Nature In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The idea of Nature can often unfold itself in many ways and forms. We can either perceive it in a literal fashion, in which we describe nature as we see it, or we perceive it in a fashion that is more metaphorical, such as in the personalities and reputations of people or animals. Throughout the rise of literature and art, individuals have tried to embody and capture the essence of the natural world in their works. Even before times of Romanticism and the Renaissance, early civilizations constructed the ideas of the environment into deities, such as Gaea in Greek Mythology, who was the primordial personification of the natural environment of the world. Turn forward in time, and the Puritans had twisted the idea of Nature into one of evil or unholy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlet Letter, which was a sort of backlash against the Puritan hypocrisy, provides a sense of how Nature is often the main catalyst of the personalities and problems of the characters.

Throughout the novel, when Hester ponders of Pearl’s existence she often admires Pearl and compares her to that of the exhilarating abandon of the natural world around, such as when she compared Pearl to the flightiness and lawlessness of a bird. In chapter sixteen, when Pearl attempting to catch the sunshine and becomes confused when the sunshine vanishes with the presence of her mother, she exclaims, “Mother, the sunshine does not love you, it runs away and hides itself” (Hawthorne, 126). This is ultimately a known opposition to the fact that the rays of the sun will only shine on Pearl, and it becomes conclusive when Hester attempts to reach for the light of the sun, but it vanishes before her. Essentially, the implication of this text is intended to describe how the natural world tends to unfold and showcase itself towards Pearl, which heightens her personality traits with