a) Chapter V builds up a hagiographic depiction of Hester, borrowing themes from penitence and members of religious communities: “ascetic”, “her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue”, “an idea of penance” (p. 70), “rejected it as a sin” (p. 71), “martyr” (p. 72). Reaches a climax here with the idea that she has the ability to see “the hidden sin in other hearts” through “revelations” or “intimations”. This allows Hawthorne to explore an ironic inversion of the traditional Puritan understanding of sin and virtue.
b) Much of the religious language of the text is thus inverted or loaded with irony. See “earthly saint”, where earthly means inhabiting the Earth, put also profane and not so holy. So too does the matron have “crimson” cheeks, ostensibly because she is ashamed of Hester, but also in order to endow her with her own scarlet token of sin. Similarly the scarlet letter, the symbol of sin, is endowed with “sympathy”, while the “earthly saint” becomes the “evil thing”.
c) Much of this inversion explored through an interior focalisation within the mind of Hester and the other members of the Boston community, articulated through references to the lexical field of sight: Hester’s “reluctant eyes” compared to the matron’s literal reading of Hester’s supposed sinful state. Within Hester’s mind we have dramatised speeches that show her internal doubt, with the “bad angel” pointing her towards what seems to be the truth, while the mock sermonic tone of other utterances (“O Fiend … wouldst thou leave nothing … for this poor sinner to revere?). These interior dialogues are the acting out of the search for truth that Hawthorne stages in Hester’s thinking.
II ~ Open-ended truth
a) The issue of the value of truth present throughout the passage. Hawthorne employs many rhetorical devices to highlight uncertainty and the possibility of numerous ways of interpreting the same thing. Note restrictive adverbs (“somewhat”, “perhaps”), modals (“Could”, “might”, “may”) and concessive structures (“yet could not help believing”). Also repeated hypothetical clauses (“had she been”, “if”, “as if”” and also a qualification of what has been stated (known as epanorthosis): “if altogether fancy…, she felt or fancied then”.
b) Perhaps the most obvious technique here though is the rhetorical question. Indeed a rhetorical question seems to introduce the whole passage: “Had Hester sinned alone?” (p. 73). As such, the entire passage might be read as an attempt to answer the question, and its ambiguity – note the other rhetorical questions within the passage that refuse any certain interpretation – points to the open-ended nature of truth.
c) Indeed Hawthorne seems to insist on the complexity of truth, rejecting not only the rigid interpretations of the Puritans, but strikingly also modern dismissals of their beliefs: “more truth … than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.” Indeed the final paragraph is a direct commentary to this effect – note the modals and more obviously the presence of the narrator in this passage (“we”, “we”, “our”). The passage thus builds to this climax in which Hawthorne articulates most clearly his vision about truth and about the reader’s responsibility to work to identify that truth.
III ~ From history to romance
a) The rhetorical ambiguity of the passage also operates on the chronology of the passage. References to the past in this passage (“that age of antique reverence”). The narrator is used to draw a sharp comparison between the two ages (the 17th and the 19th centuries), notably in the opposition established between “those dreary old times” and “our modern incredulity”. This historical perspective seems then to allow for the authorial comments on the superstitions of the Puritans, which serve to demand of readers a willingness to see things in a number of ways.
b) Indeed this central to Hawthorne’s conception of romance: that readers should allow the writers a “certain latitude” (The House of the Seven Gables). Hawthorne declared himself a writer of romances, and notably expounded upon the matter in the preface to The Scarlet Letter, notably when the narrator says that he has taken great liberty with the facts of Hester Prynne’s story (p. 28) and that writing romances consists of making the fantastic seem credible through the use of imagination (p. 31). Thus for example the quotation above about “more truth”: Hawthorne wishes the reader to indulge his fantasy, and to accept gradations of truth.
c) In this manner, the passage may be read as a metaphor for the writing and reading of romances. Hester too must interpret the different signs that her imagination gives her access to, just like Hawthorne has managed to flesh out the allegory of the scarlet letter to give it a convincing guise of truth.
