ENS TUNIS

Mémoire de Maîtrise

Section: Anglais
Spécialité: Littérature Américaine

The Tragic in Nathaniel

Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter

Réalisé par: Wided Laribi

Encadré par: Pr. Mohamed Mansouri

Table of contents
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Dedication………………………………………………....3
Acknowledgements……………………………………...4
Introduction………………………………………………5
A General Overview: Aristotle’s View of
Tragedy…………………………………………...7
The Tragic in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter:
• Introduction…………………………………………….10
• A Cathartic Scarlet Letter……………………………...13
• Tragic Characters
 Arthur Dimmesdale: The Tragic Hero…………………….18
 Roger Chillingworth: The Tragic Villain……………….....23
 Hester Prynne: The Survivor………………………..……..25
 The Puritan Community: The Tragic Society…………......32
 Pearl: The Tragic Symbol of Sin………………………….35
• Tragic Plot……………………………………………..39
Conclusion…………………………………………….....44
Bibliography.………………….………………………......47

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To my Parents,

Acknowledgements

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 I have had practical support from a variety of sources

while I have been working on this memoir.

First of all, I thank my academic supervisor Professor

Mohamed Mansouri. His hearty receptivity of me was

encouraging, indeed, and his suggestions helpful.

I am also grateful to the staff of the ENS library,

especially Fatma and Najwa for their help and patience.

I thank all my friends and colleagues for their moral

support especially Youssef Belgacem.

My gratitude also goes to my aunt Sadika and her family

for receiving me in their home, and my uncle Abdelwahab for

his moral and financial help.

Finally, I owe a great deal to those who had to bear all my

claims and helped me through my academic journey and my

whole life: my dear parents, Sadok and Zohra.

Introduction

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 The Scarlet Letter tells the story of two lovers kept apart by
the ironies of fate, their own mingled strengths and
weaknesses, and the Puritan community's interpretation of
moral law, until at last, death unites them under a single
tombstone.1

When I was checking the Encyclopedia Britannica for information

about Nathaniel Hawthorne, I came across this note on the literary
work that "made him famous" and was "eventually recognized as one
of the greatest American novels."2 What drew my attention in this
definition was the use of both "fate" and "death".
The note continues this way:

The book's four characters are inextricably bound together

in the tangled web of a life situation that seems to have no
solution, and the tightly woven plot has a unity of action that
rises slowly but inexorably to the climactic scene of
Dimmesdale's public confession.3

Such terms as "fate", "death", "plot", "unity of action", "climactic

scene" and "confession" immediately brought to my mind Aristotle's
view of tragedy and what I have learned about the classic tragedies of
Ancient Greece and Rome. Along came to my mind this question:
Could we read The Scarlet Letter as a tragedy and not just as a simple
romantic tale?
The Scarlet Letter differs widely from the classical tragedies of
Ancient Greece and Rome. It is a novel that covers the Puritan era in
the history of The United States. When looking beyond this subject-
matter, however, The Scarlet Letter adheres to and conforms with the

1
Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropaedia, V5, 15th Ed (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2002),
.p. 766
.Ibid 2
.Ibid 3
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essential, fundamental and organic parts of classical tragedy as
described by Aristotle. I found, then, that although much has been said
about The Scarlet Letter, its tragic aspect needs more consideration.
What I shall be dealing with in this memoir is the different aspects
of tragedy present in the novel corresponding to Aristotle's definition,
and whether The Scarlet Letter conforms to these components.

General Overview:
Aristotle's view of tragedy

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 According to Aristotle, classical tragedy has basic elements that
characterize and develop its efficacy. Here is his definition:

Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable,

complete and possesses magnitude; in language made
pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts;
performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through
pity and fear the purification of such emotions.
(By "language made pleasurable" I mean that which
possesses rhythm and melody, i.e. song. By the separation of
its species, I mean that some parts are composed in verse
alone; others by contrast make use of song.)4

Aristotle defines tragedy as serious and "complex", in the medium of

poetic language, incorporating incidents "effecting through pity and
fear the purification/catharsis of such emotions."5 He insists on the
cathartic aspect of tragedy since it is the basic aspect that distinguishes
it from other genres.
Aristotle also pays considerable attention to the nature of the tragic
hero, who should neither be "a decent man undergoing a change from
good fortune to bad fortune", nor "a depraved [person] undergoing a
change from bad fortune to good fortune."6 "This is the least tragic of
all," he says. Instead, he should be "the person intermediate between
these."7 A true tragic hero should be "a person who is not outstanding
in moral excellence or justice," yet whose misfortune is "not due to any
moral defect or depravity, but to an error of some kind." 8 Therefore, a
tragic hero moves us to pity and fear because we recognize similar
possibilities of terror in our own lesser and fallible selves.

.Aristotle, Poetics (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1996), p. 10 4

.Ibid 5
.Ibid., p. 21 6
.Ibid 7
.Ibid 8
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 The last important aspect of tragedy which Aristotle enhances is the
plot. The plot, which will effectively evoke "tragic pity and fear", is
one in which the events develop through complication to a
catastrophe/climax in which there occurs, often by the discovery of
facts unknown to the hero, or what Aristotle calls "Anagnorisis", a
sudden reversal in his fortune from happiness to disaster.
In simple terms, tragedy consists in an intense exploration of
suffering and evil focused on the experience of an exceptional
individual distinguished by rank or character or both. It presents for its
readers/audiences a steep fall from "fortune" to "misfortune" ending up
in death, and a great change accompanied by conflict between the
tragic hero and some superior power. It is fundamental to a true
understanding of tragedy that its events must evoke "pity and fear".
This evocation of "tragic pity and fear" must be "cathartic", i.e. it must
purify the emotions of the reader/audience, and thus leave his/her soul
in an emotionally balanced state.
If we consider the narrative of The Scarlet Letter, we find that the
story begins in the middle of turmoil, as many classical tragedies do.
The Scarlet Letter also has, as all classical tragedies do, a tragic hero,
who is, as many of the classical heroes are, subjugated to an imminent
and unavoidable destiny. This hero is the focus of a plot, beginning in
chaos and ending up in a cathartic death.
In fact, Hawthorne begins his story with Hester's sin of adultery
having already been committed. Hester's sin is revealed by the proof of
her newly born daughter, Pearl. So, the very first images that
Hawthorne offers the readers are of public humiliation. A quote from a
lady, who the writer leaves unnamed, best describes the overall
sentiments of the angry town of Boston:

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 This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to
die. Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture
and the statute book. Then, let the magistrates, who have made
it no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters
go astray! 9

It is obvious that, in the beginning of the story, the town is bewildered

because of the injustice that has been committed to both the laws of
society and God. Therefore, Hawthorne's introduction to this chaotic
community sets up a complex story for which some tragic character
would invariably be the very center.

The Tragic in Nathaniel Hawthorne's

The Scarlet Letter
Introduction
9
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Great Britain: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1999), p. 39
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 Hawthorne and many writers who conform to the structure of
classical tragedy often create a sense of doom by alluding, throughout
the text, to the inescapable destiny that the tragic hero experiences. For
so doing, Hawthorne uses many literary devices, usually used in
classical tragedies, such as dramatic irony. This particular device
foreshadows the tragic hero's fate, especially as it comes from his own
mouth:

If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that, thy

earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to
salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow
sinner and fellow sufferer. Be not silent from any mistaken
pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he
were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside
thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to
hide a guilty heart through life.10

Although Hester does not speak the name of her child's father,
Dimmesdale does not speak it up either. Because he is unable to
concede his own pride and high position as Reverend Master
Dimmesdale, his vanity controls him and so he can only fall from his
transient “good esteem and great good fortune” 11 at the highest rank of
the Boston society.
The minister continues to suffer in turmoil and anguish, which
naturally inclines the reader to pity him. This pity is further intensified
as Dimmesdale does nothing to pacify himself, although he recognizes
that his suffering stems from his concealed sin of adultery. On the
contrary, similar to any true tragic hero, he ignores the warning of his
own conscience. The reader can not help pity such a character
.Ibid., p. 50 10
.Aristotle, ibid., p. 21 11
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 especially when s/he knows that the minister refuses to give up his
superficial vanity. What Hawthorne achieves here is what any tragedy
is intended to produce, i.e. the final cathartic effect mentioned in
Aristotle's definition of tragedy.
The most intensive cathartic scenes in The Scarlet Letter are the
three pillory scenes. During the last one, which serves as the closing
scene of the novel, Hawthorne describes Dimmesdale's experience of
public confession as a source of humanizing relief, a relief that is not
only poignant for Dimmesdale, but also for the community, Hester, and
specifically his child Pearl:

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of
grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all
her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek,
they were the pledge that she grow up amid human joy and
sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman
in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger
of anguish was fulfilled.12

It is this public confession that restores order to the chaotic world of

The Scarlet Letter. It affects everyone including the Puritan community
to whom justice is only served and God's providence is expressed when
the minister dies. His death proves that, after all, no one and nothing
escapes God's dominion and his higher law. Thus, by publicly
confessing his sin, Dimmesdale has reached the essence of classical
tragedy which, according to Aristotle, consists in the cleansing of
emotions that the tragic hero, as well as the reader, yearns to
experience after a prolonged suffering.

.Ibid., p. 192 12
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 A cathartic Scarlet Letter

In the "Custom House", Hawthorne's preface to The Scarlet Letter,

the writer describes his feelings when he discovers the letter of frayed
scarlet cloth, bound up with Surveyor Pue's manuscript, once worn by
Hester Prynne. He writes:
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 It strangely interested me. My eyes fastened themselves
upon the old scarlet letter, and would not be turned aside.
Certainly, there was some deep meaning in it, most worthy of
interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth from the
mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself to my
sensibilities, by evading the analysis of my mind.13

This kind of confession reveals Hawthorne's sympathetic nature. His

fascination with the discovered scarlet letter derives from his feelings
and imagination. And it is these feelings that give the author
imaginative access to the motives and modes of passion of his
characters. Frederick Crews, in his psychoanalytic approach to the
novel, views that Hawthorne's tragic vision "is to see to the bottom of
his created characters, to understand the inner necessity of everything
they do, and thus pity and forgive them in the very act of laying bare
their weaknesses."14
Accordingly, one would be tempted to say that if the reader of The
Scarlet Letter wants to understand the author, s/he must rely on similar
sympathetic imagination. As a predisposition, such imagination allows
the reader to get involved with the novel, identify with its characters
and sympathize with them. Hawthorne takes as "a triumphant success"
his wife's reaction to the concluding chapter of The Scarlet Letter: "It
broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache" (1850
letter to his friend Horatio Bridge). It is "a triumphant success", indeed.
What Hawthorne has achieved is actually a kind of "purgation", or
what Aristotle labels "catharsis". This success is further stressed by
several readers of the novel who commented in print that The Scarlet
Letter left them with intense and unresolved feelings of sadness, pain

.Ibid., p. 24 13
14
Frederick Crews, The Sins of The Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes (New York: Oxford
.University Press, 1996), p. 153
- 13 -
 and annoyance. For instance, E.P. Whipple, writing in Graham's
Magazine, predicts that "Hawthorne's regular readers will hardly be
prepared for a novel of much tragic interest and tragic power, so deep
in thought and so condensed in style."15 Henry James, on his part, finds
the story too painful, too somber: "It is densely dark," he writes, and
"will probably long remain the most consistently gloomy of English
novels of the first order." 16
One actually notes that the narrator of The Scarlet Letter skillfully
arouses the reader's pity and sympathy in many ways. Indeed, the
narrative is loaded with cathartic scenes, among which the three
scaffold scenes are the most intensive. Roy Male, in his work
Hawthorne's Tragic Vision, describes these scenes as representing "the
crucial moment when the emotionally involved reader or spectator
raises and ennobles his own perspective so that he sees not only the
agony but also the purification."17 These scenes present Dimmesdale
as a truly tragic hero and meet the necessary requirements for The
Scarlet Letter to illustrate Aristotle's definition of tragedy.
During the first scaffold scene, which occupies the first three
chapters of The Scarlet Letter and covers Hester's trial, Hawthorne
makes it obvious that a grim secret lies hidden in the depths of Arthur
Dimmesdale's soul. The minister denies his partnership in Hester's sin
of adultery. He does not reveal his sin, and this, in order to keep his
standing in the town. Hester's refusal to disclose her lover's name
intensifies his sense of guilt. When she does not reveal his name, he
finds that he stands in awe of the wondrous strength and generosity of
a woman's heart. In this first scaffold scene, although Hawthorne
introduces Dimmesdale as "a being who felt himself quite astray and at

.J. Donald Crowley, ed. Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage (New York: Barnes, 1971), pp. 160-61 15
.Henry James, Hawthorne (New York: St Martin's Press, 1967), pp. 107-08 16
Roy Male, “The Tongue of The Flame: The Scarlet Letter”, Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The 17
.Scarlet Letter, ed. David Kesterson (Massachusetts: Boston, GK Hall & Co., 1988), p. 95
- 14 -
 a loss in the pathway of human existence" 18, he makes him look strong
and resistant, a quality that will diminish along the course of the book.
For this reason, the three pillory scenes form a kind of metamorphosis,
a change of fortune, a progression toward Dimmesdale's final
"nemesis", through which the minister finally conquers his sin.
The next ascension scene occurs seven years later in the middle of
the night. The battle within Dimmesdale, between "remorse, which
dogged him everywhere", and "cowardice, which invariably drew him
back"19, brings him to confess his sin, not to the town, but to himself.
This self-reconciliation proves to be a gigantic step toward
"retribution" and self-forgiveness.
In the final scaffold scene, Dimmesdale finally triumphs over his sin
and delivers himself into the hand of God. He escapes the Devil,
symbolized here by the villainous Roger Chillingworth. Thus,
Dimmesdale's public confession redeems his soul and frees him from
his secret which binds the Devil to him. By publicly exposing his sin,
specifically when he uncovers the scarlet letter on his chest, burned
into his flesh, he rises above it, forgiving himself and being forgiven by
his townspeople, Hester and Pearl. Finally, he dies in "a triumphant
ignominy" and vanquishes evil. Like Sophocles' Oedipus, whose
"mature insight coincides with his physical blindness and banishment,
Arthur Dimmesdale purifies himself at the terrible human cost of sin,
physical decay and death."20 Such closure would naturally evoke pity
for the minister and fear from a similar, though glorious, ending. For
this reason, the heartless Puritan "spectators of the whole scene" finally
admit that "we are sinners all alike."21
Being on the pillory puts oneself in a state of spiritual nakedness,
where one feels exposed to God and the mob, but cleansed. It is the one
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 50 18
.Ibid., p. 110 19
.Roy Male, ibid., p. 95 20
.Ibid., p. 108 21
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 place where Dimmesdale can find complete reconciliation. The
scaffold brings Dimmesdale closer to the audience/reader. Thus, the
latter could feel the same passion and witness the same suffering:

Without any effort of his will or power to restrain himself,

he shrieked aloud: an outcry that went pealing through the
night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and
never berated from the hills in the background; as if a
company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it,
had made a plaything of the sound and bandying it to and
fro.22

Throughout his tragic itinerary, Dimmesdale struggles not for life,

but for redemption. On the scaffold, he reaches his goal, and dies
gloriously, like many heroes and heroines of classical tragedies.
"Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom.
Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull
countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed." 23 At the
sight of his passion and death, "the multitude, silent till then, broke out
in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder."24
“With a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to
have departed,” Chillingworth, witnessing Dimmesdale’s confession
and glorious ending, is already dead. He dies, as he has lived,
‘unknown.’25 It is only thanks to his destruction that order is restored
and divine justice is accomplished.
Besides, the physician’s fatal end seems to evoke ‘pity and fear.’ It
is the only way to make the reader feel an emotional relief and make
him fear a similar ending. What evokes pity for Chillingworth is that
we know that he has acted out of a hubristic motive, i.e. revenge. What
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 111 22
.Ibid., p. 191 23
.Ibid., p. 192 24
.Ibid., p. 57 25
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 evokes fear from a similar destiny is the fact that although
Chillingworth is the incarnation of evil, he has been portrayed as
somebody who still bears some compassion inside his heart. “‘Wouldst
thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?’ asked Hester. ‘Foolish
women!’ responded the physician soothingly, ‘what should ail me to
harm this misbegotten and miserable babe?’”26
Furthermore, according to Aristotle, the cathartic effect of tragedy is
better achieved when the characters “are closely connected with each
other, in situations in which sufferings arise within close
relationships,”27 i.e. among family members. Chillingworth is avenging
“a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and [him]self there exist the
closest ligaments.”28 “Anyone who hears the events which occur [in a
plot] constructed in such a way” could only “shudder and feel pity at
what happens.”29

Tragic Characters

 Arthur Dimmesdale, the Tragic Hero:

"Most critics think The Scarlet Letter is essentially Hester Prynne's

story, but a few, most notably Henry James, have felt that Dimmesdale
is really more important."30 What Roy Male suggests here may be
further emphasized, especially if we presume that Arthur Dimmesdale

.Ibid., p. 55 26
.Aristotle, ibid., p. 23 27
.Nathniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 57 28
.Aristotle, ibid., p. 22 29
.Roy Male, ibid., p. 90 30
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 is the tragic hero of The Scarlet Letter. He is confronted with a number
of circumstances, both in and out of his control, that lead him to
destruction and make him live and die tragically.
Dimmesdale has committed adultery with Hester Prynne. Like her,
he wears a scarlet letter over his heart and is constantly aware of it. He
knows that it is there, but he refuses to acknowledge it to the rest of the
community. Rather than accepting the truth of his passionate nature, he
is tortured by it and tries to change it. In committing adultery, he has
given himself over to an urge, a sensual impulse which stems from his
human nature. Yet, because of his religious position and ascetic beliefs,
he has been unprepared to assert his passion even to himself. For this
reason, he violently expels and denies this sensual impulse. "It was at
this point", Frederick Crews writes, "the point of which one element of
Dimmesdale's nature passed a sentence of exile over another, that the
true psychological damage was done."31 Dimmesdale becomes torn
between his conscience and emotions, and begins to feel guilty for his
thoughtless surrender for passion. His mental and psychological
struggle is physically revealed to others through his paleness, the
tremor of his mouth denoting both "nervous sensibility and a vast
power of self-restraint" and "his compulsive gesture of placing his
hand over his heart."32
In addition to his ‘psychological damage’33, Dimmesdale suffers a
moral and social dilemma. They intermingle to shape Dimmesdale's
tragedy. As a matter of fact, the minister realizes his fault in hiding his
sin and refusing to acknowledge Pearl as his daughter. But he chooses
to value his public status over his psychological tranquility. Driven by
"hubristic" impulses, which consist in his overweening desire to be a
great and revered minister, Dimmesdale fears what his Puritan

.Frederick Crews, ibid., p. 136 31

.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 24 32
.Frederick Crews, ibid 33
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 congregation would think about him, if he confessed his sin, and how it
would affect his career. Thus, he pretends saintliness and self-sacrifice
and continuously denies the truth of his nature. In pretending so, he
succeeds in making the community worship him. He does not
recognize, however, that their veneration intensifies his guilty anguish,
and he continues to delude himself into believing that he is saintly and
pure. Writing in The Shape of Hawthorne's Career, Nina Baym
describes Dimmesdale as

a man deeply committed to the furthering of social aims of

permanence and respectability, who yet finds himself
possessed of [a] subversive power, is necessarily a
psychologically ravaged human being…He is unable to
identify his "self" with the passionate core he regards as sinful
and obsessed with a feeling of falseness…The part of him that
is Puritan magistrate, and which he thinks of as his "self",
condemns the sinful "other".34

Ironically enough, Dimmesdale's denied passion and his inner sense

of guilt help him achieve professional success. His psychological and
sexual repression is sublimated through his sermons, as they represent
a kind of artistic production. In every performance, he impresses his
Puritan audience by speeches epitomizing holiness and pathos. The
more he reviles himself as sinner, the more he is elevated to new
heights of spirituality. In preaching about sin and vice, the minister is
essentially preaching about himself. In Baym's words, "he reaches his
audience not by argument but by emotion." He arouses in them
"passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender" to reach "a climax
of awe and solemn grandeur."35

34
Nina Baym, "The Major Phase I, 1850: The Scarlet Letter", Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The
.Scarlet Letter, ed. David Kesterson (Massachusetts: Boston, GK Hall & Co., 1988), p. 141
.Nina Baym, ibid., p. 13235
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 However conscious of his fortunate state, Dimmesdale, as any other
tragic hero, keeps his secret unrevealed out of egocentricity, pride or
self-excess. He even punishes himself for his sin through masochistic
rituals:
It was his custom, too, as it had been that of many other
pious Puritans, to fast…not, however, like them, in order to
purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial
illumination…but rigorously, and until his knees trembled
beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise,
night after night, some times in utter darkness, sometimes with
a glimmering lamp, and sometimes, viewing his own face in a
looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could
throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection
wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself.36

According to Terence Martin, "self-condemnation, self-abnegation

37
and self-loathing are the stimulants of [Dimmesdale's] life." This
certainly aouses the pity for the minister’s suffering and tortured self.
However, such sinister predicament could not be everlasting since
relief, finally, comes with Dimmesdale's public confession. After
delivering his final Election Day sermon, the spiritually ravaged priest
ascends the scaffold and cries to his community, ‘with a voice that rose
over them high, solemn and majestic – yet had always a tremor through
it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of
remorse and woe’ 38:

People of New England – ye, that have loved me! – ye, that
have deemed me holy! – behold me here, the one sinner of the
world! At last! – at last! – I stand upon the spot where, seven
years since, I should have stood, here, with this woman, whose
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 10836
37
Terence Martin, ‘Dimmesdale’s Ultimate Sermon’, Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
.Letter, ed. David Kesterson (Massachusetts: Boston, GK Hall & Co., 1988), p. 128
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., pp. 190-91 38
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 arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept
hitherward, sustains me at this dreadful moment from
groveling down upon my face!39

‘Tremor’, ‘shriek’, ‘remorse’, ‘woe’ and ‘groveling’ are the

manifestations of Dimmesdale’s extreme ‘pathos’.
So, Dimmesdale falls apart in Hester's arms and dies peacefully after
confessing his sin and purging his soul. His epic death turns him to a
myth and makes his community forget and forgive his sin. His fall
elevates him beyond humanity and turns him into a saintly figure or
rather Christ-like. Like any other tragic hero, his fall from grace
inspires awe in the reader and arouses cathartic feelings in him.
It might be true that Arthur Dimmesdale falls short of some of the
qualifications expected for a tragic hero. Yet, despite his insecurities
and foibles, he is of a high rank and a noble character. These
characteristics are, according to Aristotle, crucial in any tragic hero.
Furthermore, readers of The Scarlet Letter agree that his story is tragic
and that it incites "pity and fear". He is flawed and aware of it. He does
also end up destroyed, and this is what makes him truly tragic.

 Roger Chillingworth, the Tragic Villain:

The atmosphere of The Scarlet Letter is gothic, magical, and

psychological. It tends toward the allegorical and symbolic. It is an
atmosphere loaded with expressive vehicles of revenge. In this novel,
"revenge thrives on an atmosphere of intensity that brings the self to
stand apart from communal and institutional concerns, to comfort what

.Ibid 39
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 is perceived as a target with the full force of mind and volition." 40 What
makes Roger Chillingworth tragic in the novel is his obsession with
revenge, or what Hawthorne calls “a terrible fascination, a kind of
fierce necessity.”41 Vengeance drives the physician to his death.
When we first meet Chillingworth, we have the impression that he is
the ultimate victim of the story. After being held captive of The New
England Indians, he arrives to Boston looking for his wife. As he
arrives to the town, he finds Hester standing on the scaffold, in the
middle of the townspeople, carrying a baby in her arms and wearing on
her bosom, a strange scarlet A indicating her adultery. So, our first
encounter with the physician is as a victim of treason. Then,
Hawthorne draws our attention to another manifestation of
Chillingworth’s "misfortune". The physician is a victim of his own
physical appearance: he is small, thin and slightly deformed with one
shoulder being higher than the other. It is for these reasons that he has
withdrawn from social life and become an outcast.
However, as the novel progresses, we witness Chillingworth's
metamorphosis from a victim to a villainous sinner. He seeks
vengeance against Arthur Dimmesdale as soon as he discovers that he
is the father of Hester's child. He devotes himself completely to
destroying the priest's sanity. He becomes a leech draining
Dimmesdale of nerve, will and physical strength. His obsession with
revenge turns him from a peaceful scholar to a demon. He gradually
loses any sense of pity or mercy. He is transformed from a human
being to an unnatural personification of sin, evil and guilt. Like the
ancient Faust myth, the scholar-magician who sold his soul to the devil
for secret or forbidden knowledge, Chillingworth sells his soul for
vengeance. He becomes the Devil itself. Like Faust, the physician also
40
Emory Elliot, "The Romance", The Columbia History of The American Novel (New York: Columbia
.University Press, 1991), p. 81
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 96 41
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 pays his life for the knowledge he seeks. After Hester refuses to reveal
the identity of her lover, Chillingworth extorts a pledge of silence from
her on the legal state of their relation. But something in his cruel smile
and "the expression of his eyes"42 causes her to regret her promise, and
she enquires in fear: "Why dost thou smile so at me? Art thou the
Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me
into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?" His answer is
sardonically elusive: "Not thy soul! No, not thine!" 43
Consequently, Chillingworth's death at the end of the story is one
path for restoring order, and divine justice. Our first feeling of
sympathy with the physician, as he discovers his wife's treason,
comes back to us while we watch his fall. Despite his obvious
villainy, his death arouses "pity and fear". We pity him because we
know that his devilishness proceeded from his physical deformity,
his sexual jealousy and his perverted craving for knowledge. He has
caught himself in a vicious trap: the more he intensifies the torture
upon Dimmesdale, the more he destroys himself and fastens his fatal
ending. He is the unrepentant sinner who dies without any
redemption, and this is what makes his death definitely tragic.

.Ibid., p. 58 42
.Ibid 43
- 23 -
  Hester Prynne, the Survivor:

In The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne has created "the first heroine of

American fiction; as well as one of its enduring heroes…Hester. She is
a hero because she has qualities and actions that transcend her gender
and lead to heroism as it can be understood for anyone." 44 Hester is a
tragic heroine because she is able to learn through her suffering, which
is a distinguishing characteristic of Greek tragic heroes. Besides
courage, tenacity and endurance, she has the ability to grow, by means
of these qualities, into an understanding of herself, of her fellows, and
.Nina Baym, The Scarlet Letter: A Reading (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986), p. 62 44
- 24 -
 of the conditions of existence. "Suffering," says Aeschylus, "need not
to be embittering but can be a source of knowledge."45
The Scarlet Letter opens up with Hester Prynne's sin of adultery
having already been committed. We watch her standing, in the middle
of people, on a scaffold where she receives the punishment chosen for
her by the town's magistrates. She is condemned to wear the letter A,
as a symbol of her adultery, for the rest of her life. On the scaffold, she
feels the "heavy wait of thousand unrelenting eyes upon her…in the
hot, mid-day sun burning upon her face, and lighting up its shame." 46
Hester's transgression of the Puritan law causes her alienation from the
society where she lives. She moves into a remote, secluded cottage on
the outskirts of the town. Moreover, she is subject to malice from the
lowliest vagrants to the most genteel of the Boston community, who,
because of her sin and seclusion, regard her with much doubt and
suspicion.
These factors intensify her isolation and deepen the abyss separating
her from her townspeople. Her social seclusion intermingles with her
spiritual suffering to shape her tragedy. The Puritan society and its
harsh moral codes make Hester feel at odds with her self. The Puritans
view that Hester's sin stems from her passionate nature, from her
sexuality, i.e. her young and beautiful body. They persist in regulating
this sexuality within religious, legal and economic structures. They
make her despise her body. She reveals less of herself, her entire body
shrouded in gray, her hair covered by a tight fitting cap, and her breast
shielded by the scarlet letter. She views her body as the emblem of sin.
They make her even see her innocent child, Pearl, as the
personification of her flaw:

.Encyclopedia Britannica, ibid 45

.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 42 46
- 25 -
 She symbolizes the sinful part of Hester's self – the wild,
amoral, creative core. Hester is at odds with that part of her
self, and until she comes to some sort of resolution, is a
divided self… She tries to restrain and discipline Pearl
according to society's judgment, but her passionate nature
continues to assert itself. Pearl expresses all the resentment,
pride, anger and blasphemy that Hester feels but may not
voice, and perhaps does not admit to feeling.47

What heightens our compassion for Hester Prynne is the fact that
although she could go to Europe, where she could ‘hide her character
and identity under a new exterior’, or she could enter the forest, ‘where
the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose
customs and life were alien from the law that condemned her’, she
does not leave Boston and she ‘consciously chooses to define her root
as her chain.’48 Her identity is her sin so "galling to her inmost soul." 49
Although this choice of self-inflicted punishment may be pervert for a
woman in a similar situation, it presents Hester as a real heroine. For,
in choosing to stay at the place of her humiliation, Hester decides that
it should be the scene of her penance, and makes it the challenge and
the ultimate reason for her staying alive.
Her heroism manifests itself in several ways. From the outset, during
her punishment scene, she stands proud and gorgeous. As we watch her
standing on the pillory, we cannot help admiring her, loving and
sympathizing with her:

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect

elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so
glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face
which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and
.Nina Baym, The Shape of Hawthorne's Career, pp. 129-30 47
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 60 48
.Ibid 49
- 26 -
 richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to
marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too,
after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days;
characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the
delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now
recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne
appeared more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the
term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had
before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed
and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even
startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out and made a halo
of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.50

Her pride and boldness are strongly stressed, when under the
threatening gaze of the community, and Dimmesdale charging her "to
speak out the name of [her] fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer" 51, she
refuses and chooses to endure her punishment alone. Under such
circumstances, the more Hester persists, the more we pity her, for she
is suffering an unbearable passion. It is also important to emphasize the
fact that her endurance highlights a nobelness that we cannot help
sympathizing with.
Still on the scaffold, what makes Hester exceptional is "the scarlet
letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom." 52
Hawthorne assures that "it had the effort of a spell, taking her out of
the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by
53
herself." Thus, he has simply rendered her beyond the world of
humanity. In embroidering the letter, Hester is trying to change her
reality and make it prettier than it really is. Here, Hester achieves her
first triumph over the heartless Puritans. According to Nina Baym,

.Ibid., p. 40 50
.Ibid., p. 50 51
.Ibid., p. 40 52
.Ibid 53
- 27 -
 by making the letter beautiful, Hester is denying its literal
meaning and thereby subverting the intention of the
magistrates who condemn her to wear it. Moreover, by
applying this art to her own letter, she puts her gift to work in
the service of her private thoughts and feelings rather than in
support of public rituals.54

Hester resorts to her art as "a mode of expressing, and therefore

55
soothing, the passion of her life." This act of embellishing the letter
provokes her townspeople and makes them resentfully inquire: "Did
ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of
showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our
godly magistrates and make a pride out of what they, worthy
gentlemen, meant for a punishment?" 56
It is Hester's art which grants her the opportunity to reintegrate in the
Puritan society. "Through it she becomes involved with birth and
death, with the social hierarchy, with all the phases of community life
(save marriage)."57 It is her art that supplies her with life's necessities
and secures her child and herself:

Her needlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor;

military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his
band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be
mildewed and moulder away in the coffins of the dead. But it
is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called to
embroider the white veil which was to cover relentless vigour
with which society frowned upon her sin.58

.Nina Baym, ibid., p. 138 54

.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 63 55
.Ibid., p. 40 56
.Roy Male, ibid., p. 98 57
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 62 58
- 28 -
 Although it was hard for Hester to reconcile with society, she has
managed to reenter it and reintegrate in its daily life. She starts with
doing charity works. "Much of the time, which she might readily have
applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse
garments for the poor," and therefore, she "came to have a part to
perform in the world.”59 Her needlework is her path to penance.
Coupled with good deeds, this divine gift transmutes the letter from the
stigma of shame to a badge of mercy, which has the effect of a cross
upon a nun's bosom. Throughout the seven following years, Hester
constantly performs deeds of mercy and kindness so that many people
refused to interpret the scarlet letter by its original signification. They
said that it meant ‘Able’.
Hester's following triumph consists in her contribution in
Dimmesdale's self-reconciliation. When she meets him in the forest,
seven years after committing their sin, she sustains him and tenderly
soothes him so that he wonders:

O Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung

myself – sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened – down upon
the forest-leaves and to have risen up all made anew; and with
new powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is
already the better life! Why did we not find it soon? 60

In the forest, Hester lightens up Dimmesdale's path for redemption and

reveals to him Chillingworth's dark secret of seeking vengeance against
him. Therefore, Hester turns from a sinful and passionate ‘Adulteress’
to a pure savior and a spiritual ‘Angel’. Some critics view her as the
image of "Divine Maternity" that she suggested at the first scaffold
scene, and thus, she becomes a myth.

.Ibid., p. 63 59
.Ibid., p. 152 60
- 29 -
 In the forest, also, Hester wins her freedom back. She frees herself
from all bonds: she throws off the scarlet letter and she removes the
formal cap that confines her hair, resuming “her sex, her youth and the
whole richness of her beauty.”61 She also throws Chillingworth's secret,
warns her lover of his danger, and they finally plan to escape to
Europe.
Yet, for the tragic end to occur, we watch Dimmesdale die in
Hester's arms. His death purifies both of them. He dies after publicly
confessing his sin, hence assuming his partnership in Hester's adultery,
and dropping his mask of saintliness. Hester purges her soul, according
to Anne Abbott, "in her baptism with tears which will reclaim it from
the foul strain it has been cast upon it."62
Finally, after securing Pearl's welfare in Europe, Hester comes back
to Boston, where she is buried with her lover. She comes back wearing
the same scarlet letter after a very long period of Dimmesdale's death:

By wearing the letter after her return – a gesture nobody

would have required of her after so many years – and thus
bringing the community to accept that letter on her terms
rather than its own, Hester has in fact brought about a modest
social change. Society expands to accept her with the letter –
the private life carves out a small place for itself in the
community's awareness. This is a small, but real, triumph for
the heroine.63

After introducing Hester with a great beauty, vitality and a halo,

Hawthorne, at the end of The Scarlet Letter, knows that he has created
a humble, self-denying and charitable tragic heroine who has managed,

.Ibid., p.152 61
62
Anne Abbott, “The Magic Power of Hawthorne’s Style”, Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The
.Scarlet Letter, ed. David Kesterson (Massachusetts: Boston, GK Hall & Co., 1988), p. 32
.Nina Baym, ibid., p. 127 63
- 30 -
by her strength of courage and integrity to find meaning and purpose in
life despite her frustration.

 The Puritan Community, the Tragic Society:

It is worth mentioning that the tragic end of The Scarlet Letter is

partly brought about by the Puritan community. In the novel, the
Puritans are the living instruments of doom. It is they who inflicted the
punishment over Hester Prynne. They condemned her to wear on her
bosom, for the rest of her life, the letter A, as the indication of adultery,
hence the creation of the entire story.
Early in the novel, the narrator makes the reader aware of the
harshness of the Puritans' punishment and their intolerance to
- 31 -
 everything different from their creed and way of life. This becomes
dramatically clear in the rigid penalties imposed for trivial, natural
human behavior:

It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful

child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority,
was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an
Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to
be scourged out of the town; or an idle and vagrant Indian,
whom the white man's fire-water had made riotous about the
streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the
forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins,
the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon
the gallows.64

The harshness of the Puritan community is reflected even in the play

of the little children who imitate the actions of their elders. In contrast
to Pearl, they play at "scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-
fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative
witchcraft."65 The Puritans gaze with harsh and intolerant criticism at
the pursuits and enjoyments of living men. They do not acknowledge
that they themselves are sexual and passionate, by nature, just like
Hester Prynne. It is for this reason that, Hester, always wearing the
badge of shame, becomes a target for their cruelty. It is as if they can
better deny their own nature by projecting it onto Hester and despising
her for it. Indeed, they act as if she alone has passion in her heart.
The tragedy of The Scarlet Letter is the ultimate consequence of the
Puritans' constant denial and transgression of human nature. The rigid
background of Puritanism strongly despises youth, joy, passion and
creativity. This is clear in the way they treat Hester's art of needlework.
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 37 64
.Ibid., p. 70 65
- 32 -
 To the townspeople, the embroidered letter seemed to derive its scarlet
color from the flames of hell. So, they drive Hester to turn herself into
a sexless woman who dresses in drab gray and hides her hair with a
cap. Her youth and femininity do not survive in a society that does not
value them. Similarly, Dimmesdale's youth vanishes and he becomes
more sick and halting than much older men in the community. "The
aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Dimmesdale's frame so
feeble while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity,
believed that he would go heavenward before them."66
When Puritans came to the New World, it was an untainted place, "a
virgin soil", the author writes, a place where there could have been a
truly new beginning, "a utopia."67 Instead, the first buildings they
established were a prison and a cemetery. For them virgin soil,
wilderness and nature are enemies, since they represent the dark evil in
human life. Thus, The Scarlet Letter becomes the story of the Puritan
tragic struggle against nature. It is for this reason that Hester is
banished to a hut on the edge of the wilderness, and this is what
denotes her wild nature. Also, Pearl is always depicted as nature's
child. While the other children in the community play games taught by
society, Pearl plays in the forest and by the seashore with living fauna
and flora. Still for the same reason, Dimmesdale's meeting with Hester
is located in the forest. For, there, they will be hidden and say and do
things that the Puritans would call lawless. Indeed, the forest inspires
them to think that they can be free of both the Puritans and their moral
code through escaping to Europe.
The Puritans associate nature with the unknown, rebellion, evil,
mystery, lawlessness, pleasure, emotion, and sexuality. Given these
characteristics, it is appropriate that the evil man, Chillingworth,

.Ibid., p. 100 66
.Ibid., p. 35 67
- 33 -
 should emerge from the forest; that Hester, who has broken a divine
law, should live in the wilderness; that Pearl, who seems to know no
bond and is a child of nature, should feel so at home there. The
Puritans' response to nature is, consequently, at the heart of the tragedy
of The Scarlet Letter. They persist in denying the passion in human
nature till the end. Although they witness Dimmesdale's public
confession and fall, they strongly refuse to see any evil in the high
representative of their society. They rather "associate his final action
with Christ's sympathy for the adulteress, and they think Dimmesdale
so shaped the manner of his death as to make of it a parable,
illustrating that in the view of the Infinite Purity, we are sinners all
alike." 68 Although, Dimmesdale's death reveals the truth and drops all
masks, the townspeople still delude themselves, and the story ends up
leaving them unrepentantly struggling in their tragic world of lies and
hypocrisy.

 Pearl, the Tragic Symbol of Sin:

In bringing Pearl into existence, “a great law had been broken. The
result was a being, whose elements were perhaps beautiful and
brilliant, but all in disorder.”69 If we treat Pearl as one of the major
characters of The Scarlet Letter, and not as a symbol, we presume that
the tragic essence of Pearl stems from chaos. Indeed, Pearl is the fruit
of transgression, and her life, till the revelation of truth, represents the
consequences of such transgression.

.Roy Male, ibid., p. 108 68

.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 68 69
- 34 -
 Pearl's tragic fate is that she has been denied an existence of her
own. She has always been associated either with her mother or the
letter she wears. Readers of The Scarlet Letter have usually agreed that
Pearl represents the material sign of Hester's sin. Since her birth, she
has very often been associated with the scarlet letter on her mother's
bosom. "She is its symbol, its double, its agent," 70 She is the scarlet
letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life. As a matter
of fact, Hester dresses the child in scarlet. "It was a remarkable
attribute of the garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it
resistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which
Hester was doomed to wear upon her bosom." 71 Later, she begins to
ask questions about why her mother wears the letter and what it means.
In the forest scene, when Hester takes off the scarlet letter, Pearl
becomes disturbed and does not calm down till her mother has it back
on her dress. As if by discarding the scarlet letter Hester has discarded
Pearl. The child's permanent association with the letter makes Hester
remembers her sin and "misfortune".
The child also embodies all that is lawless and anti-puritan in her
mother's life. ‘She symbolizes the sinful part of Hester's self – the wild,
amoral, creative core… Pearl expresses all the resentment, pride, anger
and blasphemy that Hester feels but may not voice, and perhaps does
not even admit to feeling.’72 Besides, Pearl is a source of infinite
mystery for her mother. Hester asks the child in a puzzled tone: "Tell
me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither?" 73 The mother's
confusion about the child's identity reaches its peak when she questions
even the immediate and visible bond that is Pearl's only certain
knowledge: "Child, what art thou? Art thou my child, in very truth?" 74

.Nina Baym, The Scarlet Letter: A Reading, p. 56 70

.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p.70 71
72
.Baym, “The Major Phase I, 1850: The Scarlet Letter”, ibid., pp. 138-9
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p. 73 73
.Ibid 74
- 35 -
 Not only does Pearl's father, Arthur Dimmesdale, refuse to
acknowledge her as his daughter, but also her mother does not know
what she really is.
Pearl's identity is further displaced when Hester could not help
questioning whether Pearl was a human child. Here, the child's
humanity is doubted. It is clear, however, that Hawthorne and the
Puritan community agree with Hester upon this question. Throughout
the novel, descriptions such as "a little elf", "an imp of evil" and "a
devil offspring" have been permanently attributed to the girl. Her
humanity is further degraded in the very act of naming her "Pearl" and
not another "human" name. Mr. Wilson, one of the characters, suggests
that she should have been called "Ruby" or "Coral" or "Red Rose". We
notice here that Pearl's mysterious origin incites the Puritan
community's speculation and suspicion to the point that they want to
rename her. They also plan to separate her from her mother and
reeducate her according to their lifestyle and moral code. Besides, they
subjugate her to multiple questions about her real father and her true
nature. Mr. Wilson first asks her "who art thou," then "canst thou tell
me, my child, who made thee?"75 Thus, he inquires about her biological
as well as heavenly fathers who are both absent in this case. Pearl is
rootless, and the answer to her interrogator's questions emphasizes this
quality. First, she says that she is her mother's child, then, she
announces that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by
her mother off the bush that grew by the prison-door. At this moment,
Pearl boldly creates her own identity. She "locates herself within a
world inhabited entirely by women, figuring her birth as an event that
had occurred without men."76

.Ibid., p. 82 75
.Nina Baym, The Shape of Hawthorne's Career, p. 130 76
- 36 -
 It is worth noting, however, that Pearl is the only truth in the novel.
She represents the visible embodiment of truth about Hester's sin and
she is the only truth-teller in the Puritan world of hypocrisy. "In The
Scarlet Letter," Male writes, "the quest for truth is an effort to know
Pearl." The Scarlet Letter, he says, "like many great tragedies, deals
with the quest for truth."77 It is Pearl who immediately recognizes
Chillingworth as the "Black Man", or devil, in the community. It is she,
too, who suspects that Dimmesdale has a scarlet letter over his heart,
asking Hester whether she wears the scarlet letter for the same reason
that the minister keeps his hand over his heart? She also knows
intuitively that Hester is not telling her the truth about the letter. She
persistently asks her about its true meaning.
Finally, what really makes Pearl tragic is the fact that she discovers
her true identity at her father's death. “She is initiated into humanity by
participating in ‘a great scene of grief’, whose result is both to learn
who her father is and to lose him.” 78 She becomes fully human when
she kisses her father on the scaffold and,

[a]s her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the
pledge that she would grow amid human joy and sorrow, not
for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.
Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of
anguish was fulfilled.79

This scene, as I have mentioned earlier, may be considered as one of

the most cathartic scenes in American literature, and it could be a
relevant evidence as to Pearl's tragic childhood.

.Roy Male, ibid., p. 92 77

78
.Nina Baym , The Scarlet Letter: A Reading, p. 59
.Nathaniel Hawthorne, ibid., p.192 79
- 37 -
 Tragic Plot

According to Aristotle, tragedy has six component parts, i.e. plot,

character, diction, reasoning, spectacle and lyric poetry. Plot is the
organization of events, which is the most important of the components
of tragedy. The plot is what the tragedy is there for. It is the source and
the soul of tragedy, and every other component is secondary. The
tragic plot is simply the structure of the actions as they are rendered

- 38 -
 and ordered toward achieving the particular emotional and artistic
effect of catharsis.
I have been arguing so far that The Scarlet Letter has much catharsis
in it. Both Hester and Dimmesdale have been the focus of the reader's
sympathy from the outset. In fact, throughout the first four chapters,
the narrator constantly incites our sympathies for Hester through
various kinds of stylistic devices and commentaries. In the hostile
atmosphere of the Puritan society, we could not help sympathizing
with the unknown prisoner who is about to come out from the old, dark
jail. Nature itself shows compassion with Hester as it gives birth to that
"wild rose-bush", by the prison-door, "covered, in this month of June,
with its delicate germs."80 The narrator further appeals to our pity when
he declares that The Scarlet Letter would be a "tale of human frailty
and sorrow."81 Moreover, by setting Hester at the opposite side of the
Puritans, and enhancing their severity, solemnity, coldness and
heartlessness, the narrator deprives them of the reader's sympathy, in
favor of Hester Prynne. Indeed, these people, specifically a group of
old, ugly and pitiless women, compete to suggest punishments of
greater severity than that inflicted on Hester by the town's magistrates.
At this very moment, Hester emerges from the prison, lady-like with
heroic attributes such as pride and dignity. During her public trial,
Hester boldly refuses to name her lover. Her courage, endurance and
self-sacrifice increase the reader's esteem for her and deepen his/her
sympathetic feelings towards her. As the novel goes on, we watch
Hester's spiritual journey towards redemption. Throughout this
journey, however, she suffers all sorts of humiliation inflicted upon her
by her own townspeople. Nevertheless, she persists in improving her
reputation. She shows much wisdom, compassion and generosity of

.Ibid., p. 35 80
.Ibid., p. 36 81
- 39 -
heart for her community. Like any true tragic hero, she learns through
her suffering, by means of courage and endurance, to understand
herself and her fellows.
Speaking of Dimmesdale, it might be that our interest in him is less
than that paid to Hester. Yet, his spiritual pain and psychological
deterioration, his deep feeling of guilt for letting Hester suffer alone,
his final retribution and death serve as catharsis and restore the
distorted order of the fictitious world.
The tragic plot should conventionally deal with a sort of conflict that
is crucial to the change of the hero's fortune. It could be a conflict
between individuals. It also could be a conflict of the hero against his
fate, and/or the circumstances that stand between him and his goal. It
could be a conflict between desires or values in the tragic hero's own
temperament, as well. In The Scarlet Letter, almost all these kinds of
conflict are present. From the outset, we sense that the plot is centered
in a conflict between the Puritans and Hester. On the one hand, the
Puritans' aim is to make Hester submissive to their system. On the
other hand, Hester struggles to make them admit that they have
misjudged her. When Chillingworth is introduced in the plot, another
struggle comes up. It is the struggle between Hester and Chillingworth
who decides to kill her lover.
The Scarlet Letter is also a battlefield for opposing desires and
psychological impulses. Hester's sin causes her alienation from her
community. Her seclusion makes her subject to public suspicion and
malice. She is torn between wild passion and creative imagination, on
one side, and her will to assent to her punishment, on the other. She
tries to discipline her passionate nature. Yet, it continuously asserts
itself through her artistic production and her child's wild nature. She is
ashamed of her sinful body so that she reveals less of it. She hides her
beauty under gray garments and dark caps.
- 40 -
 The minister, on his part, suffers a serious psychological damage.
His physical illness is an outward manifestation of an inward condition
that neither medicine nor religion could cure. He suffers from an
intense feeling of guilt, which is the outcome of an internalized self-
disapproval. He is aware of the dichotomy between his public image
and his private self. However, he keeps denying the truth of his
passionate nature and refusing to acknowledge his sin to his
community. He pretends saintliness and self-sacrifice in order to
preserve his social status as the beloved and worshipped reverend
minister of his community. Briefly, he is torn between conscience and
passion.
Chillingworth is also a psychologically ravaged human being. He is
devoid of humanity. He lets his obsession with revenge take hold of
him. He becomes known as the Devil or "The Black Man", the
Faustian figure who is obsessed with evil knowledge.
Furthermore, the tragic plot, according to Aristotle, should have
"unity of action." It should be created and exposed to the reader as a
complete and ordered structure of events, directed toward the intended
cathartic effect. Aristotle views that all the parts are so closely
connected that the transposal or withdrawal of anyone of them will
disjoint and dislocate the whole. Besides, the order of the unified plot
is a continuous sequence of beginning, middle and end. The beginning
initiates the main action in a way that makes us look forward to
something more. The middle presumes what has gone on before and
requires something to follow. The end follows from what has gone on
before but requires nothing more. The Scarlet Letter could be divided
to a beginning of four chapters, a middle of sixteen chapters, while four
more chapters are left for the ending.
The writer of a tragedy often captures our attention in the opening
scene with a representative incident, related and close to the event
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which is central to the main situation or conflict. The public advent of
Hester Prynne's trial for adultery paves the way for the other two
scaffold scenes which form the main events at the middle and end of
the story. If we look more closely at the course of events, we can
presume that it takes some sort of a pyramidal shape consisting of a
rising action, a climax and a falling action. In this novel, the rising
action, or what Aristotle calls "complication", takes place as Roger
Chillingworth appears during Hester's trial. In the third chapter, we
discover that he is her husband and that he is unknown to everybody
except her. It also turns out that Hester's lover is unknown and that she
refuses to unveil his identity. It is for this reason that Chillingworth
decides to identify the lover and kill him. Thus, the plot thickens more
and more. Towards the middle of the novel, Hester and Pearl share the
minister's night vigil on the scaffold. It is then that Hester realizes that
Chillingworth has discovered Dimmesdale's identity and is using his
knowledge to cause him harm. Immediately, she decides to reveal the
physician's dark secret to the priest.
Aristotle's "reversal" takes place when Hester and Dimmesdale meet
at the forest. He finally discovers Chillingworth's true identity.
Immediately after, they decide to flee to Europe. This inaugurates
Dimmesdale's change of fortune and Hester's as well. It also launches
the falling process. Finally, Dimmesdale recognizes his foe and beats
his cowardice. He is now determined to confess publicly his sin and
share the burden of the scarlet letter with his beloved Hester.
The last chapter sets the stage for the dramatic resolution of the plot,
or what is technically labeled "denouement". Around the scaffold,
everybody hides a secret which is about to explode. The final
revelation brings the plot to its final closure. This last scaffold scene
serves as the cathartic effect intended for the whole story, where all
unsettled matters are given a resolution: Pearl acquires a father,
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 Dimmesdale finally confesses and Chillingworth loses chance for
revenge. If we presume the “Conclusion” to be a sort of epilogue for
the story, we acquire further information about Chillingworth's death
and Pearl inheriting him, about Pearl's welfare in Europe and Hester
coming back to Boston, her death and her burial in the same grave
where her lover lies.

Conclusion

The plot of The Scarlet Letter has been carefully constructed with an
eye to symmetry and proportion, and a sense of beauty and order: "Sad
but beautiful, like the letter that gives it its name – and not
coincidentally."82 It definitely fits with Aristotle's design of the tragic
plot. It is made of a series of ordered and connected events that include

.Nina Baym, The Scarlet Letter: A Reading, p. 27 82

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a change in the tragic hero's fortune. It is "complete", in the sense that
it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is fundamental to the
successful creation of a tragedy that the action is evocative of "pity and
fear". The plot of The Scarlet Letter develops through complication to
catastrophe (denouement) in which there occurs, by the discovery of
the real identity of Chillingworth, a sudden reversal in Dimmesdale's
fortune that leads to his death which definitely evokes "pity and fear."
On this, it is worth recalling Hawthorne’s words about the response of
his wife to the concluding chapter of The Scarlet Letter, "it broke her
heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache – which I took upon
as a triumphant success" (1850, letter to his friend Horatio Bridge).
Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus and Aristotle himself would have
agreed with Hawthorne and shared his joy, since he has successfully
achieved what is intended for any tragedy, i.e. the final cathartic effect.
The main characters of The Scarlet Letter have much in common
with what Aristotle chose for a tragic hero to be. S/He will most
effectively evoke "pity and fear" if s/he is neither thoroughly good nor
thoroughly bad. S/He moves us to pity since s/he is not an evil man,
and his/her "misfortune" is greater than s/he deserves. S/He moves us
also to fear because we recognize similar possibilities of terror in our
fallible selves. The tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is better
than we are, in the sense that he is of a stronger character and/or higher
rank.
The opening chapters of The Scarlet Letter imply that even before
her acquisition of the scarlet letter, Hester has always been unique. The
text describes her appearance as more distinctive than conventionally
beautiful. She is also depicted as a strong-willed, proud and
independent character. She learns through her suffering to control her
tendency to be rush and passionate. She also succeeds in altering the
view of her society. Throughout the narrative, she is portrayed as
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 intelligent and capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. It is
the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an
important figure. "In the beginning of his tale, Hawthorne gave her
great beauty and vitality, and a halo; at the end, he knew he had made
her a tragic heroine who had managed, by the strength of her courage
and integrity, to find meaning and purpose in life despite her
frustration." 83
Arthur Dimmesdale also agrees with the Aristotelian model of tragic
heroes. He is a revered and highly respected minister. His congregation
worships him for his eloquent and emotional sermons and his precious
spiritual guidance. Although he was the youngest priest in the town, he
achieves much more success than the oldest reverends. His public
grace, however, does not prevent him from feeling guilty for his sin.
He has committed adultery with Hester, but in order to preserve his
high social status, he does acknowledge himself as her lover and leaves
her to take all the blame. It is for this reason that his deep feeling of
guilt takes hold of him and brings about his mental and physical
deterioration. He finally dies after publicly confessing his sin. In his
death, he becomes even more of an icon than he was in life. Many
believe that his confession was a symbolic act, while others believe
Dimmesdale's fate was an example of divine judgment.
Aristotelian tragedy is also based on conflict. The Scarlet Letter
makes us wonder if there is ever any escape from an atmosphere
heavily loaded with all sorts of conflict. Society is in conflict with the
individual, religious and moral codes are in conflict with the natural
impulse. The individual is in conflict with his fate and struggles in vain
to change the awful course of events. Within the individual, duty is in
conflict with the desire for pleasure and happiness.

83
Hyatt H. Waggoner, Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, ed. David Kesterson
.(Massachusetts: Boston, GK Hall & Co., 1988), p. 155
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 Like the Greeks, Hawthorne reveals profound psychological insight
dealing with the subconscious and different conflicting impulses inside
the human psyche. Indeed, the tragedy of The Scarlet Letter stems not
only from the Puritan society's imposition of false social ideals on the
main characters, but also from the characters' inner world of frustrated
desires. This is why many critics often use the expression
"Hawthorne’s psychological romance" to speak of The Scarlet Letter.
And like the Greeks, Hawthorne also raises questions about human
existence. Why must man suffer? Why must man be forever torn
between the seemingly irreconcilable good and evil, freedom and
necessity, truth and deceit? Are the causes of his suffering outside
himself, in blind chance, in the evil designs of others, in the malice of
gods? Are its causes within him, and does he bring suffering upon
himself through arrogance, infatuation, or the tendency to overreach
himself? Why is justice so elusive?

Bibliography

Aristotle. Poetics. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1996.

Baym, Nina. The Scarlet Letter: A Reading. Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1986.
Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological
Themes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Crowley, J. Donald, ed. Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage. New York:

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 Barnes, 1971.
Elliot, Emory. The Columbia History of The American Novel. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Encyclopedia Britannica, Macropaedia, V5, 15th ed. Chicago:
Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2002.
James, Henry. Hawthorne. New York: St Martin's Press, 1967.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Great Britain: Wordsworth
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Kesterson, David, ed. Critical Essays on Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
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