Scarlet and Sin Symbolism Starts Swiftly

Name: Paulina Smolinski

WordPress user name: paulinasmolinski

Blog Title: Scarlet Reader

This post focuses on Chapters 1-4

A couple of pages into the novel The Scarlet Letter the plot is already filled with both glaringly obvious and slightly less blunt symbolism. The novel starts off with the description of a rosebush amongst weeds covering the prison door.  The narrator even accentuates the fact that he  “could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader . . . to symbolize some sweet moral blossom” (46). We could easily infer that this delicate rose stands for the essence of Hester Prynne as she stands surrounded by the weeds of ridicule and shame. Somehow, she maintains her beauty by having strength and perseverance. Her thorns are made of self-worth and mental endurance, and they help her to survive the obloquy at the scaffold.   I find her mentality to be just as commendable as it is rare. Many delicate creations deteriorate under the pressure of nature’s wrath which is what makes it even more laudable that “this rosebush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history” (46).

Furthermore, the scaffold on which Hester Prynne is exposed to a pack of gossip-thirsty Puritans shows the symbol of the living sermon which the Puritans wish to make of Prynne. Those who mock her seem to create a foundation on the psychological defense mechanism of projection as they find no faults in their own lives and quite a lot in Hester’s. In essence, I think the Puritans act like a group of teenagers as they revel in backstabbing and malicious talk.  The exhibit that is Hester serves as a threat and reminder to those who dare to follow in her sinful footsteps. The scaffold “in old times was used as an effectual agent in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France” (52). I find it important to note that Puritans often searched for symbols in their lives to confirm divine sentiments. Clearly they found it quite necessary to confirm let’s call it less divine sentiments or, in other words, symbols of condemnation. I mean the worst thing that the scaffold does is it takes away the ability to hide. Exposure is inevitable as a shroud of judgment covers her soul. Henceforth, the scaffold also becomes a symbol more obviously of ignominy.

As if this were not enough, the condemning symbol of the ever so flagrant scarlet letter reigns supreme as it even is the namesake of the novel which means it has to hold some paramount purpose. Overall, the scarlet letter A is meant to mark Hester’s soul with her sin of adultery. Every soul she is to encounter is to see and judge her based on this shameful display. The interesting thing is that Hester does not hide the stain of shame. Instead, she embellishes it with “elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourished of gold thread” (50).  I mean it is a huge slap in the face to the Puritan ideology that simplicity is key. She actually goes out of her way to go “greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony” (50). Other than that, it is important to note that Hester almost immediately becomes an anit-hero in these first few chapters. Her refusal to confess the father of the child and mental strength when on the scaffold makes the dreaded scarlet letter also embody power in the face of adversity. Hester proves to accepts her fate and all the pain that is to come as we can see by her last moment before entering the prison doors as she sees that “yes!- these were her realities” (56). Overall, I find the abundance of symbols from the start of the novel to lay the groundwork for the plot to come.

Work cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam Dell, 1850. Print.

Nathanial Ha(w)thorne

Paulina Smolinski

This post focuses on the author of The Scarlet Letter.

Sometimes the past that so desperately haunts us can also lead us to eternal fascination.  Often the ideas of the past that loom inadvertently in our minds make a more profound impact than we imagined. Such is the case of the author Nathanial Hawthorne. The past that he tried to stifle eventually arose again and became the main inspiration for his greatest works. This not so hidden secret that he kept stemmed to his ancestors as his family descended from the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Hawthorne).  Among those early Puritan relatives was John Hathorne, one of the judges at the notorious 1692 Salem witch trials. Nathanial Hawthorne was a descendent of the man responsible for the death of many innocent people and two dogs (“Nathaniel Hawthorne – Biography.”). This is not a past that anyone would want to expose in a family-tree-portrait-in-the-living-room fashion. Hawthorne was no different as he changed his name from Hathorne to Hawthorne with a w in order to eliminate association with his ancestor’s infamous past (“Nathaniel Hawthorne – Biography.” n.pg.). In the end, it was the Puritan culture that initially Hawthorne so intently pressed down which became the topic of his most successful novels such as The Scarlet Letter as well as other stories such as “Young Goodman Brown” (“Nathaniel Hawthorne – Biography.”).  Hawthorne criticizes and highlights all the elements of the culture that made it so characteristic and strange. The idea for the novel is described with the introduction “The Custom House” as Hawthorne describes a narrator who is eerily similar to himself (Hawthorne 3). The narrator finds himself in a sea of Puritan mystery as he finds the scarlet letter that a women had to wear during the Puritan Era along with her story. In the same fashion, Hawthorne’s course of life events from his birth in Salem to fascination with the obscure culture lead him to the creation of The Scarlet Letter in my opinion.  Overall, I believe that he could not escape the past that haunted and fascinated him considering that eventually it became the central topic of his works.

I find it intriguing that Hawthorne chose to write about Puritan culture; considering the fact that he could write about any topic and he chose to write about the one element of his life that he has been trying to desperately hide. Honestly, there are certain things in everyone’s life that they are not proud to claim; however few people go on to then write a successful novel about them. This inspiration to describe the Puritan culture in a slightly sarcastic, judgmental tone may lie in the fact that he spent some time in Salem after graduating college. I mean he could have also have been sarcastic since the Puritain culture was ever so slightly covered in a sheet of insanity. Hindsight is twenty-twenty,looking back, the whole killing innocent people on no physical evidence does not seem like the brightest idea. Hawthorne’s diaries show us that he spent most of his time in the witch trial fatherland reading and writing as he began to develop the historical basis of the novel (“Nathaniel Hawthorne – Biography.”). Personally, the creative narrative where the narrator often steps out to speak to the reader is what I enjoy so far in Nathanial Hawthorne’s style. Furthermore, I find it fitting that my description of his inspiration to write the novel be done in that same opinionated, slightly sarcastic manner.

Work cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Bantam Dell, 1850. Print.

“Nathaniel Hawthorne – Biography.” Nathaniel Hawthorne. The European Graduate SChool, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.