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... But Prynne, himself delaying to adjust certain affairs, sends his young, beautiful, wealthy wife in advance to assume her station in the pioneer settlement. In the wild, free air of that new world her spirits kindled, and many unsuspected tendencies of her impulsive and passionate nature were revealed to her. The "rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristics" of her temperament, her ardent love of beauty, her strong intellectual fibre, and her native energy and capacity, -- such elements needed a strong and wise hand to curb and guide them, scarcely disguised as they were by the light and graceful foliage of her innocent, womanly charm. Being left, however, for two years "to her own misguidance, " her husband had little cause to wonder, when, on emerging from the forest, the first object to meet his eyes was Hester Prynne, "standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people. " She "doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall; " and though the author leaves the matter there, so far as any explicit statement is concerned, it is manifest that, had he written out what was already pictured before his imagination, the few pregnant hints scattered through the volume would have been developed into as circumstantial and laborious a narrative as any the most deliberate English or French novelist could desire. For his forbearance he has received much praise from well-meaning critics, who seem to think that he was restrained by considerations of morality or propriety.
This appears a little strained. As an artist and as a man of a certain temperament, Hawthorne treated that side of the subject which seemed to him the more powerful and interesting. But a writer who works with deep insight and truthful purpose can never be guilty of a lack of decency. Indecency is a creation, not of God or of nature, but of the indecent. And whoever takes it for granted that indecency is necessarily involved in telling the story of an illicit passion has studied human nature and good literature to poor purpose. The truth is that the situation selected by Hawthorne has more scope and depth than the one which he passed over.
It is with the subjective consequences of a sinner's act that our understanding of him begins. The murderer's blow tells us nothing of his character; but in his remorse or exultation over his deed his secret is revealed to us. So Hawthorne fixes the starting-point of his romance at Hester's prison-door, rather than at any earlier epoch of her career, because the narrative can thence, as it were, move both ways at once; all essentials of the past can be gathered up as wanted, and the reminiscences and self-knowledge of the characters can supplement the author's analysis. The story rounds itself out at once, catching light and casting shadow; and Hester's previous life seems familiar to us the moment she takes her stand upon the scaffold, -- for, in the case of an experience such as hers, a bare hint tells the whole sad story. So long as women are frail and men selfish, the prologue of The Scarlet Letter will not need to be written; it is known a thousand times already.
But what is to follow is not known; no newspapers publish it, no whisper of it passes from mouth to mouth, nor is it cried on the housetops. Yet is there great need that it should be taught, for such teaching serves a practical moral use. All have felt the allurement of temptation, but few realize the sequel of yielding to it. This sequel is exhaustively analyzed in the romance, and hence the profound and permanent interest of the story. No sinner so eccentric but may find here the statement of his personal problem. Such an achievement avouches a lofty reach of art.
The form has not the carpenter's symmetry of a French drama, but the spontaneous, living symmetry of a tree or flower, unfolding from the force within. We are drawn to regard, not the outline, but the substance, which claims affinity with the inmost recesses of our own nature; so that The Scarlet Letter is a self-revelation to whomsoever takes it up. In a story of this calibre a complex of incidents would be superfluous. The use of incidents in fiction is twofold, -- to develop the characters and to keep awake the reader's attention. But the personages of this tale are not technically developed; they are gradually made transparent as they stand, until we see them through and through.
And what we thus behold is less individual peculiarities than traits and devices of our general human nature, under the stress of the given conditions. The individuals are there, and could at need be particularized sharply enough; but that part of them which we are concerned with lies so far beneath the surface as inevitably to exhibit more of general than of personal characteristics. The individual veils the general to the extent of his individuality; and since the effect of "incident" is to emphasize individuality, the best value of The Scarlet Letter had it been based on incident, would have been impaired. As to postponing the reader's drowsiness, -- victims of the Inquisition have slumbered upon the rack; and people who have been kept too long awake over the sprightly subtleties of Zola, or the Daedalian involutions of Mrs. Henry Wood, have doubtless yawned over the revelation of Dimmesdale's soul, and grown heavy-eyed at the spectacle of Pearl's elfish waywardness.
Dimmesdale is, artistically, a corollary of Hester; and yet the average writer would not be apt to hit upon him as a probable seducer. The community in which he abides certainly shows a commendable lack of suspicion towards him: even old Mistress Hobbies whose scent for moral carrion was as keen as that of a modern society journal, can scarcely credit her own conviction. "What mortal imagination could conceive it!" whispers the old lady to Hester, as the minister passes in the procession. "Many a church member saw I, walking behind the music, who has danced in the same measure with me, when somebody was the fiddler! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister!" It is, of course, this very refinement that makes him the more available for the ends of the story.
A gross, sensual man would render the whole drama gross and obvious. But Dimmesdale's social position, as well as his personal character, seems to raise him above the possibility of such a lapse. This is essential to the scope of the treatment, which, dealing with the spiritual aspects of the crime, requires characters of spiritual proclivities.
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Research essay sample on The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
