The forest in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, represents an array of personas. Both rumors and scandal surround the forest, causing a biased view of this secluded location within the Puritan community. Yet, Hawthorne designates the forest as a place of truth, independence, and joy to those with secrets. Boston’s Puritan society of the mid 1600’s feared the near-bye forest. Believing that “the black man that haunts the forest” (71) and that the witches who do the devil’s work there, the townspeople are warned to stay away the sinful place. Another reason why the Puritans may have discouraged people from entering the forest was because it was an isolated setting in which no one could spy on its visitors. This completely goes against Puritan values which encourages gossip and spying in order to prevent sin. Yet some like the forest for this exact reason, finding it a safe place to escape. Banished from the Puritan society for committing adultery, Hester Prynne is considered an outcast, “outlawed from society”(189). With her illegitimate daughter Pearl, Prynne moves with her daughter to the outskirts of the community at the mouth of the forest. It is there in their own secluded life that they are free, not subjected to the regular ridicule and embarrassment that they usually experience in their strict Puritan town. Unknown to the town was the identity of Pearl’s father, Arthur Dimmesdale, who was both a respected and revered reverend and “the head of the [Puritan] social system”(189). Their “sin of passion” (190) caused him to believe that his soul was “irrevocably doomed” (189) causing him to commit self inflicted punishments. They had Pearl behind Prynne’s husband, who was out of the country at the time. Unawa... ... middle of paper ... ... clouds” (140) has been restored. Usually solemn with an ‘old soul,’ Pearl’s youth is also revealed. When outside of the Puritan community, the sun always shines on Pearl, symbolizing joy, cheer, and a sense of normalcy. Only when Prynne rids herself of the A and frees her hair does the sun shine on her, providing her with a blissful escape. Puritan society’s stifling nature removes not only privacy, yet also a freedom and true happiness from its inhabitants. The bias of this community forced Hester Prynne and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale to lead a life of misery and secrecy. Yet, it was only in the forest where they could live their ‘immoral’ lives in peace and express their love for each other without the scrutiny of their peers. Therefore, Hawthorne uses the forest to contradict Puritan life, and instead symbolize a paradise in which only the truth exists.
The Scarlet Letter is a tale of constant trial and punishment. For Hester Prynne, there is no escape from the shame and belittlement she has been forced to endure within puritan society. However, like the puritans who had escaped prosecution by migrating from England to the New World, characters in The Scarlet Letter can escape the prosecution of puritan society by visiting the forest. It is a symbolic realm that embodies freedom and privacy, and the only sanctuary for those who seek liberty to express their true nature, whether it be through acts of love, or heresy. The forest as a symbol of escape from puritan society is persistent throughout the novel through its use by the witches and the Black Man, Dimmesdale and Hester?s interactions there, and Pearl?s union with nature there.
Irving and Hawthorne both explore the role the forest has on their Puritan communities and main characters. Irving’s story focuses the forest as a place where the devil is while cutting and burning trees. Irving’s depiction of the forest is very dark, and the forest itself is more a swamp than a traditional, lush forest. Irving describes it as, “thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet tall, which made it dark at noon-day…(Irving, 178).” He also uses adjectives like “stagnant”, “smothering”, “rotting”, and “treacherous” to describe his story’s forest.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, tells the story of a young adulteress named Hester Prynne and her bastard daughter, Pearl, as they endure their residence in a small town of the Massachusetts British settlement in the1600s. Pearl’s illegitimate birth is the result of the relationship between Hester Prynne and a minister of the Puritan church, Arthur Dimmesdale. Through public defamation and a perpetual embroidery of an “A” upon her dress, Hester is punished for her crime. Whereas, Arthur choses to suppress the secret over illuminating the truth and endures internal and self-inflicted punishment as consequence.
Hester is a youthful, beautiful, proud woman who has committed an awful sin and a scandal that changes her life in a major way. She commits adultery with a man known as Arthur Dimmesdale, leader of the local Puritan church and Hester’s minister. The adultery committed results in a baby girl named Pearl. This child she clutches to her chest is the proof of her sin. This behavior is unacceptable. Hester is sent to prison and then punished. Hester is the only one who gets punished for this horrendous act, because no one knows who the man is that Hester has this scandalous affair with. Hester’s sin is confessed, and she lives with two constant reminders of that sin: the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl, the child conceived with Dimmesdale. Her punishment is that she must stand upon a scaffold receiving public humiliation for several hours each day, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest, represe...
They see the forest as a place only for the Devil and his minions. Yet, while the Puritans see it as an evil place, it is used as a good place for the ones who the Puritans consider as being evil, or unworthy of being in their sacred community. It is this ever present community embodied again as a forest. The forest is accepting of all of the misfits and outcasts of the mainstream society. “The environment affords Pearl safe surroundings in which to roam and play… [and] is where two lovers are allowed to be alone for the first time in seven years without the frowning disapproval or condemnation of their human peers” (Daniel
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter, nature plays a very important and symbolic role. Hawthorne uses nature to convey the mood of a scene, to describe characters, and to link the natural elements with human nature. Many of the passages that have to do with nature accomplish more than one of these ideas. All throughout the book, nature is incorporated into the story line. The deep symbolism conveyed by certain aspects of nature helps the reader gain a deeper understanding of the plight and inner emotions of the characters in the novel.
“To the untrue man, the whole universe is false,--it is impalpable,--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.” (Hawthorne 115) Throughout the hostile novel The Scarlet Letter, author Nathaniel Hawthorne used contrasting settings to represent opposed ideas that were central to the meaning of the work. Some have argued that when it came to the theme that secrets have a destructive effect on the secret-keeper and truth, by contrast, was natural, a character evaluation would best advocate these differences. However, two settings, Dimmesdale’s house and the secrets that lie within, and the scaffold representing the truth, better embody the adverse ideas posed by the point at issue.
Arthur Dimmesdale presented himself as an uncorrupted man by his social status. Inside he felt unworthy and corrupt form the sin he has committed. The town’s people looked up to Dimmesdale as a man who could commit no grand sin. “People say that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very seriously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.” (48). Little did they know that the scandal that Dimmesdale took to hear was the fornication that happened between Dimmesdale and adulteress Hester Prynne. His sinful ways was affecting his health greatly. “Some declared, that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet.” (106). The town’s people respected him so much so that they figured it was the world that is corrupt and not Dimmesdale.
In choosing to contain his deep sin as a secret, Mr. Dimmesdale suffered from a festering guilt that plagued him until his death. After Hester was sentenced with the punishment for her act of adultery, Mr. Dimmesdale remained silent in refusal to confess to his inclusion in the sin. Over time, feelings of remorse gnawed at Mr. Dimmesdale’s conscience and left him in a self loathing state for his own hypocrisy. Dimmesdale felt excessive guilt in allowing Hester to undergo the entirety of the ridicule and punishment alone while he maintained a positioned of respected and idolized authority, yet could not find it in his heart to expose the sin. Looking upon his situation with the Puritan perspective, Mr. Dimmesdale “…loved the truth and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore above all things else, he loathed his miserable self” (136). Mr. Dimmesdale felt he was living a lie for he, the very man who preached to the community about living a pure life, was living one tainted with...
“A truth is still the truth, even if no one believes it. A lie is still a lie, even if everyone believes it.” (David Stevens) In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, sins, including those of revenge, have a destructive effect on the protagonist, Hester Prynne. Truth, by contrast, is forgiving in a natural setting. Even though readers often consider places as just a backdrop where the story takes place, Hawthorne uses them to add to the overall meaning of the work. Two evidently conflicting settings throughout the novel include the cemetery and the forest. While the cemetery displays a negative implication, the forest exhibits veracity. Through these places, Hawthorne then depicts the central theme of sin versus truth.
When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the forest, they discuss their true feelings about their experiences since Hester was branded with the scarlet letter. Hawthorne describes how, “No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest” (192). The rare presence of light in this otherwise dark situation symbolizes the relief both Hester and Dimmesdale feel after sharing the truth about Dimmesdale’s torturous guilt and Hester’s marriage to Chillingworth. In every scene previous to this one, the forest is associated with witchcraft, evil, darkness, and secrets. This prior association is contrasted by the shedding of sunshine on the sinful pair after releasing the last of their secrets. This scene is a turning point in the novel and shows how despite Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin and the consequences they’ve had to suffer for it, they are able to find some peace in the fact that they have confided in each other and fully admitted their
Hester Prynne, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, the Scarlet Letter, faces a crucible. She commits adultery with Reverend Dimmesdale and becomes pregnant with a daughter, Pearl. She is isolated from the community and the general public except for when she must stand upon the scaffold for three hours as part of her punishment for her sin. She must also wear a scarlet letter “A” for adultery on her breast. The town looks at her differently because of her sin but Hester stays true to her personality. Hester fairs her life by honoring her punishment and her mistakes, as well as taking care of Pearl and teaching her to be kind.
The historical setting is highly significant in the novel since it is intertwined with the public’s belief and values, which shape overall themes of the novel and the main characters’ traits. The main setting of the novel takes place in New England during the middle of the seventeenth century, and the setting is the essential factor that develops the core conflicts among Hester, Dimmesdale, and the Puritan society; in fact, the historical setting itself and the society within it is what Hawthorne intends to reveal to the reader. New England in the seventeenth century was predominately organized around religious authorities, and indeed, a large portion of the population had migrated to the colony of New England with religious purposes. Therefore, the strict and religiously centered historical setting is well demonstrated through Hester’s townspeople when Hester commits adultery. The church authority and the townspeople require Hester to wear the large “A” embroidered scarlet letter, which symbolizes adultery. This act is aligned with the historica...
Hester Prynne, the main character of the novel, was a courageous and honorable person; even though, what she had been known for wasn’t such an admirable deed. Hester Prynne was a very strong person in one’s eyes, because even though she had been publically humiliated in front of all of Boston, she still remained confident in herself and her daughter. She was ordered to wear a scarlet colored piece of fabric, with the letter “A” embroidered in gold on it, on her bosom at all times to show that she had committed adultery. She was mocked all the time and constantly looked down upon in society, because of her sin; but instead of running away from her problems, she st...
The dark and mystical forest plays an important role in the poetics of the novel. After all, there is the meeting between Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale, which became a turning point in the development of action and characters. The forest ,which is almost always endowed with the epithet “dark”(dark, gloomy) it’s not schematic in comparison with other symbols of nature, which Hawthorne pounces only individual strokes and are referred to in the text no more than one or two times. It is a cluster of mysterious supernatural forces often encountered in the novel, moreover, the writer deliberately calls the whole chapter “A forest walk”.The forest creates an uncertain and mysterious impression when we read about Hester and Pearl walking in the forest. Here, nature is not only used by Hawthorne for artistic means, for the dark paths of the forest become a symbol of human spiritual quest. But not all the characters perceive the forest in the same way. The symbol of forest is emphasized two-foldly - he alludes to both the good and dark beginning. The symbol of forest is a kind of resting place that opposes the laws of society, so only there that Hester and Dimmesdale breathe a breath of fresh air. In the woods, you can escape from the anger and surrounding attacks. The multi-faceted character of the forest and its interpretation depends on the view of his own characters. This symbol does not