The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter, (1850) is considered Hawthorne’s masterpiece. The novel is set in Boston (New England), in Puritan colony in the 17th century, and tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout, Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, the relationship between sin and guilty conscience, American morbid moralism, isolation and frustration for a life without emotions and passions.

The Scarlet Letter is introduced by a sort of preface (called "The Custom House") in which the writer, a stand-in for Hawthorne, purports to have found documents and papers that substantiate the evidence concerning Prynne and her situation. The narrator also claims that when he touched the letter it gave off a "burning heat...as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red hot iron." Previously, Hawthorne worked in the Salem Custom House several times, losing his job as a result of administration changes.

We only have four characters, all the others are functional to the development of the plot:

  1. Hester Prynne: impulsive, passionate, outcast, strong, beautiful, corageous and heroic. She submits to everything on the outside, but inside she feels she is paying a right price for her sin. She manages to re-build her life from that situation because she is strong inside.

  2. Chillingworth (or Dr Prynne): the villain, revengeful, pure intellect without passion, uncapable to understand human soul. He is bad throughout the novel but he even worsens his wickdness and this is evident in the changing of his physical appearance. Chillingworth’s behaviour shows as the sin of revenge es even worse than the one of hypocrisy.

  3. Rev. Dimmesdale: uncapable to will, passionate, weak, passive, hypocritical. He is seen through the eyes of the Puritans (a brillian and clever person), but as the novel goes on, he reveals his weakness. He is uncapable to confess and to endure his solitary guilt. His hypocrisy leads him to torture himself and to his final death.

  4. Pearl: Hester and Dimmesdale’s daughter, she is freedom, innocence, wisdom. She obeys no rules unless she wants to. She is Hester’s ransom. She is always portrayed in brilliant colours (in contrast with her mother’s black dress) and she always plays in the sun (the same sun that never lightens her mother).

The main symbol is the red letter "A" (actually worn in New England). At the beginning of the novel it is a negative symbol (it stands for "adulteress"), then it becomes positive (people read it as "able"). It is a symbol of America’s morbid moralism, need for freedom, isolation, frustration, and potentialities. It is red as red has been, in the US in particular, a symbol of scandalous ideas and behaviours.

 

Plot:

Hester Prynne, the heroine, is a young married woman whose husband was supposed to have died. She begins an adulterous relationship with Arthur Dimmesdale, the highly regarded town minister, and becomes pregnant with a daughter, whom she names Pearl. She is then publicly vilified and forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her clothing to identify her as an adulteress, but loyally refuses to reveal the identity of her lover. She accepts the punishment with grace and refuses to be defeated by the shame inflicted upon her by her society, and gradually regains her community's favor through good deeds and admirable character.

Dimmesdale, knowing that the punishment for his sin could be his execution, does not admit his relationship with Prynne. He thus maintains his righteous image, but internally he is dogged by his guilt and the shame of his weakness and hypocrisy. The reappearance of Prynne's husband, Roger Chillingworth, causes him further emotional strife, as Chillingworth covertly exacts his revenge on Dimmesdale by exacerbating his guilt while keeping him physically alive. Ultimately, Dimmesdale contracts a mysterious disease as a result of his shame, which eventually kills him, just moments after he admits his guilt publicly.

 

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