The Scarlet Letter 535est practical necessities to allot a portion of the
virgin soil . . . as the site of a prison.” Once Hester
Prynne is ushered through the prison door in the
next chapter, the scarlet “A” upon her chest provides
a symbolic focus for the novel’s exploration of the
relationship between the individual and society.
The magistrates clearly intend for the scarlet let-
ter to embody their judgment; they clearly mean
to mark Hester as an adulteress through this “A.”
And yet Hester silently challenges their laws and
their evaluation of her. Using her imagination and
her skill with the needle, she embellishes the “A”
with “flourishes of gold thread. . . . greatly beyond
what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations
of the colony.” Like Pearl, the living reflection
of the scarlet letter, the luxuriously decorated “A”
expresses the “warfare of Hester’s spirit.” Through
its exploration of the effects and the efficacy of the
scarlet “A,” The Scarlet Letter comments upon the
rigid and inflexible social codes of Massachusetts
Bay Colony.
The most obvious effect of Hester’s punish-
ment is isolation. While she makes a living with
her needle, she “inhabited another sphere. . . . like
a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no
longer make itself seen or felt.” As a result of the
magistrates’ punishment, Hester is transformed. She
is robbed of her femininity and her passion, and in
her isolation she recognizes that “the world’s law was
no law for her.” Similarly, Pearl, who functions both
as a character and a symbol in the novel, also suf-
fers. Born an “outcast of the infantile world,” Pearl
instinctively knows that she has no place within
Puritan society. Without playmates, she occupies
herself through imaginary play but tellingly, “she
never created a friend.” Always outside of a social
structure, Pearl cannot “be made amenable to rules”
or to discipline.
Contemplating Hester’s profound isolation and
the transformation that it evokes, the narrator
seems to challenge the efficacy of the “dismal
severity of the Puritanic code of law” in a solitary
sentence that forms a paragraph: “The scarlet let-
ter had not done its office.” Yet even before this,
the novel hints at the shortcomings of Hester’s
punishment, for the community at large does not
completely accept the rulings of the magistrates. As
Hester continues her life on the outskirts of Boston,
the community’s interpretation of her and her letter
varies greatly from the magistrates’ original mean-
ing. Hester’s “A,” they claim, stands for “Able” or for
“Angel.” By the novel’s end, “the scarlet letter ceased
to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and
bitterness, and became a type of something to be
sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with
reverence too.”
While Hester undergoes public punishment,
Dimmesdale grapples with his sin privately. He
longs to confess his sin publicly but cannot manage
to do so until the novel’s end. His relationship to
society and social codes best explains his inability.
The narrator describes the minister saying, “it would
always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure
of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined
him within its iron framework.” Hester’s experi-
ence has forced her outside of her community, but
Dimmesdale’s experience has not afforded him this
latitude of speculation. He is a prisoner of societal
codes: “At the head of the social system . . . he was
only the more trammeled by its regulations, its
principles, and even its prejudices.” Thus, even when
he and Hester resolve to flee Boston, Dimmesdale
finds it impossible to leave his socially constructed
identity. He is anxious to stay until he preaches the
Election Sermon, and he thinks to himself, “At least,
they shall say of me . . . that I leave no public duty
unperformed, nor ill performed!”
While Dimmesdale finally manages confession
but not escape, Hester eventually leaves Boston
with Pearl. But Hawthorne complicates the rela-
tionship between Hester and her Puritan society
further at the novel’s end. Despite the freedom of
her earlier views, Hester returns to Boston and
takes up the scarlet “A” of her own accord, perhaps
affirming society’s role in shaping an individual’s
identity.
Laurie A. Sterlingparenthood in The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne modeled the character of Pearl in The
Scarlet Letter after his own first born, Una, and
while the novel is clearly about sin and retribu-
tion, it is also a family drama that emphasizes
the import and the power of familial ties. While