In the
Puritan society in New England, Hester Pryne committed adultery with a man whom
she concealed the identity. For that, she must wear the scarlet letter of ‘A’
(symbolizing ‘Adultery’] embroidered on her bosom, and was expelled from the
society together with her daughter Pearl. An old physician—who turned out to be
her long missing husband and called himself Roger Chillingworth—promised Hester
that he would take avenge to her lover. His suspicion was soon directed to a
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, whom Chillingworth then took as his patient, to be
able to ruin his soul.
This is a
tale about sin and passion, beautifully written by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Although many times I got confused with his so many metaphors and magic realism
symbols, I finally managed to grab most of the meanings in the end. Really worth
the effort, because I have been enjoying reading this book right from the first
sentence of the first chapter! Four stars for The Scarlet Letter; and these are
my answers to the inquiries from my The Well Educated Mind Self-Project.
Grammar Stage
Inquiry [What]
Which character is the most affected? How is
that character affected by the book’s main event?
It’s all
about Hester Pryne. It’s Hester Pryne’s battle to be repented from her sin: How
a woman survived pressures from Puritan’s unfair system by bearing her
humiliation; but in the end she proved that she cultivated much more than the
hypocrite society by bearing her symbol of sin, in contrast with her companion
of the crime—who faded away from the world after being mistakenly praised as
holy and divine by the same society.
Logic Stage
Inquiry [Why & How]
What does
Hester Pryne want? What is standing in her way? What strategy does she pursue
in order to overcome this block?
Hester
wanted to be set free or repented from her sin. However, voluntarily wearing
the scarlet letter and performing good deeds for the poor were not sufficient
to change society’s view on her. As long as she wore the scarlet letter, people
would always regard her only as an adulterer, a poor sinner, no less or no more
than that. So, Hester kept bearing all the tortures in her in order to be
stronger. Her little Pearl was also a big help for her to survive. Together
they lived a humble life, never wanted more than the society permit them, but
when the magistrates wanted to take Pearl from her, Hester did everything she
could to keep Pearl.
Image and
metaphor, is any particular image repeated again and again? What does this
represent?
First, the
contrast of gloomy prison door and the shining rosebush in front of it; the
prison door represented the sin (dark patches in human’s soul), while the
bright rosebush represented the fruits which culminated from the sin.
From the seclusion from the society, Hester sprung out of her sin, being a much
stronger than before, that enabled her to help others and performing many good
deeds for the society. In other words, Hester’s sin had outshone the pureness
that the Puritans were proud of themselves.
Second, the scarlet
‘A’ letter. It shone on Hester’s bosom, glowing even more in the dark;
represented the sin that Hester honestly admitted glowed from the dark hypocrisy of
Puritan society. Pearl’s particular interest in the scarlet letter (she even
wrought the same letter from seaweed for herself) represented her self as the
fruit of the adultery, who at the end could have a happier life outside New
England.
The scarlet
letter appeared as stigmata in Dimmesdale’s chest to represent that once you
commit a sin, it would stay there as long as you permit it. You have the choice
whether to admit it or to hide it behind your hypocrisy, it’s all the same, you
are a sinner.
The letter ‘A’ represented how people used to see things as they wanted to see. When a letter ‘A’ appeared on the horizon, Dimmesdale took it as the sign of what he feared the most: that his sin was to be revealed. However, people saw it as ‘Angel’ because a worthy Governor died at the same hour, and they imagined angels came to pick him up. On the other hand, several people who regarded Hester’s willing hands to help people in needs, assumed the ‘A’ on her bosom has changed to ‘Able’.
The letter ‘A’ represented how people used to see things as they wanted to see. When a letter ‘A’ appeared on the horizon, Dimmesdale took it as the sign of what he feared the most: that his sin was to be revealed. However, people saw it as ‘Angel’ because a worthy Governor died at the same hour, and they imagined angels came to pick him up. On the other hand, several people who regarded Hester’s willing hands to help people in needs, assumed the ‘A’ on her bosom has changed to ‘Able’.
Rhetorical
Stage Inquiry [So What]
What does the setting of the book tell you
about the way human beings are shaped?
I don’t know
much about Puritan, but from this book I think Puritan only made people look ‘pure’
on the outside, but not in the inside. They created strict laws, dull lifestyle,
they prevented the society to have pleasures. They praised their magistrates and
church authorities, they were touched by any beautifully-performed sermons, but
they forgot to bear in mind the real essence of them. You were regarded highly
in the society only if you were ‘pure’, there’s no place for wrong doing,
because once you committed it, you were banished from the society. The pressures
were so high that I think they were far away from being happy, and made them
hypocrites.
What exactly is the writer telling you?
That
humanity lies not on the right or wrong, holy or sinful, but on our decisions
and principles, on what we do and what we think. People do make mistakes, but
it’s not on the size of the mistake that we should judge others, but by what
they do from that. Remarkable things might come from sinful personages, amazing
yet true, just as the rosemary bushes could culminate from the death soil in
front of the old prison door….
Do you agree? Is this work true? In what
sense is the book true?
Although
Hawthorne picked Puritan era as the setting, the conflicts were still relevant
to today’s life, so I can say positively that this work is true. I have created
a diagram of Hester vs Dimmesdale, in term of how they made up with
their sins, and from that I could see that life is not black or white, but we
grow up from mistakes and sins; that if we are brave and strong, we can change
our dark past to a fruitful future, not only for ourselves, but also for the
world. Just as Hester Pryne had done.
