The Scarlet Letter: Hawthorne's Quintessential Nineteenth Century American Novel
Hawthorne's allegorical tale, The Scarlet Letter, written about 17th centuy Salem, resonating in 19th century American literature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of America?s most influential, brilliant writers of the nineteenth century. Hawthorne?s literature, written before, during, and after the Civil War, is deeply concerned with the ethical problems of sin, social identity, and humanity. Admirers of Hawthorne?s works, such as Herman Melville, identify with Hawthorne?s deep psychological insight into not only the nineteenth century but also American history. Hawthorne, like Melville, writes symbolic and allegorical tales. Hawthorne?s works deal largely with the moral effects and conflicts of Puritanism on colonial New England. The Scarlet Letter reveals both Hawthorne's superb craftsmanship and powerful psychological insight with which he scrutinizes guilt and anxiety in the human soul. Though The Scarlet Letter was written about seventeenth century Salem, the problems of the past affect the future, as evidenced by the personal guilt that Hawthorne, being of a Puritan heritage, reveals concerning his past. Nineteenth century American literature focuses on exactly what Hawthorne strives to point out in The Scarlet Letter ? that society is moving towards a new way of life; however, one must never forget what and where one came from. Much of nineteenth century American literature focused on these aspects, seen in works by Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville. This ?psychological romance?(1) about an adulterous Puritan woman, Hester Prynne, exemplifies how guilt and a strong moral standpoint resonate as part of a true American lifestyle. His work is a result of his guilt and upset with the evasion of truth, as seen in the moral disillusionment of the Church in the seventeenth century. This is seen in his writing, criticism, and comparison to other colleagues during the mid-1800s. There are few other writers from the nineteenth century that have as deep of a working knowledge and understanding of American history as Nathaniel Hawthorne. As a novelist and avid historian, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes The Scarlet Letter and his other works as a response to the surroundings and changing, decadent life of the nineteenth century, both in his community and Salem?s Puritan heritage.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in 1804 to an old Puritan family in Salem, Massachusetts, became an educated man and a strong, influential nineteenth century American writer. After attending Bowdoin College in 1825, he began writing. His first success that established him as a leading writer was Twice Told Tales (1837) in which a collection of his short stories, largely historical sketches and symbolic, allegorical tales, dealt with moral conflicts and the effects of Puritanism on colonial New England.(2) This kind of writing was popular among readers of this period, because it educated the reader on not only historical aspects but also many aspects of what was going on during this time in nineteenth century America. Much of the nineteenth century focused on the nouveaux riches; the economy was growing and the people, in general, were becoming more educated. Communities such as Brook Farm, where Nathaniel Hawthorne lived, were constructed, and people were trying to imitate the Victorian lifestyle of the rich and exclusive (much like in later works such as ?Daisy Miller: A Study? by Henry James [1878]). Children and wives were seen as possessions and made to dress up in a very Victorian-like fashion. This obviously affected the way Hawthorne chose his characters in The Scarlet Letter, because the main character in the novel, Hester Prynne, and her daughter, Pearl, are both seen as owned by her first husband, Chillingworth, and then by her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester is then chastised publicly for adultery and must seek social graces by her humility. This writing mirrors the theme of ?women and property? in Great Expectations (by Charles Dickens), written with events dating to circa 1815, as seen in a Dickens essay: ?His depiction of propertied women in the novel reflects Victorian England's beliefs about women's inability to responsibly own and manage their own property.?(3) Other aspects of America in the 1800s reflect on Hawthorne?s writing. Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter, writes about the suffering of Hester, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale. This suffering is similar to that of slaves in nineteenth century America in the mid-1800s. The amount of slaves who existed during the early nineteenth century matches the size of Chicago?s current population (nearly four million). Questions such as ?progression or regression?? (concerning slavery) often arose. People lacked sensitivity to poverty, for example, the poverty of the blacks and slaves in general, as they focused on a materialistic, accessorized lifestyle. As a writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne became influential in the nineteenth century because he analyzed the feelings of guilt and moral disillusionment of the Church in the seventeenth century, which resonated with the issues of slavery and insensitivity in America. The Scarlet Letter is a perfect example of Hawthorne?s progressive literature resonating in the nineteenth century, with his very precise and personal descriptions of the life of Hester Prynne.
The Scarlet Letter begins with a chapter called ?The Custom-House,? in which the narrator of the book writes a long description recalling his days as the chief executive officer of the Customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. This is important to the rest of the story because Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter while working at a customhouse in Salem. He sets a certain mood in ?The Custom-House? with such elaborate descriptions:
?Salem?was a bustling wharf?exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; ? at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf?the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass?this not very enlivening prospect?Over the entrance [of this wharf (edifice)] hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunder- bolts and barbed arrows in each claw?she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community?She has no great tenderness even in her best of moods?(4)
Critics of Nathaniel Hawthorne?s ? The Custom-House? have said, ?It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable malevolence .?(5) This novel, then, could be considered similar in style to Emerson?s criticism of Americans in ?Self-Reliance.? The description of nature in Hawthorne?s writing is the same type of style that Emerson used; that is, Hawthorne uses his descriptions to place judgment on the town, just as Emerson uses nature to tell readers that nature is everything. After this introduction, the reader understands how much Hawthorne understood his own Puritan history, as well as his personal interest in Salem during the 1600?s. ?The Custom-House? can be summed up with a criticism by Robert L. Berner, ??The Custom-House? has been explained in terms of its ?ethical dimensions?; ?its tone has been compared to that of the romance [in The Scarlet Letter]; its ?design? has been understood as Hawthorne?s definition of his relationship to his art and to his country.?(6) Again, his relationship to his art and his country are seen through his description and depiction of nature. Further along in this novel, the reader can also see the personal guilt that Hawthorne feels concerning what happened in seventeenth century Salem.
Hawthorne uses the first scene of The Scarlet Letter, ?The Prison-Door,? to set the expression for the first parts of the book, a gray and gloomy environment with a multitude of people who match the mood: ?A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.?(7) At this point, the crowd watches as a beautiful young woman, Hester Prynne, steps across the prison threshold into the sunshine, carrying a young infant in her arms. She slowly, almost defiantly, walks to the scaffold, where she is to stand and endure public taunts, remarks, and stares. Her most remarkable feature, besides her beauty, is the elaborately sewn letter on her bosom: a scarlet letter ?A? stitched with gold thread. Through the crowd?s remarks and the narration of Hester?s thoughts, the scarlet letter stands for ?adulterer.? This dramatic introduction to what becomes a very intimate, detailed account of Hester Prynne?s life, imprisoned for her sins and social deviance, is important because the reader understands what it must feel like to go through the social exile and imprisonment that an adulterer went through during the 1600s. Ultimately, as a piece of nineteenth century American literature being analyzed today, images are conjured up of the taunting, imprisonment, and abuse of slaves in the early to mid-1800s. Again, the progression that is seen in literature soon after the Civil War in the mid to later 1800s is also seen here in The Scarlet Letter.
The nineteenth century point-of-view of women as possessions is seen when Chillingworth, Hester?s former husband, visits Hester and offers to help her. She does not accept his help, knowing that he found out about her affair while he was away. She fears that he will poison her and her baby, as he is a doctor and obviously vengeful. Chillingworth promises Hester that he will not tell anyone that he was her husband if she does not tell anyone that she was his wife. This is preempted by the fact that Hester has been adulterous; she is seen as an object of lust and sin, and she is nothing more than that to the townspeople or to Chillingworth.
Doctors during the nineteenth century were of the consensus that women were emotionally unstable by nature, as learned in class about nineteenth century medicine, and this obviously affected Hawthorne?s use of Chillingworth?s view. Most doctors, like Hawthorne?s character Chillingworth, believed ?female mental health problems were generally viewed as pathological. The Victorian view of females as weak, fragile, and childlike served as both cause and effect, creating generations of repressed, suffering women made worse by harsh treatment.?(8) Pearl is also seen in this same manner, perhaps the reason why Hawthorne gives her the name Pearl, because she is the pearl out of a vast number of child deaths: ?Childbirth during this period [the nineteenth century] was marked by concern for pain in delivery and the cause of puerperal fever, which appeared mysteriously after deliveries and often led to quick death.?(9) Chillingworth, like many men in the nineteenth century, is materialistic and possessive. He feels angered, embarrassed, and ashamed to be considered Hester Prynne?s husband. He is too concerned with his image in the town, as many men of this time period were. Chillingworth suspects that Arthur Dimmesdale, a town minister (also Hester?s lover) who tries to help Hester and her child to stay together, is part of what lies beneath Hester?s secret, as she refuses to tell anyone with whom she had the affair. Chillingworth is a selfish, tormented man with no morals; he moves in with Dimmesdale not only because Dimmesdale needs someone to care for him in his now sickly state but also because he wants to satisfy his suspicions.
Dimmesdale?s ailments, along with the psychological stress, deepen. This psychological stress is caused mainly by the fact that Hester is the one that is paying for their adulterous acts, and because Chillingworth lives with him. This sinful minister invents new tortures for himself, as Hawthorne describes:
And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart?there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain?he shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night?reverberated from the hills in the background; ?It is done!? muttered the minister. ?The whole town will awake, and hurry forth, and find me here!? But it was not so.(10)
Hawthorne?s own guilt and pain that he feels about what happened to people in seventeenth century Salem is reflected in this description. In the meantime, Hester's charitable deeds and quiet humility earn her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. Hester sees 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.
At the end of the novel, Hester is able to stay in the woods and practice herbal medicine and becomes an abortionist. Hester?s daughter, Pearl, escapes and sails away with her new husband. Before Pearl leaves, Dimmesdale dies, but not before delivering a dramatic sermon in which he reveals his sins, the fact that he?s Pearl?s father, and, of course, Hester?s lover. At this point, the reader sees how much Hester and Pearl were in the thoughts of the dying minister, both in love and in torment, as he gives each a kiss on the forehead after the sermon. The confessions of Arthur are necessary to the ending because of the way Hawthorne constructed the plot: ?As the author has managed the plot, no other ending is possible.?(11) The romance in the novel, between Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne, and the fact that Hester?s husband lives with him, causes the town minister immense torment. The detail of the psychological stress that he bestows upon himself is what makes this novel so interesting ? men of the nineteenth century were just as concerned about adultery and sin as Puritan ministers, such as Dimmesdale, were in seventeenth century America. Hawthorne?s personal tone in the novel helps him give deeper descriptions, and, therefore, the novel becomes more enthralling to the reader. Again, images are conjured up of nineteenth century American life: women and children seen as possessions (expendable, used only for image), materialistic and accessorized lives, and slavery from an educated man?s (Hawthorne?s) point-of-view.
The Scarlet Letter, in Hawthorne?s mind, did not point out to its readers the assertion he was trying to make about literature:
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand.(12)
Hawthorne wanted to deviate from a decadent attitude where one literary trend follows the next. This was a failure of the arts to Hawthorne, and he wanted to change that with his historical background and his exotic, allegorical tales such as The Scarlet Letter. This is what a community like Brook Farm could offer Hawthorne ? a place to educate himself among other writers of his time and think freely and independently. Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter and became interested in not just the seventeenth century history but the way in which history is portrayed in society two centuries later:
Severity, rigidity, intolerance, iconoclasm, militancy, and persecution - these are?traits that Hawthorne commonly associates with the Puritan majority?the lives of Dimmesdale, Hester and Pearl are caught up in their formidable network?Hawthorne is equally if not more fascinated by attractive but recessive qualities?in early Puritans?sympathy, charity, gaiety, respect for tradition, and appreciation of art.(13)
Again, Hawthorne is trying to accomplish a duality, as many nineteenth century American writers have, with his own renditions, through The Scarlet Letter. The Puritan qualities of life in the seventeenth century resonate with the people in nineteenth century Salem. Hawthorne exerts that, although the two periods differ, they are, ?oppressive in their own ways - one too self-righteous in matters of religion and morality, the other too smug in its allegiance to materialism.?(14) He uses this and all other aspects of nineteenth century American literature to work as a response to nineteenth century America in The Scarlet Letter.
Nineteenth century America was a place of change for different people, different places, and different situations. Women were gaining more rights, the revolutionary changes of the Civil War affected history and many social anxieties, and technology and education were on the rise; Hawthorne knew that this is what nineteenth century America represented. The Scarlet Letter demonstrates his knowledge and passion for American history and his country, as seen in his personal guilt and feelings, characters, and analysis of the plot. Many writers of the nineteenth century touched on aspects of literature such as ?Self-Reliance,? ?Moby Dick,? ?Walden Pond,? and other works by famous authors. However, none of these famous authors were able to utilize a deep, working knowledge of Puritan history, like Hawthorne was able to do in The Scarlet Letter. Few authors of the nineteenth century could write with such a personal touch, depth of many psychological states, and romance. Hawthorne believed in social change, education, rights of women and slaves, and a general movement towards a new way of life; yet, through his life, his Puritan heritage, and his novels, he reminds readers of who they are and where they came from. He asserts that Americans can and will one day move away from bourgeois American life to a life full of artful, masterful literature. His allegorical tales, such as The Scarlet Letter, resonate in today?s society as timeless classics that teach society lessons, observe moral and social disillusion, and inspire and enthrall readers.
Bibliography
(4)(5)(7)(10)Hawthorne, Nathaniel et al. The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
Essays in Criticism and Scholarship
(6)Berner, Robert L. ?A Key to the ?Custom-House.?? The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
(1)Duyckink, Evert A. ?Great Feeling and Discrimination.? The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
(11)Baughman, Ernest W. ?Public Confession and The Scarlet Letter.? The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
(13)(14)Newberry, Frederick. ?Tradition and Disinheritance in The Scarlet Letter.? The Scarlet Letter: A Norton Critical Edition. Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988.
(2)?Nathaniel Hawthorne.? Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia. Microsoft Corporation, 2002. Read This Article
(3)Brinjikji, Hiam. ?Women and Property in Great Expectations.? Read This Article
(8)(9)Floyd, Barbara. ?Women?s Health Care.? University of Toledo Libraries. Read This Article
(12)Reuben, Paul P. ?Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 3: Nineteenth Century American Literature ? Hawthorne.? PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - A research and Reference Guide. Read This Article
