A Brief Review of The Scarlet Letter, A Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne
by Michael D. Christensen

“On a field, sable, the letter A, Gules.”

From The Scarlet Letter, by N. Hawthorne

Late in 1619, or early in 1620, English Puritans began arriving on the East Coast of North America. They came not in search of gold, silver, slaves nor of worldly glory nor honor, but sought to establish themselves as an independent people to escape the power of government to inhibit, or take from them, the right to worship God, in what they considered to be the most pure way, hence their name.

Twenty-two years later, by the summer of 1642, one of their several small settlements was relatively well established. This was the town which they had named Boston. On a particular day that summer, a young woman, carrying an infant daughter is led from the rickety-looking jailhouse to the scaffold in the middle of the town square, and she remains with her child in public view for some three hours. Hester Prynne, English born, is an adulteress and she wears, sewn on the front of her black dress, with its traditional white trim, a relatively large representation of the letter “A,” composed of brightly colored fabric. She endures the public exhibition quietly. Some of the more matronly women of the community protest among themselves that the punishment is too light for the sinner. Besides the humiliation, Hester has been, and will be in the prison house, after which, for the rest of her life she will be required to wear the scarlet “A,” as a reminder to her and to others that she is unclean in the sight of the Almighty.

Observing her punishment is the father of her daughter – said daughter having been named Pearl, after the “pearl of great price” mentioned in the New Testament – who is the most Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, one of the pastors of the Puritanical congregation of which Hester is a member. He is young, like Hester, and is unmarried, and the pain of watching her humiliation, knowing that by the justice of God, and the law of the community, he should be by Hester’s side, causes him to tremble in weakness. He wants to be there, but has not found the courage to confess his involvement with the woman. Hester has persistently refused to name her consort, to the frustration of the clergy and the anger of Governor Bellingham, and the town council.

Hester Prynne, herself, is deeply in love with Arthur Dimmesdale, and although the author does not provide the readership with Hester’s thoughts and emotions during the ordeal, there is one pointed exception, when she recognizes among the onlookers a smallish man, somewhat older than her, with a lined face, unkempt and wearing the costume of the American natives, among who he has lived, both as a prisoner, and a student of their way of life, during the last year. The man is to a small extent deformed, with one shoulder being slightly higher than the other. This man is Roger Prynne, her husband, and Hester is momentarily seized with fear and foreboding, by his sudden, and unexpected appearance.

Later that evening, Hester and Pearl are once again in the prison, but the infant is writhing in pain. A doctor is called for, and the newly arrived Roger Chillingworth enters the cell. He is not a doctor in the customary sense of training and certification, however, he is highly learned in the medical treatments of the age, and additionally, has learned of treatments among native peoples. We are, in actuality, referring to Roger Prynne, who since his arrival in the town, has called himself Chillingworth. The medicine he provides immediately helps Pearl, and she quickly falls asleep. Hester and her husband make an agreement; Hester will not divulge that Roger is her husband, and he will not reveal his identity, nor attempt to force Hester to reveal the name of the father of her child. Hester will later have cause to regret this agreement.

Upon the above events the plot of The Scarlet Letter is established. Hester will remain faithful to the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. The Reverend himself will struggle with his fear and failure to confess the sin, and crime, of adultery. Roger Chillingworth, never an attractive nor socially adept man, vows to discover by whom he has been cuckolded, to use a more course term, vowing to take extreme revenge upon the man. The story of The Scarlet Letter plays out thusly:

Hester raises Pearl, who becomes an impish, precocious, and, at times, mischievous child, who senses both her mothers burden of ostracism, and recognizes in Reverend Dimmesdale a person apart from the rest of the citizens of the town, with whom she and her mother have an unspoken, but serious connection. When the overly rigid clergyman, the Reverend Mr. Wilson, threatens to take the child from Hester, she will appeal to Reverend Dimmesdale, who is present at the moment, for his intervention. Arthur reminds the clergy and officials that Hester has been a model citizen of Boston, caring for the sick and dying, and in other charitable, Christian acts and he further persuades the authorities that it would be an ill advised act to sever the child from its natural mother, while Hester has not been involved in any further ungodliness. The intervention is a sincere and persuasive plea for compassion, and the matter is dropped forthwith.

Roger Chillingworth, whose heart and emotions grow ever more jaundiced, cold, even obscene, determines that Arthur Dimmesdale is the unrevealed adulterer. Less this smack of contrivance on the part of the author, it is to be remembered that for Chillingworth, all men are suspects, while for other citizens any expressed notion of Mr. Dimmesdale having been involved inappropriately with Mistress Prynne would bring ridicule upon the accuser, so unlikely would such a connection be held. Chillingworth successfully convinces the Reverend to share a house with the him, which please the people generally as he, Chillingworth, is an excellent physician in the eyes of the townsfolk. Of course, the doctor will take every opportunity to subtly do all that he may to torment the clergyman, driving the latter’s already deteriorating health to even lower depths.

Roger Chillingworth, once a man of some gentleness, had been aware of his unattractiveness and his lack wisdom and practicality in having taken the young, tallish, statuesque, black haired, black eyed Hester as his bride when they were in England. As much aware as he is of these facts, he also knows that she had never been in love with him, and these realizations, rather than temper the man, cause him to fall deeper into the grip of the white-hot need for vengeance. If any character from an American novel might be nominated as having come directly out of the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Roger Chillingworth would be a prime candidate.

Eventually Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne, with Pearl, will meet in the seclusion of the forest, and Hester will break her agreement with her husband, warning the cleric that the effects of his grief for the serious, unconfessed sin are being promoted and exacerbated by Roger Chillingworth. Arthur and Hester agree to take flight from Boston to England, but there is a foreboding in Hester’s thoughts, and, perhaps, in the mind of Arthur Dimmesdale as well. (One night previously, Arthur, well after dark, had ascended the scaffold where Hester had once been punished. He had been discovered standing there alone, by Hester and Pearl, who joined him, and they had further been observed upon the structure by Roger Chillingworth, who had remained obscured in the shadows. That night a “portent” of supernatural origin, presumably a meteorite, trailed brilliantly across the sky for Hester, Arthur and Pearl. Seven years have passed since Hester and Pearl were on the scaffold, and their lives seem about to change).

Before Hester and Arthur and their daughter can leave Boston, the Reverend Dimmesdale is to march in a procession leading towards the church, where he will preach a sermon, in conjunction with the ceremonies by which a new governor is to be installed. Hester has had the unwelcome news that Roger Chillingworth will be aboard the ship with them, and when she sees the now physically ravaged Arthur in the procession she wonders if he can live another day. After preaching the most beautiful and moving of sermons, the Reverend leaves the church, takes Hester by the hand, and with their daughter ascends the scaffold. Roger Chillingworth attempts, without avail, to stop them. Arthur Dimmesdale cries out that he is guilty to the large crowd, tears open his coat, and then falls to the floor of the scaffold and bids farewell to his beloved Hester, kisses his daughter, who weeps openly and praises God. Thus, with the confession and the ending of his life, Arthur Dimmesdale is released from the scourge of guilt.

It seems that on every hard bound book jacket, and the cover of every paperback edition of The Scarlet Letter ever published, there is an illustration of Hester Prynne and the letter of infamy upon the bodice of her costume. Is this an indication that Hester Prynne is commonly held as the central character in The Scarlet Letter ? Always open to interpretation, this conclusion, however, does not appear to be the case. The story of The Scarlet Letter is the account of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s seven year battle-within-the-soul, to find redemption through confession in the face of an assured, deep humiliation before the public. He sincerely believes that his transgression of one of the basic prohibitions of God, "Thou shalt not commit adultery” has offended the Deity and that in spite of all his prayers, sermons and good works and towards others he can not be forgiven until the confession is made. The idea that confession is “good for the soul” is today still much with us, among the non-aligned, as well as those of profession.

Arthur Dimmesdale is the sort of person one might wish there were more of in this world. He is genuinely kind, honest, principled and seems to be filled with love for God, his fellow human beings and for peace in a world which is perpetually and concurrently rigid, demanding, corrupt and permissive to excess. His character, were one allowed only to read a passage or two from The Scarlet Letter, is typified by his method of intervening against Reverend Wilson, whose intentions, as we have seen, are to take Pearl away from her mother, and also in the manner in which he speaks to and deals with Hester and the quixotic Pearl, when the three meet alone in the deep woods. This reunion occurs after his having loved Hester for years, and not being permitted to have communication with her, or even be allowed to notice her publicly. One of the few exceptions to his forced separation from Hester and Pearl was occasioned by his helping Hester to keep her child, as referred to above. Undoubtedly, some may insist that the churchman lives dully, without courage, however, age and experience in life are ever working towards our recognition that no one will “outlive” life, so to speak, and that Arthur Dimmesdale, regardless of what age, culture or society into which he might have been born, would be a “leavening” agent among his people. That he fell in premature death owing to a personal flaw, a specific weakness, does not remove him from his special station, but rather beckons the readers to consider that he lived with a desire to give, rather than to take and use.

Regardless of how many individuals, especially among the young people in our society, are powerfully mesmerized by, and in a quest for, the idealized non-conformist, the independent, the unbeatable loner, the “loose canon,” striking against authoritarianism, it remains the man or woman who can be trusted to speak the truth, and who lives the truth, who will ultimately be sought for. That Arthur Dimmesdale was unable to tell the hidden truth and died from the longing to do so, accentuates the fact that he is among the ones for whom all will seek, even if he will be destroyed for his integrity and decency. (Such is the nature of the human kind. It is recalled that, “that which we would do, we do not, and that which we would not do, we do,” to paraphrase the tentmaker).

Hester Prynne, who many believe, for many good reasons, to be the primary personality of The Scarlet Letter, is arguably one of the more interesting and intriguing, and to an extent, mysterious characters in American Literature. There must be in today’s milieu, those who feel that she represents the cause of feminism, and of resistant strength in the face of a corrupt, superstition-ridden, male dominated society, which is attempting to break her spirit, and, in particular, her femaleness. The notion of 17th Century Puritan society being a male dominated society is certainly not unreasonable, and one would have little success in suggesting otherwise, however, beyond that point, the most salient, controversial current issues of gender are not the issues with which Hester was dealing. One could not fault any reader, or student, of the book for wishing to bring Hester Prynne into their own camp, given that her strength, equanimity, and her instinct for survival are of the highest order. Without doubt she had greater strength than Arthur Dimmesdale, of which she was aware, but it did nothing more than increase her profound love for him. If it is a fact that Hester Prynne does not fulfill the role of a feminist as described above, one would possibly have greater success in a search for those qualities in the female literary character and protagonist of Anna Karenina, though in establishing the Russian woman’s attitude and feelings in this regard, one will still encounter some difficulties.

Hester Prynne was not a Puritan. A fact that this writer, even in the wake of several careful readings of the novel, was unaware. It required another reviewer’s commentary to identify this fact. Having become aware of this, however, only deepens one’s perception of Hester’s personality, enriching it further, since she bore with such equanimity the punishments poured upon her, with some added viciousness on the part of her peers, within the small town of Boston. In reality a volume might be written on the subject of this woman, and in the number and length of commentaries more than a volume devoted to Hester Prynne most likely has been composed. Her love for Arthur Dimmesdale, her loyalty to that love in spite of the recognition of what must have appeared to be hopelessly intransigent obstacles, her love of her daughter, the spritish Pearl, her Christian service at all times of the day and night, over the years, to the ill and dying and her exquisite needle work, by which she supported herself and Pearl, exemplify her true nature and character.

Also of relevance to the evaluation of Mistress Prynne are some of her life’s experiences prior to the commencement of the story; her being practically sold into marriage at a tender age to an older, eccentric and unattractive man, even though he could be kindly, their plans for her to travel to Massachusetts from England, with her husband to arrive a year later, his not arriving in Boston until after two years, by which time he was assumed to have died in England, or more likely, to have perished at sea. It was under this circumstance, the assumed death of her husband, that she may have found that her heart belonged to the young minister to whom she listened each Sunday in sermon at church. All of these circumstances, of course, had contributed to the creation of Hester Prynne.

This reviewer wishes to make one proposition in regards to Hester, which may not collate well with the prevailing views. Hester Prynne, as mentioned, did not begin life as a Puritan, and she was, of course, punished and tormented by them for what to her must have been the expression of a deep love, and yet as the experiences through which she has passed are coming to a conclusion in the story of The Scarlet Letter she had become a Puritan herself. There would be several evidences in favor of this conclusion, but here it will be written only that the example of Arthur Dimmesdale, living with his profound conviction of having egregiously offended the higher power, eventually so permeated Hester’s being that she lost her desires to see life differently from the most rigid among the sect, and that her return to America after having taken Pearl to England, was not only to be near the grave of Arthur, but to live out her life according to the basic, uncomplicated, religious tenants of the Puritans. Actually it would be illogical for her to have had any other disposition. She returned to the humble cottage wherein she had worked, and raised Pearl, which home had remained uninhabited during her absence in England, and returned to the life she had known, and to the beliefs for which there could be no substitutes, even had she avoided some of the outward forms and ceremonies of the people dressed in black and white.

Earlier in this piece, different references were made to the character of Roger Chillingworth, and the cataclysmic personal fall he suffered. There is, as has been mentioned by any number of reviewers, a sadness and regret elicited in the feelings of many readers over this man. Although it requires some consideration and thought, perhaps not until the reading of the book has been completed, to recognize these feelings, so loathsome had become Hester’s husband during the course of events. The final evidence of the wickedness that had rooted itself in his soul is seen in his attempts to prevent Arthur, Hester and Pearl from climbing the scaffold. Roger Chillingworth knew well that this event spelled the end of what he had worked for, and the final perdition, perhaps, of his own soul. Indeed, Roger Chillingworth had a need to ascend the scaffold himself, and to cry more loudly than the Reverend Dimmesdale, of the sin he had committed for having taken up the very cause of the Devil himself.

Additional Note: The Scarlet Letter does not open with the events in the lives of its primary characters. Mr. Hawthorne chose to call the first part of his story, ”The Custom House,” in which he narrates, as a customs official, his discovery in the archives of the public building, the worn, frayed and faded letter “A” made of fabric, which item was folded between a number of sheets of parchment, upon which the events of the story of Arthur, Hester and Pearl were recorded. The author, by all accounts was not suggesting that the story was based on an event from history, but was rather employing an ingenious way of introducing the story, hoping to create an interest in the readers as to the significance of the fabric letter, and the account to be found in the parchment record. He succeeded in a most excellent manner!