Symbols in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Timar Maria-Elena
Group RE-B

A. General information

The novel is written two hundred years after the events presented there, namely in 1800s. The
time of the novel is around 1600s. The place of the novel is Massachusetts Bay Colony, in
Boston where the protagonist, Hester Prynne, was send to live by her old aged husband,
Roger Chillingworth. They are coming from Europe and Roger send his wife first so that he
joins her two years later, unrevealing his true identity to the community.

The major conflict is evolving around Hester, her husband Roger, the young priest Arthur
Dimmesdale and the community because of Hester’s sin – adultery that ended with a baby
girl. The father of the baby is Arthur Dimmesdale, which is hiding his sin, unlike Hester who
takes all the blame.

B. The plot and the symbols allotted to the main points

I. The intrigue and the scaffold

The novel begins with this intrigue, Hester being in jail and then she was put on a scaffold in
the market along with her baby, so everyone who goes by to see her. This was a symbol in
the Puritan religion, everyone who committed a crime or a sin (like adultery) should be put
on the scaffold, this was the punishment – public shame. At that exact moment, Roger
Chillingworth, a stranger, arrives in the market from the forest and sees his wife on the
scaffold. The community outcasts Hester and her baby, while the young priest is respected
and loved by the people.

II. Pearl

When Pearl, the Hester’s daughter born of passion and sin, is a little child, she is a very wild
child. She is the symbol of her mother and the reverend’s sin, and also her mother’s joy and
blessing from God. The narrator says that Hester named her daughter Pearl as being of great
price from Mathew’s passage from the Bible: ‘Christ relates the following parable: “Again, the
kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he has found one

pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it”. ‘

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 For Roger, the daughter represents her mother’s unfaithfulness, a reminder of Hester’s sin.
For Dimmesdale, Pearl is a reminder of his sin, but also a chance of redemption, forgiveness,
acceptance and love (the kiss in the end).

III. Roger Chillingworth

Roger Chillingworth represents the evil in his pure form because he does not reveals his true
identity to no one. When he visited Hester in prison, he asked who the father of her baby is,
but she did not want to tell him. Then, he swore revenge, to find who the adulterer is and
makes him pay. As the story goes on, Roger proves his evil through his actions: he pretends
to be a doctor, then he says is taking care of the young reverend, who is ill, but he torments
him instead of healing him.

His physical appearance also reflects his evil intentions:

“Now, there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and
which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon him. […] To sum up the
matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other
personages of special sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself,
or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine
permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman’s intimacy, and plot against his soul. No
sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn.”

As Chillingworth becomes obsessed with revenge, he becomes Satan for the townsmen, a
representation of evil, whereas the reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is a representation of God
and religion.

IV. Hester and Arthur

Hester and Reverend Dimmesdale are a symbol. They reiterate Adam’s fall myth, the
Original sin, the insubordination within a law. Both the woman and the man did not respected
the community’s law and the religious law (the priests could not have relationships with
women). By admitting her sin and her public shame, Hester proves that she is a strong
woman, a woman that defies the society rules because of her passion. She also thought that
her husband was dead until he visited her.

V. Arthur Dimmesdale

Otherwise, reverend Dimmesdale represents the weak person, he fells ill after Hester refuses
to reveal the name of the other adulterer. The guilt and Chillingworth’s torment make Arthur

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very ill, leading to his desire in admitting the truth after seven years. Towards the end he has
some revelations. The first is that his illness is connected with his sin and so he has to be
punished. Like when he stays on the scaffold at night and shouts. No one saw him, only
Hester and Pearl saw him passing by. They join Dimmesdale until Roger comes and takes
Dimmesdale home.

VI. The meteor and first kiss

Another symbol is the meteor that passes through the sky as letter A, in the night when
Dimmesdale, Hester and Pearl were on the scaffold. The second revelation of the priest is
when he meets Hester in the woods and plan to run with her and Pearl. At that moment he
kisses Pearl, but she wiped his kiss. This means that she did not except him as her father yet.

VII. The reveal and second kiss

As Arthur’s disease progresses, Hester thinks how they will leave the colony. She finds out
from the ship owner that Roger plans to come with them. In that day, at noon, after his
sermon, Dimmesdale confessed his sin and he showed his mark on his chest (no body knows
exactly what it is). Soon after this he dies, but right before his death, Pearl kisses him on the
forehead, showing that she accepts him as her father. In short time after Dimmesdale’s death,
Chillingworth dies too.

VIII. The scarlet letter

The most important symbol of the novel is the scarlet letter A that Hester was obligated to
embroil on her chest in the color red, a symbol of shame, sin and passion. The fact that Hester
embroiled the sign symbolizes that she had the courage to admit her deed, unlike
Dimmesdale who had a pain in his chest along with a mark, symbolizing his hidden sin. Also,
Hester wear the sign even after she was not supposed to wear it anymore, proving that the
sign is now a symbol of love, love for her daughter. Pearl wears clothes in the scarlet color
that proves this. In the episode where Hester talks with the young reverend about their fate,
Hester takes out her A mark and toss it next to a river. When she asks Pearl to come and
salute the reverend she did not want to come because she does not recognize her mother
without the A. But when Hester puts the sign back on her chest, her daughter comes to her
and recognize her as her mother.

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The meteor has the form of latter A and it shows Hester’s and Arthur’s connection. Even
when Hester dies, she is buried close to Dimmesdale and under the same stone with an A on
it proving the fact that even in the afterlife they are still united by this sin.

IX. The wild rose bush and Pearl

The link is that as an infant Pearl was a wild child, she scared the other children and was
uncivilized. She was, also known as the Elf-Child. After Dimmesdale told the truth, Pearl
become mild and well behaved. The wild rose bush was in front of the jail where her mother
was put into and in front of the Governor‘s house, where Pearl and her mother go in order for
Hester to prevent losing her child.

C. Conclusions

All in all, I think that The Scarlet Letter is a novel with hidden meanings, full of symbols
beautiful arranged into the narrative that prove the choices each important characters
presented here make. This novel is composed of multiple dichotomies:

- good vs evil in Arthur and Roger;

I chose this book because it seems interesting to see how people lived in the early colonies. I
also chose this novel because Hawthorn is a well-known American author and it has a series
of mysteries in it – what is the scarlet letter? , what it represents? , who is the father? All this
questions find they’re answers while you read.

Resources:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, editor: EMC/Paradigm Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota,
1998 (pdf)

The Scarlet Letter | Symbols | Nathaniel Hawthorne – Course Hero/ YouTube