Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels can be perceived as significant and resilient records of the contemporary Puritan society, disclosing the social and religious order prevalent at that time. His novels portray the clash between the individual and moral values and virtues and social goodness and ethical codes. Laurence Sargent Hall says: “The moral problem to be found wherever the individual’s mal- adjustment to society culminates in sin furnished Hawthorne with his major tragic themes. In the main this problem is worked out through some resolution by the individual of his mal- adjustment, an expiation of sin, by coming to terms with society- by coming to terms with a democratic society.” Thus debauchery, corruption and reprimand, or sin and rebirth through moral courage, tenacity and awakening form the principal theme of the major novels of Hawthorne.
The Scarlet Letter is one of the most powerful of his novels projecting this theme. It can surely be called as one of the finest novels of American literature. The novel invokes the disastrous, intense tale of passion and vengeance, retains a power and profundity that he did not achieve in any of his other works. The novel was published in the year 1850 and gained wide public and critical attention. There are four major and significant characters such as Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl Prynne and Roger Chillingworth. The present thesis attempts to analyse the theme of redemption as attained by the characters in the novel, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale.
The Scarlet Letter unveils the heartless character of the Puritan society of the seventeenth century. It was a very narrow-minded, conformist and inflexible moral order that was levied on society by the Church. This simulated societal moral order was contrary to all psychological demands and individual freedom. It devitalized the principal current of life by suppressing and crushing punishment for any lapse in the prescribed moral and ethical code by the individual. The Puritan society of Boston at this time was theocratic. The Church governed not only the religious but also the socio- political life. Individuals who rebelled or affronted the social code were considered to be hazardous and were brutally punished by the Church. In The Scarlet Letter the sin committed is the sin of adultery. The sinner, Hester, is penalized, openly disgraced and expelled from the society. But by her moral courage, resolute resolution and devoutness to social service, she redeems herself into a great philanthropist. Thus the central theme of the novel is sin and regeneration through moral courage and resolution. Harold Bloom points out
The Scarlet Letter is a novel about judgment and about the relations that arise between publicly trumpeted or imposed values and private moral decision. It is important to make this point at once, because The Scarlet Letter is too often imprecisely read as a condemnation of Puritan hypocrisy and intolerance; these are matters of concern for Hawthorne, but they are not the principal focus of the narrative. The Puritans provide an excellent example of provincial bigotry and unself-conscious inconsistency between theory and practice; Hawthorne does depict them, for the most part, as ignorant rabble. However, their hypocrisy and prejudice are not entirely taken for granted; rather, they are tested by the events of the novel and permitted to unfold in a variety of opinions (21).
The chief sinner in the novel is Hester Prynne. She has committed the sin of adultery. Thus she has violated and defined the strict moral and ethical code of the society. She has come into conflict with the strict religious injunctions of the Puritan morality, and for this violation of the established moral code, she is awarded a very harsh, demoralizing and shameful punishment. Hawthorne introduces Hester in a distinct style:
The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it (80-81).
She is persuaded to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her breast constantly, exhibiting to the people that she is guilty of adultery. She could have eluded this punishment by running away to an unknown place, but has a moral strength and firmness of will. She has also been awarded a term of imprisonment on the same charge of adultery. It is this lady who comes out of the prison with the letter “A” hanging on her bosom. The scarlet letter is a mode of adjustment with the society. It appears as a brand on her bosom to the spectators. A woman spectator contemptuously looks at her and says:
She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment (81)?
The symbolic letter “A” embodying punishment to her for her transgression of the Puritan morality and afflicting her with anguish links her with the society, and she puts it on as if it were a thing of admiration. This was a result of her conviction that though physically defiled, she was spiritually pure and upright.
Pearl, the daughter of Heater, is unjustly made to share the moral lapse and guilt of her mother. She is a product of the rank luxuriance of her mother and finds a place on Hester’s “dishonoured bosom”. With this background of sin, dishonour and shame, she has to establish her relations with “the race and descent of mortals.” Pearl’s moral nature has been imbibed from the mother. “The mother’s impassioned state has been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the un -tempered light of the intervening substance.” Pearl’s character and moral nature bears an image of her mother.
The second great sinner is Dimmesdale. He is equally guilt of adultery with Hester. He is equally guilty of adultery with Hester. But he lacks the moral courage of Hester. Dimmesdale’s suffering and spiritual agonies are intensified because of his inability to acknowledge his guilt. His cogitation and his conflicting thoughts pinch his soul and convert him into a moral coward. He aggravates his sin by concealing it from the public eye. He is not only a sinner, but also a hypocrite. His always keeping his hand on his heart is also a symbol of his weakness. He is always haunted by his sense of guilt. He tortures himself but is not able to purify himself. His feeling of remorse, which eats into his vitals, brings him before Hester in a mood of repentance. He tells her:
As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul like mine effect towards the redemption of other souls?—or a polluted soul towards their purification? And as for the people's reverence, would that it was turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation that I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!—and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolise? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it (283- 84)!
However, in the end, both Hester and Dimmesdale are redeemed through repentance, moral courage, resolution and human service. During the seven years. When she has worn the letter “A”, she is instilled with an altruism, and love for the sick and downtrodden. Dimmesdale’s health suffers, she thinks it her duty and responsibility to restore him. With the passage of time, through hert suffering, martyrdom and repentance she identifies herself with the race of man. She helps the poor and the sick and in the time of pestilence she is devoted. She is the sister of Mercy. Hawthorne adds:
Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich—a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her—so much power to do, and power to sympathise—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Abel, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength (237).
The Scarlet letter has the effect of cross. Her life is no more the life of passion, but rather that of thought. She has greater speed of speculation and rationalism. She meets Chillingworth, her former husband to prevent him from wreaking his vengeance on Dimmesdale. She speaks to Chillingworth:
Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself, for, having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him, and something whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true (251)!
In order to protect Dimmesdale, her partner in the guilt, she dissuades him from being fiendish out of his hatred for Dimmesdale.
Hawthorne has embodied the problem of guilty, sin and retribution through Hester. Hester falls as a victim to sin and later through the agency of sin, there is a transformation of her character. She is the sister of Mercy and dedicates her life to the service of the sick, poor and the downtrodden. As the novel ends, we encounter Hester’s emergence as an angel of mercy. Dimmesdale also seems equally redeemed and rejuvenated.
He wins our admiration by his intense and secret suffering. The love which Hester Prynne bears towards this man also enhances our admiration of the great minister. His haunted, emaciated figure cannot be forgotten by any sensitive reader. By revealing the hidden workings of the mind of Arthur Dimmesdale, Hawthorne is able to retain our admiration for him. Real heroism lies in inner torment and Arthur Dimmesdale suffers this internal torment greatly. The temptations which he has to suffer increase his stature as a priest and minister.
Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 1999. Print.
Bloom, Harold. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Print.
