The eyes are the windows into a person’s soul. But the soul is the key to a person’s humanity. American society, overall, idealizes a person’s individuality, his soul, as the basis of life itself. However, this was not always the way. In early America, Puritan views ruled the budding nation: views of community salvation, strict moral punishment, and arduous living. Nathaniel Hawthorne, transcendentalist author, sets his story, The Scarlet Letter, in this puritanical setting of strict morals to contrast his aversion to the stringency of the country’s and his own (he, himself was of Puritan heritage) origins.
The scene opens with Hester Prynne, the beautiful young mother of an illegitimate child, on a scaffold, receiving her punishment for adultery, a capital offense. Her lover, a Puritan minister, struggles with the inward torment of a veiled sinner, whilst outwardly preaching the importance of confessing and accepting punishment for sin. Her estranged husband returns to find his wife the symbol of sin in the town and swears revenge to gain vengeance for the despicable wrong that Hester's partner in crime did to him, which ultimately brings about his own downfall. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his characters’ duplicity in their personal and societal conflicts, and the ironies that come with that aforementioned duplicity, to explain his personal moral compass: guided chiefly by self-probity or, adherence to one’s own upmost principles.
Hester, a sinner through and through, bears her mark, the red letter A representative not only of her crime (adultery) but also of the general Avoidance she would have to face, as if she carried a plague, with an almost prideful stance. She even exits the prison house, the house of punishment, the beating heart of Puritan life, “as if by her own free will,” (49-50). The disparity between the expected acquiescence of a condemned sinner, and Hester’s proud, independent stride marks Hawthorne’s first example of character favoritism in one that defies the influence of society’s tactics to crush her soul. He takes her defiant character, anathematized and rather despised by the greater community, and shines a venerable light on her beauty, he describes as never appearing “more lady-like… than as she issued from the prison,” thereby solidifying his favor of the defiant sinner (50). Her “splendor… greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony,” strengthens Hawthorne’s regard for Hester, as shown by his benign description of her physicality. That physicality, unfitting in the Puritan settlement, also uncovers his respect for personal expression, not influenced by any restrictive law or social regulation.
But watch, every character must have a downfall. Though Hester serves as, almost, the least outwardly influenced, she falters slightly as she, “clasp[s] the infant closely to her bosom…that she might thereby conceal a certain token,” thereby succumbing to the immediate influence of society by trying to conceal her shame, her sin among the Puritan crowd, even momentarily (50). Hawthorne, however, not wanting his heroine to fall ultimately returns her to her self-incorruptibility, “wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, … with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople,” and unashamedly bore her punishment, ostracizing her from them, placing her on a scaffold, a pedestal of sorts, above them. The slight, but notable, crack in Hester’s wall of personal rectitude, in the strongest character to grace the stage set by Hawthorne, allows him to reiterate the importance of a self-probity.
As Hester’s punishment grows, so does her strength. Several years since her first punishment, Hester pushes on and bears her Scarlet Letter, no more a symbol of sin, but a defining mark, symbolizing Hester’s strength, her aptitude, her ability such that “many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said it meant Able” (146). The Puritan society’s changed view of its own punishment should spark a change in Hester’s steady work, but it does not. She continues her hard work (incidentally, a trait revered by many Transcendentalists). Hester no longer is a forced outcast. Hawthorne allows her to choose for herself the path she takes. She remains at her home on the outskirts of town, away from the central magnet of the Puritan culture, symbolizing Hester’s psychological distance from the strict, conformist Puritan culture. The potential conflict with Hester’s integrity in regards to the Puritan society and her resoluteness demonstrates the practicality of remaining true and honest with one’s self even in times of diminutive turmoil, by projecting the practice onto his protagonist whom the reader has already come to respect and empathize.
Pearl, more of a symbol than a character in Hawthorne’s novel, throughout illuminates the utterly duplicitous manner of those around her, while modeling the truest form of Hawthorne’s ideal: a person uninfluenced by the world around her, and staying true to only her inner spark, without faltering.
At the tender age of three, Puritan children generally know their basic catechism: that there is a God, that He created all things; the He is the heavenly father of all men, women, and children. Pearl is no exception to this rule; she knows fully well, when prompted, “‘Canst thou tell me… who made thee?’” to reply that her heavenly Father made her (102). She, rather than accede at all to the queries of the Puritan leader, replies in her own manner, that she “had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door;” a description most suited for the spirited, wild, product of sin (103). The expected answer, that she had been taught to reiterate like a mindless parrot, does not come. The irony of her response: a response, technically wrong, but infinitely more suited to her own emergence as a spirited, wild, product of sin, provides insight to Hawthorne’s further ideals. The surprising intelligence shown by Pearl’s adherence to her own beliefs by personal observation matches the insight Hawthorne suggests comes from mimicking Pearl’s actions in staying true to personal beliefs, not tainted in any way by the influence of others.
Any effective lesson book gives examples, not only of what to do, but also of what not to do. The Scarlet Letter, a book on Hawthorne’s personal convictions displays, too, the effects of a life of what he deems wrong. Of a life that attempts to remain in a world of ease, of structure, of subordination and a world of self understanding, of an attempted self-reliance. The dangers of this bipartite living, Hawthorne outlines in his development of two characters, Roger Chillingworth, Hester Prynne’s husband, and Arthur Dimmesdale, her secret lover, and Pearl’s father.In the forest, the still self-aware and uncorrupt Hester suggests to a distraught Dimmesdale that they should leave for a place where Dimmesdale could leave behind his sufferings. Where he could be free from the conflict between his inner desires, his conscience, and his priestly duties. They agree to go to Europe, where, he finds, that “his entire development would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicately adapted to it the man,” an almost clear-cut view of his personal needs, not influenced by any other being—only himself. However, this near-honesty is not enough. He still is vulnerable to the push of society.
Dimmesdale’s comments on the convenience of the vessel to Europe leaving four days from the plan’s inception provides a twist in character, not merely a plot convenience. Hawthorne, shows his reluctance in informing the reader that Dimmesdale’s flighting self-clarity was just that: flighting. At the threshold of a new life, where he can let go of his ties, he focuses merely on “‘At least, they shall say of me… that I leave no public duty unperformed nor ill performed’” a revelation to which Hawthorne interjects that “an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister’s should be so miserably deceived!” (197). Hawthorne, in reprimanding the nearly insightful, yet still petty cares, of the minister, hammers in his belief that a life nearly self-reliant, but still susceptible to outside influence, is the most vulgar, most deadly life to live, preparing the reader for Dimmesdale’s imminent end.
The forest changed Dimmesdale, it showed him a new way, but he does not accept the new, introspectiveness. Hawthorne makes his path home “wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man,” trying to prevent his return, making his re-assimilation with society more difficult (197). He has changed. He no longer is his own self This twist in his character: his step in front of the mirror of self-trust, only to find out that it is not his true self reflected back. Through his encounters with the town folk in his return from, we see him almost succumb to his “inner man” but though the blasphemous words bubbled up to the surface, the half Puritanical half of him kept it down (199). He suppressed his inner self so long that it was a painful realization when he rediscovered it. Hawthorne calls Dimmesdale a “lost and desperate man” in his duplicitous state: all at once realizing his satanic, sinful, soul, but still unwilling to give himself over to that inner desire, using his entire energies to suppress his true, crazy, disturbed self. Living both for himself, and for others, Dimmesdale’s soul becomes more tormented than if he had led an entirely assimilated or an entirely self-run life, with no input but his own. This lack of strong conviction either way injures both himself, and those around him, sucked into his vacillating purposes (200-201).
Chillingworth, Hester’s estranged husband, formerly lived among the Indians. He lived as separate as one could get from Puritan society in the wooded wilderness the Puritans deemed satanic. The wilderness he lived through, though forced upon him, symbolizes the most true he could get. But, his intent is muddled. It is not really his intent. His abduction taught him how to live without the conforms of society, but since he had no choice in whether or not to follow this path, the outcome remains the same, perhaps worse, than if he had lived within society’s tangles. He, himself, describes his being as one of utter “decay” and “misshapen,” (69). Not a very optimistic view of himself. This low self-regard and self trust causes great confusion in personal psyche. He cannot choose between following his inner desire for vengeance against Pearl’s father, the man who had done him wrong, and following the general search for the man’s identity, within the Puritan society.
Chillingworth, as he reinvents himself as Roger Chillingworth, a physician, finds himself faced with a choice, to let his self known to all, to let his guard down, to show that he is the man Hester had sinned against. Or, to reinvent himself under a false alias, thereby concealing his true self. He asks Hester, at their tense reunion in the Prison, to “Recognize [him] not, by word, by sign by look!” to conceal, for him, his true self. He does however, strive to find the man whom had wronged him. The man who shamed his wife’s name. This, dear reader, is Hawthorne’s description of Chillingworth’s dual purpose. Hawthorne either pities or despises this misshapen, grotesque man. Nevertheless, Chillingworth’s duality in character, his true, revenge seeking self, and invented, false self, renders him more greatly susceptible to an influence besides his own. His duality makes him weak. His duality makes him powerless.
Chillingworth, once caught on to some sort of connection between Dimmesdale and Hester, throws himself completely into the matter of unsheathing the truth between these people. Though his quest for truth is admirable, Hawthorne makes it clear that he looks in the wrong place. Instead of looking within himself, and only within himself, he looks partially inward, to find he needs revenge, but acts on it by delving into the personage, the psyche, of another. Hester, from their first reunion, inquires, “Why not announce thyself openly,” to gain the revenge he seeks. The transcendentalist’s protagonist prods him later, too, as they meet again on the shore, away from the eyes of the Puritan mob, to understanding the outcome of his personal obsession with another person’s psyche. The culmination of his self-abandonment, his disposal of his true identity and his outward integration into the mind of another, causes him to lose his humanity, to become “a fiend,” in human (157-158). He understands then, that his new self, the one that he himself created, lacking the Godly spark Transcendentalists find in the search of their selves, must continue, as the object of his torment “ha[d] but increased the debt!” causing him to become this thing. Although he understands, he brought the duplicitous state upon himself, his being became so engrained in that of the young minister, that he could only explain himself through him.
In the end, as Dimmesdale moves to confess his sin, to clear his conscience, he can sense the danger, not for the Reverend’s good name, but for Chillingworth’s new “soul.” He rushes forward and tries to stop the Reverend from confessing, as that would also punish Chillingworth, their fates eternally entwined (230). He holds a clear enough view of his own inner self, that he knows that it really is no longer his own. Dimmesdale, upon clearing his name, his blotched conscience, dies. Hawthorne, showing that he disapproves of this serving two masters: himself and society, by his death, after the object of his entangled soul dies.
Hawthorne, though a Transcendentalist through and through, despises not the ways of the unknowing. To live in ignorance or complete disdain for a life led by one’s personal convictions stands true, as long as he does not try to govern himself. Once a man tries to serve himself and society, he can no longer function properly in either sense. Hester and Pearl, both strive to wholly live by their own self. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth both try to live for the society, and though too late for both, try to live for themselves. They try to serve two masters. But as Hawthorne knows, "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other,” as Chillingworth came to hate himself and Dimmesdale came to hate the society he came from (Matthew 6:24, New International Version).
