it would be better if it was a big ‘x,’ or like an infinity sign

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts to a prominent Puritan family (in fact, a member of his family had been a judge at the Salem Witch Trials). His father was a sea captain who died in 1808, leaving behind a widow who mourned in seclusion for the rest of her life. Under this dark influence, Hawthorne became somber and solitary seeking solace in literature. He graduated Bowdoin College in 1825, at which point he returned to Salem and began to write of the moral condition of New England. He published his first novel by vanity press in 1828, but attracted the attention of publisher S.G. Goodrich who went on to publish much of Hawthorne’s work in his magazine, The Token. Hawthorne was, throughout his career, preoccupied by the effects of Puritanism on the people and the psyche of New England — his perspective on this is generally pessimistic and negative. Despite it’s pious claims, he sees Puritanism as a decadent life that stood at the roots of the culture of his own time. Though his career also had stints of editorial work and biography writing, he is best known as the classic interpreter of the spiritual history of New England as well as a master of romantic fiction.

The Scarlet Letter (1850) is a novel about the tragic consequences of concealed guilt, set in Puritanical Boston in the mid-17th century. The story begins with a framing the explains that the author found a scarlet A and documents revealing the story — but it’s kind of a clumsy frame because it’s never recalled at the end and feels moderately unnecessary. Anyway, the story proper is about Hester Prynne, who is sent by her English scholar husband to head to Boston in advance of him and set up their home. She told him ahead of the marriage that she would marry him but did not love him, and he agreed to her condition. When he arrives in Boston two years later, he sees her being publicly shamed for having conceived and birthed a baby in the absence of her husband — and she will not name her lover. She is sentenced to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ to signify that she is an adulteress and as a token of her sin, and as punishment for not naming the man. Her husband assumes the name of Robert Chillingworth and moves into the community, asking Hester to keep his identity secret and intending to find the identity of his wife’s paramour. He realizes that the father is the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who has been secretly carving an A into his own chest as penance but incapable of confessing to his crimes. Through the novel, Hester grows to be a stronger woman, independent of the men who destroy themselves around her — Chillingworth is consumed by his desire for vengeance, and Dimmesdale by his concealed guilt. While Hester, the one the community has labelled a sinner, rises to become something more, the two respectable men of the community (a doctor and a reverend) fall apart as a result of their own sins of vengeance and omission (because Dimmesdale isn’t destroyed by the act of sleeping with Hester, but rather his inability to declare Pearl as his own child — he loves her and shows no regret for the action itself but rather for his own inability to overcome his pride and stand against the expectations of the community).

In the end, it isn’t sin that is at fault — it’s the internalizing of Puritanical values. That’s what Hawthorne is kicking against. He also seems to celebrate the movement away from these values amongst average Americans — the residents of Boston grow, over the years, to celebrate Hester for the strong woman she becomes, rather than seeing only the letter on her chest. That she survives the ordeal and that Pearl grows up to be an independent woman (and learns to love her mother in spite of her mother’s sin and fort he whole person that she is) is a hugely important message in the text and a testament to the fact that one shouldn’t be condemned for one’s sins, but rather judged for the person one becomes in the face of adversity. The community pillars of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale are both crushed under the pressure of puritanical expectation. Only Hester stands apart, on the edge of the community, and fosters an internal strength that carries the day.