Length: 1181 words (4.3 pages)
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The Secrets of The Scarlet Letter  

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is considered by many to be the greatest accomplishment of an author hailed as the master of the American short story. It is set in Salem, Massachusetts. In this strictly controlled Puritan town the inhabitants live by harsh laws and fierce prejudices. Hester Prynne, a young wife whose husband is presumed dead, is being publicly humiliated for the sin of adultery. The proof of her sin is her baby girl Pearl. She conceals the identity of Pearl's father to protect him from the harsh judgement of Puritan law. She however is doomed to spend the rest of her life marked as an adulterer by wearing a scarlet "A" on her chest. Hester's husband meanwhile has arrived in the colony and taken up practice as a doctor. He makes Hester promise that she won't reveal his identity to anyone. The book covers a seven year period during which the identity of the father becomes known. It is the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who is renowned as an especially holy and pious man. Wracked by guilt he starts to show outward signs of serious illness. Hester's husband under the assumed name Roger Chillingworth moves in and begins taking care of Dimmesdale. Chillingworth soon discovers that the Reverend is Pearl's father. Dimmesdale however thinks that Chillingworth is simply a doctor. Chillingworth uses his influence to multiply the feelings of guilt in the minister while trying to keep him in physical health, as a form of emotional torture. At the climax of the story, Dimmesdale confesses and dies. Hester and Pearl leave the colony. Chillingworth whose whole purpose was to get revenge from Dimmesdale suddenly finds his life without purpose and dies within a year. Hawthorne used the settings in the book, not only to develop the story, but to make a statement about Puritan Society through the use of allegory.

The Puritans were a people dedicated to perfecting themselves according to a certain set of values that were uniquely Puritan. On the individual level a Puritan would try to reach perfection by living out this series of values. If they did not succeed, as in Hester or Arthur Dimmesdale's cases, their punishment would be in the fact that they did not live up to the perfection they strived for. The prison, in The Scarlet Letter is proof that Salem is a society striving for self perfection, not only individuals dedicated to perfecting themselves. The difference is that in a society striving for self perfection the punishment for deviance is not purely emotional. The prison shows that the Puritan society punishes individuals within itself for deviation from the laws of that society.

The prison is also a concession to the fact that even in a society made up of citizens dedicated to perfecting themselves, that there would still be a need for a prison. Allegorically, the prison for a member of Puritan society was the prison in their own minds. They loathed wrongdoing and if they participated in it they would have their own blemish on their souls that would torment them. As it did in Dimmesdale's case.

The scaffold in The Scarlet Letter is extremely important. The most pivotal scenes in the book take place on it. The scaffold is a place of public humiliation, the lawbreaker must stand in front of all his or her peers with them fully knowing of his or her crime. Standing on the scaffold as a guilty sinner would also mean that they will be shunned, as Hester was, for the rest of their lives.

It seems a terrible punishment by today's standards. But the scaffold was not merely a cruel device of humiliation and scorn. The prison was a blemish on the face of a society bent on self perfection. The scaffold was the society's way of righting the wrong and preventing it from being repeated. The entire town was ashamed to see Hester, one of their own standing in front of them for a horrendous crime. It strengthened their resolve to continue to do what in their minds was good and righteous. The scaffold was not only a place of punishment, it was a place of atonement as well. It gave the guilty person relief knowing that they were acknowledged as a sinner and that they did not have to deal with the prison and the guilt of their minds any more.

The difference between Hester's emotional state and Dimmesdale's state was enormous. Hester was an acknowledged lawbreaker, she felt that she had been punished and was continually punished by the "a". Dimmesdale however never underwent punishment before his peers, so his guilt, his prison, festered inside him until he started to physically deteriorate. His lack of peace from hiding from the scaffold, from truth,was his undoing. As Dimmesdale found out at the very end of his life, the scaffold was every guilty Puritans only way of redemption. Chillingworth himself said, (to Dimmesdale) "Hadst thou sought the whole earth over....there was no place place so secret,-no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,-save on this very scaffold!"

The forest outside of Salem was unknown country. It was Nature, where the savage indians roamed. It was where the dreaded Black Man was fabled to meet with Witches and sinners. The forest was also away from Salem, its prying eyes and harsh judgements. Here events could be open and free. Here was the only place where Hester and Dimmesdale can meet and talk freely of the sin they shared seven years previous. In this respect the Puritans were accurate in their superstition of the Black Man living in the forest. There was indeed in the forest a place where free thinking could go unfettered by Puritan code. This "Black Man" was no more than the freedom to form ideas outside of the Puritan way of life. It was dangerous to Hester and Arthur as they conspired to flee the colony instead of facing their problem. Mistress Hibbins recognized the change in Dimmesdale and acknowledged that he has had un-Puritan ideas. So he had, in a sense, met with the Black Man. The forest at its most basic level was simply that place in the Puritan mind that thought other than Puritan thought can enter.

Three of Hawthorne's settings have already told us much about Puritan society and way of thinking. The forest, with its allegorical black man, affords the opportunity for deviance from Puritan thought. The prison tells us that even in a society bent on self perfection, people can still be tempted (and succumb) to sin. The scaffold is the society's way of not only atoning for the sin but to prevent the sin from being duplicated by the other members of the society. The scaffold is the Puritans way of using the wrongdoer to prevent others from going into the forest. And if they are deterred by the scaffold from entering the forest, eventually there will be no more need for the prison. The Society has corrected the deviance within itself.