Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is stuffed with themes that border around aspects of religion and human morality such as sinning, confessing, and being penalized for such sin - much to the author’s intention of sending some strong moral lessons to his readership.
Article written by Victor Onuorah
Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Hawthorne’s move to go by such name as ‘The Scarlet Letter’ for the book’s title is symbolic in itself and already hints at the themes of penitence and punishment for the crime of adultery committed by two of the book’s major characters in Hester Prynne and the priest – Arthur Dimmesdale. There are some foundational themes as there are other subsets that still carry a vital message in them. The most important ones will be analyzed in this article.
These are probably the two most obvious themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and they are very clearly executed throughout the pages of the book – beginning from the first chapter.
Hester Prynne, who is the heroine of the book, is one of the characters who bear such guilts of sin and punishment. The sin for which she is being punished is that of adultery – which she commits with a Christian preacher, Arthur Dimmesdale.
Being she lives in the era of a Christian-inspired puritan society, her punishment becomes one of massive social shaming and disgrace – whereby she has to wear a dress with a large inscription of the letter ‘A’ appearing on her chest in blood red color.
Hester and Dimmesdale – two prominent characters harboring the most damnable sin of their era – appear to have had a contrite heart after the act, particularly with Hester, who is publicly announced and disgraced.
Readers could feel the genuineness of Hester’s contrite heart, having been legally married to Roger Chillingworth, her long lost husband – even though she would never regret the love she feels for Dimmesdale and the product of such love being her child, Pearl.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, through ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ may have tried to point out the sheer inequality of the purity society before the rule of law. Hawthorne’s time is critical of several aspects of Puritanism, and here questions why preacher Arthur Dimmesdale doesn’t get served the same amount of humiliation as Hester gets.
Though an argument can be raised that the executors of the puritan laws don’t punish Dimmesdale because they do not know for sure if he committed the crime – especially with Hester refusing to give that information out. Still, one can easily sense that they don’t do enough to get the man who’s responsible.
Two hypotheses here are one; their interest in not punishing men but the women in such crimes. Two, Dimmesdale’s religious status makes him a very important person, so the executors would be tricky with handling a case of such a class.
There is a massive dose of talks and meetings about and with witches, and even the devil – who is referred to in the book as ‘The Black Man.’ These subjects are part of what gives the book its dark, spooky ambiance characteristic of gothic fiction.
Mistress Hibbins is a high-profile suspect whose behavior is, by a puritan society’s standards, termed diabolic and hellish. Hibbins goes about negatively influencing people – like Hester and Pearl – instilling strange, anti puritan mentality in them, conducting and attending meetings and conventions where they invoke and commune with ‘The Black Man’ or devil himself.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing style is typically one that deploys a lot of metaphors and symbolism to execute his works – with the end goal often having a ton of morals to impact on the reader.
Hawthorne’s works are mostly mysterious, somber, and morose in terms of their themes and storylines. ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is no different from his typical style and follows his trademark standard for novel writing.
The tone in ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is mostly sad and contrite, but also critical and disenchantment about puritan cultures, their leaders, and their tendency for being highly hypocritical.
Hawthorne brings the pages of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ to life with his heavy use of figurative expressions. Among the figurative language used include metaphor – which seems to appear pervasively throughout the book.
The author also uses tools like irony and personification to highlight his critiques of the purity legacy and traditions.
This is perhaps the foremost symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book and represents a variety of things. One such thing is that it serves as an identity for the transgressor or sinner of adultery – as is the case with the protagonist, Hester Prynne.
Hester’s daughter’s character also has an allegorical attachment to its overall essence. Pearl is a direct repercussion of Hester’s son of adultery, but also a symbol of hope for a better life, in the latter part of the book.
In the book’s reality, he is the husband of Hester, but in terms of the motif to which he represents, Chillingworth proves to be as his name appears; cold. He’s a cold and means man towards the people around him, and this is perhaps one of the reasons Hester could never find love with him.
Sin and punishment are probably the two most discussed themes in ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ and these subjects are pervasive and heavily indulged in by the author throughout the book.
The color red represents sin, and in the book’s case, the sin of adultery – which Hester, the protagonist, is indicted of from the onset of the book.
Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes the third person narrative technique in his book, ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ as this allows the narrator to tell his story subjectively – but from a rounded, three-dimensional standpoint on the characters.