The Scarlet Letter

Like the scarlet letter, the scaffold where Hester’s punishment takes place reflects the novel’s ideas about sin, penance, and punishment. The scaffold is equipped with a pillory meant to “confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze” (52). Although Hester herself isn’t subjected to the pillory, its function—to force the accused to bear witness to their own public shaming—is central to Puritan moral ideology. In subjecting a person to this kind of open and ritualized scorn, Puritan society believes itself to be “promot[ing] […] good citizenship” (52)—demonstrating the consequences of wrongdoing to both the prisoner and the public.

However, while the scaffold’s intended purpose is to make the person standing on it visible, it has the side effect of providing the prisoner with a good vantage point to survey their surroundings; for instance, it’s while she’s enduring her punishment that Hester spots her long-lost husband in the crowd. A similar scene occurs midway through the novel, when Dimmesdale, standing on the scaffold at night, notices Chillingworth by the light of a comet. In this case, the recognition is figurative rather than literal; Dimmesdale is already well acquainted with Chillingworth, but he hasn’t realized Chillingworth’s “malevolence” until this moment.

Chillingworth’s goal is to trap Dimmesdale in a paralyzing state of self-recrimination that precludes what (at least in Dimmesdale’s mind) constitutes real penance: a public confession of guilt. Dimmesdale’s recognition of Chillingworth’s ill will is therefore critical in laying the groundwork for the final scene involving the scaffold—namely, Dimmesdale’s redemption and death. However, while Dimmesdale does admit to adultery in this scene, the public nature of his confession is ultimately less important to the narrator than the psychological change he has undergone. In fact, when Dimmesdale publicly reveals his guilt, as symbolized by the branded letter on his chest, Hawthorne pulls back from any description of the “revelation”—presumably because it would detract from the seriousness of the internal “victory” Dimmesdale has achieved in finally confronting his guilt. In this way, the scaffold evolves from being a symbol of public condemnation to one of personal moral victory.

Clothing is a significant motif in the novel, in part because (like the scarlet letter) it’s a point at which private and public identities intersect. Although Hawthorne notes that early Puritan society was not yet as critical of ornamented dress as it would later become, it’s nevertheless clear that many of the novel’s characters see a connection between the manner in which a person dresses and the kind of person they are. Mistress Hibbins, for instance, wears consistently lavish outfits that make her suspect in a society that prioritizes humility and frugality. Hawthorne implicitly links Mistress Hibbins’s clothing to her reputation for witchcraft in the following passage:

“As this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds” (209).

Similarly, the narrator associates Hester’s “taste for the gorgeously beautiful” with her “rich, voluptuous” (75) nature—that is, the sensuality that led her to commit adultery. As part of her penance, Hester therefore makes a point of dressing as plainly as possible.

However, the most notable examples of the relationship between clothing and character are the designs Hester places on her daughter. Pearl, like the scarlet letter, is a tangible reminder of Hester’s “crimes,” and some of the clothing Hester fashions for her explicitly invokes the letter itself—for instance, a “crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread” (90). More broadly, Pearl’s clothing reflects her flighty, “elfish” nature:

“Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. […] The dress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly’s wing” (198).

Notably, however, Pearl’s otherworldly and morally ambiguous “character” is not so much her own as it is a projection of her mother’s feelings of guilt. In that sense, the clothing Hester designs for her reinforces Pearl’s status as a symbol more than it expresses Pearl’s inner self, in much the same way that society at large “dresses” individuals in a particular social role (e.g., making Hester a symbol of sexual transgression).

Light and dark imagery is so important to The Scarlet Letter that the novel is in some sense structured around the motif. The three scaffold scenes, which roughly correspond to the novel’s beginning, middle, and end, take place in daylight, nighttime, and daylight, respectively. These three scenes also say a great deal about the way Hawthorne uses the motif. Because darkness inhibits humans’ ability to see, it tends to evoke feelings of fear and suspicion—that is, a sense that something is being concealed. Darkness is also associated with evil, since the cover it provides allows immoral actions to go undetected. It’s therefore symbolically significant that when Dimmesdale first ascends the scaffold, he does so at night; rather than openly acknowledging his sins, Dimmesdale is simply compounding them with hypocrisy. By contrast, he finally admits to his affair with Hester in broad daylight, with the sunshine evoking ideas of both revealed truth and a purified conscience. In this sense, the motif of light and darkness develops themes of sin and personal identity; for Dimmesdale, at least, clearing his conscience requires subjecting his “hidden” inner self to the light of day.

However, Dimmesdale’s understanding of sin is different from the novel’s, and Hawthorne complicates any simple distinction between light as good and darkness as evil. Here, for instance, is how Hawthorne describes the moment after Dimmesdale and Hester decide to run away together:

“All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming down the gray trunks of the solemn trees” (177).

To the society in which Hester and Dimmesdale live, this decision to elope can only be a sinful one, and it certainly seems to have a negative effect on Dimmesdale’s character; as he returns from the forest, he finds himself struggling against various cruel and petty impulses. This transformation, however, is arguably less about the morality of the decision than it is about the way Dimmesdale himself perceives it. Deep down, Dimmesdale believes that leaving with Hester would be wrong, and he begins to act like the person he fears he is becoming.

Another example of the way Hawthorne blurs the lines between light and dark involves Hester, who has “dark and abundant hair,” and “deep black eyes,” and first appears emerging from the “gray twilight” (50) of prison. Given the preconceptions readers are likely to have about light and darkness, this initial depiction therefore suggests a correspondence between Hester’s appearance and her “sinful” inner character. As the novel progresses, however, Hester’s actions transform the nature of the darkness with which she’s associated:

“She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray” (140).

Symbolically, Hester’s ability to navigate places “darkened” by sickness or poverty mirrors the way in which she turns her own experiences of grief and guilt to good purpose by empathizing with those around her.

Although none of the events of The Scarlet Letter require supernatural explanation, a sense of the supernatural permeates the novel. This is partly a function of the work’s setting; the Puritan settlers of New England understood both God and the Devil to be real and concrete presences in daily life. One obvious example of this is the belief in witches and witchcraft, which surfaces repeatedly in The Scarlet Letter. Mistress Hibbins has a reputation for witchcraft, and her interactions with Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl often reference meetings with the “Black Man”—that is, the Devil—in the woods. Here, for instance, she attempts to persuade Hester to join a coven: “Wilt thou go with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make one” (103).

The most noteworthy thing about the above conversation (and others like it) is that the narrator recounts it only to immediately question its truth: the exchange, he says, may simply be a “parable.” This is in keeping with Hawthorne’s general skepticism of Puritan society; the novel implicitly questions both the existence of witches and the kind of society that assumes a woman must be a witch because she’s bad-tempered. It’s therefore not surprising that in characterizing the otherworldly figure of Pearl, Hawthorne draws less on witches than on the more morally ambiguous figures of elves, sprites, or fairies. Although these kinds of creatures sometimes take on sinister roles in European folklore, they can also be helpful or simply inscrutable. They are also closely associated with the natural world, which can likewise be a source of both danger and aid to humanity. This ambiguity reinforces the idea that Pearl is not so much a human child as she is a messenger operating according to some obscure agenda.