear to be specifically denied. "Wouldst
thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" Hester asks Chillingworth
(72)
—
a nice nineteenth-century sentiment, later repeated by the sup-
posedly orthodox Dimmesdale and accepted by Wilson and Belling-
ham when
they consider taking Pearl
away from her mother. The
doctrine of original sin established that no
human
being, even an in-
was an innocent. Again, both Hester and Dimmesdale appear
fant,
believe seriously
other
human
what no
true Puritan could have believed, that
beings than they have sinned in the world (87)
narrator praises them for
A
it.
to
no
—and the
Puritan might think himself the worst
made it
was sinful. Haw-
sinner in the world, but obviously the doctrine of original sin
impossible for one to maintain that only the
self
thorne's Puritans, thus, neither talk nor think like their seventeenth-
century "models";
theology,
Hawthorne has simply
making them much more
teenth century. In this
evil,
more
liberal
cut out the heart of their
like liberal Christians of the nine-
context the obsession with sin and
with sinfulness and sinners, floats about detached from the the-
ological context in
which
it
had
its
historical place,
and becomes an
inexplicable outcropping of the Puritan group psyche. Perhaps
Haw-
thorne meant simply to say that "the Puritans were like that." Or,
perhaps, by detaching the concept of sin from
meant
to emphasize the
way
in
its
theological basis he
which the concept was used by the
Puritan rulers for political rather than religious reasons.
Thus, while we
commentary
have to
ical
is
may
certainly grant that
part of Hawthorne's purpose
realize that historical
accuracy
— indeed,
commentary
historical
•
is
some kind
in
The
•
we
not equivalent to histor-
commentary often
36
of historical
Scarlet Letter,
requires historical
Where? The
distortion in order to
ber that
make
its
Setting
And we have
points strongly.
Hawthorne never presented himself
fictional
some
world
to the
who
but always as a storyteller or romancer,
rian,
to
remem-
as a histo-
intended to create
worlds that both were and were not true to
actuality.
Even
of the historicist explanations are stimulating and intriguing,
if
we
cannot dismiss the probability that when he made intentional changes
in the
Hawthorne
record
His setting evokes the historical record without being
a better way.
committed
are
did so for the purpose of telling his story in
to
providing the atmosphere for characters
it,
and are not beings
who
both
in history.
THE MARVELOUS AND THE SYMBOLIC
Besides "actuality," the other contributor to the "neutral territory"
of Hawthorne's special kind of fiction
nary,"
and one reason
since the historical
us.
For
world obviously no longer
many
called the "imagi-
work back
powerful act of imagination
easily see that a
back to
what he
is
for his setting his
is
time
in
exists,
this:
is
we can
quite
required to bring
it
Hawthorne's time (and
historical novelists of
ours) historical fiction aims to disguise the necessary role of imagination, creating a
curacy of
its
world
that,
particulars,
by the denseness of
would conceal
detail
its
and the
ac-
the agency of the imagination
that has
made
novelist
had simply imitated what was before him; the imagination
it.
The reader would be fooled
Hawthorne
would become, so
to speak, transparent.
illusion of reality,
no matter how pleasurable
pletely false;
had
and not only
to be the
product
into thinking that the
it
felt
might
that such an
be,
was com-
for historical fiction. All represented reality
part of the particular imagination that rep-
in
At the same time that he wanted readers to accept
resented
it.
world as
real,
fictional,
because he believed that the pleasure of fiction was height-
ened when we
he wanted them to do so without forgetting that
recall that
it is
preciate a magician's tricks
Beyond
this, at
some
if
level
something
we
like
magic.
We
it
•
37
•
was
wouldn't ap-
forgot that they were magic, after
Hawthorne thought
his
that there
all.
was no
THE SCARLET LETTER
such thing as an objective
composed through
tion-free.
He
a fictional
felt
and
the focusing
and none of the
ceivers,
were only different
reality; there
realities as
selecting lenses of different per-
was absolutely transparent or
lenses
that he could better represent this view
world that contained a
nary, rather than simply writing
if
distor-
he created
significant
admixture of the imagi-
one more
realistic fiction
with
its
focus on ordinary details in the everyday, contemporary world. Al-
though he respected the achievements of the new
was imaginatively fatigued by
that realism required
And
from the
humdrum
writer.
him
the early Puritan world suited
chronological remoteness.
he
literary realism,
the lengthy chronicling of the
One
for
more reasons than
of these other reasons
is
that
its
could
it
be presented as a relatively "empty" and simple time. Unlike the Old
World of seventeenth-century Europe, the Massachusetts Bay Colony
was
thinly populated, surrounded by great tracts of virtually uninha-
bited space,
all its
had a very simple and
largely
uniform
people, lacked large cities and the complex cultural and conven-
tional behavior they imply,
and/was cut
a long, perilous sea journey
from
That Hawthorne found these
genial to his aims
is
its
off
by the Atlantic Ocean and
origins.
qualities of early
The
—here and there an
was enmeshed, but
us as though
is
it
in
which the
first
the economic, domestic,
largely missing, and,
Quakers,
Governor
Belling-
more complex
generation of Puri-
and
intellectual life
on the whole, Boston comes
to
were a settlement on an otherwise unpopulated planet.
In fact, despite the difficulty
and length of the journey, the early Mas-
sachusetts Puritans sailed to and from
and goods came and went on every
tlements
at
allusion reaches out to the
and cosmopolitan cultural web
of the colony
England con-
sailors, the Indians, the
Reverend Blackstone, the indentured servant
tans
New
evidenced by the fact that he markedly exagger-
ated them in The Scarlet Letter.
ham's
among
style of life
— Rhode
Island,
New
tan colonies in Massachusetts
Old England constantly;
ship.
At the same time, other
Amsterdam,
Virginia,
and Connecticut
breakaway
—increasingly
eastern states. During the years in which the events of
Letter unfold, England
was embroiled
•
38
•
letters
in a Civil
Puri-
filled
The
set-
the
Scarlet
War; on 30 January
Where? The
1649 King Charles was beheaded and
Setting
a Puritan
government took over
the country. These events were, obviously, of the
Puritan colony; the "real" Boston
most
to
especially in the spring
some
importance to a
and summer of that year when, according
scholars, the final scaffold scene takes place. But there
ing of this in
A
first
would have been buzzing with them,
The
noth-
is
Scarlet Letter.
second appeal of the early Puritan world to Hawthorne was that
inhabitants were pre-scientific, pre-empirical, pre-rational. By leav-
its
ing
Europe when they
many
did, the Puritans "missed," so to speak,
of the great philosophical developments of the seventeenth century.
Francis
ments
Bacon (1561—1616) elaborated
in
a
method
for
doing experi-
which hypotheses were tested and conclusions derived from
Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679) suggested that
human creation of beings who had banded together
repeated observation;
society
was
the
for self-protection;
Rene Descartes (1596-1650) offered
mind separated from nature and therefore able
bias;
to observe
John Locke (1632-1704) suggested that ideas
inated entirely in sensory perceptions. In Europe, as
The
in
Scarlet Letter, "it
was an age
newly emancipated, had taken
for
many
Hester,
more
a
in
radical thoughts been
view of
it
without
mind
Hawthorne
which the human
and
active
known
a
orig-
says
intellect,
wider range than
New World,
where
to the authorities,
would
centuries before" (164); but not so in the
had her
in the
a
probably have been put to death.
Thus, the Puritans, however they might have imagined themselves
in the forefront
medieval
characterized by
many respects remained profoundly
worldview. And their mode of thinking was also
of their age, in
in their
some very
specific procedures,
above
all
the habit of
"interpreting" everything that they saw, everything that happened to
them, as a message from
no doubt that
God
with specific import for them. They had
their mission into the
New World
was
directly
demand-
He was constantly overseeing their work and
letting them know whether He was pleased or displeased with it. So
the Puritans did not live in the "real world" either, as we might uned by God, and that
derstand that concept today; they lived
challenge set out for them by
God and
•
39
•
in a
world that was both
a text that recorded his
a
mes-
THE SCARLET LETTER
sage, but that never existed in
and to
tation as "fantasy"
call the
interpretation the "reality"
The
and
itself.
To dismiss an
would have seemed
them grotesque.
to
was
Puritans, rather than believing that witchcraft
ter that
The
manifested
reality of the specter,
a fantasy,
whether the spec-
for determining
came from God
itself
interpre-
tangible object that called forth the
had developed complex procedures
vil.
for
or, deceptively,
from the De-
however, was not to be doubted. The
we would
Puritans had thus no procedures that
recognize for disting-
uishing between their fantasies and reality, or between the natural and
and
the supernatural;
inary.
And, of course,
in a sense their "real"
world was "really" imag-
many people
such a world,
in
seriously practiced
witchcraft and believed themselves to be witches. So, to the extent that
Hawthorne wanted
more than meet
did
from the other
—
to create a fiction in
—
a fiction in
his task
which actual and imaginary
which each took part of
its
nature
was made
easier by the choice of the early
New
Englander descended from these
Puritan setting.
Then, too, he was himself a
Puritans, a fact that
would make
their
worldview and mind-set mat-
ters of personal interest, especially insofar as
in his
of
own
The
he recognized a tendency
imagination that might seem to resemble
theirs.
The
setting
Scarlet Letter, therefore, cannot be adequately described by
referring to
its
location in historical time and space, and carefully
pointing out or providing explanations for Hawthorne's departures
from
historical record.
As every reader recognizes,
this
which the supernatural and symbolic have been given
and
real efficacy, as
would have been
ical
mind than
a
work guided by modern
is
more "true"
to
principles of histor-
accuracy.
There are many obvious cases
pernatural or, as
and
a setting in
the case for colonial Puritans of
the seventeenth century; and in this sense the setting
the Puritan
is
real existence
all
Hawthorne
in
The
Scarlet Letter
preferred to call
it,
where the
the marvelous,
is
su-
real,
the more so because Hawthorne generally accompanies such
instances with alternative explanations, by appearing to dismiss
not really doing so
—the marvelous
— but
as product of superstitious fancy,
or by offering a naturalistic cause for the event. Take, for instance, the
•
40
•
Where? The
marvelous powers of Hester's scarlet
know
ready
letter,
who have
supernatural object. Those
Setting
perhaps the most striking
read "The Custom-House"
that the letter has marvelous powers. Others meet
as a curious piece of
wonderful embroidery with
import for
terrible
the wearer: an unusual, but not a supernatural object.
We
al-
first
it
first
read of
the letter's supernatural radiance in terms that allow us to dismiss the
marvelous as an increment to the
tion: "it
was whispered, by those who peered
threw
letter
(69). Later,
a lurid
when
the narrator says straightforwardly that "there glim-
thusiasm and think that the
do
with comfort
letter,
so,
The
but
we
pany of
has the capacity to
it
embroidery.
its
We
are free to
physical pain on Hester, to
inflict
does so with special intensity
more than
her suffering has created: "It
altogether fancy,
it
when
The pain may be no more than
of her heart, the throb no
she
is
now and
the constant aching
then appeared to Hester,
was nevertheless too potent
to be resisted,
—
— she
endowed her with
a
The narrator
protects himself, yet
we
sin in
finally will
new
it
other hearts"
not reason away
every appearance of the marvelous, because there are too
Why
if
felt
shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that
gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden
them.
com-
in the
the heightened sensitivity that
or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had
(86).
as narratorial en-
don't.
secret sin.
sense. She
unearthly ray" (161),
glows with nothing more than the
from the gold threads of
letter also
burn her; and
letter
in its
word unearthly
are perhaps free to dismiss the
light reflected
after her, that the scarlet
gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior"
mered the embroidered
we
created by Puritan supersti-
letter
many
of
not accept the shorthand, so to speak, of the text: Hester
has indeed been given a particular power of insight through the agency
of the
letter.
Another major instance of the marvelous
in
The
Scarlet Letter
is
the
physical deterioration of Chillingworth as he pursues his revenge. This
physical deterioration
in
is
conveyed to us through Hesters observations
chapter 14, and so could be attributed to her seventeenth-century
imagination; but
it is
reinforced by the narrator's account. "Ever and
anon, too, there came a glare of red
•
41
light
•
out of
his eves; as
if
the old
THE SCARLET LETTER
man s
soul were
on
fire,
and kept on smouldering duskily within
his
breast" (169). In Chillingworth, the narrator goes on, can be seen "a
striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil"
we
(170). Then, a
little
his heart blaze
out before her eyes" (171); perhaps a metaphor only,
further on,
and yet the meshing of
read that he
levels of description here
possible for us to believe that there
is
"the lurid
let
makes
somehow,
not,
fire
of
quite im-
it
a "real" fire in
Chillingworth 's heart.
A
third
is
the
way
in
mother to resemble the
which
Pearl, quite deliberately dressed
scarlet letter, closely
corresponds to
it.
by her
We
can
explain her fascination with the letter and her lawless behavior as aspects of the intense relationship she has with Hester; but
explain
it
we cannot
altogether in this way. Like Chillingworth, Pearl
acter with partial status as allegory,
as both a real child
and an
and
order to
in
make
is
a char-
her "work"
Hawthorne envelops
allegorical presence,
her in an ambience of the unlikely: do her feet touch the ground? do
the animals of the forest sympathize with her?
time, a fiend peeping out of her eyes?
Of
Almost
The
story
to
rich in details of witchcraft
is
(most of which Hawthorne drew from a source
time period with which he
is
is
superstitions, or
is
later
than the
to think of her as
a real, a practicing witch;
one
who
is
deluded by her
by psychopathology. She knows what she
ing about; her perceptions are certain, her
Although Hester's
much
dealing, the writings of Cotton Mather).
no doubt that Mistress Hibbins
and we are not invited
own
from time
course, the treatment of witches, in the person of Mistress Hib-
bins, allows for the marvelous.
There
there,
is
certainly, yes.
A
is
ground
is
is
talk-
firm.
probably the chief instance of the marvelous,
the second half of the plot turns with almost equal significance
on
second and equally though differently remarkable A; the one that
inscribed
on Dimmesdale's chest and revealed
scaffold scene.
How
is
this
A
a
is
to the people at the third
to be explained?
Some
critics
have
fol-
lowed the naturalistic hint and studied nineteenth-century herbals and
medical texts to discover diseases or drugs that Hawthorne might have
known
that
would be capable of producing such an eruption. But
in
running through his catalog of alternatives, Hawthorne quite clearly
•
42
•
Where? The
Setting
aligns himself with the supernatural explanation; here, for once, the
multitude
is
anxious to explain the
letter in
any way but the "real"
one.
Some
affirmed that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale
a course of
contended
Others
caused
penance ... by
it
that
ister's
was
the body,
.
old
and those
peculiar sensibility,
upon
.
.
.
.
had begun
hideous torture on himself.
Roger
Chillingworth
.
.
.
had
through the agency of magic and poisonous
to appear,
drugs. Others, again
it
.
inflicting a
and
best able to appreciate the min-
the wonderful operation of his spir-
—whispered
symbol
their belief, that the awful
the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse. (258, emphasis
added)
Of
mean
course, Hawthorne's use of the supernatural does not
he believed in
it.
He
nations that split
did intend to imply, almost certainly, that expla-
mind or
spirit
material or mechanical causes
tainer,
from matter and
on purely
insisted
had only limited usefulness; we might
view "holistic" today. In addition, as
call his
that
a storyteller
and
enter-
he used the marvelous as any good narrator does: to heighten
his effects, to intensify his contrasts, to
provide some extra shivers
(and hence enjoyment) for his audience. The
demand
that every fiction
be tested by the criterion of verisimilitude seemed to him a tremendous
narrowing of imaginative scope
well as an imitative
—was
imagination not a creative as
power?
Our account of the setting of The Scarlet Letter
even when we have added acknowledgment of
marvelous to our location of the story
It is
modes of
a
world whose inhabitants
thinking, and
have established. But
who
would
The
is
Scarlet Letter
of the storyteller.
the presence of the
setting
is
utilize allegorical
its
time
symbolic
and symbolic
attribute real efficacy to the symbols they
this, after all,
different cultures,
not adequate,
in a corrected historical
and space. For part of our experience of the
quality.
is still
still
allowing for different symbols
be a world
like
our own. The world of
also the product of such symbolizing
The symbol of
.
the scarlet letter
43
.
in
is
on the part
only one
albeit
THE SCARLET LETTER
the
most
can
we
pened to be
setting of
around
and focused
striking
—of many. No more than any Puritan
who
take the forest simply as a forest, Indians as those
earlier settlers, the
The
Scarlet Letter
hap-
ocean as a massive body of water. The
in part a series of
is
symbolic contrasts
a constellation of repeated images.
Probably the two most important contrasts are those of
dark, and of
town and
forest (clearing
and
light
and wilderness). The polarity
of light and dark shows up in the constant interplay of sunshine and
shadow during
the day, and of daytime and nighttime in the natural
cycle. (But light
symbolically divided into sunlight, which comes
is
from heaven, and
which seems
firelight,
and
firelight, again, divides into hellfire
come from
to
the
pit.
And
hearthfire. Thus, symbolic
worlds are not necessarily easy to read.) In principle, sunlight and daytime are or should be the equivalent of openness, honesty, and good-
and shadow represent concealment,
ness; nighttime
Similarly, in principle, the settlement represents
community,
whom
intellect
forest
she
roamed
home
is
connection,
abode of the untamed, uncivilized
the
home,
their
as
it
In-
were, in desert places, where
woods"
as freely as the wild Indian in his
of "the Black
almost always portrayed
civilization,
evil.
Hester begins to resemble after years of solitude ("her
and heart had
the
human
and
civilization, while the forest represents isolation, solitude,
and savagery. The
dian,
secrets,
and
Man,"
the Devil (184-85).
in the sunlight,
social behavior.
It is
also
settlement,
home of law,
home of virtue?
the
is
also the
Is it
[199]).
The
order,
Thus, the two symbolic systems do not simplify; they add rich ambiguity.
Wildness and
evil
are not necessarily identical; the forest,
where Indians and the Devil dwell,
the
community must destroy
evil,
or only untamed?
Is
in
also the
is
order to erect
everything that
every heart have secrets, and
if
is
abode of nature, which
its
civilization. Is nature
untamed
evil?
Why
does
every heart does, might not the forest,
where they can be shown, be more the abode of honesty than the
town, where law and order require inhibition, suppression, and concealment? In town, Dimmesdale can mount the scaffold and enact
mock penance
Hester only
only
in
darkest night.
in the forest,
and
in
.
He
a
can freely be himself with
the heart of the forest's darkness the
44
.
Where? The
Setting
sun bursts out as though to support the lovers'
hand
Pearl that he will not take her
the marketplace,
human
for the
for the society,
and the inner
heart,
it
would appear
human
even outlawed the
for talking
thus,
What
for-
the symbol
is
On
kind of community can be
the other hand,
or at least, that does not supervise and police
real
in
the settlement stands
if
what kind of community can be erected
Our
about the
sense that the forest
self;
tells
broad daylight,
in
to be a society that has neglected or
heart.
erected on a denial of the heart?
is evil,
we
But he
liberty.
noontime,
and Hester scolds the child
marketplace. At length,
est in the
at
the
if
human
heart
that does not deny
it
it?
world, of course, does not automatically pose such ques-
tions; but
Hawthorne's imaginary world does, because he has con-
structed
to symbolize them. But
it
meanings that
of
The
his
beyond and beneath the particular
symbols bear, and our understanding of the themes
Scarlet Letter that are implied by them,
setting of the novel
is
world
a
is
the fact that the
symbolic contrasts. There
built out of
and caves; of buried treasures and
are images of labyrinths, mazes,
buried corpses; of houses and gardens; of flowers and weeds; of gold
and
iron; of scarlet
paragraph
in the
and black; of mirrors and
book
reflections. Scarcely a
develop an image. Thus,
fails to
when we
talk
about symbols and brood about their meanings, we are not perform-
we
ing an obscure act of literary criticism, but responding as
and must
to the scene that
which almost everything
is
Hawthorne has
or can
Then we can come around
in
become
should
set in this novel, a scene in
a
metaphor or symbol.
to the question of the historical setting
another way. Having once committed a certain deed, Hester and
Dimmesdale (and
They cannot escape
that has,
marked by
Pearl, too, for that matter) are
we might
it.
The Puritan settlement
imagine, marked
as an event in Hester's history
the
marked
is
an event
American nation
her. Yet,
nothing
it
forever.
in history
forever, just
is
more
at-
tractive to Americans than to imagine that individuals are free of history, able to define themselves, to
their desired selves. History then
symbol
in
The
Scarlet Letter, a
possibility that a certain past
make themselves
in the
—the Puritans themselves — may be
symbol that requires us
having taken place,
•
image of
45
•
we
a
to consider the
are
all its
descen-
THE SCARLET LETTER
dants and
its
The
victims.
Puritans, that
to say,
is
may
be the national
A.
THE NARRATOR
We
have seen that the narrator
an inescapable presence
is
He
is
not a character
the normal sense of that term, but he
is
very
from the very
Scarlet Letter
because the action
pretation,
In fact,
and
it
first.
much
in
The
in the story, in
a part of the action
constantly subjected to his commentary, inter-
is
criticism.
is
often extremely difficult,
separate out the narrator's
not impossible, neatly to
if
commentary from
his presentation
and de-
scription of things "in themselves" in this novel. For a simple example,
consider the report on Dimmesdale's thoughts as he stands on the scaffold during his midnight vigil.
As he
he beholds "his brother clergyman,
ing,
—
his professional father, as well as highly
correcting his
words
Reverend Wilson approach-
sees
or, to
speak more accurately,
valued friend" (150).
here, in order "to speak
Who
more accurately"?
It
is
can
only be the narrator; and since the narrator might have spoken more
accurately in the
first
place (by deleting his less accurate words), his
interpolation serves forcefully to remind us of his presence in the
scene.
Then, when Dimmesdale imagines
spond
if
that "a dusky tumult
(151). This poetic
And when
.
.
.
wooden
the
would
flap
its
would
re-
wings from one house to another"
A
in the
sky lights up the
visible,
entirely,
little
town, the narrator
noting that one could see
houses, with their jutting stories and quaint gable-peaks
but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another
moral interpretation to the things of
borne before" (154). Not only
tation
the people
image could not be Dimmesdale's thought.
withdraws from Dimmesdale's mind
"the
how
they were to find him there in the morning, the text states
added
is
this
world than they had ever
comment about moral interprewe can easily see; the
the
to the scene by the narrator, as
adjective quaint
must also emanate from
46
•
his point of view, since
no
Where? The
Puritans of the time
word
and
would
see their
establishes that the narrator
it
Setting
own
roof peaks as "quaint." This
removed
is
time from the action,
in
also suggests a point of view that we, as readers,
the action
we were
if
present at
it.
The word
less
is
would have of
an objective de-
scription of the scene than a description that has taken into account
the perspective of the readers. Thus, the narrator serves both as
mentator on, and as reader surrogate
way
in,
which Hawthorne shows that
in
And
the story.
"reality"
is
here
com-
another
is
constructed out of
points of view, rather than existing independently of perceivers.
Not
all
novels are told in this manner, even though
novels must
all
be "told." Sometimes novels are told from the perspective of a character within the
world of the action, whether the main character or a
minor one. Such characters are given appearances,
to play.
histories,
and
roles
Sometimes novels are told through the perspective of one or
more characters within the
action, but with these perspectives filtered
through a separate and disembodied narrative voice. Often, and com-
monly
in the
Scarlet Letter
nineteenth century, novels are told
by a narrator
is,
who
is
more or
outside and above the world of
the action while taking a very active role in transmitting
cases,
it is
The
less as
In
it.
such
natural to think of that narrator as a fictional representation
of the author himself. Thus, sometimes
we
say "the narrator" and
sometimes we say "Hawthorne."
There
is
nothing wrong
ing about
The
terms interchangeably
Scarlet Letter so long as
seen, the narrator
is
not Hawthorne,
we
in that
in talk-
we have
realize that, as
he does not exist outside
one book. This narrator
is,
atmosphere of the novel, an aspect of
its
the confines of this
in the
in using these
finally, a basic
setting.
element
Whereas Haw-
thorne was a person sitting at his desk writing the novel, with such
motives
in
mind
as paying his bills
and becoming famous, the narrator
has no other motive than to narrate.
ysis
he provides,
the
human
Hawthorne
may
or
The views he
may not correspond
being really thought. Thus, even
for this narrator
mainly because
we want
it is
with what Hawthorne
when we
important to
to give the narrator a
47
expresses, the anal-
use the term
realize that
we do
name, and that
is
so
the
THE SCARLET LETTER
name we can
to the narrator, we begin to
that may be a mistake.
only possible
We may want
because
we
give him. But as soon as
treat
him
we
though he were
as
give a
name
a person,
and
to identify the narrator with the biographical author
value sincerity.
We
think a serious author should write
from the heart, and we tend to take the voice of the narrator
as artic-
we want to find a secure ground
we want the story to have
ulating the beliefs of the author. Also,
for a "correct" interpretation of the story;
and we look
"authority,"
when
the narrator
for such authority in a narrator, especially
with analysis and commentary.
free
—
The
of
is
Scarlet Letter
selves with
its
especially those
who
and
therefore a kind of ironic figure
is
critics
have concerned them-
historical accuracy or lack of accuracy
—have suggested
that the narrator, far from being Hawthorne's deputy,
able,
Some
is
quite unreli-
who cannot
be taken as
securing the novel's truth. Such an ironic function, however improbable
it
may
appear, cannot entirely be discounted. But
—
separate out the narrator from the text as a person
we should not
it
requires us to
just the thing that
do.
when
Certainly the narrator,
offering specific views,
may
express an
opinion that a particular reader finds hard to accept. In such cases a
reader
may wish
to discover a different
one the narrator seems trying to give
the letter has not
done
its
meaning
it.
When
in the story
office for Hester, or that in her solitude she
much "amiss," those who are attracted to
may wish to discount his judgment. Then, in many
her independence
learned
rator does not provide a
final
confession
telling us
is
what
the narrator always
the
whole
truth.
is
sincere, neither
is
in
tells
Many
instances the nar-
meaning or interpretation where readers
might want one. For instance, he
nor
from the
the narrator says that
silent
about whether Dimmesdale's
commenting on
Dimmesdale's mind
it
in his
own
at that time.
the truth, so to speak, he does not
questions
in
The
Scarlet
Letter
voice,
Even
tell
if
us
remain
unanswered.
Thus, one attribute of
this particular narrator,
"person" rather than a "presence,"
is
if
you take him
as a
a frequent willingness to leave
explanations open and a concomitant refusal to serve as an authority,
•
48
•
Where? The
Setting
a refusal to play the very role that a reader expects
from narrators. He
pretends that the story exists independently of him and that he does
not
tiple
know
meaning any
its
better than
we
The technique of mul-
do.
explanations along with other strategies to create ambiguity en-
hances our impression of his uncertainty. Since one of the things that
The
Scarlet Letter questions
hesitates to establish
authority
is
perhaps Hawthorne
itself,
an authority within the novel that must be ac-
cepted without question.
At the same time that the narrator adopts an attitude of only
partial
authority over his narrative, he firmly places himself in the nineteenth
century.
From
the very start of the narrative he
his readers of the differences
There
is
we
are in Puritan times; in fact,
there are continual references to the century in
live.
The action of
and the events
it
tells
take place in Puritan
and of analyzing and assessing
Such distinction between the narra-
definitely takes place in 1850.
tion
which the narrator and
may
the novel
times, but the act of narrating the story
it
constantly reminding
between the Puritan age and the present.
absolutely no pretense that
the readers
is
creates an inevitable distance
reader and the Puritans because
it is
between the
always offering an alternate
tem of values from the Puritans. Thus, the narrator can play
age against the other.
shown
And
in general,
nineteenth-century values are
as superior to Puritan ones, although the Puritans in
ways were superior
much
to the "present." But as
ence and change, the narrator also never
these Puritans were our ancestors,
sys-
off each
as he stresses differ-
the reader forget that
lets
and that we
some few
live
on the ground that
they settled, within the institutions that they established. Thus, even
though he separates us from the Puritans
very firmly to
One
them
in
one sense, he connects us
in another.
demeanor
aspect of the narrator's nineteenth-century
would apear
to contradict his narrative
openness
dency to moralize. The flower that he offers
is
that
his constant ten-
at the
beginning
"sweet moral blossom," and the radiance of the supernatural
A
is
a
in the
sky imparts a "moral interpretation" to the scene. Yet the contradiction
is
only apparent. At the same time that he
insists that the
has or should have a moral interpretation, the narrator
•
49
•
is
world
carefully
THE SCARLET LETTER
vague about what that interpretation should
be.
more
good intentions more
rhetorical than substantive, a matter of
The moralizing
is
than of definite accomplishments. Such vagueness accords well with
the desire to leave the story open rather than to close
within the
it
confines of any single moral framework. In a sense, the moralism
"embroidery" on the fabric of the story;
dery of the
letter
cannot be separated from
removed from The
In
from
yet, just as Hester's
it,
embroi-
the moralism cannot be
Scarlet Letter.
Hawthorne's day many people were trying
dogmas and
specific
is
to separate morality
doctrines, partly because the rapid prolif-
eration of religious denominations in the United States threatened to
create a kind of moral chaos, not to
religious warfare.
mention the
real possibility of
Americans could no longer afford to be
intolerant.
Thus, the idea of a transcendent morality, universal and attached to
"our
common
nature" (55), emerged. Religion was losing
The
to legislate morality.
its
narrator's universal moral stance
authority
embodies
such a nineteenth-century veiw of morality as transhistorical and
was
transdoctrinal. Unity
increasingly to be a political matter, a ques-
tion of the nation, rather than a religious one.
Puritans did not recognize
tion
on which The Scarlet Letter
In addition, the
story about
passion for
tiveness.
imagine
frailty
as a "blossom,"
is
condemnatory
—
is
a distinc-
offered to "relieve" a
terms that express com-
human
defec-
moralism "sweet," or
to
to suggest that morality has a consolatory
role to play in
plicable, the narrator presents
a
state
rather than a judgment of
his presentation of morality as
we can make
is
in
In fact, even to call a piece of
it
distinction that the
morally based.
and sorrow,"
human weakness
rather than a
Thus,
is
"sweet moral blossom"
"human
The
—between church and
human
affairs.
Along with
something always and everywhere apas
it
something sweet
in
and of
itself.
few firm statements about the narrator's moral
views, indeterminate as they generally are.
No
matter
how
he might
sympathize with a given character's defiance of one or another particular,
cept
temporal, local formulation of a moral law, he would never aca
perspective
that
rejected
the
relevance
categories for analyzing and understanding
•
50
•
human
of general
life,
moral
as well as for
Where? The
making human
life
Setting
tolerable. In other words, morality should be a
category of understanding rather than a basis for judgment and punishment. Moreover, as a category
human
that
to
all.
The
siveness;
the
New
own
nature, whatever
it
it is,
must be grounded
and
Puritans' worst fault, then,
and yet
this exclusiveness
World. The narrator
self-interpretation,
is
is
in the
in all its varieties,
would have
precisely
is
axiom
common
to be their exclu-
what had
them
led
thus interpreting them against their
performing an act that they would have
jected, that of integrating
them
to
into a view of
51
common human
re-
nature.
WHO?
THE CHARACTERS
The
"neutral territory" of Hawthorne's fiction serves the author's
general goal of
is
embodying
his conviction that "reality," for all of us,
not a given something but
is
constructed by the interaction between
our selective perceptions and what exists "out there." Some people are
more
objective than others, but
nobody can
attain a purely objective
vision. Besides this general goal, the neutral territory provides
thorne with a
in
fit
habitat for a
the
way
The
cast of characters in
of them
is
mix of
characters,
they are portrayed, others far
The
is
instances of a single type, not as individuals; Pearl
are developed as
and Dimmesdale,
much
none
are portrayed as
and Chillingworth
for their symbolic values in relation to Hester
respectively, as they are for their
and even Dimmesdale and Hester are
rizing
fantastic.
quite small, and
The Puritans
Haw-
fairly "realistic"
more abstract or
Scarlet Letter
a wholly realistic character.
some
and typifying scheme.
(Briefly,
own
personalities;
in part subjected to
we can
distinguish
an allego-
symbol from
allegory by saying that a symbol attaches, by suggestion, a range of
various abstract meanings to an object, while an allegory stands more
forthrightly for a single idea.
bolic simultaneously.) Every
A
character can be allegorical and sym-
one of these personages would be out of
place in the richly detailed and particularized world of a conventional
^1
Who? The
realistic fiction.
As Hawthorne himself described
knowing
well that in a bright glare they
full
Sometimes he regretted
but he could not
his practice,
he kept
dim so that these characters would seem
the lights of his fiction
like,
Characters
life-
would fade away.
his inability to write purely realistic fiction:
resist his
own
imaginative tendency to "embroider"
a realistic scene with suggestions
and implications.
THE PURITANS
The Puritan character
in the
portrayed as a type
is
in
which
individuals
all
Boston community participate, from the small children
who
play at going to church, scourging Quakers, and fighting Indians,
through the
pitiless
chorus of women, and on to the authority figures
of Governor Bellingham and Reverend Wilson.
of this character
is
part of
its
nature
taking themselves for the standard, see
unnatural, bad. To this sameness
is
The very uniformity
—the Puritans are
all
added
difference
alike and,
all
and variety
as
Hawthorne
a quality that
sometimes describes as the aptitude for reverence (237), and elsewhere
and
as so strong a respect for authority
equated with the divine and the sacred
its
forms that those forms are
(64). Since the Puritans revere
authority, their authorities really are their representatives;
why
the only developed Puritan characters in
the rulers of church
and
state.
The others
are
The
sionally for general effect.
crowd
rulers are
It is
significant,
are frequently incorrect.
this
is
anonymous; the Puritan
people as a whole are simply a crowd that Hawthorne
of this
and
Scarlet Letter are
calls
on occa-
however, that the judgments
Without
directly saying that the
wrong, the narrator can suggest that the elected represen-
tatives of people
who
are frequently mistaken
may make
mistakes
themselves.
The
rulers are described repeatedly with
practical,
forceful,
ual,
hardheaded,
unimaginative,
ponderous, martial,
stately,
words
like
unimpulsive,
weighty.
They
like
somber, wise,
severe,
stern,
ceremony,
rit-
and shows of power. Toward the end of the book the narrator
describes
them
as
seldom
brilliant,
"but distinguished by
53
a
ponderous
THE SCARLET LETTER
They had
sobriety, rather than activity of intellect.
up
reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood
the state like a line of
cliffs
fortitude
and
self-
for the welfare of
against a tempestuous tide" (238). Because
they revere authority themselves, these
men
(they are
all
men) are ded-
There certainly seems to be a degree
icated to the welfare of the state.
of circularity here, the purpose of the state being nothing else than to
establish itself; but
state not as
we need
embodying
remember
to
own
their
that Puritans thought of the
character, but rather as articulating
divine laws. In their role as creators and enforcers of the law they
stand
for,
the rulers stand allegorically for law, authority, and power.
Since they enforce law through display, they also stand for form and
formality, as
opposed to content and spontaneity.
With respect
to their intention,
which
to establish an enduring
is
must be judged successful
society, the Puritans
—they
have accom-
plished so much, the narrator remarks, precisely because they imag-
ined and hoped so
their
little
awareness of their
what
it
there
was no youth
(64).
own
takes to be successful.
why Hawthorne
An important
and
success,
part of their character
their practical
is
knowledge of
The Puritans value age and experience;
culture in early Boston. This preference explains
set his tale
among
the
generation, which
first
was
already mature at the time of the settlement.
For
all
this
group, the emigration to an unpeopled wilderness removes
impediments to the
fullest
Anybody who does not
fit
development of
the
mold
is
their personal qualities.
punished or expelled. At the
beginning of chapter 2 Hawthorne notes their ready reliance on public
whippings for any number of reasons:
It
might be that
whom
his parents
had given over to the
corrected at the whipping-post.
a
Quaker, or other heterodox
It
civil
authority,
religionist,
had made riotous about the
was
to be
to be scourged out
whom
streets,
with stripes into the shadow of the forest. (49)
54
was
might be, that an Antinomian,
of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian,
fire-water
an undutiful child,
a sluggish bond-servant, or
the white man's
was
to be driven
Who? The
To
Characters
a nineteenth-century audience, the narrator observes,
would seem minor, but
offenses
simply because
some
of these
group that respects authority
to a
authority, the breaking of any
law
is
a matter of
Besides the frequency with which the Puritans punish,
Hawthorne
it is
extreme seriousness, no matter which law
also stresses the attendant publicity.
ony of Massachusetts, where
Come
along,
Madam
"A
iniquity
it is.
blessing
dragged out into the sunshine!
is
show your
Hester, and
on the righteous Col-
scarlet letter in the
mar-
ket-place!" (54). Because they are dedicated to forms, rules, laws,
structures, the Puritans
have no tolerance for
as purely public beings,
and they hate and
aim, insofar as their
human
the
crowd says
searched out, and punished
New
England"
Hawthorne portrays them, people
as such there
to the state.
is
must gladden your
to turn anything
heart," a
man
in
to Chillingworth, "to find yourself, at length, in a land
is
people; as here in our godly
and
fear anything private. Their
subjects are concerned,
private into something public. "It
where iniquity
secrets; they take people
We
is
nothing
in
are
—or
them that
is
in the sight of rulers
(62).
and
For the Puritans, as
should be
—
exterior,
all
not appropriately subject
might go one step further and
say, for the Puritans,
people are entirely and only subjects.
The only apparent
tress
rift in
Puritan uniformity
the Puritans
accommodate
reality
is
to be
— and
how
ingenious
Man,
figured in
forest,
some of
it
is
all:
is!
—
which
do have
is
but. Their solu-
to define the inner
as the alien
world of the
world
as the
forest, the dark,
comes upon them from the
reversal of inside
and outside
is
the spatial ambiguities in Hawthorne's imagery: the
Man
lives,
seems both to surround, and to be
by, the settlement.
Witchcraft, then,
sense
it
them away. The
where the Black
surrounded
in
Completely to deny an inescapable
the Other, something that
outside and tempts
way
the
mad, and the Puritans are anything
most exterior world of
the Black
represented by Misis
the inescapable reality, that people
interior lives, into their worldview.
tion
is
Hibbins, the witch. The idea of witchcraft
is
a
concept that the Puritans develop, and
a fantasy, unreal.
But
•
it
is
55
a
in this
concept developed to take ac-
THE SCARLET LETTER
count of something that
a life of
the
its
most notable of them
is
once developed,
also,
it
takes
on
are real witches in Puritan Boston,
and
the governor's sister. Putting the witch
and
the governor in one house
more
and
real;
is
own. Thus, there
economy and
a narrative
is
The
besides. In the symbolic space of
a great deal
Scarlet Letter Mistress
Hibbins represents the other side of the coin of authority. The witches,
who
accept that they are
and
evil
rejoice in their wickedness,
have
acquiesced in the Puritan worldview, and hence their actions are part
of the foundations of Puritan authority. Witchcraft
or an aberration in the Puritan worldview;
Hester
—
to
jump ahead
for a
moment
—
truly aberrant
is
its
essence.
refuses to join the witches be-
cause she will not accept an evaluation of her inner
respect she
not an accident
part of
is
it
is
as evil. In this
life
whereas Mistress Hibbins
is
everything a
witch should be.
PEARL
The character of
she
Pearl
is
much, or more,
as
human
the representation of a
is
Pearl, her affinity with the scarlet letter
its
double,
its
scarlet letter
agent: "it
endowed with
in clothing that
As such, she
erately,
is
stressed.
She
is its
life!" (102).
is
way
symbol,
the scarlet letter in another form; the
Hester carefully dresses Pearl
mimics the color and embroidery of the
gesture also stresses the
tion.
was
a symbolic function as
child. In all the descriptions of
which the child
in
is
letter; this
her mother's crea-
both something that the mother produces delib-
and something that
reflects the
particularly, she reflects the mother's
mother despite
deed that gave her
More
herself.
life
(her
life is
never attributed to her father).
In
"The
one sense, the Puritan sense, that deed
child could not be
tence, a great
made amenable
Hester recognizes
in Pearl's
result
brilliant,
but
was
all in
a being,
whose
disorder" (91).
character "the warfare" of her
own
spirit
when she was pregnant: "she could recognize her
defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even
during the months
wild, desperate,
equal to a broken law.
to rules. In giving her exis-
law had been broken; and the
elements were perhaps beautiful and
is
•
56
•
Who? The
some of
the very cloud-shapes of
brooded
in
Characters
gloom and despondency
another sense, however, the child
In
that had
her heart" (91).
imagination and
all
beauty and freedom and
is
the other natural qualities that the Puritan system
denies. Beautiful, intelligent, perfectly shaped, vigorous, graceful, passionate, imaginative, impulsive, capricious, creative, visionary: these
are only a sampling of the adjectives with
these are
Hester as well as
all traits in
gest that Pearl
is
which she
in Pearl.
is
described.
And
Such descriptions sug-
not an independent character so
much
as
an abstrac-
tion of elements of Hester's character: a kind of "double," or "other
self."
This means that character analysis of Pearl
Hester, and that the child's lawlessness
quiet
and subservient public demeanor
shows how
is.
And
is
Hester's great love for
the child signifies in part her refusal to disown her
judgment that
But Pearl
it
was
really analysis of
superficial Hester's
fck
sin" through a
evil.
not simply a splitting off and intensifying of some
is
pects of Hester's character, a
way
as-
of measuring Hester's attitudes.
Quite apart from anything that Hester might intend consciously or
unconsciously, Pearl seems to have a special, original relation to the
letter.
She
agent
in
a
is
not only the
scheme that
letter as
is
Hester might conceive
quite independent of her.
it,
in
If,
but
its
Hesters
scheme, the child represents elements of defiant and lawless beauty,
this
other scheme the child represents a form of conscience.
It is
in
her
role to enforce the mother's guilt as well as to represent her rebellion.
She does
letter.
this
The
simply by making
letter
is
the
first
it
impossible for Hester to forget the
object that Pearl becomes aware of as a
baby, and she keeps the letter firmly at the center of Hester's
keeping
it
the letter
firmly in her infant regard.
most
We
letter
one and only time that
away. Oblivious to the mother's resurgent
youth and beauty and happiness, Pearl refuses to join her
letter
is
returned to
its
usual place. Only
Hester her mother: and
in the
when
this, alas, is a true
Should Hester repudiate the
Much
by
see this role as enforcer of
clearly in the forest scene, the
Hester throws the
life
letter,
depiction of Pearl
•
until the
she wears the letter
is
perception on Pearl's parr.
she will repudiate Pearl.
is
57
realistic;
•
she
is
not
all
symbol and
THE SCARLET LETTER
allegory.
Hawthorne used
about
his journal entries
Una,
his first child,
as sources for elements of his depiction of Pearl. Wildness, caprice,
imaginativeness are
child
who
traits consistent
all
endowed with energy and
is
with the nature of a young
and allowed
creativity
deal of freedom. She lacks reference
and adaptation
which she was born, Hester thinks
(91); but kept apart
as Pearl
If
any child would find
is,
we could
a great
world into
to the
from society
difficult to adapt.
it
separate Pearl from her symbolic tasks in the novel,
might take her simply as an unusual
is
easily explained: the letter
with her mother
ter
without
it.
is
is
and
colorful
letter
Her equation of
shiny.
it
likewise comprehensible: Pearl has never seen Hes-
And
as for her behavior in the forest, Hester herself
offers the explanation that the child
ter's
and
(for its time), unidealized,
unsentimental description of a real child. Her attraction to the
we
is
Her
jealous.
moods may have nothing mysterious about
it:
reflecting of
spending so
Hes-
much
time with her mother, being completely dependent on her, and pos-
would
sessing an imaginative nature, Pearl
to Hester, even
Pearl's
more than
extreme restlessness during the
the narrator says,
naturally be keenly attuned
the preoccupied mother might be herself.
last
scene in the marketplace,
was "played upon and vibrated with her mother's
disquietude" (244).
However
of the
realistic
for the first time.
may
she
book (when she
"A
spell
which the wild infant bore
and
she
as her tears
fell
be, there
woman
the
letter's
(its
ward Hester
Thus, the
all fulfilled"
is
fulfilled
—she
for ever
do
battle
too, Pearl's
(256). So Pearl has
its
victim.
a reality of her
she becomes real, nevertheless
human
were the pledge that
angel, in the word's original sense)
zation has consisted in being denied
end
human
her sympathies;
Towards her mother,
it.
incarnation; and she has also been
moment when
all
and sorrow, not
joy
in
at the
fully
great scene of grief, in
had developed
errand as a messenger of anguish was
messenger
becomes
father's cheek, they
would grow up amid human
letter's
no mistaking that
was broken. The
a part,
upon her
with the world, but be a
been the
is
kisses her father) Pearl
Her
and
victimi-
own. At the very
—when
her errand to-
ceases to be a character in the story.
character Pearl
•
is
not really part of The Scarlet let-
58
•
Who? The
ter,
and the character
a function
who
book
in the
is
Characters
best thought of as a symbol
and
"naturalized" by being given a smattering of realistic
is
traits.
Hawthorne's choice of humanizing event for Pearl should not go
unremarked, however. She
(a
result
is
both to learn
who
question, curiously, that she has never asked in so
and to
means
to be
manity
might
say,
not that
it is
evil,
who
she learns
but that
(as the
it is
is full
many words)
her father was.
Puritans
rooted in
observe that there are no families
devoid of
her father
If this
what Hawthorne thinks
us anything about
tells
human,
rooted in
is
we can
society
We
lose him.
plot invention
it is
humanity by participating
initiated into
whose
"great scene of grief,"
in a
is
is
in
would
loss. In this
The
see
it)
it
hu-
connection
The
Scarlet Letter.
of patriarchs, authorities, rulers, and father figures, but
real fathers.
The founding
"fathers" are oddly unfamil-
ial,
and Dimmesdale, who wants so badly to be one of them, must pay
for
membership
in the ruling
of both Hester and Pearl.
It
group by absenting himself from the
emotional weight
in the story is
couple nor to the
woman-man
New
attached neither to the mother-child
couple, but to the triangulation of the
three people as a nuclear family
suggest, the soil of
lives
could be argued that the strongest positive
England
—except
is
that,
Hawthorne seems
not congenial to
this triangle.
be? Because the idealized, loving family cannot exist
should
this
society
where people are merely subjects
to
Why
in a
for authority. In that society
fathers are only figures.
CHILLINGWORTH
Many
critics
over the years have been fascinated by the psychology
of Roger Chillingworth, but structually he
type as Pearl, chiefly symbolic and
and Governor Bellingham are
made
to live together in the
Chillingworth
lives
is
a character of the
allegorical.
identified as parts of a
same house,
same
As Mistress Hibbins
whole by being
as Pearl lives with Hester, so
with Dimmesdale and can be thought of as
a part
of him. Just as Hester can be better understood by analyzing Pearl,
Dimmesdale can be
better understood by analyzing Chillingworth.
•
39
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
Pearl
and Chillingworth both, from
the Broken Law.
And
change
sure,
in
some space
in a contrast of their
is
constant companions.
devoted to the idea of a deterioration and
Chillingworth, as though he were a realistic character. But
the change
some of
Dimmesdale and Hester
the differences between
can be seen most intensely
To be
different perspectives, stand for
is
always described
that language
in highly fanciful
comes from the
language. Although
superstitious multitude, their
explanations are replicated in the narrator's metaphors. Thus, "ac-
cording to the vulgar idea, the
fire in his
laboratory had been brought
from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal
might be expected,
his visage
was
and
so, as
smoke"
(127).
fuel;
getting sooty with the
This medieval representation of Chillingworth's alteration
only two pages
fanciful, that
later,
"sometimes, a
burning blue and ominous,
of those gleams of ghastly
way
in the hill-side" (129).
really
him
was
light
validated,
is
says, in language equally
glimmered out of the physican's
like the reflection of a furnace, or
fire
.
.
eyes,
.
one
that darted from Bunyan's awful door-
The only way
that
we can
allow that there
a blue light burning out of Chillingworth's eyes
is
to allow
a nonrealistic level of existence in the story.
In a later chapter
his
who
by the narrator,
Hester looks at Chillingworth and observes from
changed appearance that he has become a
fiend.
The narrator
cor-
roborates her reading:
Old Roger Chillingworth was
a striking evidence of man's faculty
of transforming himself into a devil,
if
he will only, for a reason-
able space of time, undertake a devil's office. This
unhappy
per-
son had effected such a transformation by devoting himself, for
seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart
full
of torture, and
deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures
which he analyzed and gloated
over. (170).
Materializing out of the forest, realistically explained as Hester's
husband, Chillingworth quickly loses
his
human
ing himself to the minister, begins his mission
messenger of anguish."
He becomes
•
60
—
identity and, attach-
like Pearl's, that of
"a
the extremest representation pos-
•
Who? The
and well suggests the idea that no judge
sible of a pitiless conscience,
is
Characters
so exacting as the judge within. "All that guilty sorrow, hidden from
whose
the world,
would have
great heart
pitied
and forgiven,
revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving!" (139).
is
not yet human, Chillingworth
is
no longer human, and
to be
If
Pearl
after
Dim-
mesdale's death "he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and
most vanished from mortal
sight, like
an uprooted weed that
allies
wilting in the sun" (260).
Also, along with his role as Dimmesdale's alter ego, Chillingworth
who have read Hawthorne's betterknown short works will recall how often he wrote allegories about
people with obsessions, people who become their own victims. Quite
has a story of his own. Those
often, these obsessed people start out as particularly rational, even
They
scientific, individuals.
are overtaken by their goals; they lose
touch with humanity; they become monsters; and they often end up
as destroyers of those they love. In fact, as
to represent
it,
those
who
are obsessed have
perhaps their original weakness
the
first
place.
At some
level all
is
Hawthorne's
human
a dearth of
obsession
is
stories tend
become incapable of
love;
connection
in
self-obsession, hence ego-
ism and obsession are the same. (Some examples of such stories are
"Ethan Brand," "Rappaccini's Daughter," "The Birthmark," "The
Man
Great Carbuncle," "The
Bosom
Adamant," and "Egotism;
or,
The
Serpent.")
Hawthorne
Certainly,
locates Chillingworth
of,
scholar.
and
The
is
augmented
scientist
s
susceptibility to ob-
warmth. This lack of warmth
session in his original lack of
cause
of
occupation as
by, his
is
both the
and
a scientist
a
has a mentality prone to dispassionate experi-
mentation. But after banishing his passions, he finds them returning
as obsessions.
The scholar tends
because his capacity for
Interestingly, in
er of
books and an avid
ing in
The
virtually
life is
view of the
to substitute
is
for
book
perhaps
Hawthorne was himself
one reference
favorable.
The
to
a
w Tit-
books and learn-
Bible, as noted earlier,
unmentioned, and the book most often referred
tithesis, the
life,
weak.
fact that
reader, not
Scarlet Letter
books
to
is
its
is
an-
carried under the Devil's arm, wherein he writes the
•
61
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
names of those who
books
among
join his satanic society. Otherwise, a life
seen as cause or result of a lack of capacity for fellowship:
is
Reverend Wilson looks
like a frontispiece in a
volume of sermons, and
has "no more right than one of those portraits would have, to step
forth, as he
now
did,
and meddle with
a question of
human
guilt,
passion, and anguish" (65). Chillingworth explains his inadequacies
as Hester's
ies" (74).
is
huband by
calling himself "the
Though one person can be both
a difference
traditional, the scientist
is
more
moment;
relates to the
tation to the
Thus,
if
scientist
of great librar-
and
scholar, there
between them. The scholar tends to be conservative and
The scholar looks backward:
them
book-worm
world
in
radical in thought
and temperament.
the scientist, forward. But neither of
and adap-
like Pearl, they lack reference
which they were born.
we know Hawthorne's
previous writings,
we
are not sur-
prised that he embodies his figure of obsessive vengeance in a scientist
and scholar. Nor that Chillingworth 's investigation, undertaken "with
the severe
and equal
quickly gives
to "a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce,
though
calm, necessity," which seizes him and never sets him free again
still
(129).
is
way
integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth,"
his
New to Hawthorne's treatment of this type in
developing of the character
The
Scarlet Letter
connection with the Broken Law,
in
thereby making him a metaphoric judge, a law enforcer.
HESTER
In Hester Prynne,
Hawthorne
ican fiction, as well as one of
because she
is
"appropriate" for a
it
this
and responsive
is
is
a
to, the
story, turning
Amer-
heroine
gender
on "love,"
is
a hero because she has qualities
can be understood for anyone.
power
A
true heroine of
gender reference and lead to heroism
"Such helpfulness was found
let
in,
and because her
woman. She
and actions that transcend
first
enduring heroes. Hester
its
deeply implicated
structure of her society,
as
created the
to sympathize,
by
its
in her,
—so much
—that many people refused
original signification.
•
They
62
•
power
to do,
and
to interpret the scar-
said that
it
meant Able; so
Who? The
was Hester Prynne, with
strong
can
any longer
I
to sustain,
live
Characters
woman's strength"
a
without her companionship; so powerful
—so tender
to soothe!" (201).
and many other passages, the
these
strength as well as the fundamentally
it.
Without going beyond the
might allegorize Hester as
what,
The power
a hero.
scheme of
woman.
all
Hawthorne
is,
after
narrative,
the Puritan state
precisely
all,
one looks for
perhaps, herself an alternative source of power.
that even the Puritan
of character,
and
Perhaps, however,
community
world cannot
rare capacity,
is
it
it
then
it,
power
a
it is
power
deny, for "with her native energy
could not entirely cast her off" (84).
precisely her essential alienation
doubt the power of the Puritan community
life,
she
knows
power only because she has granted
from the
Boston whenever she chooses. Her
time this submission
is
—
it
to punish her
as
we do
and define
— that they have
to them. She
is
free to leave
decision to stay entails a submis-
sion to Puritan power, but since she can
may
And
power
its
that explains this power. Although Hester can hardly
the circumstances of her
this
in
seems so im-
draws
from the consensual community and the laws that uphold
is,
in
allows, one
clearly Hester has access to a completely different source of
or
she
uses to which she puts
in that its existence
If
is
impossible to miss,
on Hester's remarkable
stress
humane
license that
remarkable
is
an outcast
in
It is
Good Power, which
in the basic structural
probable
(161). "Neither
withdraw her consent
always provisional. Her
any
at
reasons for staying
be misguided, but they are her own. In schematic terms,
if
the
Puritans symbolize the law, then Hester symbolizes the individual per-
son
—with
this
important proviso: she also symbolizes good.
It
would
be easy to deduce from this polarity that Hawthorne wants us to think
that law
Matters
is
in
a situation
flict,
bad and the individual good
Hawthorne
— but that would be too
easy.
are never so clear-cut. But he certainly gives us
wherein two kinds of power confront each other
in
con-
and strongly suggests that any society that regards the power of
the individual only as an adversary to be overcome,
fective
is
profoundly de-
and deeply inhuman.
Hester's situation, even before the
of an outsider. She
was
commission of her
"sin,"
is
that
sent to Massachusetts in advance of her hus-
63
THE SCARLET LETTER
band; he had decided to emigrate, not she. The native strength of her
character
society
when
is
is
certainly abetted by the fact that, as a
young woman
dominated by aging men, she has no public importance. Even
she becomes a public figure through her punishment, her psyche
largely left alone.
The magistrates condemn her
wear the
to
but thereafter seem to have only a very superficial interest
minister
who
sees her
on the
may
street
an extempore sermon; people stare
none of
It is
in a
this
letter
in her.
A
take the opportunity to preach
at the letter; children jeer;
but
behavior represents an attempt to change Hester's mind.
hoped that the external
work
letter will
nobody
heart and cause repentance, but
its
way down
into Hesters
and
this indiffer-
really cares
Hester's freedom. In fact, the effect of the letter so far as Hes-
ence
is
ter's
character
is
concerned
the opposite of
is
turning her into a public symbol,
protects
it
what was intended:
conceals her individuality and thus
it.
As the representative of
individuality, Hester, rather than subjecting
herself to the law, subjects
takes herself as a law. She
it
is
to her
own
scrutiny; as
not, by nature, rebellious;
I
have
said, she
and during the
seven-year period of The Scarlet Letter's action, she certainly attempts
judgment implicit
to accept the
judgment she would be able to
ing.
But ultimately she
is
in the letter. If she
see
Dimmesdale, with
she loves the child that her sin brought forth.
whom
she sinned;
then, can she agree
far in her thinking as to attribute her
God, thus denying the
entire rationale of the Puritan
certainty that their laws
this
How,
was wrong?
She goes so
marked
in her suffer-
unable to transcend her heartfelt conviction
that she has not sinned. She loves
that her deed
could accept that
purpose and meaning
woman's
sin
conform
community,
to divine intention.
by a scarlet
letter,
own law
were
sinful like herself.
God,
as a direct
which man thus punished, had given her
their
"Man had
which had such potent
and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach
it
to
her, save
consequence of the
a lovely child,
sin
whose place
was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for ever
with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul
in
heaven!" (89).
•
64
•
Who? The
In fact, while the
Characters
outward Hester performs deeds of mercy and
kindness throughout the seven years, the inward Hester grows ever
more alienated and over time becomes
—what she was not
at first
—
genuine revolutionary and social radical.
The world's law was no law
the
and
human
for her mind.
a wider range than for
many
was an age
in
had overthrown and rearranged
Men
centuries before.
sword had overthrown nobles and
which
Men
kings.
—not
of the
bolder than these
actually, but within the
sphere of theory, which was their most real abode
—the
whole
system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked
much
of an-
Prynne imbibed
cient principle. Hester
of the Atlantic, but
this spirit.
common enough on
freedom of speculation, then
Had
It
newly emancipated, had taken a more active
intellect,
which our
forefathers,
She assumed a
the other side
had they known of
it,
would have held
to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by
the scarlet
(164)
letter.
she spoken her thoughts, she probably
would "have
suffered
death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to under-
mine the foundations of the Puritan establishment" (165).
not for the existence of Pearl, for whose sake she
ton, she
would have become,
lives quietly in
Anne Hutchinson,
like
were
If it
a
Bos-
religious
reformer.
But
just as
Hester refuses to take the road to witchcraft on account
of Pearl, she rejects Hutchinson's radical path for the
feels particular
obligations to
human
beings far
same reason. She
more than she
feels
general social responsibilities. She behaves as a sister of mercy in the
community because
this
believes in doing good.
is
the
And
can bring up Pearl. Staying
living there as she
way
to live unmolested, not because she
she wants to live unmolested so that she
in
Boston on account of Dimmesdale, and
does on account of Pearl, Hester's behavior
is
ap-
propriate to her role as representative of individual and personal, rather
than social, power.
A
reformer
abandoned an individual
is
No
center.
•
65
dedicated to social power and has
doubt
•
this
makes
the
whole
issue
THE SCARLET LETTER
of social reform on behalf of individualism highly problematic; so far
as Hester
concerned
is
— and
this
is
our concern at present
—the very
consistency of her individualism keeps her within the sphere of the
personal. At the end of the story, with her group of
about
with
her, she
it.
The
invokes the
subject of talk
memory
among
women
clustered
of Hutchinson only to contrast
the
women
entirely personal,
is
centered on secular love; Hester counsels patience. Thus, the narra-
suggestion that her radicalism stems from an unquiet heart
tor's
partly validated by her behavior.
ical,
If
motivated by the impersonal,
Hawthorne's world a true rad-
in
somehow
is
is
a true individual, motivated by the personal,
is
anti-individual,
then our current popular understanding of these terms
ent from Hawthorne's. His distinction
and
is
quite differ-
between ideologues and
is
if
ultimately not radical,
in-
dividuals rather than between varieties of ideology: an "individual-ist"
is
an ideologue. The individual as a
than a concept
reality rather
is
always extremely vulnerable.
Among
er,
If
gift for
sister
of mercy,
needlework
is
it
also includes the character of artist.
the expression of an
broideries that she produces are genuine
We
her "skill at
her nature includes the characters of outcast, rebel, lov-
mother, and
Her
we cannot overlook
Hester's key defining traits
her needle."
meet her
skill first,
artist's
works of
of course, in the
letter,
nature; the em-
art.
which, "surrounded
with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread,"
is
"so artistically done, and with so
uriance of fancy, that
it
had
all
much
fertility
and gorgeous lux-
and
the effect of a last
fitting
decora-
tion" to her splendid apparel (53). Hester's grand costuming for the
scaffold scene, far
more elegant than what
normally would allow her,
is
the dress code of the colony
not seen again. She wears nothing but
drab gray gowns. Her dreary dress, however, becomes a frame for the
letter,
and the
letter
remains, as
it is
Beautifying the letter through art
clearly
is
meant
another
to be, an ornament.
way
breaks the Puritan law (although the Puritan rulers
en
in the
crowd
—are too literal-minded
to notice
in
which Hester
—unlike the womit).
The
letter be-
comes the chief ground for the struggle between Hester and the
66
Who? The
Puritans,
and
Characters
able to play this role because of Hester's gift as an
it is
artist.
tempting here to associate
It is
artistic skill
with social rebellion, but
the equation does not hold. For Hester supports herself
in Puritan
Boston chiefly by making the elaborate decorative garments that the
magistrates wear for public occasions and that are allowed to the better-off in the colony.
"Deep
geously embroidered gloves, were
men assuming
state of
wrought bands, and gor-
ruffs, painfully
all
deemed necessary
the reins of power;
and were
to the official
readily allowed to
individuals dignified by rank or wealth" (82). Art does not have an
inherently political nature, although
shows
—
it
—
as the instance of the letter
can become highly politicized. Rather,
of an original and creative energy, of
fertility,
it is
the expression
of imagination, and of
the love for the beautiful, even the gorgeous. This energy
have no reference to society at
all.
Artists
appropriated by society or condemned by
profound nonsocial element
can make
art.
forms of
Although the
their products
part, society
ducing
art,
and
if
is.
as
makes use of
But
women,
an outlet for
her.
want Hester
this
is
who
makeup
retain, or con-
(as
Hester does)
it
does allow
this one,
this side of her nature.
The Puritans may be incapable
but they certainly want to possess
everything, they
as she
it
can be
social structure of the age denies virtually
expression to
artistic
Hester makes use of
in their
creativity
but society cannot make
only individuals can. Indeed, only individuals
art,
tain, a
all
and
it;
and
in their
it.
and
For
its
of pro-
Therefore, despite
community; and they want her
something they have to learn about themselves;
they do not learn in time, there will be a society with no more
Hesters.
DIMMESDALE
Each character
each relates to
in
all
The
Scarlet Letter has a function in the plot,
and
the others in an abstract pattern of contrast and
doubling. Chillingworth doubles Dimmesdale's conscience, but contrasts
with him as a scientist to a scholar. Pearl doubles Hesters crca-
67
THE SCARLET LETTER
and beauty, but her anarchic freedom contrasts with Hester's
tivity
continuous self-control. Mistress Hibbins,
in principle the Puritans'
opposite, doubles the vision of evil that they have created.
Dimmesdale,
by
it
her heart, to think of their act as
thinking of
as good.
it
shamed woman, on
shamed. She
deed
the inside she
a social outcast,
is
expressed and his
is
he
is
by Hawthorne
is
is
independent and
free,
he a
is
is
unable,
equally incapable of
While on the outside Hester
independent and
externally
dale,
evil,
so on.
person affected
a
chiefly developed
is
and comparison to the heroine. While she
as a contrast with
in
and yet
as the partner of Hester's sin
completely different way,
in a
And
internally
pillar of society.
a
branded,
free.
Dimmes-
is
branded and
Above
all,
her
hidden.
At the same time that Hawthorne develops Dimmesdale's character
and situation with continual reference to Hester, he gives Dimmes-
makes him,
dale's portrait a rich psychological texture that
as interesting in himself as Hester.
ing. Certainly,
ter,
whose
he
a
is
For some, he
is
for
many,
even more interest-
more troubled and divided character than Hes-
strength and consistency produce a certain uniformity and
predictability of effect.
The
Dimmesdale's character
chief key to
not his religious piety
is
but his dependence on the good opinion of society.
of
mind
wore
its
a "true reli-
passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In
would he have been what
would always be
(123).
It is
is
called a
man
no
and
state
of liberal views;
essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith
about him, supporting, while
work"
is
that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed,
of society
it
He
with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order
gionist,
above
all
it
confined him within
its
iron frame-
Hester's ability to stand alone that distin-
guishes her from him; he needs support and confinement.
Given
this need,
view contrary to
demnation.
He
did in the forest
ished.
Dimmesdale
society's,
even
not a person
is
when
society's
who
can easily hold a
view leads to self-con-
never doubts for an instant that what he and Hester
was
evil.
He
never doubts that he deserves to be pun-
But to confess his act and receive the punishment that would
68
Who? The
satisfy his sense of guilt
he cannot
between
to lose his position in society,
which
without. Thus, the very social dependency that makes
live
him condemn himself
split:
would be
Characters
him from
also keeps
and inner
his outer
He
confessing.
and within
selves,
doubly
is
his inner self as
well.
As
means of equivocating between mutually incompatible psychic
a
demands, Dimmesdale engages
a variety of private penances:
But these
sleep.
that he
gences.
knows
He
carries cut
flagellation, nights
fasting,
no substitute
activities are
He
in all sorts of fakeries.
his sin requires; thus, they are
decadent self-indul-
does confess publicly time after time, but always
bolic language that he
knows
will be
occasion he enjoys the combined
relief
ing off an irreversible self-exposure,
own contemptuous
misunderstood.
On
in a
sym-
each such
of venting the truth while stav-
all
the while suffering from his
self-estimate.
The
minister well
was!
—the
He had
without
for the public confession
light in
knew
—
which
subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he
his
striven to put a cheat
vague confession would be viewed.
upon himself by making
the avowal
of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a
self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary
self-deceived.
He had spoken the very
into the veriest falsehood.
ture, he loved the truth,
Therefore, above
all
And
yet,
truth,
relief
of being
and transformed
by the constitution of
and loathed the
lie,
as
it
his na-
few men ever
things else, he loathed his miserable
did.
self!
(144)
If
Dimmesdale were merely
a social parasite or a clever charlatan,
he would not be an object of compassion, as he seems clearly meant
to be.
Though he
and
lacks Hesters courage
fortitude, he has other
inherently valuable qualities: sensitivity, intelligence, kindness, benevolence, the desire to
do good, the love of
liness that contrasts attractively
Puritan leaders.
The hypocrisy
truth,
and
a basic
unworld-
with the hard practicality of the other
in
which he
69
is
involved, however, alien-
THE SCARLET LETTER
own
ates
him from
real
and substantial and never
his
loses
becomes progressively more unreal
the
whole universe
becomes
false light,
false,
is
And
within his grasp.
—
touch with her
"To the untrue man,
to himself.
impalpable,
is
it
he himself,
shadow,
a
who is always
own essence, he
goodness. In contrast to Hester,
—
it
shrinks to nothing
he shows himself
in so far as
his increasing abilities as a minister.
comes
He becomes
a
made him
effective counselor.
for his
work, a strange and distressing discovery for one
fully
As
seems that
sin
directly
has
from
wonderful preacher
and an
It
(145-46).
or, indeed, ceases to exist"
Part of Dimmesdale's agony during these years
in a
better suited
who
has care-
kept himself apart from the world precisely to preserve his purity.
a
Hawthorne
between
Puritan,
his "fall"
the devil's party.
and
He
Dimmesdale cannot explain
his success
except as a sign of his enlistment
devil's
work?
A
—how can they need someone
strenuous argument on just this point occurs
between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth
thou have
me
can be better
own
God's
to believe,
O
—can be more
may
rest
on
If
for God's glory, or man's welfare
men
show
—than
deceive themselves!" Chilling-
Chillingworth
wrong, the
is
a foundation of evil. This
Dimmesdale's rationalizing leads
In his analysis of
chapter 10. "Woulds't
in
wise and pious friend, that a false
truth? Trust me, such
worth exclaims (133).
structure
in
has rationalized his failure to confess by telling
himself that his congregation needs him
doing the
a connection
is
entire social
the position that
to.
Dimmesdale Hawthorne shows keen
insight into
disordered mental states. "The only truth, that continued to give Mr.
Dimmesdale
most
soul,
a real existence
on
this earth,
was the anguish
and the undissembled expression of
it
in his in-
in his aspect.
Had
he
once found power to smile, and wear a face of gayety, there would
have been no such man!" (146). In a sense, Dimmesdale's struggle for
seven years
ing
some
is,
quite
literally, to
keep body and soul together, by allow-
external sign of his inner state to be visible. His face, reflect-
ing his torment, constitutes such a sign. So too
publicly visible
It is
—does the emerging
no wonder, then, that
letter
on
—although
not yet
his chest.
after his climactic
70
it is
encounter with Hester
Who? The
Dimmesdale goes
in the forest,
whole
the total collapse of a
Characters
briefly insane,
Hester,
self.
who
by insanity we mean
if
has meant to save him
—cannot do
whom
he has implored to save him
truth.
Leaving the forest after having experienced what he interprets
new
as a
ist.
Dimmesdale
birth,
and thereby, exactly
gaiety;
Of
so; her truth
certainly does smile
Hawthorne
as
and wear
He
could never
live that
a face of
predicted, he ceases to ex-
course, flight to Europe with Hester and Pearl
unthinkable.
not his
is
altogether
is
way. But having given himself
over to the concept of flight and freedom, he can no longer
With
duplicity, either.
superhuman
a kind of
effort,
live in
he diverts his
energy to one crowning achievement, and preaches the greatest
the last
Is
—sermon of
motive
his
his
life.
sermon the
in the
one more expression of
ceaseless brooding on
Dimmesdale
is
lingworth
And what
is.
the scaffold?
secret
means
his
egoism?
own
his
God, or
desire to serve
sin
One
that
simply
is it
aspect of the minister's
the self-absorption
is
clearly obsessed with his secret just as
it
implies.
much
as Chil-
are the motives behind his final confession on
not yet another exhibition of
Is this
mad
—and
self?
Keeping
Dimmesdale can never acknowledge Hester or
his
Pearl.
Twentieth-century readers are apt to take very seriously his failure to
accept his responsibilities toward his "family,"
failure
fore,
contrasted to Hester's behavior.
is
avowal of
his
human
to the scaffold with
It
more when
ties to
them. But
him has such
if
it is
letter!
He
shadow
own
Dimmesdale
tells
of
cries,
"He
you, that, with
what
red stigma,
all its
heart!" (255). Hester's suffering
and sign of
Dimmesdale, as noted,
one
who
in the third
mysterious horror,
own
breast,
it
is
is
appropriated
to his
own
but the
is
and that even
no more than the type of what has seared
into a pale duplicate
drama
bids you look again at Hester's scarlet
he bears on his
is
and Pearl
also part of a
staged to allot him the central role. Speaking of himself
person,
as a belated
his calling Hester
a meaning,
this
gratifying, there-
on the scaffold could be read
his final confession
if
the
all
would be
this, his
his
inmost
use,
made
his infinitely greater suffering.
not a truly religious
reallv believes the tenets of the religion
71
man
in
the sense of
he practices.
He
is
THE SCARLET LETTER
religious because of his
dependent and praise-requiring temperament.
Hawthorne seems almost
religious people, that faith
is
we have observed
fits in
work
to be at
with the universalizing mo-
Another way of
in the novel.
understanding Hawthorne's strategy here, however,
is
as a refusal to
use the novel as a forum for discussing religious truth at
ber that this
is
for all
a matter of psychological need, not of
necessary truth. Such a suggestion
rality
Dimmesdale stands
to suggest that
human
called not a tale of
sin
all.
Remem-
and redemption, but one
of frailty and sorrow.
The biographical Hawthorne's own
tremely difficult to
er
clarify.
As
and aunts, or heard the Bible read
have proven ex-
religious views
a child he
went
to church with his
moth-
at his grandmother's. In college
he was required to take Bible study class and attend Sunday sermons,
which were of the
hellfire
and brimstone
variety. Subsequently,
church service or even entered a church except as a sight-
er attended a
from
seer in Europe. Allusions to religion that can be extracted
journals, his letters,
and the reminiscences of
his friends
tances are few and thoroughly conventional. Guilt
tive feeling
he nev-
—rather
than sin
—that
is,
and acquain-
—that
an objective
his
a subjec-
is,
reality
—was
the
focus of his investigation in Dimmesdale's case.
And even Dimmesdale's guilt is depicted in terms of his alienation
from his own center and from society, whereas the real psychology of
a religious being
person
who
would probably have
believed himself a sinner
a different focus.
would
obsessively, concerned with his relation to
A
religious
surely be deeply, even
God; but
this
seems to be
the least of Dimmesdale's worries. Indeed, he rebukes Chillingworth
for seeking to thrust himself
as
though
this
would seem
was
between "the sufferer and
the one secure
his
God"
and untouchable area of
his
(137),
life. It
that Hawthorne's reluctance to deal with religious issues
goes so far as to
make him draw back from portraying the psychology
Hawthorne has carefully drawn his bound-
of a deeply religious man.
aries
yet
and never oversteps them. The matter
for fiction
is
wide-ranging;
Hawthorne, while expanding the range of the novel through the
material he treated in
The
Scarlet Letter,
into theology.
•
72
•
was not
willing to venture
Who? The
HAWTHORNE
An examination
complete
Characters
AS PSYCHOLOGIST
The
of characters in
would not be
Scarlet Letter
did not stress Hawthorne's contribution to psychological
if it
understanding. Even though the book often introduces allegorical or
and depends on old-fashioned
partly allegorical characters,
personifi-
cations and other techniques to bring out inner truths, the very fact
that
it
concerned with inner truth puts
is
development of psychological
life
and
his description of
at the forefront of the
it
fiction. In his recognition of the
hidden
mental processes Hawthorne was
a psy-
chologist ahead of his time.
Psychological speculation
scientific, analytic
is
as old as Aristotle, but the idea of a
psychology was new
in the nineteenth century,
and
there did not yet exist the rich array of concepts, the wide vocabulary,
and the accumulation of data that would
Hawthorne was apt
representing
some
depend on outmoded
to
This
later develop.
is
why
literary techniques for
of his insights into mental states and processes.
Moreover, since science
in his
time was intensely materialistic
in its
approach, he probably meant to suggest, by using old-fashioned rhetoric, that
some important human
had been
lost sight of in the positivist intellectual orientation of
temporary
scientific
truths
so,
tation in
and
The
liable to
life
fitting.
Scarlet Letter are strikingly innovative
be overlooked
if
we succumb
it
is
and advanced,
entirely to the novels in-
an advanced idea to
key to identity
Dimmesdale, and
at the
same time
Hawthorne's time
it
was
Today
this idea
and the novel
not,
is
commonplace;
as a genre
the lead in investigating the "interior of a heart," as
title
describes
tion to, the interior
in the
to place the
thoughts, emotions, and fantasies of these char-
in the
acters rather than in their behavior.
chapter
split the
fundamentally from the outer, as Hawthorne does
cases of Hester and
in
con-
however, certain elements of the psychological represen-
tentional archaisms. For example,
inner
to earlier generations
thought. For such an implication, outdated lan-
guage and techniques would be quite
Even
known
it.
The
was taking
Hawthorne's
vast increase in awareness of, and atten-
world was an offshoot oi the general romantic
•
73
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
movement with
its
tremendous focus on the
lectual forms, fiction
was
single self.
Among
intel-
especially well suited to treat the concept in
depth and with detailed examples.
But along with a
stress
on the mental
life
of his major characters,
which he shares with many other novelists of
offers us other,
more personal psychological
his time,
Hawthorne
He
suggests the
insights.
existence, not exactly of a single, unified unconscious as Freud
was
to
hypothesize, but certainly of continual unconscious thought processes,
with accompanying defenses and rationalizations on the part of the
conscious mind as
it
know
seeks to contain while pretending not to
deeper layers. The usually hidden unconscious becomes visible
its
in
periods of mental conflict, and also in states of unusual excitement.
Important scenes
in
The
Scarlet Letter
show Hester
or Dimmesdale at
such times.
The
first
episode of extreme mental stimulation occurs at the begin-
ning of the story
when Hester
exposed on the scaffold. After de-
is
scribing her from the outside, as she appeared to the Puritan multitude
and
as she
moves
might have appeared to
into her
a cultural outsider, the narrator
mind and follows her own
currents of thought.
mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally
bringing up other scenes than this
another; as
sibly,
it
if all
was an
.
.
.
active,
one picture precisely
were of similar importance, or
all
"Her
and kept
as vivid as
alike a play. Pos-
instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself,
by the
exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and
hardness of the reality" (57). Here Hester's mind seems out of control,
or rather the conscious
mind
is
simply a screen on which another,
deeper mind (an "instinctive device of her
at times of
enormous
spirit")
stress, the controlling
the presence of layers of usually obscured or
mind
—
is
casting
its
images;
way to reveal
modern term
gives
to use a
repressed mental activity.
As
ter
a character distinguished, however, by striking self-control, Hes-
does not often succumb to eruptions of the unconscious
manner. Her conscious mind
unacceptable thoughts from
its
in this
occupied nonetheless with excluding
is
precincts. In devoting so
much
of her
needlecraft to creating "coarse garments for the poor," the narrator
•
74
•
Who? The
suggests, "it
Characters
probable that there was an idea of penance," which,
is
however, was "morbid," betokening "something doubtful, something
that might be deeply wrong, beneath" (83-84).
mind
here divides the
into layers,
and
The word beneath
identifies the center of the psy-
che not in surface rationality but in the hidden desires beneath, thus
portioning mental
was
do half
to
into conscious
life
and unconscious
layers, as
a century later.
Earlier in this
same chapter Hawthorne has attempted
why, "with the world before her," Hester chose to stay
here he distinguishes even
tion
—what the mind
cause
too
it
tells itself
was
grew pale whenever
its
more
hole,
—
it
so,
it
mind
rejects. "It
struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from
in the face,
and hastened
—what,
to bar
a self-delusion" (80).
it
finally,
her motive for continuing a resident of
and half
might be,
although she hid the secret from herself, and
she compelled herself to believe,
truth,
Boston, and
in
between surface explana-
carefully
might be that another feeling kept
looked the idea
to explain
—and "true" explanation, which, be-
doesn't suit one's self-image, the
it
—doubtless
Freud
New
What
is
her.
in its
.
.
She barely
.
dungeon.
What
she reasoned upon, as
England,
—was
half a
this idea, this feeling?
Simply that she continues to love Dimmesdale and to hope that some-
how
circumstances will bring them together. This
is
early instances in literature of the depiction of the
space,
one of the striking
mind
as a divided
and of the processes of rationalization that impose
wholeness on
a spurious
it.
Another occurs
later on, after
about her decision to break her
constructed for herself a noble
Hester has spoken with Chillingworth
vow
of secrecy. Hester has previously
—which
is
to say, unselfish
—explana-
tion of the act she has decided to perform: "Hester could not but ask
herself,
age,
whether there has not originally been a defect of
and
loyalty,
thrown into
on her own
a position
part, in allowing the minister to be
where so much
She determined to redeem her error, so
(166-67).
Nobody can
truth, cour-
evil
far as
disapprove, after
the desire to be true, courageous,
and
was
all,
it
to be foreboded.
.
.
.
might yet be possible"
of an act motivated by
loyal.
But after her interview with Chillingworth, Hester finds her mind
•
75
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
in a
turmoil, and other motives
come
to the surface: her lively hatred
of Chillingworth for having betrayed her into loveless marriage and
cheated her of deserved happiness, for one; her continued love for
Dimmesdale; her
living desire, despite everything, for
him. "The emotions of that brief space
ter's state
of mind, revealing
acknowledged
much
.
.
.
an intimacy with
threw a dark
to herself" (177). Yet even as hidden emotions
the attention of the conscious mind, they continue to evade
For the
first
time since putting on the
grows harshly defensive with
letter
Hester
new
come
to
control.
its
about
lies
it
and
comments, such
Pearl; and, the narrator
behavior suggests that perhaps "some
heart, "or
on Hes-
light
that she might not otherwise have
had crept" into her
evil
some old one had never been expelled"
(181).
When
Hester,
her patience at an end, threatens to shut Pearl in the dark closet, she
is
expressing in outward behavior the mental gesture of denying or
suppressing the feelings that have revealed themselves to her
them away with
tells
us often in his allegorical figures,
have been buried,
is
Pearl in the dark closet.
a closet
where
evil
is
The
heart, as
a cave or cellar
—shutting
Hawthorne
where corpses
thoughts have been discarded.
It
not only, as optimistic Americans would prefer to believe, the source
of a fountain of pure feeling and innocent goodness.
With Dimmesdale, whose mind
is
more
and more badly
fragile
di-
vided than Hester's, Hawthorne can more fully elaborate this model
of the inner world. Dimmesdale,
might be
it
tinual state of extreme excitement; this
is
said, operates in a con-
what
killing him.
is
His reg-
ular fasting induces hallucinatory states: "his brain often reeled,
visions
seemed to
flit
before him"
his youth, his parents,
—
devils, angels, the
Hester and Pearl. These visions were, the nar-
rator remarks, "in one sense, the truest
which the poor minister
Yet even
agitation
12,
—
in his
and
dead friends of
now
and most substantial things
dealt with" (145).
keyed-up existence there are peaks of much greater
penance on the scaffold (chapter
in particular, his secret
"The Minister's
Vigil")
and
his return
Hester (chapter 20, "The Minister
minister's conscious
in a
mind becomes
from the
Maze").
76
•
And
meeting
both episodes the
a passive receiver for
impulses projected from lower mental depths.
•
forest after
In
in
images and
both, the images
Who? The
Characters
express a counterforce to the minister's continual effort to be good, to
be perfect, to be better than anybody else has ever been; they reveal
all
what we might today
the contrary impulses to be
Dimmesdale
interpret their eruption at the least as psychological
On
call
interprets these impulses as evidence of evil,
the scaffold (chapter 12),
possibility that he
may
ments, his behavior
is
Dimmesdale
"normal."
and we must
breakdown.
actually delights in the
be discovered, even while, as the narrator com-
which
a mockery, "in
his soul trifled
(148).
As was the case with Hester on the scaffold
nizing
power of
the conscious mind,
with
earlier, the
ability to discriminate
its
itself"
orga-
between
inner and outer, important and trivial, disappears: watching an ap-
proaching
pump,
a
light,
Dimmesdale
sees
it
shine on a post, a garden fence, a
water trough, an oak door, an iron knocker, noticing
these minute particulars, even while firmly convinced that the
of his existence
was
stealing
onward" (149-50). As
"all
doom
the night wears
on, he comes close to hallucinating, in a phantasmagoric scene wherein the
on the
whole town
rises
up
at
dawn and comes running
scaffold: patriarchs in their nightgowns,
with his ruff askew, and the young virgins of his parish
a shrine for
by, in their
Dimmesdale
in their
hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given them-
mock
the
decorum of
images of their disarray; and
women
who had made
"white bosoms; which, now, by the
selves time to cover with their kerchiefs" (151-52).
sire to
out to see him
Governor Bellingham
the elders
his
is
Dimmesdale's de-
expressed in his disrespectful
suppressed sexuality turns the young
of his parish into half-clothed groupies. His unconscious
relieves itself in irreverent
and disruptive
mind
jokes.
This episode comes to a climax with the appearance of a comet
the sky,
whose
eerie light
shows "the
in
familiar scene of the street, with
the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that
is
always
imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light" (154). Here
three interpretive
modes converge:
a naturalistic interpretation,
which the comet simply appears when
to
it
do with the movement of heavenly bodies;
whereby the Puritans together
to their "infant
find a
meaning
commonwealth"; and
•
77
•
in
appears for reasons having
a social interpretation,
in the
comet pertinent
a private interpretation, with
THE SCARLET LETTER
Dimmesdale assuming
cially as a
narrator, could "only be the
state,
when
tense,
and
a
symptom
of a highly disordered mental
man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by
had extended
secret pain,
panse of nature,
a fitting
comet has appeared espe-
that the A-shaped
message for him. Such an interpretation, according to the
until the
page for
firmament
his soul's history
egotism over the whole ex-
itself
should appear no more than
and
The narrator
fate" (154—55).
we would today
prefigures here the condition that
long, in-
his
call
paranoia, the
in the scene of
Dimmesdale's
outward projection of obsession.
The same processes
are at
return from the forest; once
spectator of his
own
much more dramatic
minister has
is
now
work again
more he
is
the passive
and almost
is
wicked thing or
strange, wild,
a
scene than the meditation on the scaffold, for the
He
taken a conscious, willful step toward rebellion.
beset by appalling temptations. "At every step he
some
helpless
forbidden and threatening impulses. This
was
incited to
other, with a sense that
it
do
would
be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing
out of a profounder
These
self
desires, willed
than that which opposed the impulse" (217).
but resisted, recognized but denied, have an ob-
vious aspect of disruptive
ritanical
code and
make blasphemous
a
humor about them,
own
his
submission to
it.
a
wish to
mock
the pu-
Dimmesdale wants
to
suggestions to an elderly, respectable deacon and
devout old widow; to make a lewd proposal to a young and beau-
tiful
words
parishioner; to teach dirty
to children; to trade obscene
jokes with a sailor.
Yet
if
these impulses are funny and, to a twentieth-century mind,
rather pathetic than wicked, there
not a sign of the minister's having
dom
is
no doubt that
won
his
their
emergence
emotional and mental
but rather of his near approach to mental breakdown. To
is
free-
rec-
ognize divisions and conflicts in the mind, the presence of the
repressed, the
power of
an advocate of what,
ty" or "authenticity."
the unconscious,
in the
is
not necessarily to become
twentieth century,
Nor does
we might
call "sinceri-
the narrator suggest that the newly
revealed impulses are expressions of Dimmesdale's essential and natural goodness;
on the contrary, he says firmly that these impulses
•
78
•
rep-
Who? The
resent "scorn, bitterness,
ridicule of
ill,
Characters
unprovoked malignity, gratuitous
Examining Dimmesdale's hypocrisy
Hawthorne
relies, just as
whelming passion
he did
in
showing Hester's denied yet over-
and rationalization. Dimmesdale
silence to himself chiefly
on
altruistic
and would
for his congregation
in refusing to confess his sin,
Dimmesdale, on concepts of such mental pro-
for
cesses as self-delusion
He
desire of
whatever was good and holy" (222).
justifies his
grounds: he wishes to do good
lose this ability
were
his sin
known.
stands up in the pulpit and delivers sermons calling himself a great
sinner, all the while
knowing
that these
and thus
uratively by his listeners
words
that, far
will
be interpreted
from revealing
fig-
his sin, they
Unable to "assign a reason" for
his distrust
and abhorrence of Chillingworth, he explains away these
feelings as
will
only further conceal
it.
products of his general morbid state of mind (140). Although
mesdale the
self is
in Hester, the
more dangerously embroiled
in civil
in
war than
dilemmas of both characters depend on concepts
though Hawthorne lacks a modern vocabulary to
Dim-
them,
label
it is
that,
antici-
pate later psychological understanding.
Notably, too, Hawthorne makes no distinction between
women
in his
men and
depiction of mental processes. At this basic level of mind
On
there are
no sexual
of Hester
—not so much of Dimmesdale, except by implication—seems
differences.
the other hand, his representation
assume innate psychological differences between men and women.
to
To
the extent that
The
Scarlet Letter claims our attention as a
of psychological analysis, this point needs to be pursued.
thorne uses the word
man
for
Dimmesdale,
it
than an empty identifier; not so with the term
her case, the
word woman and
its
is
generally no
woman
work
When Hawmore
for Hester. In
cognates seem to imply a specific
female essence.
who
have
individual or cultural ideas of sexual difference. Thus,
when
Sometimes, to be sure, the word
their
own
Hester
first
refuses to
name
is
used by characters
her lover, Dimmesdale pays tribute to the
"wondrous strength and generosity of
a
woman's heart"
(68); later, as
Hester comes into favor with the townspeople through her behavior
as a "self-ordained sister of mercy,"
•
79
when
•
they find her helpful, "with
THE SCARLET LETTER
power
and power
to do,
to sympathize," they praise her as strong,
"with a woman's strength" (161).
But, in chapter 13, "Another
View of
Hester," the narrator studies
her at length in light of what seems presented as an objective, transhistorical ideal of
womanhood. On
the one hand, she appears to be
faulted for having deviated from this ideal (even
on the
herself);
it.
other, her
And we cannot
fail
good
if
she could not help
appears to be compatible with
traits
to note that the worst result of Hester's seven-
year isolation, to this narrator, appears to be her loss of beauty
beauty that he describes as attractiveness to men.
"There seemed to be no longer any thing
upon; nothing
to dwell
like,
that Passion
in Hester's
in Hester's
in Hester's face for
would ever dream of clasping
bosom,
to
make
in its
embrace; nothing
ever again the pillow of Affection," the
it
narrator says, in a progression increasingly intimate
And
sex, to intimate slumber.
Love
form, though majestic and statue-
he sums
it
up:
"Some
— from
desire, to
attribute
had de-
parted from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep
her a
woman"
(163). This conclusion
acknowledged that
itself
warm and
in her
is
reached even while
rich; a well-spring of
human
even while her passionate devotion to Pearl
narration. Thus,
men
it
Almost
has been
is
tenderness" (161); and
a constant motif in the
can only be the power to inspire sexual desire
that Hester has lost; this
is
womanhood. And why
essential
it
errands around town her "nature showed
certainly, in
what
is
in
the narrator equates with her
Hester no longer attractive to men?
view of the narrator's elaboration of her freedom
of thought and her independence,
gether self-reliant. Thus,
we
it is
because she has become alto-
are faced with the irony that a
woman
is
woman, if she is an object of the amorous male regard.
"Womanhood" and "selfhood" may be incompatible concepts.
only herself, a
Hawthorne develops
literary
and
cultural
this
preaching self-reliance to
cating to
women
self-reliance
all
at precisely the era in
when
American
Transcendentalists were firmly
and sundry
— but
at the
same time
allo-
the role of dependent helpmate, thus indicating that
men only. In 1844 Margaret Fuller (whom Hawknow well while he lived at the Old Manse) wrote an
was
thorne came to
paradox
history
for
•
80
•
Who? The
essay on the topic,
a
book
called
Characters
"The Great Lawsuit," subsequently expanded
Woman
in the
Nineteenth Century, which
into
generally
is
considered the earliest document in the American woman's rights
movement.
expanded
was
Fuller argued passionately that until the Transcendentalists
their
message to include both sexes,
their entire
program
suspect.
It is
evident that
Hawthorne has
this
and other early manifestations
of feminism in mind, and that the question of a specifically female
psychology was preoccupying him, as
riously attempting to
an's rights
to write
work with
feminist; his wife, Sophia,
not.
her
own
in
was
if
The
he were
first
se-
wom-
1848, the year before he began
Scarlet Letter; his sister-in-law Elizabeth
ters (Elizabeth)
was
to
a female protagonist.
convention had been held
The
would have
it
was adamantly
Peabody was
antifeminist;
one of
a
his sis-
feminist in inclination, the other (Maria Louisa)
Chapter 13 shows Hester's thoughts moving naturally from
whole race of
situation, to Pearl's, to the situation of "the
womankind"
(165).
The problems
—which
are real
—are
not to be
overcome "by any exercise of thought," the narrator opines; they cannot be solved; they can only disappear
come uppermost"
"heart chance to
Hawthorne
is
suggesting that
if
and only
if
the
woman's
(166).
not denigrating the quality of Hester's mind here, nor
women
reasoning to men.
age,
—
Nor
and ought
are incapable of thought
is
he intending to
trivialize
to leave
her strength, cour-
and magnanimity; indeed, the story cannot work without
ognizing these virtues. Yet Hester's character
specific to her
partly innate.
gender
It is
—elements
on her by
not society's fault that she loves
one passionately and for
womanly
partly enforced
life,
example;
for
his rec-
formed by elements
is
this
society,
one man and
is
but
only
part of Hester's
nature.
Yet, while
Hawthorne makes Hester
ways, he also seems to
insist that
she
a real
isn't
woman
one:
"Some
in all sorts
attribute
of
had
departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to
keep her a woman. Such
is
frequently the fate, and such the stern
development, of the feminine character and person, when the
woman
has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severi•
81
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
ty" (163, emphasis added).
sence that
is
Womanhood,
then,
is
implies that the idea of
"woman"
is
who must conform
The narrators judgments of Hester vary according
seen as a person or as a
woman:
strength
be a
woman, and
vary even
to
when
to
whether she
she
is
it.
is
seen only
strong with a woman's strength, with the wonderful
and generosity of a woman's
woman! These
heart, Hester has yet ceased to
inconsistencies are perhaps inevitable reflections
of the debate over female psychology that the
ment had
es-
a social construction and, as such,
an additional burden on those human beings
as a
an inalienable
nevertheless completely vulnerable. This contradiction
precipitated,
and that has not
<S2
woman's
rights
yet been concluded.
move-
THE SCARLET LETTER
IN THE SCARLET LETTER
Vv
of
it
hile
The
some few
critics
Scarlet Letter,
think that Dimmesdale
most agree that
could be argued that there
either of them.
giate)^ the
is
the
is
main character
this role
belongs to Hester. Yet
a "character"
more important than
According to the dictionary (Webster's
primary meaning of the word character
is
New
Colle-
"a conventional
graphic device placed on an object as an indication of ownership, age,
or relationship," or "a graphic symbol (as a hieroglyph or alphabet
used
letter)
in
writing or printing." Taking this primary definition, the
chief character in
letter itself.
It
is
The
typical of
niques that he should
acter that
single,
is
a symbol,
make
must
be, of course, the scarlet
Hawthorne's multilayered writing techa
symbol that
and thus
shows that
its
is
a character,
his
work.
In fact,
a char-
to derive a
examination of
chief philosophical function
question the very grounds on which one can
in
and
confound attempts
utterly
uncomplicated meaning from
the use of the letter
put
Scarlet Letter
is
insist that there
to
is
"a" meaning for anything.
As
in a hall
of mirrors, the letter
is
reflected, refracted,
and dupli-
cated almost endlessly throughout the story. In the scene at Governor
Bellingham's house, for example (chapters 7-8),
ously in four different versions.
Of course,
•
83
•
it is
it
there
exists simultane-
on Hesters
dress.
THE SCARLET LETTER
A
gross distortion of the letter
governor's armor, where
it
reflected in the breastplate of the
is
appears "in exaggerated and gigantic pro-
portions, so as to be greatly the
most prominent feature of her ap-
pearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind
(The symbolism
except
that to the Puritan rulers, Hester has
is
in the letter; this
means
—
no
identity
that this distortion of the letter
The
accurate reflection of their view of her.)
in Pearl
(106).
it"
in fact, twice represented:
once
letter is also
in her
has intentionally designed to resemble the
is
an
represented
costume, which Hester
letter,
many
"lavishing
hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object of
her affection, and the
emblem
of her guilt and torture" (102); and
again in the child herself, for "in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as
the other;
and only
in
consequence of that identity had Hester con-
trived so perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her appearance"
(102).
In the scene of the minister's vigil
and once
way
scaffold (chapter 12) the
four times, once in each of the characters standing
letter is replicated
there,
on the
in the sky.
The
letter is
permanently inscribed
or another on Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl;
sky, repeated in mirrors, eyes,
The word
letter.
are reading and,
letter
if
is
brooks
one
featured in the
—everywhere one looks, another
inscribed also
on the cover of the novel we
Hawthorne had gotten
his
way, would have been
doubled on the cover of the novel with a graphic
Now
it is
in
illustration of the A.
the question arises: which one of these multiple appearances
the "real" letter? Are any
of these letters counterfeit?
Are
all
is
of these
equivalent to each other? Are they basically signs of something
letters
"real,"
something "behind" them, to which they
refer
and which
in
turn gives them their meaning?
In his scaffold confession
Dimmesdale announces
ternal letter, a surface attached to a surface,
letter
branded on
his
body; and the
letter
on
is
that Hester's ex-
only the shadow of the
his body, in turn,
the "type," the visible indicator, of the letter in his heart. But
to speak of
ically.
Of
what
is
course, there isn't really a letter in his heart; there
name
only
order
Dimmesdale can only speak symbol-
in his heart,
thing" that he gives a
is
in
to but that
•
84
is
is
"some-
certainly not identical to the
The
name, the
is still
it is
made
to stand for (whatever
the only possible
and inaccessible
low the
Scarlet Letter
Nevertheless, even though the letter
letter.
whatever
to
The
Scarlet Letter in
way
in the heart), the letter
and speak about that mysterious
to think
Dimmesdale's view, then, truth resides be-
interior. In
surface,
is
not identical
is
and the surface
refers to the
hidden truth
in
some
human
kind of correspondent way. All tangible objects as well as
lan-
guage are essentially symbolic, referring beyond themselves to some
source of meaning. Dimmesdale's "problem," from a philosophical
point of view,
can do
is
that the source
always out of reach; the best one
is
use a symbol, a substitute, for
is
A
it.
belief that there are
sources beyond the symbols can only be expressed through symbols:
in the
depths of his heart there
to the source directly, but only
we
only another A.
is
If
we can
through "mediating" symbols,
be sure that the sources really exist?
What
if
never get
how
can
no sources,
there are
but only symbols?
The Puritan
leaders
would not share Dimmesdale's
truth of the letter, the source of
heart.
But they certainly share
a pointer to a truth that
letter refers is in
an
its
his idea that the letter
somewhere
is
idea that the
meaning, resides within the human
else.
The
is
no more than
truth to
which the
world: not "inside" the
invisible, divine
human
heart (such a vision, despite Dimmesdale's supposed orthodoxy,
really
human being altogether in
and change where God has his dwelling. Puritan
antinomian), but outside the
beyond time
Puritan rulers,
is
somewhere
is
their
else,
in
marked her
the
law, to
law
is
only a transcription of an orig-
they do not doubt the accuracy of their
transcription. In devising Hester's particular
mark her
a place
the representation in "characters" of the divine word.
While acknowledging that
inal that
human world
in the invisible
as,
punishment they plan to
in their view,
God
has already
world.
Thus, Dimmesdale and the Puritans believe that though truth
a
world beyond or within the surface where we have
"characters" to represent
possible because there
is
it,
do not
lies in
to resort to
nevertheless a correct representation
a fixed
and given
resentation and the essence for which
they
is
it
relation
85
•
between the rep-
stands. Or, differently stated,
believe that the relation between a truth
•
is
and
its
represen-
THE SCARLET LETTER
tation
simply arbitrary or conventional, any more than they believe
is
that truth
itself is
variable.
But both Dimmesdale and the Puritan community are located by
Hawthorne
in a
world that does not mirror
their "essentialist" notion
of the relation between the sources of meaning and the representation
of meaning. To return to the specific question that launched our in-
The
quiry, the proliferation of letters in the text of
it
very unlikely that there
some
is
inside the surface; insofar as there
any
ical
specific
it,
attempts to
self as
looking for
fix its
a better or
worse copy,
and
— —
just
exactly
is
symbolic import; yet the
its
is
beyond meaning. The
the real letter;
interpretations.
what
read in any
the story
number
appearance
.
.
way
faces of
it-
Hester wears
its
it
letter
is
not a unitary and stable object. By
has already deviated from the meaning that the
but did ever a
of showing
it!
it
woman,
Why,
good
to have. "She hath
skill
at her
before this brazen hussy, contrive
gossips,
what
is it
but to laugh
for a
punishment?"
(54).
— "adultery." Along with that meaning came
evil.
is
the physical object capable of being
our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what
good or
truth
"means"
that letter
quired her to wear a red A, the Puritans assumed that
of
establishes
of ways.
worthy gentlemen, meant
meaning
all
about, and the "source" of that story
itself,
Puritans originally intended
such a
whose
the other visible letters are copies of
all
is all
But even that physical
.
not
evades
letter
letter that
The question of what
the physical object, the letter
needle
the letter
is
interpretations of the letter are not expressions of
all
its first
it is
text but rather in the specific phys-
meaning and, through such evasion,
an entity that
on her dress
is
is
letter in the novel,
people are concerned about. Constantly, people in the novel
are reading
but
one original
object that Hester wears on her gown. That
meaning
it;
meaning outside the
makes
"ideal" letter existing outside or
is
the original of which everything else
in
Scarlet Letter
But their view of meaning
outset of the story, for at the
moment
is
shown
When
it
in the
they,
they
re-
had one fixed
a fixed
judgment
up as naive at the
that the tale begins, that sup-
posedly immutable meaning has already been undermined by Hester's
artistic
and beautiful interpretation of the
•
86
•
letter.
The
Hesters
two
thus, raises
letter,
The
Scarlet Letter in
Scarlet Letter
alternative possibilities. First, that
the letter has a meaning, but the Puritans, despite their claims to be
able to read
Gods
herself believes
tact,
the characters in
all
believe
intentions, have got that
—or comes over time
it.
And
meanings of the
letter
The Scarlet
we
true,
if it is
meaning wrong. Hester
to believe
this alternative. In
except possiblv Pearl,
Letter,
are in a pleasant
—
world wherein different
can be proposed and tested, and we can reason-
ably expect that the "right" meaning will eventually be established.
But the second alternative
fixed
—
— that
meaning of the
the
not
letter is
the one that the structure of the novel as a whole seems to
is
And
validate.
if it is
correct,
we
much more
are in a
world, wherein the "meaning" of the
letter
truth as a matter of power: the letter will
be persuaded to believe that
it
means;
it
fluid
and insecure
is not so much a matter of
mean whatever people can
has no fixed and permanent
reference.
This
what Hawthorne shows
is
and groups are
ferent individuals
"their"
meaning
while the
shows
is
|
dif-
either trying to persuade others that
meaning
embroidered by plenty of rhetoric and ceremony
letter itself
remains susceptible to
by introducing the
this
world wherein
the right one, or are simply imposing their
is
by physical force
in the novel: a
a variety of
letter to us at a
already being questioned, and never from
point
meanings.
when
first to last
its
,
He
meaning
allowing
it
to
be firmly attached to any single meaning. Governor Bellingham's hall
of reflecting mirrors aptly epitomizes
what happens
in this
universe of
meaning-in-flux: everywhere you look, a different A. with a different
meaning. The horrid possibility emerges that so many meanings are
possible because the
"A
itself"; all
signifies pure
gests that
we
we
A
itself
have, as
is
but
ings.
it
because there
modern philosophers would
live in a
world composed
is
say,
is
is
no
an empty
entirely of surfaces,
.md that
no more than the meaning we have made.
the letter in flux at the start, having changed
from the Puritans' original intention
it,
all,
form without content. The mirror symbolism, then, sug-
whatever meaning we find
Not only
has no meaning at
at the
moment
its
meaning
that Hester makes
continues throughout the storv as the focus of multiple read-
And
as
new
readings are produced, earlier readings are not dis-
•
87
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
carded;
rather,
becomes ever
novel
the
accumulates more and more readings,
letter
richer in
its
generations of literary
itself,
And beyond
resonance.
the confines of the
and student readers have
critics
continued to add meanings beyond those specifically suggested
story: "able," "admirable," "angel,"
and so on.
In
in the
adding meanings,
critics are
not being untrue to the text; on the contrary, they are
lowing
example
and
its
letter
artwork
its
of the
A
is
the locus of indefinite
expansion of meaning.
infinite
The
in suggesting that the
fol-
can easily be read to stand for "art":
work
itself a
of art,
responsible for subverting the intended Puritan meaning
is
letter. It
can stand for
"authority," so that Hester
"artist."
is
It
can stand for "author," and
made
being
to
wear the mark of her
"adversaries" or "antagonists," while insisting that she will be the "au-
thor" of her
own
Recall the dictionary definition of character
letter.
as "a conventional graphic device placed
on an object
as
an indication
of ownership, age, or relationship." In this reading, the letter
that Hester
is
owned by
the Puritan community,
change the meaning of the
letter is a struggle for
is
a sign
and her struggle
her right to
to
"own"
herself.
The A can stand
for
Dimmesdale's
first
name, Arthur, so that we
can think of Hester's wearing not only the mark of her
the
name
of her lover, for
anybody with eyes
to see
"adoration," Hester's emotion for Dimmesdale
emotion, as the story shows, for any
other.
It
names
to the
human
it. It
—an
being to
becomes value-laden.
misdeed committed
in the
It
can stand for
inappropriate
feel
can stand for "apple,"
toward any
Adam, everyman (and
every
woman
too).
It
we can make
ism that was her heresy.
Hawthorne
is
in
It
Anne Hutchinson, and
which
stand for
its
wearer.
examining
in
The
whose
Scarlet Letter.
article, a, as
restricts reference. It
It
for the antinomian-
can stand for America, as the nation
can remind us of the indefinite
article the,
it
can stand for "alone," or
"apart," a condition that the letter certainly creates for
can stand for Anne, as
in reference
Garden of Eden; and, thinking of the
Bible account as well as of Puritan theology,
It
but
can stand for "act," a neutral something that, as soon as one
it,
origins
illicit act,
opposed
to the definite
can stand for "anything,"
in
The
The
Scarlet Letter in
Scarlet Letter
another allusion to indefiniteness. As the
first letter in
can stand for the alphabet, which means
another doubling.
itself, in
It
it
itself,
and
phrase "the
letter of the
law"
that law
constantly in flux.
is
in question.
The
the world of
—and
And
law
in this case
in fact, the
Scarlet Letter
is
itself. It
can
as in the
certainly puts the
it
whole story goes
one where
symbol
a
law that the Puritans follow and enforce,
stability of
If
itself
thus containing repetitions and doublings within
also stand for the
it
letter"
can thus symbolize the multiplicity or
deceptiveness of "truth" by being simultaneously
of
the alphabet,
can stand for "the
letters
to
show
have no fixed
meaning, then the conflict between Hester and the Puritans about
what her
means may be seen
letter
interpretation
is
going to prevail
—
power
as a
the ownership of Hester, but about the far
of the
letter,
which
to say the
is
in
important
for
it is
more
meaning
is
consensus or by
recognize
any would-be authority to control the manner
arbitrary
fiat.
ownership
significant
we have become, we
which things get said and represented. And
that
whose
ownership of language and the law.
Certainly, media-conscious people that
how
struggle about
a political struggle not only about
this
and determined only
So long as society
is
is
again to suggest
as a result of social
uniform, meanings seem to
be fixed, and the relation between a meaning and the character by
which
ing
—
it is
as
represented seems to be fixed also. But this
soon as there
variable and there
This
is
may
is
from
a different culture,
rulers
—standing
only seem-
heterogeneity, meanings are revealed to be
be a struggle until consensus
the world that
is
we
find in
The
is
again achieved.
Scarlet Letter, with Hester
and of another generation, than the Puritan
for the arrival of heterogeneity
and the breakdown
of consensus. Since the story takes place less than twenty years after
the founding of the
not
American colonies, we can
last long; in fact,
Thus, Hawthorne
make
it
it
it
is
may have been
in the first place.
stand for multiplicity and the relativity of meaning
stand, in a sense, for
is
myth
able to take a single letter of the alphabet and
a relativist.
They
—
to
make
anything and everything. He does so even
though none of the characters engaged
letter
a
see that consensus did
in the struggle to
sincerely believe that "their"
•
89
•
control the
meaning
is
the
THE SCARLET LETTER
correct one, that
is
God, and
in
rests
it
their
stable ground. For the Puritans, stability
meanings are thus human representations of divine
law. For Hester, stability
a
on
is
which she takes
in nature,
law that competes with Puritan law but
deserves precedence over
To the Puritan plan
it.
You could say
to take Pearl
"what hast thou
(197), she
is
as the source of
actually prior to
that nature
away from
Hester's
is
denying that the Puritan law
is
"what we did had
own"
what we did was
to say,
is
she says to
is
which anyits
also according to the
—which, any-
only "opinion."
Hawthorne
Let us grant that for
oly
Dimmes-
a consecration of
from the Puritan law
law, only a different, a higher law
way,
God.
anything more than opin-
thing goes. Instead, she says,
which
and
to do with these iron men, and their opinions"
ion; but she does not appeal to a contrasting universe in
(195),
it
opposes her nat-
her, she
when
ural right to the child. In the forest scene
dale,
is
the Puritans
on divine law and that what they
the reflection of their
own
set
do not have
a
out as God's word
social consensus
—
in other
monopis
words,
in fact
Haw-
thorne sees Puritan law simply as an expression of the social contract
without any divine authorization. Does he agree with Hester that there
is
a natural law?
and natural law
He
in
has introduced the conflict between social law
his
introductory chapter, "The Prison-Door,"
through the contrast of the prison, the "black flower of civilized society,"
with the wild rose bush growing beside
identified both with the
its
door. That bush
antinomian Anne Hutchinson,
who
is
denied the
relevance of the "moral law," and with "the deep heart of Nature,"
which can
pity
and be kind
to those
whom
society has called criminal.
Nature looks good.
But over the course of the book
it
would seem
shows that symbols taken from nature,
like the rose
est,
are no more fixed and authoritative
artificial
symbols of human
innocent child like Pearl
law
is
also the
The same
of the Indian,
at
Nature,
in
who
and of
has
(in
itself, is
•
Hawthorne
bush and the
for-
meanings than the
forest that befriends
abode of the
an
Black Man, whose
certainly not "higher" than the Puritan law;
home
all.
is
letters.
in their
that
and
it is
also the
Hawthorne's representation) no law
thoroughly neutral;
90
•
in
order to find
The
law
in
in
from the
see
it
—which means that
nature the law that you read into
more authoritative than
we
Scarlet Letter
one has to impose an interpretation on
it,
you only find
as
The
Scarlet Letter in
it.
Such
law
a
no
is
the law derived from a social consensus. And,
different
the idea of natural law,
outcome
for
Dimmesdale when he accepts
has no authority for anybody but oneself,
it
whereas
(at least) a social
minded
individuals. Thus,
consensus has validity for numbers of
we do
not escape from relativism
though we may escape from uncongenial laws
What Hawthorne shows
—by escaping
The
in the plot of
like-
—
al-
to nature.
Scarlet Letter, then,
is
not that one or the other idea of the origin of meaning and law
is
right,
whether the origin be
believed, or in a natural
in a divine invisible
world
tury romantics, including such
thorne's friends
believed.
as Hester (and
world
many
as the Puritans
nineteenth-cen-
American Transcendentalists
as
Haw-
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau)
The conclusion
of
The
Scarlet Letter accords completely with
an idea of meaning as a matter of
fiat,
social negotiation, or consensus.
At the end of the story Hester returns to Boston and resumes wearing
the
so
Nobody would have required her to wear it any longer, after
much time and so much anguish which is to say, the law has
letter.
—
changed.
But, as a result of her doing so, "the scarlet letter ceased to be a
stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became
a type of
something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe,
yet with reverence too" (263). This final
compromise, a newly negotiated
wanted the community
actly
community has
prevailed
meaning
is
for the letter
originally took the letter to
arrived at a
over them,
new
is
a
not what Hester originally
to understand by the letter, but
from what the community
ritan
result. It
it is
very far
mean. The Pu-
consensus. Hester has not ex-
and she has
certainly
not
been
the
prophetess of a revolution as she had earlier hopes of being (263).
Nevertheless, she has had a powerful effect on her society's system of
meanings, which means that she has been an agent of social change.
At the end of the story the community
the beginning,
new reading
and
of the
this difference
letter.
is
is
different
from what
People are not quite so judgmental,
•
91
it
was
symbolized by the emergence of
•
at
a
legalistic,
THE SCARLET LETTER
and moralistic
as they
were
at the start.
main of experience that they were
They
They have recognized
earlier unwilling to
are beginning to find a language for the heart.
admit existed.
They
are begin-
ning to recognize the claims of the individual and the claims of
en.
They
On
a do-
wom-
are ceasing to be Puritans.
the other hand, Hester takes
up her place
at the center of a
feminine world where she dispenses consolation and advice with a
fairly
conservative cast to
lovelorn
And
it.
She confines herself to concerns of the
—no more attacking the
foundations of established society.
she counsels patience, promising that there will be a dramatic
reconstitution of the relations between
brighter period,
Heaven's
own
woman, but
a
when
The
woman
Scarlet Letter
ter,
Thus,
she has
if
grown
"at
ripe for
some
it,
in
time" (263). This change will be brought about by a
difficult to see that
ness.
men and women
the world should have
the
without
such a
and
sin,
woman
is
shame, or even sorrow.
an impossibility
that, therefore, the
world
community has moved part of
moved
at least as far along the
92
is
in the
It is
not
world of
very far from ripe-
the
way toward Hes-
way toward them.
THEMES IN
THE SCARLET LETTER
I
hough there have been
novel
is
stories as long as there
advent of film and then television,
tions
have been people, the
a relatively recent form. In the nineteenth century, before the
it
was
the chief form in which
were disseminated to a broad public. For various reasons
frowned on by serious and educated men.
events
it
It
—
—
was dishonest
damaging
—
since
unfitted the
it
mind
kinds of mental activity; addictive
for
commonly lodged
against
more
we
since
it
live in;
serious and tedious
since each novel
more of them. These
create the desire for
plaints
—
fic-
was
since the
recounted had not actually happened; distracting
presented worlds more exciting and attractive than the one
it
are only
seemed only
some of
the
to
com-
it.
But as the novel's popularity became ever more firmly established,
these
same
serious
men
—and
women
now, too
—changed
their ap-
proach. They began to use the novel for their own, serious purposes.
On
the thread of an
provoking
amusing or gripping story they strung thought-
issues: philosophical speculations,
views of
life,
moral con-
cerns. And over time it has turned out that, though we read and see
and hear thousands of stories in our lifetime, we "study" only those
novels that can be read not only for the story, but also for such themes.
This
is
not to say that,
in a serious fiction, story
93
is
unimportant. The
THE SCARLET LETTER
Scarlet Letter
not a treatise on guilt or on the social construction of
is
meaning. Essentially,
story
is
and
first
last,
enhanced throughout by
it
is
But obviously that
a story.
capacity to provoke thought on a
its
we
range of topics. At every step along the track of the story
are urged
ponder the many ramifications of events and relationships. Haw-
to
mode
thorne's symbolic
of presenting
themes,
its
exist for the sake of
add
novelists
requires us to look at events for their larger
But rather than thinking that the story exists for the sake
significance.
let
us take the opposite approach: the themes
making
the story
many
Where some
interesting.
by inventing large numbers of char-
interest to fiction
acters, devising
more
subplots carried out in a diversity of settings and
over sweeps of historical time, Hawthorne adds interest by intensifying his basic situation through a technique of enhancing our sense of
significance,
its
If
we wish
its
to divert
hope
is
and
refresh ourselves for an
and reasonable
natural, healthy,
Letter
intellectual resonance.
probably not the book
desire
The
accounts
all
we want. On
Scarlet Letter
storyteller,
is
if
moral mes-
and authoritatively handed down,
not the right book,
either.
For Hawthorne
is
tainty, dualities,
not a piece of didactic
is
a
and ambiguities of
his
fiction. All the mystery, uncer-
treatment result
in calling at-
tention to questions, not enforcing or persuading us to answers.
A
is
is
inquiring, speculative, meditative.
its
we
not a moralist, and had no set doctrine to inculcate; The
Scarlet Letter
ultimately a riddle, teasing and perplexing us.
therefore,
—
Scarlet
the other hand,
for a reading experience that will leave us with firm
sages, absolute truths clearly stated
The
on
hour or more
if
we attempted
The prevalent mode
We would make
to simplify
The
The
a
bad mistake,
Scarlet Letter by translating
themes into messages.
Reduced
to
plot elements, the story of
its
The
Scarlet Letter asks
and answers three main questions. Will the separated lovers ever be
united? No. Will Dimmesdale's role as Hester's "partner in crime" be
revealed? Yes. Will the Puritans ever
is?
Yes and no.
Letter
is
From
Many
to see Hester as she "really"
a thematic perspective, however,
dense with questions, and
of answers.
come
it
leaves
all
The
Scarlet
of them open to a range
of these questions have been touched on in earlier
•
94
•
Themes
parts of this essay: the
tainly
any reader
which
to follow recapitulates
list
they are,
be seen as rising from the
place,"
Scarlet Letter
be able to add to
will
Numerous though
The
in
all
between individuals and
cer-
the novel's thematic questions can
presented in "The Market-
initial situation
that of a supposed division, a
is
and adds, but
it.
rift,
in
an original unity
their society. This original unity,
however,
is
immediately exposed as a fantasy because whatever Utopia the founders
had projected, they quickly had
years after the establishment of the
Only
to build a prison.
"new"
society, the prison
fifteen
was
al-
ready old. The presence of the prison symbolizes the breaking of the
law; but
uals
if
and
there
had
really
law would have been unnecessary. Law
their society,
therefore, represents the
as deviation.
The
been the imagined unity between individ-
and "individualism"
rift in society,
individual, the
self,
enters the
is
itself,
defined
world of The Scarlet
Letter under a cloud, already judged and marked. In turn, however,
the individual attempts to establish her priority to society, and she
does this by establishing herself as the center of the law and claiming
the right to judge society.
If
this
is
Hester's eventual rationale,
many
assuming, as Hester and so
mantics did, that the
self as arriving
self
was
on the scene
it is
not Hawthorne's. Far from
nineteenth-century American ro-
prior to society,
Hawthorne shows
historically later than society. This
situation that he represents in
is
the
the
"The Market-Place": the moment when
an individual emerges from the undifferentiated crowd. To some degree, this
is
the
moment
that not only starts the time of
American
Letter,
but begins American history
say,
the record of the idea of the individual.
is
moment
itself.
that begins the idea of history
more
And
The
Scarlet
history, that
in a
sense
generally, for there
is
is
history unless people are self-conscious about themselves and wish
keep
a record of
And
The
what happened
as a fable
is
no
to
history,
probably accurate. The consciously elaborated
idea of the individual
is
modern, Western concept. The
a relatively
newness of the concept does not mean
"incorrect."
a
to them.
about the emergence of individualism and
Scarlet Letter
to
is
it
in the least that
Hawthorne, however, given
•
95
•
his
it
is
"bad" or
view of meaning, would
THE SCARLET LETTER
probably suppose that the idea has been responsible for creating
dividuals, rather than individuals being responsible for
The
idea.
in-
making
the
novel, interestingly enough, has been one of the bulwarks of
the idea of the individual. At an abstract level,
all
may
novels
thought of as representing individuals, and hence the concept of
be
indi-
vidualism, in a great variety of situations. The Scarlet Letter raises this
representation to a higher level of abstraction, and considers the con-
more
cept
Once
directly.
The concept comes
the "individual" has
emerged
be no return to an earlier time. Once
never forget
it.
first.
as a historical concept, there can
we know
The moment when we
that
realize that
we
we
we can
exist,
exist
is,
for each
of us, the beginning of our personal history, and of our sense of historical time.
It is
moment when we become aware of the exthough we imagine society to be centered on
also the
istence of society, even
us and to exist chiefly as an aid or an impediment to our demands.
society full of self-aware individuals
is,
one
exist; accordingly, the
in
which the concept does not
clearly, a different society
of individuals requires changes in society.
A
from
emergence
The more powerful
the idea
of the individual, the greater the pressure will be on society to give an
account of
itself.
Thereafter, there will always be a clash between the claims of the
individual and the claims of society, with each side authorizing
sition in
numerous ways, including appeals
and with each compromise only leading
Scarlet Letter chronicles
will
to divine
to a
new
one such episode. Each
continuously attempt to extend
its
territory
its
po-
and natural law,
separation.
The
side in the struggle
and power, hoping
for nothing less than the ultimate obliteration of the other. Society has,
to all appearances,
much more power than
cept of the individual
is
the individual; but the con-
so tremendously attractive that
anticipated counterforce of
its
it
has an un-
own. The concept of the individual
tells
us that our desires are good, that society ought to be organized to
enable their satisfaction, and that a proper social organization will
allow
it
all
our desires to be realized. Once such an idea has taken hold,
cannot be extirpated; despite
hope
for
is
to keep
it
all its
force, the
most that society can
within bounds. Thus, the battle from society's
•
96
Themes
The
in
Scarlet Letter
point of view should not be to extirpate individualism, but to contain
to set boundaries to
it,
may
view, however,
The
it.
well involve attempting to deny society any right
Only
to set boundaries to individuals.
from the
He
like.
numbers, and because
on the whole,
tends,
unequal, both because society
to see the battle as
much more powerful
is
in the force of
has penetrated the individual so deeply that
it
thoroughly independent
The
Dimmesdale's return
briefly, in
does Hawthorne consider what the unbounded indi-
forest,
vidual might look
a
from the individual's point of
battle
self is
situation presented in
not really imaginable.
The
two questions:
Scarlet Letter raises
where should the boundaries between individual and society be
and how should the answer
what
ways
are the proper
to this question be arrived at
Hawthorne
or the other? In the course of the novel
the arguments that were, in fact, offered
tions
roots in this duality
its
about
Society.
on both
is its
The
law, then
whose
absolutes,
how
is
it,
human
and
it
be justified?
and how
it
is
Is
it
If
sense?
later as individuals,
creation?
society?
what
if
If
We
so,
is it
how
its
the
is
divine
law has no basis
in
"authorizes" "authority"? Are
the very concept of society so
to individuals are allowable?
good or
"real-
society
people are born into society and only emerge
not
fair to
can people
say that "individualism"
realistically ever
is
a social
expect to be free of
have thought of society as the creation of fantasy, but
the deepest
bitions, like
If
If
embody
bad? Does the idea of the individual as separable from
make any
get
it
a delusion,
is
does not
the individual, in essence, "really"
Is
to ask ques-
maintained?
command
If it
embodies?
Who
than others?
no concessions
individual.
on
their possible interrelations.
fantasy?
are the laws that
can
societies better
fragile that
really
of
sides of this debate.
Scarlet Letter goes
Puritan belief that society embodies divine
ly"
many
purpose and justification? Where does
society the expression of
The
suggests
only the general one that neither
it is
society, the individual,
What
power, what kind of power
some
is,
allowed unlimited power.
side can be
From
—that
about and argue for one position
to think
Insofar as he has a "position,"
set?
human
feelings are only internalized social prohi-
Dimmesdale's profound sense of sin?
•
97
•
Is
there such a thing
THE SCARLET LETTER
from
as real evil, as distinct
known?
If
human
moral judges?
If
beings are
they are
they are good,
If
how
evil,
what
is
bad?
so,
how
can
we
that a single
tell
Is
which
society.
What
Is
terrible?
What
is
is
if
evil
deplorable,
is
sincerity
why
always preferable to
are isolation
the moral status of love?
father,
The
What
and alienation so
is
the connection
—
is
not the
Scarlet Letter epitomized in the configuration of
mother, and child?
Would not
was supported by
that configuration
should
life
the explanation for feel-
between love and sexual passion? And what about family
secret ideal of
good and
has a nature, such
aspects of individual
ings of guilt, remorse, conscience?
society
be
entire psyche?
What
If
it
which? Where do our ideas of
is
be exempt from social supervision?
hypocrisy?
can
themselves up as
essential mixtures of
the nature of evil,
bad deed colors the
The individual and
set
how
the explanation for a society that op-
them? Are people, perhaps,
If
can they
so,
where does such an authority come
presses
good and bad originate?
if
they should be subject to authority ex-
evil,
ternal to themselves; but then
from?
and
social crime,
the best society be one where
society?
And
is
not that config-
uration denied by both parties to the struggle between self and society?
Women and society.
thority in males
—
If,
as
is
obvious, society invests power and au-
especially older males
exists to further the individualism of
expense of other groups?
women? and
children?
What
—can we not say that
one
specific
group?
society
And
at the
obligations does society have toward
How does
it
justify
and maintain the exclusion
women essentially different kinds of
human beings from men? and if so, how is the concept of individualism affected? If women are excluded from society, but also excluded
of
women from
from
a
authority? Are
concept of individualism, where do they belong? Are
to extend the idea of individualism to
all
human
we
ready
beings regardless of
sex? Regardless of whether they are essentially like or unlike one an-
other?
Can Hester
ever get up on the platform to preach her
own
sermon rather than to second Dimmesdale's?
The
other?
artist. Is
The
the artist necessarily
on one
side of this struggle or the
creative energies that produce art appear to inhere in in-
dividuals, not in social groups. Yet, evidently, art can be put to use in
•
98
•
Themes
The
in
Scarlet Letter
the service of society, or in the service of the individual.
Hester
fulfills
own
her
individualistic needs
To some extent she does both
wear her embroidered
gifts,
at the
collars
and
same
artist,
and serves
society as well.
When
the magistrates
time.
have they appropriated her
cuffs,
or has she co-opted them?
As human beings
Historical analysis.
pasts, so a nation
is
shaped by
its
are shaped by their personal
And, conversely,
collective past.
individual pasts are developed within a national setting.
was founded
ists,
As an
in a particular historical
Hawthorne
The
struggle.
believes.
It
way;
its
New
England
Puritan legacy
still
ex-
evidently a legacy of confusion and
is
own
anti-individual Puritans, by virtue of their
break
with Old World authority, created the context for an inevitable emer-
gence of individualism.
stands for him, he
When Dimmesdale
an
sees
A
in the
sky that
only imitating the Puritans' group egotism. They
is
saddle us with our past actions (condemning Hester to wear her letter
for
life),
yet themselves have
made
(or think they
have made) a decisive
break with the Old World. They deny that people are
though they have freedom. By rooting
own
their
free, yet act as
view of divine law
in their
unauthorized interpretation of the Bible, they invite pluralism.
To what extent
we
are
still
showing the
brought with them? Have
we
be better off discarding?
so, are
other hand, have
If
signs of the struggles they
kept anything of theirs that
we
capable of discarding
we thrown overboard anything
have been better kept?
erable to our cynicism
we would
it?
On
of theirs that
the
would
sense that everything matters pref-
Isn't their
and nihilism?
Is
the future of the nation going
to be a future of conformity or a future of self-development?
Language, symbolism, and meaning. The Scarlet Letter
ly
between the philosophy of
split
meaning
their
is
stable
character-actors,
still
profound-
who
think
struggling to impose
meanings on provocative but neutral symbols), and the philoso-
phy of
its
own
structure,
bitrary convention
that goes
and
which takes meaning
to be a matter of ar-
The
struggle for mastery
social negotiation.
on between Hester and the Puritans focuses with particular
urgency on the
it
its
and externally given (while
is
means? The
letter:
artist,
whose
letter
whom we
is it;
who
has the right to say what
have noted above as
.
99
.
a
channel of pure-
THE SCARLET LETTER
ly
self-expressive
and creative energy, has an important
prime manipulator of symbols. Nobody
mesdale) or images (Hester)
neglect.
Even when an
artist
is
is
who works
a person
whom
role here as a
with words (Dim-
society can afford to
not making an overt political statement,
the beauty of an artistic production carries a political charge.
beautiful,
is
it
supposed to be good.
side,
politics in
The
The human and
the answer
human
Scarlet Letter,
the natural.
field? If
would be
yes.
Is
and
art
there anything, finally, that exists
we
But even Pearl, as
see,
from the moment
—from the raw power con-
between Hester and the authorities as to which of them
more
to "keep" her, to the
to exist outside the
human
will get
which both mother and
subtle conflict by
how to
magistrates argue over
"interpret" her. Pearl, like nature, seems
field; but, like nature,
long as nobody looks at her. As soon as she
the
becomes propaganda.
one could imagine Pearl without her A,
of her birth, becomes the object of conflict
flict
ought to be on
it
whichever side we are on. Thus, philosophy quickly be-
"our"
comes
outside the
good,
If it is
If it is
is
human boundaries and becomes an
she does so only so
noticed, she falls within
object of
meaning and
interpretation.
We
are left then to
ponder the astonishing
finale in
which Hester
takes Pearl back to Europe and ensures that she marries there. In terms
of the themes enunciated, this
would appear
back the clock and repudiating
history.
to be a gesture of turning
It is,
one might
say, a thor-
oughly antinomian gesture, even though Hester then returns to work
out her destiny, takes up her
struggle with the magistrates.
but
how
letter,
It is
and concludes her interrupted
also a thoroughly Utopian gesture,
extraordinary to locate Utopia in the place that Americans
thought they had escaped from. Pearl has been saved
American
future.
Does
vidualism or against
America or against
close; but all
its
it?
it?
this event
imply a statement
—saved from an
in
In favor of society or against
The
action of
The
questions remain open.
100
favor of indiit?
Scarlet Letter
In favor of
comes
to a
THE SCARLET LETTER
AND "THE CUSTOM-HOUSE"
Vv hen the
plete,
first
draft of
Hawthorne
set
He was concerned
gloom of
the novel.
it
The
Scarlet Letter
aside to
that readers
He
compose
was about two-thirds coma long introductory sketch.
would be put
feared that
off
by the unvarying
fantasy and archaisms
its
would
not be attractive to readers entranced with realism, at that time a
new
literary
development. His introduction aimed to balance The
Scarlet Letter with a different kind of writing
cheerful,
more humorous, more
realistic.
And
— more
Beyond
and an extension of
this,
it
timely,
more
the essay developed a
context for reading The Scarlet Letter. Therefore,
to the novel
fairly
it is
both a contrast
it.
includes an important discussion of Hawthorne's
ideas about writing
and about himself
The passage about
as a writer.
the fictional world as a neutral territory has already served us well in
considering his setting. Although he focuses his discussion on the text
at
hand, The Scarlet Letter,
Custom-House"
a
critics
over the years have found "The
key statement about his general
literary
aims as well
as his particular situation as a writer in mid-nineteenth-century
ica.
The
Scarlet Letter can be read without
"The Custom-House" without The
however, the two produce
a
Scarlet Letter.
whole that
101
is
Amer-
"The Custom-House,"
When
different
read together,
from either
part.
THE SCARLET LETTER
"The Custom-House" contains
Hawthorne had worked with
portraits of real people
satirical
the Salem customhouse.
in
It
alludes
rather sharply to his political dismissal. Such topical material naturally
interested readers of his day,
led
many
reviewers to prefer
before The Scarlet Letter
under
and
own name,
his
it
The
to
humor and satire
Letter. Remember that
along with the
Scarlet
Hawthorne published only
have found
his psychological fanta-
be of more worth than his whimsical and
sies to
that the
Hawthorne we know
thorne at his best
—
is
short sketches
sketches encompassing a variety of tones and
topics. Later critical generations
own
this
well today
satirical pieces, so
—what we think of
only a selection of the Hawthorne
time. His original readers did not feel that
Hawto his
'The Custom-House"
detracted from the effect of The Scarlet Letter or that
the
as
known
inclusion in
its
same volume with the longer work was inappropriate.
much
of
what Hawthorne had
hand was
particular novel at
to say
about
But, since
his writing as well as the
articulated through his typical allegorical
and symbolical methods, the introduction probably did not
offer read-
much guidance in understanding The Scarlet Letter. One had to
understand Hawthorne in order to understand his intentions as they
ers
were explained
On
"The Custom-House."
in
"The Custom-House" says
the surface,
invent the story of
The
Scarlet Letter.
Hawthorne
that
He found
written up in
it
He
old papers on the second floor of the customhouse.
far
someone
transmitter and editor of
self as the
else's
from retreating from the present back to the
retrieve the past for his readers, helpfully
text with
Of
did not
some
presents him-
work.
In this role,
past, he
is
trying to
supplementing the archaic
commentary and explanation.
course, this story of discovery
original to
Hawthorne
of someone's papers
is
is
an invention (though not one
—the device of presenting a novel
as an edition
as old as the novel itself). Trained readers
not have been fooled for an instant, and to
make
would
sure that even the
most inexperienced among them knew what he was about, Hawthorne wrote,
"I
must not be understood
as affirming that, in the
dressing up of the tale, and imagining the motives and
sion that influenced the characters
•
who
102
•
figure in
it,
I
modes
of pas-
have invariabh
The
Scarlet Letter
and 'The Custom-House"
confined myself within the limits of the old Surveyor's half a dozen
On
sheets of foolscap.
the contrary,
my own
entirely of
invention" {33).
posed to believe
Why? Only
it,
what
Let us, therefore, look
Hawthorne
license as
the facts had been
if
Hawthorne undermines
the ve-
account of discovering the papers on the second floor of
racity of his
the customhouse.
the scarlet
have allowed myself, as to such
I
much
points, nearly or altogether as
provides, in
letter,
to lead us to ask: since
we
are not sup-
the purpose of this invention?
is
more
closely at the extensive preparation that
"The Custom-House,"
for this discovery of
symbolically the discovery of his literary subject. This
preparation constitutes nothing more than an imaginative autobiographical account of
house
why Hawthorne went
in the first place,
and what
befell
he returned to Salem and worked
tion.
MC
What
he?'
is
glorifying
have been
in the
disapproved of
What
custom-
of
to satisfy the
his literary voca-
my
forefathers to
kind of a business
God, or being serviceable
to
in life,
mankind
!'
a fiddler
M
(10).
Despite his sincere intentions to put aside writing and engage
of his
life
in his
— may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might
day and generation,
as well
work
murmurs one gray shadow
the other. 'A writer of story-books!
what mode of
to
there. Briefly, he says that
customhouse
in the
who
ghosts of his Puritan ancestors,
him
own day and
age,
Hawthorne found
the
in the
work boring and
manhood seemed to be seeping away. The
who are described in extended
were as good as dead already. One day, when busi-
the routine deadening. His
other employees of the customhouse
and
satirical detail)
ness
was
light,
and found
a
he was browsing through old papers
with gold thread (31). The
some deep meaning
it
in
it,
letter .4
letter intrigued
finely
embroidered
him. "Certainly, there was
most worthy of interpretation, and which,
were, streamed forth from the mystic symbol, subtly communi-
cating
(31).
upper story
manuscript wrapped around a "rag of scarlet cloth"
which, on inspection, proved to be the
as
in the
itself to
my
but evading the analysis oi
sensibilities,
Having read through The
Scarlet Letter,
we
my mind"
shall be pleased but
not surprised to find the motif of meaning and interpretation intro-
duced simultaneously with the
letter.
•
103
•
THE SCARLET LETTER
The papers
in
which the
outlines of the story of a
was wrapped turn out
letter
woman's
the
life,
woman
to contain the
cagily described as
one "who appeared to be rather a noteworthy personage
of our ancestors" (32).
Hawthorne accepted
in the
view
—what he interpreted
—
as
summons from the long-dead writer of these papers the obligation
to work up her story for publication. Unfortunately, the oppression of
a
life in
them,
customhouse was so great that he could not carry out
the
"An
promise.
—of no
from me"
Not
carried
had,
I
was dismissed from
customhouse did he
the
moment when
a man's
head drops
result of restoring
on over
him
man"
Salem and
most agreeable of
Among
(43).
his
head
and
his departure
situation. Like Hester,
a
from
letter.
con-
in
with Puritans. They
in conflict
is
disapprove of what he does and mark him (internally) with their
approval.
He
attempts to conform his
their judgments.
But
his
attempt
life
what they would
The upper
forest,
is
to adopt
is
increasingly
is
nothing
aware
less
than
their judgments, to live
to die.
story of the
where there
it is
and he
To accept
is
customhouse can be seen
human
an escape from
nation with the letter can be understood
that
and
dis-
he may, he cannot share
define out of his existence
the very principle of that existence.
by their law,
to their rules
fails; try as
their estimate of his literary ambitions,
that
lit-
structural duplication of Hester's
is its
Hawthorne
steel-
in considering this imagi-
nary autobiographical narrative, perhaps the most important
nection with The Scarlet Letter
it
safely
was again
completion of the story of the scarlet
worthy of notice
I
While the press
in ink, paper,
Hawthorne's story ends with
several points
to lose his
his life" [41]),
Hawthorne, "with
had made "an investment
his successful
was
it
find him-
seldom or never,
is
to his true vocation.
his "decapitation,"
his shoulders,"
off
pens, had opened his long-disused writing-desk, and
erary
—was gone
{36).
inclined to think, precisely the
had the
his
a gift connected with
great richness or value, but the best
until he
job ("the
on
and
able to write the story. Thus, traumatic though
self
am
entire class of susceptibilities,
"his" letter; and, indeed, while
•
104
•
law.
as analogous to the
Hawthorne's
fasci-
as his intuitive understanding
wondering about
its
import,
The
and "The Custom-House"
Scarlet Letter
he (accidentally, of course) puts
then, that
so, as
I
of burning heat; and as
initial
person.
And
red
A on
swer
—
may
Come
isn't
seemed
his breast. "It
to
me,
if
the letter were not of red cloth, but
moment, Hester and Hawthorne (whose
red-hot iron" (32). At this
shared
on
it
experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost
not be merely coincidence) are identified as the same
to think of
it,
Hawthorne, an
Hester, like
isn't
artist?
Hawthorne's book, which he had hoped to publish with
A
the cover, his defiant answer to the Puritans?
in that
it
a
double an-
represents his return to a despised profession and,
moreover, the commitment of his art to the defense of an outcast
woman.
If
"The Custom-House"
As
irresistibly
The
a story,
—
it
to
as "a citizen
else" (44).
to suppose that
charge.
so far as to suggest
and bringing Pearl to adulthood
Hester's leaving Boston
somewhere
we can even go
and publishing The Scarlet Letter are equivalent
that leaving Salem
of
analogy
In pursuit of this
identifies
Hester with her creator,
we have
Scarlet Letter carries an intense autobiographical
it
embroiders and beautifies, and
justifies Hester's
A. As a
work
and
his art.
And
thorne's defense of himself
at length
of literature,
this, art
—and
it is
Haw-
proceeds from a
deliberate, long-gestated decision to reject the right of those in au-
thority to determine the course of his
judgments on him.
In
What
he did had a consecration of
defending his right to
him how
to live,
Hawthorne works within
ation leads her to ever
personal
first.
But
more general and
situation
susceptible to generalization.
its
their
moral
own.
against the right of authorities to
live
emotive domain as Hester does at
thorne's
by imposing
life
as
the
artist
"Hawthorne
the
same personal and
just as her
personal situ-
abstract ideas, so
in
the
in the
tell
Haw-
customhouse
customhouse"
is
is
in-
terpretable, symbolically, as a representation of the situation of the
artist in
tion
was vigorously representing
tory, as
And
America. For by the middle of the nineteenth century the na-
devoted to business,
as a
formity.
democracy,
it
itself, in
the press
was very much attuned
who
in
public ora-
to consensus
The savagery of Puritan intolerance was
but the individual
and
free enterprise, the practical, the useful.
stood out
•
crowd was
in a
105
•
and con-
a thing of the past,
still
seen not merely
THE SCARLET LETTER
as different, but very likely as
who,
in
blameworthy
an energetic commercial
who dreams
for being so.
society, prefers to create
we
see here
some explanation
of Pearl's return to Eu-
rope, as well as her marriage to an aristocrat
Old World, marks of
artist
art,
instead of calculating, feels stigmatized for that prefer-
ence. (Perhaps
the
The person
works of
has no place
customhouse: that
in the
—another A word.)
marks of
difference can be
distinction.
In
The
Hawthorne's symbolic
is
statement.
In defending himself, then,
Hawthorne
suggests that the democratic
and commercial American nation has found no place
has indeed excluded the
We
can go further
artist
in
still
from
its
for the artist,
of legitimate citizens.
such an interpretation and take the
himself or herself as personifying the
for
its roll call
human
artist
qualities that art requires
creation: creativity, originality, imagination, the love of beauty.
Then "The Custom-House" proposes
The
respect for such qualities.
that the nation has
the imagination and creativity in a country that has
Because Hawthorne
jects the
is
no place or
essay becomes a passionate defense of
no use
for them.
standing up for "pure" imagination, he
compromise that
is
available to artists in America,
to write "realistic" works.
Work
the real world, enforcing
its
of this sort
claims
upon
which
makes imagination
us,
making us
reis
serve
forget
how
much our own fantasies have entered into the construction of what
we accept as objective reality. Hawthorne provides some samples of
realistic
writing in "The
we know
leagues. Therefore,
let
Letter
it
Custom-House"
that
not because he
is
matter of choice.
A
is
in his description
when he
writes a piece like
how
ironic
it
is
that these
The
a
comsame
Scarlet Let-
perhaps only what Hawthorne would have expected.)
To some degree,
more Utopian than
Letter.
it is
true defense of imagination calls for a total
descriptions were thought, by some, to be superior to
Ironic, or
The Scar-
incapable of literary realism;
mitment. (Under the circumstances,
ter.
of his col-
the stance that he takes in
"The Custom-House"
that adopted by Hester at the end of
The
is
Scarlet
She brought the community around partly by investing herself
in altruistic
deeds of social service, whereas Hawthorne takes a stand
on nothing short of absolute dedication
•
106
•
to his art.
On
the one hand,
The
Scarlet Letter
and "The Custom-House"
he seems to want to imply that any notion that there
world
is
possibly
self-delusion;
come
on the
other, that such a
into existence, but
it
would be
is
"only" a real
world could quite
totalitarian.
These two
apparently incompatible statements can be reconciled at another level
of discourse by understanding that a totalitarian society has simply
granted
all
everybody
force
authority to
else's.
safer
Outlawed
—witness the
native variety
—
is
ironically,
its
at
a
own
particular fantasies
fantasies acquire
devil in the forest.
once a
more
richer,
A
more
substantial
and outlawed
tremendous destructive
society
more open
to imagi-
satisfying place to live,
—one.
The
and
world depends upon the survival of imaginative freedom within
Artists serve the world,
ing their independence
and the democratic cause,
from majority
107
rule.
a
survival of a real
after
all,
it.
by declar-
Work
Bibliography of Selected Primary
EDITIONS OF
HAWTHORNE
WORKS
S
The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. William CharRoy Harvey Pearce, and Claude M. Simpson, general editors. Columbus:
vat,
Ohio
State University Press, 1964-. Sixteen
including
the tales, romances, sketches,
all
volumes have appeared
and
and
the late unfinished stories, as well as the American, French,
books and early
later letters,
letters. Still to
to date,
children's writings, drafts of
Italian
Note-
be published are the English Notebooks, the
and miscellaneous writings.
BOOKS
Fanshawe:
A
Tale. Boston:
Marsh
&c
Capen, 1828.
Twice-Told Tales. Boston: American Stationers Co., 1837.
Grandfather's Chair. Boston: E.
P.
Peabody;
New
York: Wiley &C Putnam,
1841.
Biographical Stories for Children. Boston: Tappan
& Dennet,
Twice-Told Tales (expanded edition). Boston: James Munroe
Mosses from an Old Manse.
The
Scarlet Letter:
New
A Romance.
York, Wiley
&
1842.
&
Co., 1842.
Putnam, 1846.
Boston: Ticknor, Reed, &C Fields, 1850.
The House of the Seven Gables. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
&
Fields, 1851.
True Stories from History and Biography. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
&
Fields,
1851.
The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told
Fields,
Tales. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
&
1852.
A Wonder-Book
for Girls
and Boys. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
The Blithedale Romance. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
109
&
Fields, 1852.
&: Fields, 1852.
THE SCARLET LETTER
Life of Franklin Pierce. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
Tanglewood
Tales for Girls
or,
edition. Boston:
Ticknor
&
&
Fields, 1853.
Fields, 1854.
The Romance of Monte Beni. Boston: Ticknor
1860.
Our Old Home.
Fields, 1852.
and Boys. Boston: Ticknor, Reed,
Mosses from an Old Manse. Revised
The Marble Faun,
&
Boston: Ticknor
&
Fields, 1863.
110
&
Fields,
Bibliography of Selected
Secondary Works
BIOGRAPHY
Loggins, Vernon. The Hawtbornes: The Story of Seven Generations of an
American Family.
New
York: Columbia University Press, 1951.
Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Mifflin
His Times. Boston: Houghton
in
Company, 1979.
Stewart, Randall. Nathaniel
Hawthorne: A Biography.
New Haven:
Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1948.
A
Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Biography.
New
York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1979.
CRITICAL STUDIES: BOOKS
Arvin,
Newton. Hawthorne. Boston:
Little,
Brown, 1929.
Biographical study focusing on Hawthorne's alienation.
Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne's
Career. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1976.
All of
Hawthorne's works considered
in
chronological order, tracing his
professional development.
Bell,
Michael Davitt. Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of
New
Eng-
land. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
Discusses historical novels about
day,
and compares them
Bell, Millicent.
New
York
Study of
to
New
England written
in
Hawthorne's
Hawthorne's works.
Hawthorne's View of the
Artist.
Albany: State University of
Press, 1962.
artists
and
artist figures in all of
Ill
Hawthorne's works.
THE SCARLET LETTER
Byers,
John
R., Jr.,
and Owen, James
A Concordance
J.
New
Nathaniel Hawthorne. 2
vols.
Alphabetical listing of
occurrences of every
all
to the Five
Novels of
York: Garland Publishing, 1979.
word
in
Hawthorne's nov-
extremely useful research tool.
els;
Chase, Richard. The American Novel and
Its
Tradition.
New
York: Anchor
Books, 1957.
Establishes Hawthorne's type of fiction as a "romance," essentially different
Cohen,
from the English
Criticism since
A
realistic
"novel."
The Recognition of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected
1828. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969.
B. Bernard, ed.
collection of important criticism through the years.
Colacurcio, Michael
J.,
ed.
Cambridge University
Hawthorne
as
New
Essays on The Scarlet Letter. Cambridge:
Press, 1985.
profound student of the Puritan
era.
Crews, Frederick C. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological
Themes.
A
New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
Freudian interpretation of Hawthorne's works.
Crowley,
J.
Donald, ed. Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage.
New
York: Barnes
and Noble, 1970.
A
collection of important critical essays
Erlich, Gloria.
New
and early reviews.
The Tenacious Web: Family Themes
in
Hawthorne's
Fiction.
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984.
Study of themes of the family
growing up
in
Feidelson, Charles.
the
in
Hawthorne's works as shaped by
his
Manning household.
Symbolism and American
Literature. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1953.
Hawthorne
as a symbolist
and pioneer of modernist
literary techniques,
especially in his use of the scarlet letter.
Fogle, Richard Harter. Hawthorne's Fiction:
man: University of Oklahoma
The Light and the Dark. Nor-
Press, 1964.
Patterning of Hawthorne's imagery and symbolism discussed to bring out
his techniques
and
his
worldview.
Male, Roy R. Hawthorne's Tragic Vision. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1957.
Hawthorne
as a
humanist with
a tragic vision of humanity.
Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Revised edition. Boston: Twayne
Publishers, 1983.
An extremely
thorne's
life
useful
and well-written general introduction
and writings.
•
112
•
to
Haw-
Bibliography of Selected Secondary
Hawthorne
Schubert, Leland.
Work
the Artist. Chapel Hill: University of
North
Carolina Press, 1944.
Study of Hawthorne's techniques.
A
Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne:
Critical Study.
Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1955.
Hawthorne
as a Christian
opposed
to the
optimism of
his time.
CRITICAL STUDIES: ARTICLES
Baym, Nina. "Thwarted Nature: Nathaniel Hawthorne
American Novelists Revisited: Essays
Fritz
A
Feminist."
as
In
Feminist Criticism, edited by
in
Fleischmann, 58-77. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.
feminist approach to Hawthorne's
tions vis-a-vis
men and
Colacurcio, Michael
Scarlet
J.
Letter."
women
characters and their situa-
authority.
"Footsteps of
A
ELH:
Anne Hutchinson: The Context
Journal
of
English
Literary
of The
History
39(1973):459-94.
Well-informed consideration of the relation between Anne Hutchinson's
doctrinal quarrel with the Puritans, and
attitude
its
implications for Hawthorne's
toward Hester.
Eisinger, Chester E.
"Hawthorne
as
Champion
of the Middle Way."
New Eng-
land Quarterly 27(1 954) :27-52.
Hawthorne's
Martin,
ideal
Terence.
one of balance.
is
"Dimmesdale's
Ultimate
Sermon."
Quarterly
Arizona
27(1971):230-40.
Dimmesdale's psychology as
man and
Puritan, especially as revealed in
the last scaffold scene.
Newberry, Frederick. "Tradition and Disinheritance
in
The
Scarlet Letter."
ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 23 (1977): 1-26.
Pertinent English history at the time of the action of
Reynolds, Larry
J.
"The
Scarlet Letter
The
Scarlet Letter.
and Revolution Abroad." American
Literature 57(1985):44-67.
Discussion of contemporary historical events reflected
ter,
in
The
Scarlet Let-
especially the French Revolution of 1848.
Ryskamp, Charles. "The
New
England Sources of The Scarlet
Letter."
Amer-
ican Literature 31(1959):257-72.
The most
New
authoritative study of Hawthorne's sources for, and use of,
England history
in
The
Scarlet Letter.
113
Index
A
Antinomianism,
21
7,
Feidelson, Charles, xxvi
Felt,
B
Joseph
B.,
31
Fields,
James
Fuller,
Margaret, 80
T., xxi
Bacon, Francis, 39
Bell,
Michael Davitt, xxvii
Bellingham, Richard, 16, 22, 31, 32, 59
Gaskcll, Elizabeth, xv, xxii
Borges, Jorge Luis, xxiv
Brook Farm,
xvii
Bryant, William Cullen, xvi
H
Hawthorne, Elizabeth
c
Chillingworth, Roger, 19-23, 26-28,
41-42,52, 59-62
xv, xvi, xxii
D
61
NH),
;
"Great Carbuncle, The," 6
1
House of the Seven Gables, The, xvii,
xxiii; "Man of Adamant, The," 6
Marble Faun, The, xvii; Mosses From
an Old Manse, xxii; "Rappaccini's
Descartes, Rene, 39
Dickens, Charles, xv, xxii
1
Dimmesdale, Arthur, 11, 16-18, 2128, 42-43, 52, 59, 67-72, 76-79,
84-86
Dumas, Alexandre,
of
Hawthorne, Maria Louisa (sister of
NH), 81
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: "Birthmark,
The," 61; Blithedale Romance, The,
xvii; "Custom-House, The," xxiii,
30, 101-107; "Egotism: or, the
Bosom Serpent," 61; "Ethan Brand,"
Chase, Richard, xxvii
Cooper, James Fenimore,
(sister
81
Daughter," 61; Twice-Told Tales, xvi,
xxii
xxii
Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody (wife of
NH), 81
Hester, see Prynne, Hester
Hibbins, Mistress, 31, 33-34, 42, 56,
59
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 91
114
Inde
Hobbes, Thomas, 39
Houghton, Mifflin, &: Co., xxiv
Howells, William Dean, xxiv, xxv
Poe, Edgar Allan, xvi, xxii
Hugo,
Prynne, Hester, xxviii-xxix,
Porte, Joel, xxvii
Predestination, 35
Victor, xxii
Hutchinson, Anne, 7-9, 32, 65
1
1-29, 52,
57, 59, 62-67, 68, 74-76, 79-82,
91-92, 104-105
Puritans: in history, 7-9, 30-31,
I
Irving,
34-
36, 38-40, 45-46, 99; in SL, xvii,
10-13, 16-18, 23-24, 27-29, 36,
Washington, xvi
52, 53-56, 85-87,
90-92
J
James, Henry, xxiv
Savage, James, 3
1
Scarlet letter: in SL, xx, 14-15, 25, 41
44, 83-92; in
'The Custom-House,"
103-105
Lawrence, D. H., xxiv, xxvii
Locke, John, 39
Scott, Walter, xv
Sedgwick, Catharine, xxii
Snow, Caleb H.,
M
3
1
Mather, Cotton, 31, 42
Melville,
Herman,
T
xxii
Thackeray, William Makepeace,
xxii
N
Thoreau, Henry David, 91
Narrator, 3-4, 9-10, 43, 46-57, 53,
72,
Transcendentalism, 91
93-94
u
o
Original Sin,
United States Magazine and
Democratic Review, xxii
35-36
O'Sullivan, John
Updike, John, xxiv
L., xxii
w
Waggoner, Hyatt,
Peabody, Elizabeth, 81
Pearl, 14, 22, 25,
28-29, 42, 52, 56-
xxvii
Wilson, John,' 16, 62
Winthrop, John,
60, 62, 106
11^
3
1-33
xv,
About
the
Nina Baym
is
Author
director of the School of Humanities
English at the University of
Illinois,
and professor of
Urbana-Champaign. She
the
is
author of three books on nineteenth-century American
fiction:
Shape of Hawthorne's Career (1976); Woman's Fiction:
A Guide
Novels by and about
Women
in
In addition she has written
Endowment
in
Antebellum
numerous scholarly essays
and reviews on American authors and American
er of fellowships
to
America, 1820-1870 (1978); and
Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction
America (1984).
The
literary topics.
Hold-
from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National
for the Humanities, she has served
on the
editorial
boards
of several journals including American Quarterly, American Literature,
New
England Quarterly, Legacy, and Tulsa Studies
Literature.
116
in
Women's
Literature /Criticism
$6.95
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter marks the flowering of a
vibrant and fully American literature. His portrayal of adultery and
bizarre
exile, of
human
motivation and death— a tale
set against the
harsh backdrop of Puritan America — widened the definition of the
way for other important American literary
Herman Melville.
Professor Nina Baym's full-length critical introduction to
novel and paved the
figures,
such as
Hawthorne's masterpiece explains the impact and lasting appeal of
The Scarlet Letter: "in the interweaving of choice and fatality,
Hawthorne's narrative approaches tragedy." Baym discusses the
structure and dynamics of Hawthorne's dark and stylized tale, its
ch .racters (including the scarlet letter A), and its shifting, layered
themes. She invites the reader to explore the many different aspects
and guises of Hawthorne, including his reclusiveness, his obsessive
interest in psychology, morality, and immorality, and his complex use
of myth, allegory, and symbolism.
Together with her own thought-provoking reading of the text,
Professor
Baym
offers a
comprehensive review of previous
critical
responses to The Scarlet Letter, a chronology, a bibliography, and an
index. Ultimately, this critical
monograph is an
invitation to read
and
appreciate Hawthorne at his best.
"Writing in a most readable
—
style,
Baym
examines the characters,
and symbolism
A superb companion
students of American literature."
setting, plot,
to the novel for
- Booklist
THE AUTHOR
Nina Baym is a professor of English and the director of the School
of Humanities at the University of Illinois. Her previous publications
include The Shape of Hawthorne' s Career and Woman s Fiction:
A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870.
Cover painting courtesy The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Design by Geoff Mandel
ISBN D-flD57-flDDl-7