Thus, the true path to freedom for Dimmesdale will be to mount the scaffold of guilt and confession, to “unconceal” to all what he has been hiding for seven years. This is clearly supposition on my part, but it seems to be confirmed later when Dimmesdale says to Chillingworth, “Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late,” which evidences the Reverend’s change of heart (and one theory is that Dimmesdale’s change of heart was the result of his preparation for his Election Day sermon, but in any event Hester recognizes a definite change in him on Election Day before he delivers the sermon). At some point, upon returning home, Dimmesdale must sense or discern that his spiritual life is under attack (“…am I given over utterly to the fiend?” he wondered on his walk home) and that no amount of miles between himself and Boston can ever really solve his underlying problems of guilt and concealment. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in Hester’s eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale’s!” (Chapter 18).īut as soon as Dimmesdale leaves the forest and reenters the civilized world he is attacked by diabolical temptations so vehement that he is on the verge of saying blasphemous, vile and wicked things to people passing by (most of whom are associated with his congregation). “Such was the sympathy of Nature-that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth-with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. But the narrator (speaking for Hawthorne) comments: The forest thus symbolizes a freedom not found in the civilized world, a freedom that would romantically overshadow (or overpower) the stigma of sin. In that famous scene near the end of the novel, where Dimmesdale and Hester meet in the forest, the temptation is placed in their hearts to see in their love something greater than the moral restraints that prohibit it, Hester arguing that their forbidden love “had a consecration of its own.” Their plan of escape, which can never amount to a true escape, is to get out of Boston and sail to England, and live a new life (along with their daughter, Pearl). Her mental well-being and fortitude is impressive, and her growth in virtue as described by Hawthorne in Chapter 13 results in her being called a “Sister of Mercy.” Nevertheless, there is a temptation within Hester’s soul that attracts her to the illusion of salvation offered by the forest (and one can naturally sympathize with her attraction to the type of (seemingly) liberating moral calculus offered by the forest given the Puritanical oppression she has heroically endured).īut the forest is not the pathway to true salvation. Hester Prynne, by contrast, who was forced to undergo the public humiliation of standing on the scaffold (as described in the opening chapters) fairs much better. Dimmesdale flees the scaffold, or mounts it in a cowardly and imaginary fashion under the cover of darkness, when no one can see him, and thus suffers incredible interior pain throughout the course of the novel due to the concealment of his sin (and Hawthorne’s psychological description of Dimmesdale’s acute suffering is quite remarkable). In other words, the pathway to salvation in the novel is directly connected to the scaffold. Let me get straight to my main point (knowing that you are already familiar with the facts of the novel): no one is saved in The Scarlet Letter unless he climbs up upon the scaffold. Roger Chillingworth and Pearl – were saved (and by saved I am referring ultimately to the Christian meaning of that term, although it has other meanings as well). Especially by the use of these two symbols, I hope to demonstrate that all four of the main characters in The Scarlet Letter – Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Mr. I will maintain that the scaffold, formally a penal instrument of punishment, shame and humiliation, is ultimately a symbol of salvation, and the forest a symbol of freedom from conventional moral restraints. His main criticism of the novel was that it contained “a great deal of symbolism…I think, too much.” The point, however, is that symbolism is very important to understanding The Scarlet Letter, and in this short note I will make much of two very important symbols used by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the novel, namely, the scaffold and the forest. Henry James, the famous novelist, wrote a note about The Scarlet Letter in which he called it “the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth” in the United States. “Is not this better than what we dreamed of in the forest?” (Chapter 23)
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