Topic:
Discuss ‘The Scarlet Letter’ with reference to ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne’ as the
founder of psychological novel in America.
Name:
Patel Kinjal
Paper
Name: The American Literature
Paper
No:
10
Roll
No:
14
STD: M.A
2
SEM: 3
Submitted
to:
Department of English Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
About
Author
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in
Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hawthorne and former Elizabeth Clarke
Manning. His ancestors include John Hawthorne, the only judge involved in the
Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. His first work was a
novel ‘Fanshawe’ in 1828. He published his short stories in various
periodicals.
About
the novel
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'The
Scarlet Letter’ was published in 1850. Much of Hawthorne’s
writing centers on New England. His works feature moral allegories with a
Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic Movement
and more specifically, Dark romanticism. Hawthorn’s themes often center the
inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and
deep psychological complexity.
About
Works
His famous works include
The
Scarlet Letter (1850)
The
House of the seven Gables 1851)
Twice-Told
Tales (1837)
Young
Goodman Brown (1835)
Hawthorne a 19th century American
novelist is seen as a key figure in the development of American literature for
his tales of the nation’s colonial history. The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a
historical setting. It is considered to be his magnum opus. It belongs to
Genres of Fictional novel Romanticism, children’s literature and Psychological
work. Henry James once said of the novel, “It is beautiful, admirable,
extraordinary; it has in the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of
as the mark of Hawthorne’s best things- an indefinable purity and lightness of
conception… one can often return to it; it supports familiarity and has the
inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art.
The book’s immediate and lasting successes are
due to the way it addresses spiritual and moral issues from a uniquely American
standpoint. In 1850, adultery was an extremely risque subject. Hawthorne got
support from the New England literary establishment. His work presents the
height of literary genius, dense with terse descriptions. It remains relevant
for its philosophical and psychological depth and continues to be read as a
classic story of universal theme.
Plot
overview
The Scarlet Latter opens
with a long preamble about how the book came to be written. The story begins in
17th century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman Hester
Pryme is led from the town prison with her child Pearl in her arms and the
scarlet letter ‘A’ on her breast. She was to be punished for Adultery. Her
husband who was older to her and also a scholar sent her to America but he
never arrived there. While waiting for her husband, she gave birth to a girl
child by an affair. She did not reveal the child’s father’s name. As a
punishment for her sin and secrecy she had to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her bosom.
“This child hath come from the hand of the
almighty, to work in many ways upon her heart. It was meant for a blessing, for
the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, for a retribution too, a
torture to be felt at many an unthough of moment; a pang, as sting, an ever –
recurring agony in the midst of a troubled joy”
Many onlookers gathered at
the scaffold among which there was Hester’s missing husband. He practiced
medicine and called himself Roger Chillingworth. He settles in Boston to
revenge. Hester lived in a small cottage outside the town at the edge of the
forest.
Community officials attempt
to take Pearl away from Hester, but with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, a young
and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter could stay together. Dimmesdale
seems to be suffering from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by
psychological distress. Chillingworth starts staying with Dimmesdale to provide
him round the clock care. Also the suspect about minister’s torments and
Hester’s secret. He starts testing Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale’s psychological
anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself.
On the other side Hester’s
charitable deeds and quite humanity have earned her fame. One night, when Pearl
is about seven years old, the mother daughter saw him on the way atop the town
scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and
the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request of the
acknowledgement. Hester saw Dimmesdale’s miserable condition. She goes to Chillingworth
and asks him to stop tormenting Dimmesdale. Chillingworth refuses to do so.
Hester meets Dimmesdale in
the forest. Both of them decide to flee to Europe. Hester removes ‘A’ and lets
her hair down but Pearl insists her to wear: The day before the ship is to
sail, after giving sermon, Dimmesdale sees Hester and Pearl. He mounts the
scaffold with them and confesses his sin. He exposed a scarlet letter seared
into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.
Chillingworth dies of
frustration a year letter. Hester and Pearl left for Europe where later on
Pearl marries to the European aristocrats. Hester returns to Boston and
continued chaired. When she died, she got burial by Dimmesdale. They shared a
single tombstone with ‘A’ on it.
Psychology
It is a study of behavior.
Psychology has the immediate goal of understanding individuals and groups by
both establishing general principles and researching specific case. Psychology
is the study of minds working. The psychological novel deals with the working
of its character’s mind.
Today Hawthorne is
remembered mainly for his outstanding novel ‘The Scarlet Latter’. The author’s imagination brooded over the past
and the figures that appeared in Puritan America. But it is not as a historical
novel that we remember this novel – we cherish it as a brilliant psychological
novel, unrivaled in its penetrating study of the human mind.
Hawthorne tried to “burrow into the depths of our common nature”. He displayed a deep
psychological insight into the accumulation of details about various characters
in the pages of the novel. Hawthorne has minutely presented the internal
working of the minds of the characters. Now let’s consider the major characters
of the American psychological novel ever written there before ‘The Scarlet Letter’.
Hester
Prynne
Hester is the heroine of the
novel. The author has depicted Hester’s strong internal aspects of will and passions.
"She is a complex figure and
Hawthorne sees that her natural vigor must also lead her into further trouble.
In being faithful to what he called the truth of the human heart, Hawthorne had
to use that most interesting battle was fought with the heart itself. Hester is
not properly penitent. She compounds the sin of passion with the sin of pride.
She embroiders the scarlet letter as an elaborate expression of ambiguous
defiance and guilt and she dresses her daughter in equally flamboyant colures”.
The author has given psychological treatment
to Hester. She recalls the memories of her childhood and youth. She remembers
her past while standing at scaffold. She compares her past and present. The
pictures of her parents, of the old world and of her England village come up
before her eyes at a time of severe punishment.
“…
If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on
many a bosom…”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
She
suffers from nervous breakdown in the prison. This breakdown can be seen as a
reaction of her calm and serene tolerance of disgrace on the scaffold. Later in
the novel she is full of repentance and self-realization. Her inner conflict is
seen in-
“Thus, Hester Prynne whose heart had
lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a club in the dark
labyrinth of mind”.
Hawthorne’s heroine is
passionate but strong. Hawthorne has empowered her with endurance. She endures
years of shame and hatred. She is equal to her husband and her lover in
intelligence and thoughtfulness.
Hester’s youthful zest for
life may have indirectly caused her alienation as well, spurring her to her
sin. Awareness of the story’s various stages of treatment gives the reader a
greater sense of its remoteness from contemporary life. The story’s survival
over the years speaks to the profundity of its themes. The narrator has found
in American history and in Hester’s life, a tale rich in philosophical meaning.
Arthur
Dimmesdale
“What a strange sad man is he?”
-said
the child, as if speaking partly to herself. “In the dark night time, he calls
us to him, and holds thy hand and mine as when we stood younger, and in the
deep forest, where only the old trees can hear and the strip of sky see it, he
talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moos! And he kisses my forehead, too,
that the little Brooke would hardly wash it off! But here in the sunny day, and
among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man
is he, with his had always over his heart!”
I think the girl has rightly
judged the miserable condition of this Puritan lover. In the delineation of
Dimmesdale too, Hawthorne shows his deep psychological knowledge and interest.
The way the psychological treatment is given by Hawthorne is the best example of
his being the founder of the psychological novel. Dimmesdale can be considered
as a remarkable study in psychology. The secret of his sin tortures him physically
and mentally. He is prompted now and then to confess but confession for him was
a very difficult task. There is a proverb in English that says to ‘Look before you leap’ but Dimmesdale didn't do so. Dimmesdale sin is not forgivable. Hi is the young minister who
also gives effective sermons at the church. He is honored by the Puritans. He
was afraid to confess his sin but he is forced to bear the letter ‘A’ into his
flesh. He took to self-torture, both physical and mental, as he is goaded on by
sin impulse for self-torture.
In the novel Hawthorne
explores the soul of his young minister, has no parallel in all literature for
psychological interest, except in the work of Dostoevsky.
“The depiction of
Dimmesdale’s self-agony, self-torture, inner conflict to confess or not to
confess his sin publicly, his Hamlet- like delay in confessing his acts, his remorse,
his penance and penitence, his behavior on the scaffold, his constant
introspection make the novel a fine psychological study of human mind. In the
first part of the novel he is cowardly, weak, indecisive, tormented, haunted
and hypocritical, but in the second part he becomes self conscious,
retributive, determined, brave, bold, unpretentious and truly penitent. This
mental development is to be traced psychologically.
Roger
Chillingworth
Hawthorne has given the gray
shade to Roger Chillingworth’s character. He is the worst sinner in the novel.
He is a hypocrite. He is cunning old fellow. He is a full of revenge and
malicious fellow. He himself is a psychologist. He confesses his sense of wrong
to Hester in the prison. He confessed that he should not have married a young
girl in his old age. His self- introspection is a good psychological
portraiture—“In a man of thought, the book warm of great libraries, a man
already in decay having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of
knowledge, what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own; misshapen
from my birth hours, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual
gifts might veil physical deformity in a younger girls fantasy! Men call me
wise. If sages were even wise in their own behalf, I might have foreseen all
this”.
He analyzed himself in the
above way. He was as carafly as Satan. He himself was devil’s soul. He was the
worst of all sinners. Knowingly he tortured the young lovers in a very cruel
way.
Roger Chillingworth’s mental
condition was quite different from that of Dimmesdale. Both were Puritans.
Dimmesdale suffered as he did something against the nature’s law where as Roger
Chillingworth is full of revenge, he tortures Dimmesdale by not losing even a
single opportunity. Suspecting the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale,
he took the opportunity to live with Dimmesdale so that he can provide him
medicine. But he gave him lots of pain. He tried to weaken him mentally and
spiritually. He is one of the worst American villain characters.
“The character of
Chillingworth is made the more sinister by making him dabble in black magic. He
collects herbs and roots to give them a touch of spell. His fame as a doctor is
partly accountable to his power of working wonders over his medicines and
patients. On the whole, Chillingworth is a searching type of character, even
thought it means his own isolation and destruction.”
Now, after discussing major
elder characters delineated by Nathaniel Hawthorne let’s move towards a beautiful
flower born out of Heater’s and Dimmesdale’s sin. This lovely flower is pearl,
the only precious treasure of a lonely mother.
Pearl
“But she named the infant
‘Pearl’, as being of great price- purchased with all she had- her mother’s only
pleasure.”
--Chapter 6, ‘Pearl’.
In Pearl, Hawthorne has
stuffed abnormality. He calls her “a born misfit of the infantile worlds”. The
way she is born, the way she is brought up forces us to believe that this girl
cannot be a normal child. Her behavior makes us believe that she should be
considered a probed child according to the modern psychology. She is
represented as a child who is extraordinarily sportive, brisk, witty oracular
and taxing. Even her mother feels irritated and nervous at her persistent
questionings. She could neither flexible nor controllable. She is stubborn embodying
her mother’s passion. She got the sinful qualities in her inheritance. She
proves a constant tormentor to her mother reminding her of her past sin. She
had a special attraction towards the scarlet letter, a symbol of her parent’s
sin. She often asked the meaning of the letter. In short, the author tried to
show remarkable subtlety in portraying Pearl as an abnormal child, and has
revealed his skill of craftsmanship dealing with abnormal psychology.
Conclusion
The entire novel including
the symbols belongs to psychological study. The psychological and moral tones
remain dominant throughout the novel. The novel is the best illustration of
psychological tendency of an act of carnal love that is free from erotic
elements.
“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.”
-- Chapter- 20 ‘The Minister in a Maze’
References:
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