Honors Novel #2

The Delights of the Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has the “uncivilized free and wild thinking” that Henry David Thoreau speaks about in his essay “Walking.” “It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking… not learned in schools, that delights us.” The story of Hester Prynne captures the reader within the first visualization that the narrator gives us of her. We are given a scene of a large number of people gathered in the center of town to watch the conviction of a young woman holding her baby in her arms. The only part that the townspeople pay attention to is the letter “A” upon her breast. “A” standing for adultery, is what captures the reader into this story and will later on delight us with the “uncivilized free and wild thinking” of the story.

            The character of Hester and her daughter Pearl make the story of the Scarlet Letter complete along the lines of the “uncivilized free and wild thinking” that Thoreau speaks of in his essay. Pearl is the product of the mischievousness acts of her mother. The fact that an affair that was unknown to everyone else other than the Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale is what makes the story a whole, as a piece of literature, that pulls in the reader. It took seven years for anyone to find out about the affair and to find out who Pearl’s father was. It is even a mystery to the reader who the man in the affair is until the very end of the story.

            The narrator in the story not only uses the actions of Hester Prynne to show the uncivilized and wild, but the actual thoughts and the way she thinks of herself is what makes her that much more of a strong character. “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness. . . . The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.” When Hester is first given the scarlet “A” that she wears upon her breast, she was ashamed and thought so much lower of herself than she should have. But who wouldn’t? Hester had full obligation to feel this way, but it was the steps that led her to the character that she became within those seven years that made her so admirable. Of course she wouldn’t be admirable in the sense that she had an affair with another man while she was married, but having the strength to pull away from the reputation as well as the self-doubt is what made her strong.

            Along with Hester comes along her daughter Pearl. Pearl is a character within herself and has the outgoing side that helps make her mother stronger. Although Hester has the strength within herself, Pearl was a large contribution in those efforts. Just as any other seven year old does, Pearl still obtains the naïve state of mind and does not really understand the whole concept of her mother’s scarlet letter. Hester has worn the scarlet letter since her daughter was born and does not know any other than that. ‘“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. . . . It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!”’ Pearl knows that she wants to be exactly like her mother and of course that also includes the letter “A” upon her breast. The idea of adultery is not comprehendible to her and she has been told her whole life that the heavenly father is in fact her father. What Pearl does understand is the sadness that her mother has lived with her entire life.

            The “uncivilized free and wild thinking” that we read about here that is delightful to the reader, is the personal struggle that Hester has to go through to reach the character she is by the end of the story. A life filled with pain is finally brought to an end when the father of the child presents to the public that he was the one responsible. It all ended for Hester when this occurrence happened and she is able to pursue the life that is beyond the scarlet letter that represented adultery for seven years of her life. What was unbelievable and delightful to me was the fact that Hester still loved Arthur after all the years. After being left and completely alone and isolated by the man, she was able to still be madly in love with him and he obviously felt the same after dying for her. The symbol of adultery became removed from Hester in a literal sense, but it already had been a while before that because as Hester became stronger, the letter just became a hypothetical symbol of shame that no longer worked to make her strength disappear again.