Nathaniel Hawthorne’s renowned novel The Scarlet Letter exemplifies America’s Puritan past and exposes this community as marred by religious intolerance, highly vindictive spirit and the suppression of all things connected to Nature, as opposed to eternal salvation that is the result of a chaste life. Hawthorne opens up about his ancestral guilt with a darkness no optimism can illuminate, retaining the realism of his work and baring the true face of Puritanism, rendering it repressive and authoritarian, but simultaneously utilizing this community as an analogue for the general human condition. His personal religious beliefs were shaken on his having found out about one of his ancestors being a judge in the infamous Salem Witch Trials, and this had urged him to seek a different philosophy of religion; in a way remaining true to Puritanism, though being painfully aware of all of its flaws and selflessly endeavoring to expose this religious sect for all their inhumane treatment of sinners.
A man of swift thought and able to ponder on the life’s most elusive questions, Hawthorne was reluctant to publicly express himself on the matter of religion. However, being brought up in Salem, the place most infamous for its religious implication, it was impossible for any educated man of liberal thought not to be influenced by it; all the more so due to the fact that one of his ancestors, his great grandfather, had an actively disastrous role in the Salem Witch Trials. This protracted family culpability proves to be a continuing theme in his works, as if he ached to rid himself off of this curse and delve deeply into the darkness of the human condition, where a parallel can be drawn between himself and one of his characters, Goodman Brown, whose midnight wandering into the forest and meeting with the Devil himself prove to have a shattering influence on his psyche, and he reenters his home a profoundly broken man. Hawthorne even goes as far as adding the letter W to his surname, in an effort to distinguish himself from the shame of his ancestors. Thus, on being faced with the cynicism and cruelty of the Puritan religion, Hawthorne turns to an indeterminate faith, remaining a spiritual and religious person, but not assigning himself to any particular religion.
Like any intellectual, Hawthorne was immersed in the question of sin, knowledge and the general human condition, especially as exemplified through the lens of religion. In The Scarlet Letter he investigates the implications inherent in the contrasting forums that Puritanism and Catholicism offer for confession and absolution, where confessions made to the community have the power to transform the sinner into an object, a scapegoat or a saint, depending on his sin, thereby sacrificing individual well-being in order to strengthen community coherence (Taylor, 145). Thus, the Puritan community thrives on publicly chastising and punishing the sinful individual who dares to break their religious laws, for the simple reason of strengthening the collective conscience of the community itself. By punishing this deviant sinner, they transform him into a powerful utility of re-enforcing the formation of the community as a whole, a unity unbreakable by sin.
In this sense, Hawthorne gives a portrait of society where “religion and law were almost identical” (cited in McCall, 166). This is noticeable in the fact that the plot commences right in front of a prison and consequently, there is no mention of a church, while all important events happen at the scaffold, a symbol of sin, revelation, humiliation and death. Furthermore, just like in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are punished for their impunity, because of their eating fruit from the forbidden tree that brings them knowledge. Thus, by adopting this knowledge within themselves, they have become tainted, and as such, undesirable in their heavenly abode. Once being thrown out into the cruelty of the mortal world, Adam and Eve have only two obligations: labor and to produce offspring. This original sin will continue to define the general human condition, especially as seen through the perspective of the Puritan religion.
In the same manner, Hester Prynne and reverend Dimmesdale are reminiscent of this original sin, due to the fact that their act results in exclusion from the community, psycho-physical suffering and finally, personal wisdom through the knowledge on human condition. Hester is branded as adulterous, with the burning letter A becoming a part of her identity, interchangeable with the image she projects in the Puritan society. In addition to being branded, she is also forced to work much harder than before, suffering both physically as well as psychologically at the result of her actions. However, Hawthorne accentuates the fact that Puritanism is in itself a stagnant entity, and as such, perceives earthly existence as merely an experience which every human undergoes in an effort to prove himself or herself worthy of Heaven. Sinfulness as they comprehend it can, under no circumstances, offer any good to an individual, because once having sinned, the heavenly doors close and the individual is left with nothing. On the other hand, the sinful experience Hester and Dimmesdale undergo proves to be an enlightening one. It not only makes them question their own existence in relation to others around them, but teaches them the quality of sympathy and understanding, in the process of invaluable personal growth. This is what Hawthorne endeavors to portray: not the harrowing experience of blindly following a religion which promises eternal bliss at the cost of everything that means to be human, rather, the fact that to err is human and by no means damnable, especially if it transforms the individual into a better person.
Intricately intertwined with the notion of religion is of course, the question of the nature of evil and its embodiment, and raises the question where does the evil stem in the novel. The identity of the Black Man, a dark figure most commonly associated with demonic powers and the image of the Devil, is related to three characters: Dimmesdale, Chillingworth and Mistress Hibbins. Is Dimmesdale to blame for the conception of evil in the novel, due to his inability to accept responsibility for his own actions and recognize both his child and his love for Hester? Or is Chillingworth the one who concocts the whole tragic affair by marrying a woman much younger than himself and then, being unable to make her happy? As the entire novel is based on the conception and relationship between love and hate, the results that ensue are intertwined and reliant upon each other. Thus, the love affair between Hester and Dimmesdale, fueled by true emotions, is not considered to be the source of evil, though it is perceived as such by the Puritan elders and she is made to wear the scorching badge of shame. However, she becomes a self-appointed martyr, in the sense that she attempts to follow the Puritan guideline of working out her peace with God, yet she remains unwilling to separate herself from her sin by recognizing it as a sin, transforming her sacrificial actions into a form of self-validation (Taylor, 143). Consequently, Hawthorne endeavors to exemplify the harmony and healing that may follow reconciliation, as Hester tells Dimmesdale that their union “had a consecration of its own,” thus contradicting the Puritan view of their unison being a sin, while in fact it was holy, and as a result, she had Pearl, which helped her on her path to redemption (Hawthorne, 364).
While reverend Dimmesdale conceals himself within the confines of religious integrity, despite the fact that it is all a charade, Hester moves along the margins of being considered a wicked, immoral sinner, to the confines of the same integrity as Dimmesdale. In addition, his confession is perceived as voluntary and self-sacrificial by his congregation, while Hester had to work hard for her redemption and earn the title of “the town’s own Hester” (Hawthorne, 304). However, until they are both able to forgive themselves, the absolution of others can do very little for their state of their mind. Only after profound, personal confession can a person feel “solemnized and softened with the comfort she had obtained by disburdening herself of the soil of worldly frailties and receiving absolution” (cited in Taylor, 148). In this sense, an individual has no need for a moral authority outside of his own self, but rather ought to be motivated by individual morality and desire for truth; not to be instructed on the nature of right and wrong, but to learn to feel it from the inside, stemming out of solitude of a thinking mind. This is the reason Hawthorne did not declare himself a follower of any religion, because it puts confines around an individual’s sense of morality, imposing on it the psycho-physical abuses of a community that has misplaced its faith.
Though Hawthorne refused to adhere publicly to strictly one religion, he nonetheless remained, throughout his entire life, a deeply religious persona, who endeavored to reveal a new philosophy of religion in his works. By exposing what he believed was erroneous in the Puritan theology, he added color into a world that was until then, considered only black or white, and individuals either saved or damned, with no possibility of the two extremes ever amalgamating. He endeavored to portray the real state of the human condition, marred by frailty, love, betrayal, wickedness, wrongdoing and sin, all of which make the human experience all the more valuable.
Works Cited:
McCall, Dan. “The Tongue of Flame.” Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002. Print.
Taylor, Olivia G. “Cultural Confessions: Penance and Penitence in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun.” REN 58.2 (2005): 135-152. Print.
