EC 303 American Literature

Paper Name            : EC 303 American Literature

Name                        : Amita C. Jani

 Roll No.                   : 10

Semester                 : III

Topic                          : The Scarlet Letter: Thematic Study of novel

Date                           : 22/10/2011

Submitted to          : Dr.Dilip Barad

                                      Department of English,

                                      Bhavnagar University.

About the Scarlet Letter :

The scarlet letter is considered Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous novel and first quintessentially American novel in style, theme and language set in seventeenth century puritan Massachusetts. the novel centers around the travels of Hester Prynne, who gives birth to a daughter Pearl after an adulterous affair. Hawthorne’s novel is concerned with the effect of the affair rather than the affair itself, using Hester’s public shaming as a springboard to explore the lingering taboos of puritan new England in contemporary society.

The scarlet letter was an immediate success for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the United States was one hundred year old at the time of the novel’s publication. Hawthorne’s novel offered a uniquely American style, language, set of characters and most importantly a uniquely American central dilemma. Beside entertainment then Hawthorne’s novel had the possibility of goading change, since it addresses a topic that was still relatively controversial, even taboo. But Hawthorne was not concerned with a puritan affair here, though novel’s characters are. Hawthorne choose to leave out the details of the adulterous rendezvous between Hester and Dimmesdale entirely he was concerned with the after math of the affair – the shaming of Hester, the raising of a child born of sin, and the values of a society that would allow a sin to continue to be punished long after it would seem reasonable. Hawthorne takes advantage of his greatest assets as a writer – the interiority of his writing, his exploration of thoughts and emotions and uses them to humanize all the parties involved in the affair, as well as to demonize the thoughts that consumed by it. Chilling worth, notably, becomes the embodiment of puritan values, which led people to lynch and destroy in the name of God, but motivated in large measure by the people’s own repressed sins of lust, greed and envy.

The Scarlet Letter also becomes intensely popular upon publication because it holds the good fortune of becoming one of America’s first mass published books. The novel becomes equivalent of semi political track and subject of endless discussion and debate. No doubt influencing change, the Scarlet Letter has been adapted many times on film, on television and on the stage. The first film was a 1917 black and white silent film. While the most recent and much maligned film version opened in 1995 staring Demy Moore and Gamy Oldman. Thus novel became popular not only with the masses, it was heralded as “appropriate” reading deposit its attention to adulterous love.

Major themes :

1)      Public Guilt v/s Private Guilt :

Perhaps the foremost purpose of the Scarlet Letter is to illustrate the difference between shaming someone in public and allowing him or her to suffer the consequences of an unjust act privately. According to the bible, adultery was capital sin that required the execution of both adulterer and adulteress – or at the very least, serve public corporal punishment. Even if the husband wanted to keep his wife alive after she committed adultery, the law insists that she would have to die for it. It is in this environment that Hester commits adultery with Dimmensdale, but we come to see that the public shaming cannot begin to account for all the complexities of the illicit relationship or the context of it what, Hawthorne sets out to portray, private torture and guilt and emotional destruction of the people involved in the affair, are more than enough punishment for the crime. We wonder whether the state or society has any right to impose law in private matters between citizens. Does adultery really have no impact upon the lives of others? If not it should not be seen as a crime against the village and the Bible reading says that the public need not step into punish a crime when we ourselves have our own sins to be judged. Each person, suffers enough already for his or her own sins.  

2)      Punishment v/s Forgiveness :

One of the more compeering themes of the novel’s embodied by Chillingwarth who seems the arbiter of moral judgment in the story, since Dimmesdale – the minister and the supposed purveyor of righteousness – is himself tainted as a crime. Chillingwarth is surprisingly forgiving of Hester’s crime. We sense that he understands why she would forsake him. After all, he is deformed he is older; he has not been nearby, while she is beautiful and passionate. We get the feeling that Chillingwarth’s self-loathing a ways him to forgive Hester, but this attribute also increases the relentless and rage which he goes after Dimmesdale. In Dimmesdale desires and while he himself does not possess, like a leech, he’s out to suck the minister for his life force, not just to punish with his wife, but also symbolically appropriate Dimmesdale’s virility, and as the novel continues Chillingwarth seems to grow stronger while Dimmesdale seems to grow weaken. That pattern continues until Dimmesdale dies in an act of defiance, his public demonstration of guilt, which essentially leaves Chillingwarth stripped bare of his power to punish or forgive.

3)      The Scarlet Letter :

The Scarlet Letter is symbolic in a number of different ways, but perhaps most in the ways that the sinner’s choose to wear it. Hawthorne’s generative image for the novel was that of a woman charged with adultery and forced to wear the letter. A upon her clothes, but upon wearing it decided to add fancy embroidery as if to appropriate the letter as a point of pride. Hawthorne read about this choice in an actual case in 1844, recorded it in his journal, and thus the Scarlet Letter was born as Hester Prynne’s story. Hester, a knitter by trade, sees the letter as a burden lay on by the society, an act of community – enforced quit that she is forced to bear, even though it seems to make little difference for her private thoughts. Dimmesdale, however, as the town minister, wear his own Scarlet. A burned upon his flesh, since it is the community’s range, he fears the most. Thus we see the difference between a woman who has made peace with the crime publically confesses and endure the suffering the community imposes, and a man who imposes his own punishment because he cannot bear to reveal the crime to the community.

4)      Sin and Judgment :

Hawthrone’s novel consistently calls into question the notion of sin and what is necessary for redemption. Is Hester’s initial crime is a sin? She married Chillingwarth without quite understanding the commitment she made and then she had to live without him while he as ‘abroad’, then fell in love with Dimmesdale – perhaps discovering feeling for the first time. Is the sin, then community adultery with Dimmesdale and breaking her vow and commitment or is the sin first marrying Chillingwarth without thinking it through and what is Chillingwarth’s sin? Essentially, abandonees or failure to forgive her once he knew of the crime? Is Dimmesdale’s sin his adultery or his hypocritical failure to change his sermon themes after the fact? Or are all of these things sins of different degrees? For each kind of sin, we wonder if the punishment fits the crime and what be done, if anything to redeems the sinner in the eyes of society as well as in the eyes of the sinner himself. We also should remember that what the puritans thought of as sin was different from what went for sin in Hawthorne’s time, both being different from what many Christians thinks of as sin today. This should not teach us moral relativism, but it should encourage us to be way of judging others.

5)      Civilization v/s Wilderness :

Pearl embodies the theme of wilderness over against civilization. After all, she is a kind of embodiment of the Scarlet Letter: Wild, passionate and completely obvious to the rules, mores and legal structure of the time. Pearl is innocence, in way, an individualistic passionate innocence. So long as Dimmesdale is alive, Pearl seems to be a magnet that attracts Hester and Dimmesdale, but as soon as Dimmesdale dies, Pearl seems to lose her vigor and becomes a natural girl, able to marry and assimilate into society. The implication is thus that Pearl truly was a child of lust or love, a product of activity outside the boundaries imposed by strict puritan society.

6)      The Town v/s The Woods :

In the town, Hester usually is confronted with the legal and moral consequences of her crime. Governor comes to take her child away, Chillingwarth reminds her of her deed, and she faces Dimmesdale in the context of sinner. But whenever Hester leaves the town and enters the woods, a traditional symbol of unbridled passion without boundaries, she is free to rediscover herself. The woods also traditionally emblematize darkness. In the darkness of night, Hester is free to meet Dimmesdale, to confess her misgivings and to live apart from the torment and burdens of the guilt enforced by the community.

7)      Memories v/s Present :

Hester Prynne’s offense against society occurred seven years earlier, but she remains punished for it. Hester learned remains punished for it. Hester learned to forgive herself for her adultery but society continues to scorn her for it. Hester reaches peace with her affair and in that peace comes to see the town as insufficiently forgiving in its thoughts and attitudes. Pearl is enough of a reminder of the wild choices in her past and as Pearl grows up, Hester continues to live in the present rather than in the past. Reverend Dimmesdale, mean while, is seems to reflect the town’s tendency to punish long after the offense. In suppressing his own confession, Dimmensdale remains focused on coming to terms with a sinful past instead of looking squarely at the problems of the present.

8)      The Custom House :

The custom house is largely an autobiography sketch describing Hawthorn’s life as an administrator of the Salem custom house. It was written to enlarge the tale of the Scarlet Letter, since Hawthorne deemed the story too short to print by itself. It also serves as an excellent essay on society during Hawthorne’s times, and it allows Hawthorne to add an imaginative device the romantic pretense of having manuscript of the Scarlet Letter in the custom house.

9)      The Nature of Evil :

The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the “Black Man”, the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the “Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingwarth, Minister Hibbins and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child.

The character also tries to root out the causes of evil:

                    I.            Did Chillingwarth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the “Evil” she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms?

                  II.            Is Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed responsible for Chillingwarth’s transformation into a malevolent being?

                III.            The nature of evil is symbolically reflected in different interpretation of superstitious symbolically “Black Man”.

10)   Identity and Society :

After Hester is publically names and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned and leaving the Massachusetts Bay colony would allow her to remove the Scarlet Letter and resume a former life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingwarth tease her that the town fathers are considering letting her remove the letter. Hester’s behavior is premised on her desire to determine it for her. To her running away of removing the letter would be an acknowledgement of society’s power over her. She would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desire to escape. Instead Hester, refiguring the Scarlet Letter as a symbol of her own experience and character. Her past sin is a part of which she is to pretend that is never happened would mean denying a part of her. This Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.

Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As the community’s minister, he is more symbol than human being. Except for Chillingwarth, those around the minister awfully ignore his obvious anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately, Dimmesdale never fully recognize the truth of what Hester has learned; that individually and strength are gained by quite self-assertion and by a reconfiguration, not a resection, of one’s assigned identity.