1) the prison: Hawthorne opens his novel with the description of the prison, meaning isolation, and the prison door. The prison, described as an "ugly edifice", and as the "black flower of civilized society", is a clear symbol of loneliness and estrangement from the rest of the world, in that case of the Puritan Community. This "foreshadows the life that Hester will lead" even after she leaves it. Hester lives in a "prison of alienation": as a matter of fact she moves away from the town, but remains near, in the outskirts, anyway out of the Community and she lives as an outcast in a secluded life. She herself Hester prefers that and tries to avoid any contact with them because the Community sees her as an outcast, a condition that Hester seems to accept and somehow accept.

Even Reverend Dimmesdale lives in a prison, but made up of guilt and remorse because he is not able to confess his sin publicly. This imprisonment of unconfessed sin deteriorates his health and peace with God.

Chillingworth, too, is in jail as he imprisons himself in his intentions to take revenge on Dimmesdale. All his actions aims at tormenting the young minister.

2) The rosebush : just out of Hester’s prison, Hawthorne describes a wild rosebush that with its charm gives a "fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner". That plant symbolizes Hester, her wild and fragrant soul, and the "sweet and moral blossom" of the story. Its beauty surpasses all that is around it and its colour gives life to the ugliness of the prison, just like Hester appears on the scaffold, despite her awful condition. It may also represent God’s pity on her and her child. The rosebush somehow recalls the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom, that mark of shame that she has to wear as a sign of her sin: the heroine transforms this plain letter into an elaborately gold embroidered "A" and from a mark of shame it becomes a mark of superiority, throughout the story the more she garnishes that terrible mark with gold thread, the less the people notice it, as if that letter – like a wild rosebush – contained in itself a sign of goodness and loveliness, despite its initial appearance.

3) The scaffold: another important symbol in the story is the scaffold and three are the scenes in which the scaffold is relevant to the story. The Puritans used it as an object to punish sinners or discipline them for their actions. The Puritans were "people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful". For them the scaffold was as a symbol of God’s scaffold on the great judgement day. The first scaffold scene is at the beginning of the novel, when Hester bravely stands before the pitiless crowd with little Pearl in arms. She stands there alone with her baby not revealing the identity of her lover. Of course minister Dimmesdale is in great difficulty standing before the crowd on the scaffold and he is tortured by remorse even if he can not reveal his responsibility. The second scaffold scene happens in the middle of the story when Dimmesdale tries to confess his sin standing on the scaffold during a night when the whole Community is sleeping and cannot see what Dimmesdale is trying to do. Upset by remorse, he cries aloud, but no one hears him. Hester and Pearl, returning from the governor’s deathbed, see him and join him and the three stand on the scaffold holding hands but nobody sees them, except Chillingworth who is standing nearby. The third scaffold scene is at the end of the story: It is dayl and Dimmesdale has just pronounced one of his best sermons. He is feeling weak and tired and as he makes to walk through the crowd, he comes across Hester and Pearl that are standing nearby. He calls out for them and asks them to help him get up the scaffold. He at last stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl and publicly acknowledges that he is Pearl’s father dying just after admitting that.

4) The meteor : it illuminates the night scene when Dimmesdale cries out his sin but nobody of the Community sees him. That meteor, tracing a bright "A" in the sky, for Dimmesdale means "adultery", so a sign of sin for him, while those few people who see it interpret that same meteor as "angel", because in that very night Governor Winthrop dies.

5) Pearl : Hester and Dimmesdale’s daughter is a very significant symbol in the novel. Pearl is the symbol of their forbidden love, their immoral love affair. Like the scarlet letter, Pearl’s function seems the one to remind Hester of her shame and sin and she is defined "the scarlet letter endowed with life!"’ Pearl also represents "the great price" that Hester will pay for her sin but also the only precious gift that Hester has in her life and she loves her intensely and always tries to defend her from the Community’s bad intentions.

6) The scarlet letter "A" : this symbol can have several different meanings depending on the context of the story. First of all this letter is a symbol of Hester’s adultery with the purpose to publicly punish and humiliate her. Hester feels the letter as her agony and loneliness becoming the outcast of her Puritan society. For seven years she lives alone with her child in the outskirts of the town. But as the years pass by and as she is more involved in helping the sick, everybody forgets the original meaning of the letter and starts seeing it as a symbol of an able person and not a sinner. Some contemporary critic has interpreted that "A" as the marginalization and loneliness of the "Artist", and Hester for her ability to embroider, is an artist. Some others have read that "A", for its sign of transgression, as "America" whose soul constantly divided between tradition and transgression, between the wild spirit of discovery and the feeling of sin, is so well described and interpreted in the novel. However that scarlet, scandalous letter, makes Hester as a person different from the rest of the others, somebody whose aura of sin necessarily isolates her but that eventually makes her untouchable, almost holy. She had the merit to have dared, to have gone beyond the limits imposed by the dull collectivity who was still slave to that morality imported from the Old Continent and that, in the new "Land of Promise" might have no reason to survive. So Hester represented America, that America capable of real revolutions.

(Isabella Marinaro)

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