The theme of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, TheScarlet Letter, revolves around one sin: adultery. This sin manages to ruin the lives of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. One wonders whether the sin is actually as terrible as the Puritans believe it to be, though. They ruin all natural good with their “harsh determinism and moralism” (Magill 468). Hawthorne shares this opinion through symbolism and imagery.
Hester is a prime example of how natural good is destroyed in a strict Puritan society. The most obvious instance is the transformation of Hester from a passionate woman to a stern Puritan (at least on the outside). She sacrifices her natural beauty by exchanging her colorful clothing for a more sober gray and hiding her lustrous, shining hair under a cap. She hides her natural beauty in an attempt to atone for her sin. However, what of the natural good (Pearl) that results from her sin? The townspeople don’t see her as such. Instead they refer to her as a child of the devil. Certainly, committing adultery is wrong, but it’s only imposing evil upon evil to make Hester wear the scarlet “A” and visit her disgrace upon an innocent child. It’s punishment enough for her to have the entire town know of her crime and “become the general symbol at which the preachers … might point…and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion” (76). This quote reveals that Hester now symbolizes everything that a woman should not do. Also, although Hester could feasibly build a new life for herself and Pearl somewhere else, she elects to stay where she is. Her reasoning is that “her sin, her ignominy, were the roots she had struck into the soil” (76-77). This conveys the image of Nester’s sin growing roots which force her to remain forever in a society that shuns her and her child …a society that punishes and degrades the natural gift of love she shares with Dimmesdale.
While Hester bears her ignominy openly, Arthur Dimmesdale suffers terribly because he tries to conceal his sin, being afraid of what society will think of him. More often, as the novel proceeds, he is observed “putting his hand over his heart” (117). This motion symbolizes his hidden sin. Yet, the only reason he hides it is because of the light in which his society will view it. He becomes extremely ill in his attempt to withhold the truth, and even turns morbid and interprets almost everything as a sign of his sin. For example, the night he sleepwalks to the scaffold, he beholds “the appearance of an immense letter – the letter A – marked out in lines of dull red light” (152). This quote has both imagery and symbolism. First, it creates a picture of a peaceful, dark, night sky suddenly disturbed by a lurid, red streak forming the letter “A.” Of course, it also symbolizes (or at least it does to Reverend Dimmesdale) his and Hester’s sin of adultery. Now, here’s a man who was placed upon this earth to serve God and act as His shepherd. Yes, he sinned, but who doesn’t? Yet, this poor man feels that he can no longer be a messenger of God. He believes this so strongly that his health slowly deteriorates until he can barely walk, and eventually he dies on the scaffoldafter confessing to his sin. Once again, Dimmesdale’s natural good (his ability to proclaim God’s word) is ruined by his society’s view on sin.
Though it is sometimes hard to see, Roger Chillingworth also possesses natural good. It’s just that it disappears almost immediately after he finds Hester, the center of ignominy, on the scaffold. Not much is seen of him until he moves into a boarding house with Reverend Dimmesdale, supposedly to watch over his health. The two build an intellectual “friendship,” but mistrust each other the entire time. One night, while Dimmesdale sleeps, Chillingworth removes his vestment, revealing what is eventually discovered to be the letter “A,” on his chest. Such a look of villainous enjoyment masks Chillingworth’s features that one “would have no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious human soul is …won into his kingdom” (135). This conjures up the image of the devil cackling with hellish delight over a lost soul. After achieving his goal of discovering Pearl’s father, Chillingworth sets out to make Dimmesdale’s life a living hell. After Dimmesdale dies confessing, though, “all (Chillingworth’s) strength and energy – all his vital and intellectual force – seemed at once to desert him insomuch that he positively withered up and shriveled away…like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun” (254). This plant imagery shows how once the evil purpose that sustains Chillingworth’s life dies, he must also die. Once though, he was a prominent, learned scholar. However, when he realizes his honor will be “besmirched (as) the husband of a faithless woman” (74), he turns all his intellectual capabilities towards finding and torturing the other partner in Hester’s crime, thus destroying his natural good.
Hawthorne doesn’t believe in the Puritan way of dealing with what is supposedly sin. Throughout the novel he shows his contempt and disgust of Puritan society and morality with many symbols, images, and satiric or ironic little jabs. Nothing is allowed to be pleasurable in Puritan society. Pleasure, itself, was a sin. To put it simply, Puritan society couldn’t see the beauty of the rose because of the prickles of the thorns.
Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. USA: Perma Bound Classics, 1987.
Magill, Frank N. ed., Masterpieces of American Literature. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993. pp. 467-478.
