Why The Scarlet Letter?
We can never know for certain why an author puts a particular work into the world. The Scarlet Letter was published when The United States of America was still relatively new, there were only 30 states, we were still figuring out what the new country meant. Roughly ten years after the publication of The Scarlet Letter, The American Civil War began. Hawthorne's first relatives who came to America were Puritans, and his great-great grandfather had been a judge in the Salem Witch Trials.
There is a link between the characters that inhabit the world of The Scarlet Letter and Hawthorne's family and personal experiences. Hawthorne worked in Salem for many years, and would have walked the same streets his great-great grandfather had. More directly, it seems that Hawthorne was reacting to the resurgence of Puritan ideals with the Jacksonian Temperance movement. “The past is never dead,” Hawthorne wrote in “The Custom House” essay that precedes The Scarlet Letter.
There is a link between the characters that inhabit the world of The Scarlet Letter and Hawthorne's family and personal experiences. Hawthorne worked in Salem for many years, and would have walked the same streets his great-great grandfather had. More directly, it seems that Hawthorne was reacting to the resurgence of Puritan ideals with the Jacksonian Temperance movement. “The past is never dead,” Hawthorne wrote in “The Custom House” essay that precedes The Scarlet Letter.
Cycle of Isolation
In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne writes about how sin creates isolation, how isolation creates sin, and so on--making it an endless cycle. In his novel, sin is quite literal, as the setting of the novel is a strict Puritan society. But really, Biblical sin could stand as a metaphor for breaking any kind of community-established parameters. Once a person has been ostracized and isolated, the loneliness will lead that person to breaking the rules again, if that means that they can end their community-enforced solitude. Isolation, Hawthorne suggests, is inherently against human nature.
The cycle of sin and solitude can be broken if struggling person is able to atone and re-join the community or if they self-destruct.
The cycle of sin and solitude can be broken if struggling person is able to atone and re-join the community or if they self-destruct.
Four Dominant Forces
When Hawthorne wrote the book, he designed it in four sections, each section controlled by a single force. The force in the first section (Chapters 1-8) is the Puritan community; the second section's (Chapters 9-12) force is Chillingworth; in the third (Chapters 13-20) it is Hester; and in the final section it is Dimmesdale. Hester's section deviates in the symbolic setting the most. The other three sections feature the scaffold in the town center, but Hester's section takes place in the forest at the edge of the settlement. All of the settings are dominated by motifs of light and dark.
Biblical Parallels
The story of Hester and Dimmesdale is like the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. The rose bush in The Scarlet Letter becomes the symbolic apple tree. Hester and Dimmesdale, like Adam and Eve, gain knowledge from their transgression. Dimmesdale seeks desperately to be let back into Paradise, kept back by his guilty conscience. But Hester instead tries to leave Paradise, as the scarlet A on her chest changes and becomes a symbol for empathy and compassion rather than shame and sin. Hester returns to Paradise, her Puritan settlement, perhaps as the snake. There to tell women that their desires are not wrong.
