*The Scarlet Letter--Week Five.

A major event now occurs within the scarlet letter as Dimmesdale and Hester are able to converse for the first time without others around. Through physical appearances and actions of both Dimmesdale and Hester, the reader learns that Dimmesdale has actually suffered more than Hester, which is ironic because everyone knows Hester’s sin which has tainted her reputation. However, Dimmesdale suffers more because he must “stand up in [his] pulpit and meet so many eyes turned upward to [his] face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it!” therefore, Dimmesdale goes through life pretending to be somebody that he is not which makes the appearance of Dimmesdale to be ‘Godly.’ Ironically, Dimmesdale’s guilt comes from his saintly reputation, as he is forced to preach and symbolize a false appearance; one in which he pretends to preach holiness and good deeds which make people honor his words and respect him as a whole. If only the congregation would “look inward and discern the black reality of what they idolize” then Dimmesdale would not be clouded with guilt from his hypocrisy.

The only time Dimmesdale feels that although he is “false to God and man”, only with Hester is Dimmesdale “for one moment, true.” Also, the only time Hester does not feel the scarlet letter “burn the bosom of the fallen woman” is when she is with Dimmesdale. The sense of goodness that both feel with each other shows that they are the only two that really understand each other, and ironically, are the two people that are most open minded and non judgmental in the community, but are the two that are punished, which shows that not everything is as it seems. This reason is what led up to Hester suggesting the two leave and feel to Europe.

Hester provides reassurance and hope for Dimmesdale, suggesting they go to Europe and start a new life. Although one would think Hester would need comfort from Dimmesdale, Dimmesdale is the one who needs guidance in life, therefore showing people are not what they appear to be on the outside. Dimmesdale is appeared as a saint-like man whom others look up to, as Hester, on the other hand, is looked down upon and punished repeatedly for her wrong doings. However Hester’s punishment has made her stronger whereas Dimmesdale has become weaker from the act he must portray each day.

Hawthorne again uses physiognomy to portray the effect the scarlet letter has on Hester. Once Hester removes the letter, a “burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit” and “around her mouth” was a “radiant tender smile” as Hester’s “sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty came back.” Not only did Hester’s appearance become more beautiful, but also her surroundings as “forth burst the sunshine” in the forest, “gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees.” All of the items that once “made a shadow hitherto” now “embodied brightness”, livening the entire forest into a “mystery of joy.” The imagery and metaphors describing beauty in Hester and the forest after the removal of the scarlet letter shows how much better and happier life is without the letter. However, the happiness that Hester experiences is short lived, as Pearl forces her mother to put the letter back on, because Pearl does not recognize her mother without it. Not only that, but since Pearl is the “living version of the scarlet letter,” Hester removing the letter is like removing Pearl from her life, and saying that Hester does not need Pearl anymore now that she has Dimmesdale. The A also symbolizes not only the sin that Hester committed, but also the sin that Dimmesdale committed. Not only does the A punish her, but also him, and by removing it the two would be relieved of their sin. However, because Dimmesdale refuses to confess in front of everyone what he truly did, Hester cannot be relieved of her sin until Dimmesdale is. Because of the physical and emotional toll the letter and sin take on Dimmesdale and Hester, the reader begins to wonder if Dimmesdale will ever confess and if the couple will ever live in peace?

*The Scarlet Letter--Week Four.

Is Chillingworth truly the Devil? This is the question that has risen throughout the course of The Scarlet Letter, and is continuing to hold true. The physiognomy of Roger Chillingworth epitomizes an eerie and devilish appearance that was not related to just “growing older.” The old personality Hester Prynne has remembered of Chillingworth being “an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet” has vanished, as a “glare of red light” now appears in Chillingworth’s eyes, “as if the old man were on fire.” The devilish appearance attributes to the fact that Chillingworth is not attempting to know Dimmesdale’s secret to help Dimmesdale, but because Chillingworth wants revenge on the man that tempted his wife. Roger Chillingworth had practiced doing the Devil’s work so much, that he had begun “transforming himself into the Devil.”

Although Chillingworth’s appearance and characteristics make him appear more demonic, on the contrary, the town starts perceiving Hester with a “general regard that had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne” as there were “none so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty” and soon many people “refused to interpret the scarlet letter A by its original signification” but rather the town viewed the A in that it meant “Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength” as the A was now looked upon as “a token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” The metaphor of “the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom” proves just how saintly and righteous Hester now appears after she has continued on her life, and tried to rectify her life.

Ironically, although the town began viewing Hester in a better light, Hester herself continued to feel the pain associated with the A, as “on the mind of Hester Prynne herself, was powerful and peculiar” as “all the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline” is metaphor used to describe the weak appearance of Hester. Hester’s “attractiveness had undergone a change” from “rich and luxuriant hair” to all of her hair “hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine.” Although the town believes that the A has helped reform Hester into a better person, in reality the A has taken not only a physical toll on Hester, but now has “the same dark question” pondering Hester’s mind “was the existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among [women]?” Would it be better to “send Pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide?” Although the town views Hester as a better and happier women, Hester herself begins to question whether life on earth is really worth all the pain that comes with it.

Although the reader does not yet know the man that Hester Prynne had an affair with, clues are hinted at throughout the story foreshadowing who the man is. Pearl is the main character who hints at these clues, and makes them known to the reader. When Pearl keeps persistently asking what “the scarlet letter means”, Hester replies by saying she “got it from the Black Man.” Pearl then questions “why does the minister keep his hand over his heart? Did he get something from the Black Man too?” which foreshadows that Dimmesdale is the adulterer.

In the end of this week’s reading, the reader is left with Pearl and Hester in the forest, which was “black and dense” and appeared to disclose “such imperfect glimpses of the sky above” which symbolizes the “moral wilderness in which” Hester has “so long been wandering.” The “flickering sunlight” was only seen every now and then, as Pearl noted that “the sunshine does not love [Hester], but runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on [her] bosom.” As Pearl followed the sunlight, it remained shining upon her, but when Hester tried to walk into the light the “sunshine vanished.” The sunlight amidst the darkened forest symbolizes a bit of happiness in all of Hester’s “dark” life. The significance of Pearl being able to stand in the light depicts how Pearl is the good aspect in Hester’s life. Along with happiness attributed to the sunlight, the sunlight also portrays truth, as the darkness of the forest portrays sin. The only way Hester can every enter sunlight is if she frees herself of her sin and tells the truth about who her adulterer is. Otherwise, Hester will continue living an isolated life, dark and alone.

*The Scarlet Letter--Week Three.

Proceeding on in the reading of Scarlet Letter, the reader delves into the guilt of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and the relationship that forms between himself and Roger Chillingworth.

The new found relationship between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth is nonetheless ironic in that both men have a relationship with Hester Prynne, yet neither of the men knows it. The two became friends because the “mysterious old Roger Chillingworth became the medical advisor of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale” because Chillingworth “was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient.” Then two men “spent much time together”, and Dimmesdale, “a true priest, a true religionist” soon became interested and enjoyed “the occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect”, in other words, a scientific view on life that Chillingworth provided. Although the two differ in beliefs on the wide aspect of the world, what the two have in common is the relationship each men share with Hester. It’s a bit ironic that Chillingworth is attempting to release a lie and sin out of Dimmesdale, when Chillingworth himself is keeping a secret. Is Dimmesdale and Chillingworth’s relationship going to provide clues that Chillingworth needs to uncover the truth about Pearl being Dimmesdale’s daughter? And what will happen to the two’s relationship if either of them uncover who each man really is?

The home that Chillingworth and Dimmesdale reside in has ironic characteristics. The walls of Dimmesdale’s room “were hung round with tapestry said to be from the Gobelin looms” which represented “the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba.” David was a biblical character who committed adultery with Bathsheba. Also, on the wall, was “Nathan the Prophet”, who accused David of his actions. Irony in the biblical story upon Dimmesdale’s wall is that he is in fact David, Hester is Bathsheba, and Chillingworth is Nathan.

Chillingworth has various ways in achieving the task for Dimmesdale to tell the sin he committed. While collecting medicinal herbs one day, Chillingworth found a “dark, flabby leaf.” When asked by Dimmesdale where Chillingworth found such a drab looking weed, Chillingworth says he found them “growing on a grave” and the weeds “have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance”, for the man had no tombstone upon his gravesite. Perhaps the weeds “grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime” Chillingworth retorts to Dimmesdale, hoping to uncover the secret from him.

When pressured again about the symptoms Dimmesdale is feeling and as to what is making him sick, Chillingworth continues to question Dimmesdale. Angered by the persistent questioning, Dimmesdale still refuses to tell. Chillingworth responds with saying that “nothing is lost” and that the two will “shall be friends again anon. But see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! As with one passion, so with another! He hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!” The statements and actions Chillingworth has towards Dimmesdale makes the reader wonder if Chillingworth knows what Dimmesdale did?

Pearl continues to show a “demonic” and “elfish” side to her personality throughout the story. While walking with Hester one day, Pearl gathered “prickly burrs from a tall burdock, and arranged them along the lines of the scarlet letter” upon Hester’s breast, which “Hester did not puck off.” Pearl then looked up at Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale in the window, and “threw one of the prickly burrs” at him. The burrs symbolize sin, and the importance of not only putting a burr on the scarlet “A” upon Hester, but also throwing one at Dimmesdale correlates the two together, therefore foreshadowing that Dimmesdale is Hester’s adulterer. Also, the burrs are “prickly” and stick to a person right away, symbolizing how the sin each committed sticks and pokes each one, therefore unable to forget about it.

The guilt that Dimmesdale feels overpowers his ability to act in a rational manner. Chapter 12, “The Minister’s Vigil” is titled so because Dimmesdale wakes in the middle of the night, and “reached the spot, where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived through her first hour of public ignominy.” While standing on the scaffolding, Dimmesdale, “without any effort of his will”, screamed aloud, “an outcry that went pealing through the night…as if a company of devils detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro.” After the relentless cry that Dimmesdale let out, he was sure that the town would all hear, and that everyone would know of his sin. However, no one heard, and if anyone in the town did, they just thought that it was “the witches” in the town. Shortly after, Hester and Pearl saw Dimmesdale standing upon the scaffolding, and stood with him, joining hands. The very moment that Dimmesdale touched Pearl’s hand, “there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart…as if the mother and child were communicating their vital warmth into his half-torpid system.” Being together and joined in an “electric chain” with Pearl and Hester created “warmth” throughout Dimmesdale’s body, as if all the emotional pain and guilt he had been feeling earlier was suddenly healed. When asked by Pearl if Dimmesdale will hold Pearl’s and Hester’s hand when the two must stand up there again, Dimmesdale said “another time.” A flash of light then clouded up the sky and Dimmesdale saw an “appearance of an immense letter,-the letter A,-marked out in lines of dull red light.” The ‘A’ that Dimmesdale sees up in the sky symbolizes the guilt that Dimmesdale has, not only in being the adulterer, but also not being able to confess it to his congregation, and most importantly himself.

While standing on the scaffolding, “Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart.” Could the mark on Dimmesdale’s chest that Chillingworth saw be an A? Is that why Dimmesdale always has his hand on his chest, because of the pain and guilt that he feels?

*The Scarlet Letter--Week Two.

In the continuation of Scarlet Letter, the scarlet A continues to inflict a burden upon Hester Prynne. As Hester is released from the prison, imagery depicts Hester’s mood as she is released through the prison doors. Being free from prison, however, does not mean that Hester is free from the guilt inflicted upon her, as “she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast.” Hester embarks on her journey to rid herself of the mockery she faced previously from the town, but the “burning of the A upon [her] bosom” grew fierier each day. Throughout all of the people that looked upon the ‘A’, the spot “never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture” as Hester never got used to the letter branded into her. The metaphor in the “law which condemned” her was a “giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate” means that the law which once held Hester up through the standing on the scaffold, could now obliterate her as she walks out of the prison completely alone.

When Hester and Pearl arrive at the Governor’s house, Pearl sees a reflection of Hester in a mirror and in an old headpiece. In the reflection in the “convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance.” No matter how much Hester tries to appear larger than the sin she committed, the burning remnants of scarlet letter will continue to make Hester feel as if she is “hidden behind it.”

A biblical allusion is used to compare Hester to Cain, who was the first murderer branded by God to warn others of him, similarly like the brand administered upon Hester to warn others of her adultery.

When Hester gets out of prison, she resides in an isolated “thatched cottage” on the “outskirts of town” where she spends much of her time sewing clothing items for people of the town. Hester sewed for many people and many occasions, but the one occasion Hester was not allowed to sew anything for was a “white veil to cover the pure blushes of a bride” for “society frowned upon her sin” and did not think that a wedding between two pure people should be cursed by the needlework of an adulterer. Since Hester sewed her own “A” upon her clothing to symbolize her sin, the sewn clothing worn by other people in the town makes the reader wonder if the sewn articles of clothing symbolize how each person in the community is sinful, and should be marked as well.

In chapter 6, the reader is introduced to Hester’s daughter, Pearl. The name Pearl was “not expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned luster that would be indicated by the comparison” but rather because Pearl came about because of a “great price” her mother had to pay and is also “her mother’s only treasure.”

Although Pearl is known as a beautiful girl, when Hester looks Pearl in the eyes, she sees “an evil spirit possessed the child” while looking into the “abyss of her black eyes”. Pearl then questions as to where she came from, Hester replies by saying Pearl came from “Thy Heavenly Father”, but Pearl disagreed, and said that she “has no Heavenly Father”. Hester then thought back on when the “neighboring townspeople” said that “poor little Pearl was a demon offspring, such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother’s sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose.” Could Pearl possibly be the work of witchcraft to punish Hester even more of her sins?

Although Pearl has demonic eyes, she has the beauty of Hester, along with a peculiar personality. No matter how pure Pearl’s moral life had originally been, her life had now “taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light, of the intervening substance.” Hester could detect her own “wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart” within the personality of Pearl. Hester dresses Pearl in a “crimson velvet tunic, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread”, to make her appear exactly like the ‘A’ that is embroidered upon Hester’s breast. Each clue of Pearl embodying traits of Hester’s sinful and lustful personality along with Hester’s beauty and resembling the appearance of the scarlet letter, the reader undoubtedly realizes that Pearl is “the scarlet letter endowed with life!” Why did Hester make her child resemble the most guilt ridden symbol embedded within Hester’s mind? Was it because “the red ignominy [was] so deeply scorched into her brain, that all her conceptions assumed its form”?

When asked where Pearl came from, she replies by saying that she was “picked off the rosebush by the prison door.” The significance of equating the origin of Pearl to the rosebush not only depicts the physical connotation of the rose, being that Pearl is beautiful on the outside just like the rose, yet has a “thorny” personality, but also from when, in the first chapter, the reader is first brought upon the rosebush. The reader learns that the rosebush could possibly be growing by the prison from Anne Hutchinson, who committed a sin in some people’s eyes, as she broke free of the Puritan rule and believed in individual freedom. The rosebush is a symbol of sin, yet also a symbol of hope and individuality, much like the personality of Pearl.

In the very end of chapter 8, Pearl’s personality alters when Mr. Dimmesdale defends Hester’s right to keep her daughter. Morphing from Pearl’s usual wild and non sentimental self, Pearl goes up to Dimmesdale and “taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive” that Hester wondered “Is that my Pearl?” Could the affection Pearl has towards Dimmesdale foreshadow that he could in fact be her father?