Rusu Miruna ER2 III

Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter

Generally speaking, a symbol is anything which is used to represent something other than itself.
It is in his use of symbols in The Scarlet Letter that Hawthorne has made one of his most
distinctive and significant contributions to the growth of American fiction. This book is usually
regarded as the first symbolic novel to be written in the United States.
Listed below are the major symbols used by Hawthorne in this novel and an explanation of their
meanings as applied in the context of the story.
A. Red symbolizes the glow of Hester's passion.
Wild Rose-Bush- “ it may serve… to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found
along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.”
Chapter 1 Next to the prison door stands a blooming wild rose bush. The narrator imagines that
perhaps the rose bush grows in such an unlikely place to offer comfort to prisoners entering the
jail and forgiveness from Nature to those leaving it to die on the scaffold. The prison, a "black
flower," contrasts with the beautiful rose bush, which grows naturally. The prison punishes,
Nature and the rose bush forgive.
The Scarlet Letter “A” The Puritans mean for the scarlet letter to be a symbol of Hester's
shame. But the narrator describes the letter as a "mystic symbol" that means many things. The
letter does represent Hester Prynne's adultery, but as she grows and changes in the novel, the
letter's symbolism evolves as well. For example, it comes to mean "able" when she becomes a
successful seamstress, and Dimmesdale refers to Hester twice as "angel," giving the letter yet
another meaning. In the end, the letter comes to symbolize Hester's triumph over the very forces
that meant to punish her.
Chapter 13 Seven years have now passed since Pearl's birth. Hester has become more accepted
by the community, and the embroidered scarlet letter has evolved into a "symbol of her calling,"
not just her sin. The symbol of Hester's punishment now is a mark of her personal skill as a
seamstress.
Chapter 16 Hester asks how Pearl heard this story and she responds that an old woman told her
the Black Man put the scarlet letter on her mother. Eager to settle the matter, Hester confirms the
false story of the letter's origin. Like Dimmesdale's lie about his glove on the scaffold, Hester
uses the devil to hide her sin.
Chapter 18 Dimmesdale decides to flee Boston with Hester. He calls her his "angel" and says
he's been renewed. Hester flings away her scarlet letter and feels an enormous swell of relief. In
the forest, free from the pressures of Puritan society, Dimmesdale and Hester escape their sins
and are free to love.
Chapter 24 Hester returned years later to her cabin in Boston. She lived there for many years
before her death and still wore the scarlet letter, which had taken on its own legend over time.
Hester accepted the scarlet letter as part of her.
She was buried next to Dimmesdale. Their shared tombstone bore a single scarlet letter on a
field of black. In death, the symbol's meaning changed again: carved in stone, the letter
symbolizes her eternal union with Dimmesdale.

B. Black represents the devil and sin.

Chapter 14 Hester says she must tell Dimmesdale about Chillingworth. He responds that their
fate, a "black flower," is no longer in anyone's hands. He apologizes to Hester for not having
offered her the love that would have prevented their collective ruin. Prisons are black flowers
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because they arise out of sin, which they're intended to contain. Similarly, Chillingworth
intended to punish sin, but has instead become sinful himself.
Chapter 23 After his triumphant sermon, Dimmesdale sees Hester and Pearl in front of the
scaffold. He asks them to approach him at the scaffold. Chillingworth warns Dimmesdale not to
"blacken" his fame. This is the third scene on the scaffold. Dimmesdale has gone from denial to
secret confession to public confession.
Chapter 24 The inscription on the tombstone Hester and Dimmesdale share says "On a field,
sable, the letter A, gules," which means "On a black background, the scarlet letter burns."
The inscription on the tombstone Hester and Dimmesdale share says "On a field, sable, the letter
A, gules," which means "On a black background, the scarlet letter burns."

C. Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol.
Pearl is a sort of living version of her mother’s scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of
sexual sin and the indicator of a transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of Hester’s “sin,” Pearl is
more than a mere punishment to her mother: she is also a blessing. She represents not only “sin”
but also the vital spirit and passion that engendered that sin. Thus, Pearl’s existence gives her
mother reason to live, bolstering her spirits when she is tempted to give up. It is only after
Dimmesdale is revealed to be Pearl’s father that Pearl can become fully “human.” Until then, she
functions in a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an unsolved mystery.
Chapter 16 “'Mother,' said litter Pearl, 'the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides
itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.... I am but a child. It will not flee from
me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!' 'Nor ever will, my child, I hope,' said Hester. 'And why
not, mother?' asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. 'Will not it come of
its own accord, when I am a woman grown?'
Pearl's fascination with the Black Man is motivated by the secrets around the scarlet letter. In this
way, suppression creates what is being suppressed.
Chapter 19 "Doth he love us?" said Pearl, looking up with acute intelligence into her mother's
face. "Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?"
"Not now, dear child," answered Hester. "But in days to come he will walk hand in hand with us.
We will have a home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach
thee many things, and love thee dearly.
Pearl won't accept Dimmesdale as her father unless he will publicly accept her.
In Chapter 19, the narrator even calls Pearl a "living hieroglyphic." Yet Pearl, from her name to
her comfort with nature, is also the most pure character in the novel. While the Puritans see her
as a demon, the reader comes to see her as a kind of nature-sprite, cast out by a society that
cannot accept her "sinful" origins.
Chapter 23 Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild
infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's
cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do
battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a
messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.
The key moment for Pearl-as-symbol, including for Pearl-as-character, is the moment that she
gets to stop being a symbol. When she kisses her dying father, her tears become a pledge to "be a
woman" in the world—no longer a symbol of sin (and possibly grace), but a real, living,
breathing woman.
D. The Meteor
Chapter 12 When Dimmesdale and Hester have a secret and accidental meeting in the town
square, they climb the scaffold together and each hold one of Pearl's hands. This is the first
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moment we see them as a family, and apparently God sees it too, because just at that moment a
meteor streaks across the sky. It's so bright that it reveals the whole square, "with a singularity of
aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world that they had
ever borne before".
In other words, God sees them. At least, that's what Dimmesdale thinks: thanks to the "disease in
his own eye and heart," the minister sees the meteor in the shape of an A in "dull red light" . To
him, it's a symbol of his own sin, as though God were trying to expose his secret to the entire
world. He thinks solely about what the meteor means to him and him alone.
But the community interprets it differently, as a message from God commemorating the life of
the recently deceased Governor and proclaiming him to be an angel.
E. Forest- is symbolic in a variety of ways.
As a place where witches gather, where souls are signed away to the devil, and where
Dimmesdale can “ yield himself with deliberate choice… to what he knew was deadly sin,” it’s
symbolic of the world of darkness and evil.
As a place where Pearl can run and play freely, a friend of the animals and wild flowers, and
where even Hester can throw away her letter, let down her hair, and become a woman, it’s
symbolic of a natural world governed by natural laws as opposed to the artificial community
with its man-made Puritan laws.
As a place where darkness and gloom predominate and where one can find his way only by
following a narrow twisting path, it’s symbolic of the “moral wilderness” in which Hester has
been wandering.
THEMES INTRODUCED IN THE SCARLET LETTER:
Sin
The Puritans believed people were born sinners. Puritan preachers depicted each human life
as suspended by a string over the fiery pit of hell. As a result, the Puritans maintained strict
watch over themselves and their fellow townspeople, and sins such as adultery were punishable
by death. Hester is spared execution only because the Puritans of Boston decided it would benefit
the community to transform her into a "living sermon against sin." But just as Hester turns the
physical scarlet letter that she is forced to wear into a beautifully embroidered object, through the
force of her spirit she transforms the letter's symbolic meaning from shame to strength.
Hester's transformation of the scarlet letter's meaning raises one of The Scarlet Letter's most
important questions: What does it mean to sin, and who are the novel's real sinners? Hester's
defiant response to her punishment and her attempts to rekindle her romance with Dimmesdale
and flee with him to Europe shows that she never considered her affair with Dimmesdale to be a
sin. The narrator supports Hester's innocence and instead points the finger at the novel's two real
sinners: Dimmesdale and Chillingworth. Chillingworth's sin was tormenting Dimmesdale almost
to the point of death; Dimmesdale's was abandoning Hester to lead a lonely life without the man
she loved.

Individuality and Conformity

As an adulterer, Hester has broken Puritan society's harsh and strict rules. Puritan society
demanded conformity because it considered any breach of that conformity a threat to its security
and its religion. Hester doesn't conform and she suffers the consequences: the townspeople
punish, shun, and humiliate her. The town seeks to use Hester as an example to frighten any
other would-be nonconformists from breaking the strict moral rules of Puritanism. Yet Hester's
unshakable faith in herself, her love for Dimmesdale, and her devotion to her daughter empower
her to resist and transcend enforced Puritan conformity.
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In general in The Scarlet Letter, the conflict between individuality and conformity is also a
battle between appearance and reality. Because the Puritan government is so harsh, all Puritans
are always concerned about looking like conformists to best fit in. This means that they hide the
reality of their human flaws, frailties, and sins in order to avoid punishment. The result are
secrets that are the embodiment of the disconnect between private individual reality and the need
to maintain the appearance of public conformity. And though keeping secrets provide a short-
term solution for the sinner to avoid punishment, the novel argues that repression of the
individual behind a mask of secret-keeping conformity will ultimately warp and destroy a
person's soul.
Puritanism
The Scarlet Letter presents a critical, even disdainful, view of Puritanism. The narrator depicts
Puritan society as drab, confining, unforgiving, and narrow-minded that unfairly victimizes
Hester. In the scene in which Hester is released from prison, the narrator describes the town
police official as representing the "whole dismal severity of the Puritanical code of law," which
fused religion with law. In contrast, he describes Hester as a woman marked by "natural
dignity…force of character…[and] free will." It is precisely these natural strengths, which the
narrator holds in high esteem, that Puritan society suppresses. In The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans
appear as shallow hypocrites whose opinion of Hester and Pearl improves only when they
become more of an asset to the community, most notably when Hester becomes a seamstress and
Pearl inherits a fortune from Chillingworth.
Nature
In The Scarlet Letter, nature stands in contrast to Puritanism. Where Puritanism is merciless
and rigid, nature is forgiving and flexible. This contrast is made clear from the very first page,
when the narrator contrasts the "black flower" of the prison that punishes sin with the red rose
bush that he imagines forgives those sentenced to die. The theme of nature continues with the
forest outside Boston, which is described as an "unchristianized, lawless region." In the dark
forest, wild, passionate, and persecuted people like Hester, Pearl, Mistress Hibbins, and the
Indians can escape from the strict, repressive morality of Puritan society. The forest, which
provides a measure of comfort and protection that exists nowhere in society, is also the only
place where Hester can reunite with Dimmesdale. When Hester moves to the outskirts of Boston,
the narrator says she would have fit in better in the forest. Hester's choice to live on the border of
society and nature represents her internal conflict: she can't thrive entirely within the constraints
of Puritanism, but because of her attachment to society and to Dimmesdale, she also can't flee.