April Chaplin
Cline
English 102
10 November 2011
The Power of Guilt in The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850 and is, to this day, considered a piece of classic American literature. It is a book that for more than a hundred years has yielded numerous interpretations. It has been analyzed for its historical significance, for the use of symbols and allegory to tell its story, for its religious aspects and as a story about sinners and the different types of sinners it portrays. All of these interpretations are valid as Millicent Bell, in the opening line of her essay writes;
It is not wrong to identify in this famous short novel the subjects that lie so clearly upon its surface- the effect of concealed and admitted sin, or the opposed conditions of isolation and community, or the antithetic viewpoints of romantic individualism and puritan moral pessimism or the dictates of nature and law (Bell 157).
However, these themes overlook the true message of the book. It is a story of secrets and guilt and how these powerful forces affect the course, quality and outcome of one’s entire life. Keeping secrets of tremendous personal magnitude and holding on to all-consuming, unprofessed guilt is a choice that is made by all of the major characters in this book and it is one that is life altering and even fatal. Hawthorne makes clear through the transformations of his characters the devastating effects of secrets.
The book opens with the Hester Prynne, the first major character of the book, being brought from the jail and led into the town square. Here she is forced to stand on the scaffold for three hours in front of the entire town wearing a scarlet letter on her chest and holding her newborn baby in her arms. She is further condemned to wear this elaborately embroidered scarlet letter on her chest, “for the remainder of her natural life” as a “mark of shame” (Hawthorne 63). This is the punishment that the magistrates have deemed fit to enforce on her for the transgression of adultery. While the story makes clear that this punishment is imposed on Hester for her sin, it is only the beginning of a much deeper picture.
Hester’s life throughout the book is colored by the taint of shame and guilt. She lives with her child, Pearl, and her scarlet letter, both symbols and reminders of her sin, on the fringe of society. Hawthorne writes;
In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere…(Hawthorne 84)
What is so important and different about Hester’s guilt is that it is public, it is put out for all to see and it is not denied, even by Hester herself. Male writes, “Though forced upon her by the community, it is an open recognition of guilt” (Male 101). It is this open recognition that allows Hester to continue on with her life in the face of shame and eventually find a place in the community.
For Arthur Dimmesdale, the town minister, a man whom everyone reveres and believes to be the most righteous man ever to walk the Earth, the experience of guilt is much different. Because Dimmesdale keeps his guilt a secret and chooses to carry on as though nothing is wrong, he suffers both psychically and physically and is ultimately left vulnerable to the dark and evil machinations of Chillingworth. Hawthorne illustrates these effects repeatedly. He writes, “…for it was the clergyman’s peculiarity that he seldom looked straightforth at any object, whether human or inanimate” (Hawthorne 131). Psychically, he is so guilt ridden that he cannot bear to make eye contact with anyone for fear they may see the darkness and guilt in his soul. Physically, this young and holy minister deteriorates rapidly and inexplicably. Hawthorne describes the concern of Dimmesdale’s churchgoers when the minister says he needs no medicine. They wonder why he would refuse when “with every successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before…it had now become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture , to press his hand over his heart” (Hawthorne 122). This is a glaring example of the effect of secret guilt and the way it will eat a person from the inside out.
By the end of the story, it is revealed to the reader and to the entire community that Dimmesdale has the mark of the scarlet letter seared in the skin on his chest. This is the ultimate representation of the power of secret guilt. As Male describes it, “the letter [is] seen as a psychic cancer that gradually manifested itself physically” (Male 108). Throughout the book we are shown this destructive power of secrets and guilt through the physical manifestation of one’s psychic maladies. For Dimmesdale the cost and effect of keeping his guilt a secret is his deteriorating health and the bright light of a brilliant spiritual person that is prevented from attaining its true potential.
Dimmesdale is not the only person whose secrets and guilt manifest physically. Chillingworth, the physician charged with caring for Dimmesdale, holds his own secrets. He is the husband wronged by Hester and Dimmesdale. He chooses to never reveal his true identity and instead ingratiate himself with the reverend to carry out a plot of revenge. He dedicates his life to the mental torture of the one whom he sees as his nemesis. It is a secret that takes its toll on him in both his mental and physical aspect as well. As the book progresses so does the transformation seen in Chillingworth’s demeanor. Chillingworth, Hawthorne describes was, “throughout life, [a man] calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man” (Hawthorne 129). By the end of the book the transformation that takes place that is a clear representation of the secret malice that overtakes him. He is transformed from a “pure and upright man” to one of an evil and grotesquely disfigured countenance. Hawthorne describes the this shift in chapter fourteen, “In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office” (Hawthorne 170). Again Hawthorne illustrates and warns against the consequences of keeping secrets. What is hidden on the inside always finds a way to come out and when it does it is always disastrous.
In the end, as Male states, “Like many great tragedies, The Scarlet Letter deals with the quest for truth, the revelation of secrets” (Male 95). It is only the revelation of secrets that allows for the transcendence of the guilt that tortures the characters of The Scarlet Letter. In finally acknowledging and confessing his secret, Dimmesdale is freed to ascend from the agony of his secret guilt that ultimately robbed him of his life, his health and his potential. For Hester, the revelation of her secret lover and the identity of Roger Chillingworth, finally frees her from the ties that bind her to Boston and allows her for a time to be free. The only character who does not, in the end, confess his secrets is Chillingworth and the consequences are deadly. With no one left to inflict his secret methods of torture on, “he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun” (Hawthorne 260) and dies a short time after.
On the surface, The Scarlet Letter, can be seen as a story about the sin of adultery and how it is dealt with by the various characters of the book. However, the deeper theme of this book is, in fact, the nature of secrets and guilt and the havoc they can wreak in one’s life. Brownell writes, “essentially, the book is a story of concealment” (Brownell 58) and adds, “The sin itself might, one may almost say, be almost any other” (Brownell 58). In reading the novel and looking at the characters individually it is easy to see the truth of this statement because it is not that the sin was adultery or vengeance, it is that the sin was “concealed” that causes the lives of these characters to play out as they do. Had the sin been murder, thievery or anything else, the results would have been the same. Denying the truth and choosing to keep secrets results in guilt that, given no other outlet, will manifest in destructive and deadly ways. Ultimately, the moral of this story is, the truth shall set you free.
Works Cited
Bell, Millicent. “The Obliquity of Signs: The Scarlet Letter.” Critical Essays on
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Ed. David B. Kesterson. Boston: G.K. Hall &
Co., 1988. 157-169. Print.
Brownell, William Cary. “Concealment in The Scarlet Letter.” Critical Essays on
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Ed. David B. Kesterson. Boston: G.K. Hall &
Co., 1988. 58-62. Print.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. The Centenary Edition of the Works of
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Volume 1. Ed. William Charavat, et al. Columbus: Ohio
State University Press, 1962. Print.
Male, Roy R. “The Tongue of Flame:The Scarlet Letter.” Critical Essays on
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Ed. David B. Kesterson. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1988. 93-110. Print.
