When Matters of the Untrue Man's Heart Manifest

On the power of personal conviction and identity in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A blustery March has arrived and I am just now sitting down to gather my thoughts on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most famous work.

Shifting back and forth between a classic such as The Scarlet Letter and (multiple) modern novels is not likely an experience I will repeat. Reading in such a way slowed me down and kept me from fully immersing myself in the story—so I don’t recommend this approach to anyone picking up a classic novel.

As a whole, however, I found this short yet potent novel to be so much more than a tale about the pain and suffering that inevitably results from adultery. Expecting the story to focus on the scarlet letter bearer herself, Hester Prynne, I found myself fascinated with the depth in which we explore the other guilty party; Arthur Dimmesdale, the tight-knit Puritan community’s minister is the last person the town would suspect as the other guilty party—but he is the first (and only) person we the reader suspect after his nervous and passionate plea at the public sentencing atop the symbolic scaffold in the beginning chapters.

For seven trying years, Hester Prynne refuses to reveal the identity of the father of her beloved and (curiously) vivacious Pearl. She faithfully dons the scarlet letter she is sentenced to wear and continues to serve as the town’s most talented seamstress—though she is not permitted to touch a single wedding gown. In the eyes of her community, she serves as a “living sermon” to those who know her story, and she is a great comfort to those who become acquainted with sorrow in all its forms.

Meanwhile, the minister is bearing a hidden scarlet letter of his own—both literally and figuratively—as he slowly wastes away under the watchful eye of Hester Prynne’s unidentified husband, Roger Chillingworth. Hate and revenge consume Chillingworth, and he takes it upon himself to care for Dimmesdale and serve as his personal physician. All the while, he is greatly suspicious of the weakness and pain manifesting in Arthur Dimmesdale’s body, a man who is, quite literally, too faint of heart to bear the burden of his sin.

“He [Arthur Dimmesdale] looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Hester’s public ignominy; and whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlett Letter

Matters of the heart are so clearly manifested in this novel time and time again: The dark wood in which Hester lives and speaks with the minister sharply contrasts with the sunlight they cannot walk beneath, hand-in-hand, within the town’s bustling marketplace. The babbling brook within the wood speaks of many untold sorrows and serves as a boundary Pearl refuses to cross with her father. And the hate and revenge both poison the heart and distort the figure and countenance of Roger Chillingworth.

Truly, this is a novel that builds a slow-burning discernment in the reader through strong symbolism and allegory. We unmistakably see what Hawthorne is criticizing and where his empathies lie.

There are many obvious truths to observe about the effects of hidden sin, societal oppression, and hypocrisy within the clergy—but beyond these themes it is my belief that first and foremost The Scarlet Letter is a cautionary tale about living out one’s personal convictions.

Typically, I prefer a physical book to an ebook—but I often enjoy reading classics or lengthy novels on my Kindle Paperwhite because doing so allows me to (quickly) highlight passages and take notes that I can (very easily) refer back to.

Within the novel’s introduction, we are offered a clue about what can happen when we fail to live out our personal convictions. (NOTE: I nearly, shockingly skipped reading the novel’s introduction, which is penned by Hawthorne himself. Doing so would have meant missing out entirely on Hawthorne’s personal experiences of life in Old Salem and the inspiring writer’s epiphany he experienced while chasing his curiosity of a literal scarlet letter he just so happened to stumble upon within his bleak, tedious work at the Custom House. Do not overlook this portion of the book.)

While no longer writing, Hawthorne begins to feel as if he is “wasting away” in the Custom House and is considering resignation.

“I began to grow melancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and what degree of detriment had already accrued to the remainder. I endeavored to calculate how much longer I could stay in the Custom-House, and yet go forth a man. To confess the truth, it was my greatest apprehension—as it would never be a measure of policy to turn out so quiet an individual as myself; and it being hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign—it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to grow grey and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and become much such another animal as the old Inspector. Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that lay before me, finally be with me as it was with this venerable friend—to make the dinner-hour the nucleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? A dreary look-forward, this, for a man who felt it to be the best definition of happiness to live throughout the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Custom-House”/The Scarlet Letter

It is when we are out of touch with our convictions, Hawthorne argues, that we lose sight of who exactly we are. We can slowly waste away to the point that we no longer recognize the man in the mirror—a more than sad place to be, surely. And it is this very unmistakable truth that both Hawthorne himself experiences and the character of the minister Arthur Dimmesdale shows us time and time again; The weight of the minister’s prolonged secret and double-life is—quite literally—erasing him.

“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.”

- Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

The reader slowly comes to terms with the idea that a false life is really no life at all. In keeping his sin secret and failing to live out any sort of conviction, Dimmesdale’s very identity is at stake. He is neither true to Hester and Pearl, nor to his fellow clergymen and congregation; Consequently, Dimmesdale is not even true to himself.

I found the chapter titled “The Interior of a Heart” to be particularly powerful:

“It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The only truth that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile, and wear a face of gaiety, there would have been no such man.”

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

It is only in the minister’s final sermon in which we see Dimmesdale reveal all, come alive for a brief moment, and own his wrongs. He finally declares his identity as Pearl’s father, (all the while looking to Hester for strength and courage,) but the public revelation is too much for the faint-of-heart man who has already been slowly making his way to death—and it is this very declaration that swiftly leads to his untimely (and arguably inevitable) demise.

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

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Arthur Dimmesdale)

Because of Dimmesdale’s undeniable misery and untimely death, it can be all too easy to assume that Hester Prynne is living out the preferred fate, in spite of her status as society’s outcast. At the very least, she is not hiding who she is or what she has done. And, furthermore, she has tapped into an empathy and strength that only her sin and sorrows (likely) could have cultivated in her—so much so to the point that it is even suggested near the end of the story that the scarlet “A” now serves to stand for “able.”

The fates of both Arthur and Hester, however, lead me to believe that neither character has lead a full and true life—nor stewarded their convictions effectively.

While there is much to admire in the strength and grace of Hester’s character in contrast to the weak-hearted Dimmesdale, her somber fate leaves us to think about how the power of identity can both serve us and hinder us. Even long after the oppressive (and arguably delusional) Puritan-based society has moved on from the heated and stigmatized symbol of the scarlet letter, Hester continues to wear the letter and returns to dwell in the cottage by the sea. Even many years later, Hester still intimately identifies with her adultery. The letter may no longer carry the burden it did once upon a time—but she does.

Consequently, I am not sure that either fate is suggestive of justice or redemption and neither character fully embodies a path Hawthorne would explicitly lead readers to follow.

The ambiguity of the scarlet letter overtime, and even the ambiguity of love and hate that Hawthorne touches on at the end of the novel, leads me to believe that Hawthorne is suggesting that while it is important to know and live out one’s convictions, they may not be the end-all be-all to shape our identity and fate.

“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at the bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. 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.”

-Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

What exactly, therefore, are we to believe is the eternal fate of Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth? Or Hester Prynne, for that matter? Was it right for her to return to and dwell in the scene of her atonement? Could—and should—she have lived elsewhere, happily ever after, under a new name and a new identity?

Perhaps, therefore, Hawthorne is simply asking us some vital questions via a cautionary tale of conviction and identity: When faced with the weight of our wrongs—or the sins of those around us—what will we choose to see?

Will we have the courage to face our own vices? Who exactly will we choose to be? Furthermore, will we see ourselves—and perhaps more importantly others—as more than the sin that strives to define us? Will we make room for a more compassionate way of life and free ourselves from the weight of our wrongs? What sort of “living sermon” will we tell with the life we are given?

The Scarlet Letter does not leave us with definitive answers. And it is precisely these sort of novels, the ones that leave us with important questions, that lead me to believe that is precisely what great literature sets out to accomplish—and precisely why these such works (probably) shouldn’t be read in tandem with other, more modern novels. ;)