Even while Pearl is an infant Hester questions “whether Pearl was a human child” or some sort of demonic elf-child sent to punish Hester for her sins (Hawthorne 101). Since infants do not have the mental capability for complex human interaction, it is not feasible she would intentionally torture Hester. Yet Hester projects her own personality and worries onto Pearl and exaggerates them further. At this point in time Hester is still suffering major repercussions for her ignominy; she feels completely ostracized from the people of Salem and is treated inhumanely, with people constantly gaping and judging. Hester has limited interaction with others as a result of how they treat her. She is an outsider because of her sins. Pearl is also removed from society because of sin, yet Pearl’s is not her own; she is a physical manifestation of her mother’s shame, just like the scarlet letter, and treated as such. Through no fault of her own, “Pearl was a born outcast the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants (Hawthorne 102).

While Dimmesdale is literally among his people, they do not see the true man before them, nor do understand his secret burden, thus driving him to perpetual self-blame and introspective isolation into his own mind/soul.

In contrast to the bright crimson symbol that Hester Prynne displays upon her breast for all to see, Minister Arthur Dimmesdale lives out his days hiding his secret of adulterous sin from the public eye beneath the surface. Nathaniel Hawthorne creates situations of false communion that contribute to the sufferings of Dimmesdale’s guilt-ridden heart. Over the course of the Scarlet Letter deceit increasingly haunts Dimmesdale in every aspect of his life and leads to further isolation and inner scrutiny. With the duplicity of the minister’s role as a moral leader of his Puritan congregation while decaying beneath the burden of hidden sins, the solitude of his painful truth without opportunity for true healing refuge in another soul, and the perpetual castigation that he inflicts upon himself, Hawthorne demonstrates that a human heart cannot survive under the conditions of deceit, loneliness, and continual punishment.

Hester’s punishment is (obviously) the public shame that she is put through.  At first, it seems like she gets the worse punishment. As she leaves the prison in the chapter “Hester at Her Needle”, she seems sure that her future will be nothing but grim: “The days of the far off future would toil onward…for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame” (75).  Since she wears the symbol of her transgression, she will never truly escape her sin. “The young and pure would be taught to look at her…as the figure, the body, the reality of sin” (75), which will daily remind her of the fact that she is now ostracized from her people.  However, in the chapter “A Flood of Sunshine”, which takes place about seven years later, the reader is presented with a more optimistic outlook on what the punishment has done to Hester.  Wearing the scarlet letter and dealing with her isolation from the town is “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread” (158), and she is able to assess the values of her Puritan society from an outsider’s perspective.  In addition, though the punishment puts her life in turmoil, it strengthens her. “Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers…and they had made her strong…” (158).

Dimmesdale’s punishment, by contrast, is the internal torture he puts himself through because no one in the town (save for Hester and Chillingworth) know of his sin.  What’s more, the townspeople “fanc[y] him the mouth-piece of Heaven’s messages” (119).  Though at first it seems like Dimmesdale is better off because his sin is not exposed, the opposite is shown to be true.  Throughout the novel, his health is shown to be constantly declining because of his constant guilt over being a hypocrite; “gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul” (118).  While “A Flood of Sunshine” shows that Hester has become stronger through her exposed sin, it shows that Dimmesdale’s  unexposed sin has made him weaker – “he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering…his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it” (159).

The rose-bush could be an allegory for Pearl by portraying the notion of something good growing out of sin, like the rose growing out of the soil next to the prison. While I do agree she isn’t exactly a poster child, and may or may not have been described as an “imp of evil,” she is intentionally juxtaposed to the rose-bush several times. “…That little infant… a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion… beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw it’s quivering sunshine over the tiny features of the child,” (81) could serve to represent her being, while in itself a mysterious beauty blossoming, still grows from sinful roots. Pearl herself references the rose-bush in chapter 8 by decreeing that she, “had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses, that grew by the prison door” (97). Imp she may be, Pearl is incredibly perceptive for her young age, and recognizes early on that she is unique in her creation, and serves as an unfiltered, innocent muser of the world she inhabits and the relationships of others around her. Pearl’s complexion is also described as “Red Rose” (96) by Mr. Wilson.

The rose-bush could also be likened to the subliminal meaning of the letter A. In Joanne Diehl’s Psychoanalytic Perspective, it is insinuated that the letter is a visual of “desire and its necessary repression,” (315) which parallels Freud’s concept of fetish. In Ross Murfin’s Psychoanalytic Criticism, he continues this notion: “Thus the A… conceals what it ultimately signifies and…” (308) now quoting Diehl, “represents what cannot be spoken, the inviolate truth of what is most desired and what must be repressed…” (323).  The lust for something that is inherently beautiful but unable to grasp, like the concept of a rose-bush, delicate and fragile yet riddled with poisoned thorns, could be likened to Dimmesdale’s desire to love Hester freely, a pining also tethered to his desire to free himself of his guilt from concealing his identity as Pearl’s biological father. While every moment of his being he is tempted to unburden his secret he too fears the repercussions; he must look upon the scarlet letter as an escape covered in thorns. Thus, in this instance the rose-bush represents what is lusted but cannot be grasped.

The rose-bush could also represent the dichotomy between the god-fearing Puritan community from wild Hester Prynne, quite like the town and its surrounding forest. When describing the rose-bush, Hawthorne only delves waist deep into its possible origins, but notes that it may be a stubborn remnant of the forest that pre-dated Boston, surviving, “long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that overshadowed it” (54). This idea entirely separates the rose-bush from every other aspect of the town, as it is one with the godlessness and barbarousness of the forest. Yet, it persists untouched amidst the Bostonians, just as Hester was allowed to continue settlement after prosecution. In the novel, the forest is used exclusively for mischievous deeds. Mrs. Hibbins performs her witch’s rides, Dimmesdale and Hester sneak away to plot of escape, etc. The forest is reinforced throughout novel as a place of both beauty and evil, much like Hester is perceived by the townspeople, which behooves us to consider that the rose too shares both the qualities of their beauty and evil roots.

In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores the recognition of sin and different ways that sin is dealt with.  The three main characters of the book represent separate ways that such recognition manifests itself.  Hester is the one most clearly seen to be in sin, primarily through being exposed as a transgressor of Puritan law.  She is forced upon the scaffold and has to wear the scarlet “A” so that there is no hiding or diverting the blame.  Yet, contrary to the intentions of her admonishers, she comes to embrace her mistake as a natural part of life.  Yes, she recognizes her mistake, but she does not let condemnation define her, rather rises above how others perceive her.

Dimmesdale is Hester’s parallel character in taking the blame, being her hidden partner in adultery.  While Hester feels initial shame, Dimmesdale feels continuous guilt that is much more destructive to the soul.  Because his sin was not revealed to the community, he torments himself in a circulatory fashion that is worse than what any outside force could inflict on him.  He was not put to shame, but his own conscience plagues him with guilt.  Hester is better off in that she allows herself to move on after the acknowledgement of her sin, and Dimmesdale remains in a rut that he put himself in and can only come out of on his own terms.

The catalyst behind the guilt of Dimmesdale is the demonic man of Chillingsworth.  While he cannot put shame on Dimmesdale because of how he is viewed by others, he does play on the guilt that is already growing inside of the preacher.  As he clings to the guilt inside of Dimmesdale, he becomes blind to his own faults, namely that he is looking for the worst in people and trying to kill his patients from the inside.  Yet he cannot affect Hester because she resists guilt by embracing her actions, and allowing them to define her.

Hester is not only an adulteress, but also an excellent seamstress, a faithful contributor to her community, and a radical amongst narrow-minded Puritans.  Because she accepts who she is, Chillingsworth cannot tamper with her identity.  But because Dimmesdale is insecure about his role in his community, he is easily buffeted by the crafty physician.  Accepting one’s identity fortifies oneself from letting others define it.  Take a hit, and move on.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter has been passed down for years as an American classic novel. Whereas more obvious themes such as guilt and forgiveness are extremely prevalent throughout Hawthorne’s novel, another more subtly overlaying theme is femininity compared to masculinity. The Scarlet Letter follows one woman in particular during a time where women were expected to be inferior to their male counterparts. However, in the case of Hester Prynne, Hawthorne writes a female character that does everything to challenge this ideology that women must be subordinate to men. She willingly allows herself to be publicly humiliated and in doing so she is burdened to wear her sin on her chest. Alternatively, Roger Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale are the complete opposites of Hester. They are cowardly and hypocritical, reluctant to expose their true identities. Even though women are viewed as the inferior sex during this time in Puritanical society, they prove to be incredibly superior in this novel.

For the entirety of this novel Hester Prynne is set as an outcast from the rest of her town. She endures public humiliation and condemnation, yet she still manages to thrive above her male counterparts. “Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman” (158). Hester contests her status as a social outcast by remaining head-strong and adamant about living out her life unashamed of her sin, while Dimmesdale silently suffers due to a lack of backbone. She didn’t have anyone helping her deal with the ostracism that Puritan town of Boston had bestowed upon her, yet she still managed to live a better, guilt-free life as opposed to her husband and her lover. Readily, Hester “had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest” thus proving that women can (and in this novel are) in fact morally stronger than men (158).

It is important to realize that Hawthorne, in these passages is recalling the condemned woman first described as exiting the prison-door, whose “beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.” (58) For “Hester Prynne [does] not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the periods of her ignominy.” (131) She began as a woman marked scornfully by the townspeople, some of whom wanted her hanged or branded with hot iron, and her sentence is to be doomed to serve as a “living sermon against sin” (64). Rather than given death that might otherwise offer respite from her shame, Hester was made to bind her shame to her breast for all to see. Now “years [have] come, and gone” (131), and the same young woman we were offered so long ago is no longer standing in the bright morning sun, “working such an effect, that the world was only darker for this woman’s beauty.” (60)

So how is it that she’s been given a new place? When Hawthorne refers to “the periods of her ignominy”, he is suggesting that that period is over. This is clear in the explanation that “Pearl is now seven years old.” (131) The Scarlet Letter is a work that relies on religious imagery not only to give substance to its characters but also to place the perspectives with which they are interacting. Pearl’s being seven is then means more than simply her age. This is more than a reference to time’s passing; it immediately calls to mind the seven days taken to create the world. Moreover, it places Pearl in this context, giving her some part in the sins of the world and the judgment that her mother has been so long subjected to. Indeed, the scarlet letter is then offered in light of this relationship: “her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast… has long been a familiar object to the townspeople.” (131)

By choosing to call Hester “Pearl’s mother”, and distinguishing her as branded, Hawthorne is shedding light on the perspective of the townspeople. It is Pearl’s mother who bears the mark of shame, and who has become familiar to the people who so harshly viewed her in the first chapter. Then, it was a mother who recognized the import of what was being done to Hester, softly suggesting “the pang of it will be always in her heart” (56).

The balance between the real and ideal seem to be the central foundation to which Hawthorne structures all the other thematic oppositions. As an artist, Hawthorne works to balance and mirror the two to such a point that they blend into each other. Such happens within The Governor’s Hall. Among the portraits of Bellingham’s ancestors sat a suit of armor, with its breastplate shaped as a convex mirror. Within which Hester sees her reflection:

“Hester looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it.”

Hester, in living flesh and blood, is confronted with an ideal image of her situation, and where her corporeal form ends and reflection begins is a mystery. The division is blurred!

Although “modern readers… are sympathetic to Hester Prynne from the start”, I think that nearly all of us can identify with the complexities of relationships, understand the confusion when we feel as if something is a blessing and a burden, and have sympathy for those who are unjustly made outcasts of society.

The Scarlet Letter seems most relevant to me in the way that it describes Dimmesdale. On page 119 it says, “But this very burden it was, that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs”. This, too me, is very comparable to the life of Jesus, who came down to earth and underwent struggles (without sinning, unlike Dimmesdale) so that he could be more real, more relatable to us. This idea of closeness through likeness is an interesting theme throughout the book, and also relates to the theme of something being both a blessing and a curse, just as Dimmesdale’s sin debilitated his body and increased the effectiveness of his message.

The final account of relevancy I would like to introduce is found on page 121, “It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us”. This is the perfect example of ideas being capable of transcending time, because these words might be more true today than they were in the mid 1850′s.  This quote embodies a basic element of life, and it would be relevant no matter the place, time, language, or person that it was presented to. Some things are simply universal truths that never become irrelevant.