Critical Analysis of "The Scarlet Letter"

Name: Vishva Gajjar

Roll no.: 33

Paper: 10 (The American Literature)

Submit to: English Department (MKBU)

Critical Analysis of “The Scarlet Letter”

·       About Author:

Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life was steeped in the Puritan legacy. An early ancestor, William Hathorne, first emigrated from England to America in 1630 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, where he became a judge known for his harsh sentencing. William’s son, John Hathorne, was one of three judges during the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s. Hawthorne later added a “w” to his name to distance himself from this side of the family.

Hawthorne was the only son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Clark Hathorne (Manning). His father, a sea captain, died in 1808 of yellow fever while at sea. The family was left with meager financial support and moved in with Elizabeth’s wealthy brothers. A leg injury at an early age left Hawthrone immobile for several months during which time he developed a voracious appetite for reading and set his sights on becoming a writer.

After 1860, it was becoming apparent that Hawthorne was moving past his prime. Striving to rekindle his earlier productivity, he found little success. Drafts were mostly incoherent and left unfinished. Some even showed signs of psychic regression. His health began to fail and he seemed to age considerably, hair turning white and experiencing slowness of thought. For months, he refused to seek medical help and died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American short story writer and novelist. His short stories include "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832), "Young Goodman Brown" (1835) and the collection Twice-Told Tales. He is best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). His use of allegory and symbolism make Hawthorne one of the most studied writers. 

·       About Novel:

This novel is set in the theocratic and patriarchal Puritan society of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The year is 1642, which means that this particular group of colonists settled in the area of Boston, and were part of a second wave of settlers that came from England in 1630 with the purpose of purifying the Church of England. 

Ø Character:

Aurthur Dimmesdale

General Miller

Governor Bellingham

Hester Prynne

Inspector

John Wilson

Mistress Hibbins

Pearl

Roger Chillingworth

·       Critical Analysis:

Although Hawthorne wrote to his friend Bridges that he thought ‘The House of the Seven Gables’ was a better book than ‘The Scarlet Letter’, most modern critics consider ‘The Scarlet Letter’ to be his masterpiece. In fact, evidence of the continued popularity of his works, even among people not usually concerned with literary works, appeared in two 1984 issues of the New England of Medicine.

Jemshed A. Khan a physician, suggested that Dimmesdale was a victim of atropine poisoning, administered by Chillingworth. He supports his claim by citing Hawthorne’s mention of plants which contains the poison and he concludes, the symptoms experienced by Dimmesdale-the hallucinations, the convulsions, the tremors and the red stigmata of guilt, which some witnesses describes as being chest at the close of the novel-are all consistent with the known symptoms of atropine poisoning. Three rnonths later the same journal carried a series of letters both in praise of critical of— Khan's views. 'I'hat such a furor could be generated among— arid present day readers by a novel written more than a hundred and thirty years ago is ample tcstimony to the power of T Hawthorne’s novel and its continuing popularity.

In an entirely different vein, yet one that is worth investigating one should consider a theory recently advanced by another scholar Hawthorne, as noted, was always concerned with his family history and with colonial history. His earliest American ancestor, William Hawthorne, arrived in this country with John Winthrop, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630. Hathorne became the Speaker of the House of Delegates and was also a major in the Salem militia. This "steeple-crowned progenitor" who 'had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil," was remembered by the Quakers for an 'incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect." Even Hawthorne thought that the memory of his ancestor's severity toward the woman would "last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds."

William's son, John, became even more famous —or infamous. He was one of the three judges in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. It is he who is mentioned in the "Custom House" section of The Scarlet Letter as having "made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him." Hawthorne's reaction to the early history of these two ancestors may well have led him to declare that "I, the present writer as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes and pray that any curse incurred by them . . . maybe now and hence forth removed."

For many readers, the shame which Hawthorne took upon himself, as a result of the actions of his paternal ancestors, has been enough to account for what he designates as one of the "many morals" which Dimmesdale's experience might provide for the reader. That moral is placed by Hawthorne in the final chapter of the novel where he writes, 'Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait where inferred" Interestingly, as mentioned earlier, a number of scholars have looked further into Hawthorne's family history, past the apparent "sins" of his paternal ancestors, believing that the witch-hunting fervor of these long-dead relatives was not a sufficient cause of Hawthorne's strong protest for us to "show… if not the worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" They have sought elsewhere for the possible explanation for the fevered moral which Hawthorne makes so impassionately.

For example, in 1984, the critic Philip Young published. Hawthorne’s Secret, arguing that Hawthorne quite probably uncovered a bit of startling information related to his maternal ancestors that would account for the impassioned moral in the last chapter of The Scarlet Letter.

In the "Quarterly Court Records" of Essex Country, Massachusetts, Hawthorne may well have found the records of a court case which took place on March 29, 1681. Two of Hawthorne's maternal ancestors, Anstis and Margaret Manning, were convicted of having committed incest with their brother, Nicholas. They were sentenced to be publicly whipped and to stand in the middle of the Salem meeting house with a paper on their heads revealing the nature of their crime. The substitution of an adulterous for an incestuous relationship could indeed be a case of showing "some trait whereby the worst may be inferred."

This sort of scholarly research can hardly be said to provide absolute proof that Hawthorne was aware of that particular aspect of his ancestors' history, but it does again demonstrate that there is still a great interest in The Scarlet Letter and in Hawthorne's motivations for writing it.

As one considers those two recent speculations, one should also consider more mundane, but certainly valuable aspects of Hawthorne's masterpiece. It is important, for example, to know that when Hawthorne finished The Scarlet Letter, he had already written most of the works that were to make him famous. Thus, many of the stylistic techniques and themes which are characteristic of a work by Hawthorne were already a habitual art of his style. Those elements include: (1) Hawthorne’s theory of the romance as a literary form; (2) Hawthorne's use of symbolism in the novel; (3) Hawthorne's style; (4) Hawthorne's use of historical materials and figures as part of the setting; and, finally, (5) Hawthorne's use of ambiguity.

Turning to The Scarlet Letter, one finds that Hawthorne continued to use this device of ambiguity to defuse the skeptical objections of his “common-sensible" readers. At the end of Chapter 8, while discussing the significance of Hester's conversation with Mistress Hibbins, Hawthorne inserts this qualifying phrase: ". . . if we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable." In Chapter 12, while describing the scarlet A which Dimmesdale (and according to the sexton and others as well) saw in the sky, Hawthorne remarks: "We it…solely to the disease in his own eye and heart, that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter, —the letter A-marked out in lines of dull red light.

In all of these cases, Hawthorne leaves the solution to the reader; the reader must decide what is "literally true." It seems as if Hawthorne wishes to make use of the supernatural or fantastic devices for symbols, but also offers an optional explanation for the literal-minded reader to whom the fantastic is not justified—not even for an artistic effect Actually, Hawthorne's method of narration gives him the best of two worlds. He is somewhat like the trial lawyer who withdraws a telling remark upon the judge's objection, but knows that the implications of his remark will remain in the minds of the jury members.

Hawthorne’s final touch of symbolism lies in the slate tombstone which serves for both graves. Hawthorne uses the language of heraldry to describe the letter A, which is engraved on it and which “might serve for a motto and a brief description of our now concluded legend”. He describes the tombstone as being somber and brightened only by one ever-glowing point of light, the scarlet letter A. A Herald’s description of the tombstone might read: “On a Field, Sable, the Letter A glues,” which is translated into modern English as, “On a black background, the scarlet letter A.