An Analysis of the Diversity of Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter

An Analysis of the Diversity

of Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter

Abstract:

With the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne become famous as the greatest writer living then in the United States and his reputation as a major American author has been on the increase ever since. Hawthorne uses the symbolism so skillful that it enhances the artistic effects of his work greatly. This paper analyses the symbolism in this novel mainly in the following aspects: the changing symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter A and many objects that are described in the novel to make the symbolism clear to the readers.

Keywords: The Scarlet Letter;symbolism;diversity

摘 要：

在1850年《红字》出版后，霍桑成为当时生活在美国的最伟大的作家，他作为美国大作家的声誉不断上升至今。作者对象征手法的熟练使用大大增强了作品的艺术效果。本文从大写字母A的多种象征意义以及景物寓意等方面入手，浅析《红字》中的象征手法。

关键词：《红字》；象征；多义性

Ⅰ.About the author and the story

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Nathaniel Hawthorne is considered to be the first greatest American fiction writer in the moralistic tradition. His works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark romanticism, cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity. Many of his works are inspired by Puritan New England, combining historical romance loaded with symbolism and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution. He write two collections of short storys: Twice-Told Tales and Mosses from an old Manse. All these works, however,bring him neither great fame nor any fortune large enough to relieve him of the harassment of poverty. It is The Scarlet Letter which do it for him:not only do the book make his name as a writer of no small talent, it also bring him the money which make him finally financially comfortable.His work The Scarlet Letter that is notable for its allegory and symbolism is regarded as the first symbolic novel in American literature. The novel revolves around one major symbol: the scarlet letter A. Besides, some other objects that are described in the novel have their symbolic meanings too.So The Scarlet Letter is a novel abounds in symbols of various kinds.

Now let us take a look at The Scarlet Letter in which all elements of Hawthorne’s thinking and aesthetics seem to find an adequate expression.The story is simple but very moving. It begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter A on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to

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America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the minister’s torments and Hester’s secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on the man’s breast , which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home

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from a visit to a deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red A in the night sky. Hester can see that the minister’s condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet A.

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After the brief introduction about the author and the story let us have a look at the symbolic significance of the scarlet letter A and many other objects that are described in the novel.

Ⅱ.The Changing Symbolic Meaning of the Scarlet Letter A.

In this novel, the scarlet letter A changes its meaning many different times. This change is significant. It shows growth in the characters, and the community in which they live. The letter A begins as a symbol of adultery. It then becomes a symbol of alone and alienation, and finally it becomes a symbol of able, angel and admirable.

A. A for Adultery

The letter A, worn on Hester's bosom, is a symbol of her adultery against Roger Chillingworth. This is the puritan way of treating her as a criminal, for the crime of adultery. The puritan treatment continues, because as Hester walks through the streets, she will be looked down upon as if she is some sort of demon from hell that commits a terrible crime. This letter is meant to be worn in shame, and to make Hester feel unwanted. \"Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment…(Hawthorne,

The Scarlet Letter 74) Hester is ashamed of her sin, but she chooses not to show it.

She commits this sin in the heat of passion, and fully admits it because, though she is ashamed, she also receives her greatest treasure, Pearl, out of it. She is a very strong woman to be able to hold up so well against what she must face. Many will

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have fled Boston, and seek a place where no one knows of her great sin. Hester chooses to stay though, which shows a lot of strength and integrity. Any woman with enough nerve to hold up against a town, which despises her very existence, and to stay in a place where her daughter is referred to as a \"devil child,\" either has some sort of psychological problem, or is a very tough woman.

B. A for Alone and Alienation

The scarlet letter A also stands for Hester's lonely life in New England. After she is released, Hester lives in a cottage near the outskirts of the city. \" It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants.\" (Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 75) Hester's social life is virtually eliminated as a result of her

shameful history. Hester comes to have a part to perform in the world with her native energy of character and rare capacity.\" However, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came to contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from moral interests… seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart.\"( Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 78) Hester has no friends in the world, and little Pearl is the only companion of her lonely life, so the scarlet letter A also is a symbol of the words \"alone\" and \"alienate\".

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C. A for Able, Angel and Admirable

Later, the scarlet letter A changes its meaning into being able, angel and admirable. The townspeople who condemned her now believe the scarlet letter to stand for her ability to her beautiful needlework and for her unselfish assistance to the poor and sick. \"The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness is found in her so much power to do and power to sympathize - that many people refuses to interpret the scarlet letter A by its original signification.\"( Hawthorne,

The Scarlet Letter 148) At this point, a lot of the townspeople realize what a noble

character Hester possesses. \"Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge? It is our Hester – the town's own Hester – who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comforting to the afflicted!\"( Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 149) The townspeople soon begin to believe that the badge served to ward off evil, and Hester grows to be quite admirable amongst the people of the town. Hester overcomes the shame of her sin through the purity and goodness of her soul. Unselfishly offering her time and love to those who need her most proves that she is not worthy of the fate which has been dealt to her.

The three changes in The Scarlet Letter are significant; they show Hester Prynne’s response to the scarlet letter A is a positive one:they show the progressive possession of her sin, her lonely life, and her ability. Hester is a strong admirable woman who goes through more emotional torture than most people go through in a lifetime.

Ⅲ. The Symbolic Meanings of some other Objects

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In The Scarlet Letter, most of the objects that are described have many symbolic meanings. The novel is filled with light and darkness symbols because it represents the most common battle of all time, good versus evil. When Hester and her daughter are walking in the forest, Pearl exclaims:\" Mother, the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on you bosom. Now see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet.\" (Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 168) Hester tries to stretch her hand into the circle of light, but the sunshine vanishes. She then suggests that they go into the forest and have rest. This short scene actually represents Hester's daily struggle in life. The light represents what Hester wants to be, which is pure. The movement of the light represents Hester's constant denial of acceptance. Hester's lack of surprise and quick suggestion to go into the forest, where is dark, shows that she never expected to be admitted and is resigned to her station in life. Another way light and darkness is used in symbolism is in the way Hester and Dimmesdale's plan to escape is doomed. Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the shadows of the forest with a gloomy sky and a threatening storm overhead when they discuss their plans for the future. The gloomy weather and shadows exemplify the fact that they can't get away from the repressive force of their sins. It is later proven when Dimmesdale dies on the scaffold! Instead of leaving with Hester and going to England. A final example occurs in the way Hester and Dimmesdale can not acknowledge their love in front of others. When they meet in the woods, they feel that,\" No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest.\"( Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 199) This emotion foretells that they will never last together openly because their sin has separated them too much from

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normal life.

The opening chapter introduces several of the images and the themes within the story to follow.\" The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.\"( Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 45) The prison represents several different symbols. Foremost it is a symbol

for the Puritanical severity of law. The description of the prison indicates that it is old, rusted, yet strong with an \"iron-clamped oaken door.\" This represents the rigorous enforcement of laws and the inability to break free of them. The prison also serves as the symbol of the authority of the regime, which will not tolerate deviance. Hawthorne directly challenges this notion by throwing the name Ann Hutchinson into the opening pages. Hutchinson was a religious woman who disagreed with the Puritanical teachings, and as a result was imprisoned in Boston. Hawthorne claims that it is possible the beautiful rosebush growing directly at the prison door sprang from her footsteps. \"But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as the came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart if Nature could pity and be kind to him.\"( Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 46) This implies that the Puritanical authoritarianism may be too rigid, to the point of obliterating things of beauty.

The rose bush is a symbol of passion. As will later become obvious, Hester

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Prynne's sin is one of passion, thus linking her crime to the image of the rosebush. Hawthorne also indirectly compares Hester with Ann Hutchinson via the rosebush, and again makes the same parallel in Chapter 13, Another View of Hester. Hawthorne cleverly links the rosebush to the wilderness surrounding Boston,

commenting that the bush may be a remnant of the former forest, which covered the area. This is important, because it is only in the forest wilderness where the Puritans' laws fail to have any force. Thus the image of the rosebush serves to foreshadow that some of the passionate wilderness, in the form of Hester Prynne, may have accidentally made its way into Boston. The rosebush in full bloom indicates that Hester is at the peak of her passion. This parallels the fact that Hester has just born a child as a result of her passion. The child is thus comparable to the blossoms on the rosebush. Hawthorn's comment that the rose may serve as a \"moral blossom\" in the story is therefore actually saying that Hester's child will serve to provide the moral of the story.

After Hester is released from prison, she finds a cottage in the woods, near the outskirts of the city. Her choice of habitation is crucial to the symbolism within the novel. The forest represents love, or the wilderness where the strict morals of the Puritan community cannot apply. Thus, when Hester makes her home on the outskirts of the city, directly on the edge of the woods, she is putting herself in a place of limbo between the moral and the immoral universes. This is important because it shows that Hester does not live under the strict Puritanical moral code, but rather tries to live in both worlds simultaneously. Hawthorne uses the forest to provide a kind of shelter for members of society in need of a refuge from daily Puritan life.

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In the deep, dark portions of the forest, many of the pivotal characters bring forth hidden thoughts and emotions. The forest track leads away from the settlement out into the wilderness where all sign mandates of law and religion, to a refuge where men, as well as women, can open up and be themselves. It is here that Dimmesdale openly acknowledges Hester and his undying love for her. It is also here that the two of them can openly engage in conversation without being preoccupied with the constraints that Puritan society place on them.

When Hester takes Pearl with her to the Governor's Hall in order to plea with Governor Bellingham to let her keep Pearl, whom the Governor felt would be better raised in a more Christian household. Pearl looks around in the mansion and sees the shiny metal of the Governor's suit of armor. She then calls her mother's attention to the fact that the convex shape of the armor grotesquely magnifies the scarlet letter, causing it to appear gigantic. Hester feels that Pearl must be, \"an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl's shape\". (Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter 97) It is the symbol of the Puritan society's ever - lasting punishment to Hester's sin.

There are may be many other objects that are discribed by using symbolism in The Scarlet Letter. As an English major student we should not just read it for fun, we should also think when we read it and learn more from the novel and the author.

Ⅳ. Conclusion

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There have been a lot of argument over the dirersity of symbol over the past years,however,Hawthorne is successful in employing symbolic techniques and lays great emphasis on the diversity of symbol.The Scarlet Letter written by Hawthorne is undoubetedly been considered as matserpiece and the author’s symbolic style has the rich flavors of emotion and conforms to no conventional pattern. Hawthorne’s symbolism, especially the symbolic letter A helps make the key note of the story clearer and the characters to life.

Reading Hawthorne,we can find that his eyes are symbolic eyes; his mind works with the help of signs and symbols. Reading Hawthorne without noticing this feature of his art would be an incomplete experience.. The various usage of symbolism in The Scarlet Letter makes the novel a work of the world.

Works Cited

Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter. Beijing: Yi Li People’s Press, 2002

Li Yixie 李宜燮, and Chang Yaoxin 常耀信, ed. Meiguo Wenxue Xuandu (Selected Readings in American Literature). Tianjin: Nankai UP,2009

Wang Jianhui 王建会, ed. Meiguo Wenxue Cidian (A Handbok to American Literature). Shenyang: Liaoning People’s Press,2001

James Robert. Nathaniel Hawthorne’sThe Scarlet Letter.[M].Beijing: Waiyu JiaoxueYanjiu Press,1997

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