Juxtaposing the Dark and Light
The essence of the hypocritical, paradoxical, intolerant and deeply religious American Puritanical society is ever omnipresent in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. His brilliant use of the Puritan society surpasses the setting and is molded into the demeanor of his characters and therefore highlights the intricacies of his theme. The rigid Puritan moral and social code reverberates throughout all aspects of the novel and Hawthorne allows The Scarlet Letter to be interpreted as a story of sins and sinners; where sin and its punishment are eternal and immutable. His dark and gloomy tone seen throughout The Scarlet Letter seems to adhere to this way of thinking. But Nathaniel Hawthorne through his all-encompassing conflict between the restriction and piety of Puritan society and the desires and powers of individual underscores his bleak tone with a lighter one, which accentuates hope and romanticism.
Although Nathaniel Hawthorne profoundly depicts Hester Prynne as a sinner and recluse in the Puritan society through his ominous tone, he has also been able to glorify Hester’s romanticism through an exultant tone – therefore bringing light into the eternal damnation that shrouds Hester. Hawthorne submits Hester after her open “condemnation” (56) to the harsh, life-long “penance” (59) of the scarlet letter and suffers with silence. Even though Hawthorne depressingly describes Hester as “giving up her individuality” (56) and becoming a symbol of “woman's frailty and sinful passion,” (56) he however deceptively omits the key fact that Hester Prynne does not regret her passion. Consequently, even as the reader continues to believe that Hester’s passion was the fatal flaw, which caused her eternal damnation, Hawthorne is able to subtly interject hope and a justification for her belief in recognition of the desires and powers of the individual. If Hawthorne makes Hester willing to endure “the torture of the scarlet letter,” (120) it is because she is still in love and not because she is penitent. Her apparent “humility” (111) and patience conceal her devotion to her lover. Hawthorne provides numerous intimations of her true feelings when he underscores his dreary and depressing tone with a lighter tone from the first scaffold scene – where he glorifies her idealism and the sunshine emphasizes her beauty and dignity of bearing – but it is in Hester’s meeting with Arthur Dimmesdale in the forest that Hawthorne fully reveals her secret. Here it is confessed that Arthur is for her the man “once – nay, why should we not speak it? – still so passionately loved!” (132) As the meeting in the forest flowers into a love scene, a drastic change is seen from the gloominess characteristic of other chapters; Hawthorne here is able to make Hester the very goddess of love, similar to the flood of sunshine which now pours into the forest is another outer manifestation of the same inner divinity. “Love, whether newly-born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in Hester's eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale's!” (138) Here the deep force, which moves throughout the story, is at last called by its proper name – not as Hawthorne’s dark tone describes it as – “sin,” (47) “guilty passion,” (62) “shame,” (61) or “hypocrisy” (47) – but “love.” (140)
