ENGLISH ARTICLES

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s best-known novel is less about adultery and sin than about the debilitating nature of guilt. It was immediately recognized by critic Evert A. Duyckinck as an effective evocation of the consequences of Puritan repressions. However, another contemporary critic, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, charged that the novel was prurient, smelling of “incipient putrefaction.” The novel is set in 1642 in the Puritan town of Salem, Massachusetts. It begins with “The Custom-House” chapter, a device used to introduce the narrator, a Custom House surveyor who happens upon a worn scarlet letter A and a manuscript, which tells the story of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. The narrator says he is more or less objective, following the facts of the manuscript, but that he will interject some imagination into the tale. The story of Hester begins after her adulterous act has occurred with Dimmesdale and she stands with her illegitimate baby, Pearl, at the scaffold for public condemnation of her sin. Because she will not reveal the name of the baby’s father, she is sentenced to wear a scarlet letter A, embroidered with gold thread, upon her attire to remind her of her sin. At this point, Hester recognizes her estranged husband who calls himself Roger Chillingworth in order to ferret out the identity of Hester’s lover and to avenge himself.

In the novel, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is not made highly sympathetic. His refusal to acknowledge his sin and thus his daughter Pearl, render him rather pitiful. His guilt, fueled by his position in the church and by Chillingworth’s needling, prompt Dimmesdale to mortification of the flesh, including branding himself on the chest with the letter A. His spiritual guilt becomes a physical manifestation as Dimmesdale’s health quickly declines until he dies, only after he has confessed his sin publicly on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl.

Unlike Dimmesdale, Hester’s portrait is most sympathetic. She, more than any of the men, has a will of iron and survival skills that she evidently passes along to her daughter, Pearl. Hester is the rose from the wild bush, amid a crowd of weeds. She is exquisite, intelligent, and gifted with her needle. Ironically, Hester’s embroidered A becomes the vehicle by which the town recognizes her embroidery skill and thus employs her. She learns to accept her ostracism and channels her vivacious nature into the attire of her child Pearl, often described as wearing fanciful red velvet dresses in a time when slate gray and black are the predominant colors.

If there is evil in the novel it comes in the form of Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s estranged husband. Described as physically deformed, Chillingworth is spiritually depraved as well. Posing as a physician, Chillingworth calculates the destruction of Dimmesdale by preying upon Dimmesdale’s guilt. The only kind act Chillingworth undertakes is his bequeathal of land and money upon Pearl, Hester’s daughter. After the deaths of both Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, Hester disappears with Pearl to territories unknown. Years later when Hester reappears, she is without Pearl, who seems to have married happily and lives elsewhere. At the conclusion of the story, the narrator tells the reader that “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness … ” and ends with a view of Hester’s tombstone, inscribed with the motto, “On a field, sable, the letter A, gules.”