themes Hawthorne develops throughout The Scarlet Letter.

Transcription

1 Athe SCARLET LETTER

2 AWrite THREE potentially different themes Hawthorne develops throughout The Scarlet Letter.

3 ACONCLUSION

4 Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a scarlet letter--the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne--imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origins, there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural (235).

5 Others, again--and those best able to appreciate the minister s peculiar sensibility and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body--whispered their belief that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven s dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the letter (235).

6 We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness (235).

7 According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels--had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man s own righteousness (236).

8 After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind s spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to teach them that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit which would look aspiringly upward (236).

9 ...we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale s story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man s friends...will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the midday sunshine, on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sinstained creature of the dust (236).

10 Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister s miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence: Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred (236).

11 It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom (237).

12 In the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister--mutual victims as they have been-- may, unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love (237).

13 She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness (239).

14 The angel of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end! (239).

15 All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate--as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport-- there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon (239).

16 Acharacter

17 AThen I need ask no further. You deal not, I take it, in medicine for the soul! Rev. Master Dimmesdale

18 AThy acts are like mercy. But thy words interpret thee as a terror! Hester Prynne

19 A People say that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation. a townswoman

20 A I pray you, good Sir, who is this woman?--and wherefore is she here set up to public shame? Roger Chillingworth

21 A I have thought of death, have wished for it, would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything. Hester Prynne

22 A Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter, and, of a truth, the very likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them. some Puritan townschildren

23 A Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee! Hester Prynne

24 A Pearl, thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. Canst though tell me, my child, who made thee? Mr. John Wilson

25 A Youthful men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily! Roger Chilling(s)worth

26 A This man, pure as they deem him--all spiritual as he seems-- hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or mother. Roger Chillingworth

27 A A good evening, to you, venerable Father Wilson! Come up hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me! R.M. Arthur Dimmesdale

28 A I tell thee, my soul shivers at him! Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the man! Reverend Mister Dimmesdale

29 A Thou wast not bold!--thou was not true! Pearl Prynne

30 A He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result, I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. Hester

31 A Yes, I hate him! He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him! Mama Prynne

32 A Hold thy tongue, naughty child! Do not tease me; else I shall shut thee into the dark closet! Hester Prynne

33 A She said that a thousand and a thousand people had met here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. Lil Pearl

34 A Thou shalt not go alone! Hester

35 A I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend. I thank you, and can but requite your good deeds with my prayers. Arthur Dimmesdale

36 A Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there? Mistress Hibbins

37 A Madman, hold! Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Roger Chillingworth

38 A Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might!--with all his own might, and the fiend s! Reverend Master Dimmesdale

39 A Hadst thou sought the whole earth over, there was no one place so secret--no high place nor lowly place where thou couldst have escaped me--save on this very scaffold! Roger

40 A Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever! Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell! Arthur Dimmesdale

41 A Thou hast escaped me! Thou hast escaped me! Roger Chillingworth

42 A Be true! Be true! Be true! Nathaniel Hawthorn(e)

43 Atheme

44 "Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friendsand especially a clergyman's-will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the midday sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust."

45 "The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!"

46 "We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness."

47 "But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively, that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smoldering duskily within his breast, until, by some causal puff os passion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened. In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office." "The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments-which sometimes occur only at the interval of years-when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now."

48 "Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for."

49 "Her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. Standing alone in the world-alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected-alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scored to consider it desirable-she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged-not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode-the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle."

50 "There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies, Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich; a wellspring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head of that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling They said that it meant 'Able'; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength."

51 "It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility."

52 "No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true."

53 "There goes a woman who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast?"

54 I tell thee, my soul shivers at him! Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the man!

55 I freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both! We are not the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse that even the polluted priest! That old man s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!

56 Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale--as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be.

57 The reader may choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our very own brain, where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.

58 It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a newborn infant s.

59 According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying...had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man s own righteousness.

60 Without disputing a truh so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale s story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man s friends--and especially a clergyman s--will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the midday sunshine, on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sinstained creature of the dust.

61 It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

62 In the spiritual world, the old physician and minister--mutual victims as they have been-- may, unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love.

63 Not improbably, this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estimation, and, had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl, at a marriageable period of life, might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest of Puritan among them all.

64 Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a lifelong sorrow.

65 The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!

66 It bore a device, a herald s wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.

67 Asymbolism

68 It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

69 Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart to make manifest an unspoken crime?

70 At the great judgment day, whispered the Minister--and strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. Then, and there, before the judgment seat, they mother, and thou, and I, must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!

71 It was found this morning, on the scaffold where evil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverance. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!

72 By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I feindlike, who have snatched a fiend s office from his hand. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may.

73 But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among forest trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a wellspring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom.

74 When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne made a step or two towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along the path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside.

75 Hester next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her.

76 Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water.

77 Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed and he careening on it; morning came and peeped, blushing, through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam across the minister s bedazzled eyes. There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him!

78 The dress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the man-hued brilliancy from a butterfly s wing or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower.

79 In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the market place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister.

80 But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.

81 Aromanticism

82 "When, an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the character of truths supernaturally revealed."

83 "But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose."

84 Much of the marble coldness of Hester s impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to thought.

85 The phenomenon, in the various shapes which is assumed, indicated no external change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister s own will, and Hester s will, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore; but the same minister returned not from the forest.

86 One of his clerical brethren--it was the venerable John Wilson--observing the state in which Mr. Dimmesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man s arm.

87 Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!

88