English 251: American Lit. (1600-1865)

INTRODUCTION + READING ASSIGNMENT + WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Assignment 22:
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (Part 3)

Let's pause for a moment and consider the problems we've begun to unfold in reading The Scarlet Letter. On the approach developed here, a key theme involves the problem of words and their meanings. To Hawthorne, indeed, a definitive trait of "our fore-fathers" (page 1390) was their Puritan propensity to read all events as signs, also referred to by the narrator of the novel as "tokens" or "hieroglypics" signifying one "majestic idea"--the mission given them by Divine Providence, to lay down "the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem" (page 1371). In the words of Jonathan Edwards, earthly things were always to be seen as "Images or Shadows of Divine Things." This is the idea that Hawthorne, working from his own historical understanding of Puritan culture, reveals to us in Dimmesdale, who in Chapter XI is seen reckoning "all things shadow-like" and "devoid of weight or value" unless they contain within them a clearly understandable "divine essence" or meaning (page 1383).

Coming from the Hawthorne who, as custom-house officer, had the job of determining the "weight or value" of a commodity, then putting his Surveyor's "mark" upon it, these comments upon the mind of Dimmesdale take on a special resonance. Similarly, the so-called "office" of "the scarlet letter" would seem to involve a simple, and determinate process of making meaning: the "A" symbolizes Hester's sin of Adultery and nothing else; that's what the "custom" of the country, in Puritan times, would demand. And yet by the middle chapters of his great novel Hawthorne has begun to reveal how, as the narrator puts it in Chapter XIII, "the scarlet letter had not done its office" (page 1395). This chapter, aptly called "Another View of Hester," begins to imply that the "A" can mean other things. Looking at the miraculous appearance of the red "A" on the sky, for example, other viewers had thought it meant "Angel," for the dead Governor Winthrop. But in Chapter XIII we are also told that Hester's seven years' work as a "Sister of Mercy" has changed the meaning of her "badge of shame." Now, "many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able" (page 1393). It will take on potentially further, more complex "significations" as Hawthorne continues the tale.

Thus far we have focused on the problem of the singular meaning which is supposedly in a thing or sign. In Hawthorne's novel, meaning is increasingly revealed as multiple and even indeterminate, despite any singular intention of the writer who puts a sign or hieroglyphic down on the page (or, in Hester's case, on the breast). But there is also the problem of the meaning a reader will supposedly determine in coming to the thing or sign. Simply put, we are shown how other views conduce to other readings. Another way of putting this idea is that readers will potentially always stray or (in Hawthorne's terms) "err" from the single, intended meaning of a sign. For example, in Pearl the residents of Boston had always already had before them a "sign" of the child's paternity, if they had been able to accurately "read" the child's face. In the novel's second half, these inherited traits are a subject Hawthorne will have the characters discuss, as Pearl grows older and at age seven develops features suggesting not only Hester but Dimmesdale as well.

What further problems arise from this complex issue of names and signs, and their essence or meaning? Certainly we should remark that the larger issue of custom, or "law," depends to a large extent upon it. For, indeed, a law and its application, in the instance of a crime and its punishment, will depend on discovering truth and then correctly dispensing justice. Hawthorne repeatedly insists, however, that while the town of Boston stands for law and order, whereas the wilderness around it stands for lawlessness and chaos, things are nonetheless far from stable in the town. Because: it's a site of hypocrisy, and its citizens fail to unerringly determine meaning. Does this mean that the wilderness is a truer, more proper source of meaning and law? It's tempting to answer yes, for in the novel's second half, as you'll see, crucial scenes take place in the forest. Yet readers must ask if the revelations that take place in Nature produce the effect that the characters desire. And if not, why not?

Perhaps wild nature is not, therefore, a truer source of meaning. But if not, what is? Probably our best resource is the novel's concluding chapters. Dimmesdale does not follow through with the plan he worked out with Hester in the forest. As for Hester, she is gone for a time, then will be shown returning to her seaside cottage near Boston, because it is truer to her nature. And Pearl, the "pearl of great price," will be shown receiving an inheritance that makes her "the richest heiress of her day, in the New World" (page 1445). She then becomes, apparently, the bride of a European aristocrat, thus bringing the novel--in one sense--full circle; for the aristocratic home that Hester had left behind in Old England, the home with its "shield of arms over the portal" (page 1337), has been symbolically regained. Perhaps Hawthorne is suggesting that Pearl's true "nature"--her genealogical origins--have asserted their essential truth. Not wild nature without law or custom, then, but the nature that people inherit and that orders them may be the more profound source of meaning. Perhaps. But if so, why do we also see, in the novel's last chapter, a Hester Prynne who imagines a new day when women's relations with men, and thus perhaps genealogy itself, will be redefined? Such are the complexities that Hawthorne leaves us amidst, and that make The Scarlet Letter a novel worth re-reading.

Reading Assignment

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter Chs. XIII-XXIV (pp. 1391-1447).

Writing Assignment

As you read, note Hawthorne's frequently stated contrast between the town, and the forest. From your notes, briefly summarize the symbolic aspects of, and values associated with, each place.
As you read, note as well how Hawthorne develops the contrast between Dimmesdale, the man of religion, and Chillingworth, the man of science. From your notes, briefly summarize the symbolic aspects of each, and whether (and where) the realms of the two overlap. Then go further, and discuss how Emerson's Nature, in its thoughts on modern science, can shape our reading of this thematic contrast.
Hester wears the sign of her sinfulness on her breast? Where, and how, is Dimmesdale's sin revealed? Discuss briefly.
In what ways, according to the narrator, are both Hester and her daughter, Pearl, representative of a law unto themselves? Why, in your opinion?
How, according to the narrator in Chapter XXIV, does Reverend Dimmesdale's death become "a parable"? In what ways, also, does Hester's life achieve similar status? Discuss.
Select one of the following topics as the basis for an essay. The essay you write should have an original title, should be approximately 1000 words, and should argue in support of an original thesis. It should document, in parentheses, the page and source of all quotes and references, either to Hawthorne's novel or any secondary sources.
1. The relationship between "The Custom-House" and The Scarlet Letter.
2. Emerson's discussion of "Language" in Chapter IV of his Nature essay, as a way of approaching Hawthorne's ideas on signs and their meanings.
3. The ways that Hawthorne's historical novel uses Puritan times to comment upon its own time.
4. Hester Prynne as a characterization of early femminist or "suffragist" tendencies in American culture. A bit of research on the 1848 "Seneca Falls" convention might pay off very nicely for this topic.

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