Symbolism in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Introduction

In Hawthorne's revered innovative The Scarlet Letter, the use of Romanticism performances an significant role in the development of his features. He competently demonstrates individualism in Hester to farther our understanding of the adversities of living in Boston, the stern, joyless world of Puritan New England. It is all darkness and doom. If the sun ever polishes, one could barely notice. The whole location appears to be shrouded in black. The people of this humanity were stern, and of course repressive. They habitually put a lid on more natural human impulses and strong feelings than any humanity before or since. But for this reason expressly, strong feelings started bubbling and eventually simmered over, passions a novelist such as Hawthorne could seize at red heat and use for the cornerstone of an productive novel. Hawthorne displays Hester's sheer conclusion to reside in this society exactly through her activities and relatives to other ones, and inexactly through the presentation of herself and her progeny and through her internal emotional struggle.

Discussion

Hester's adultery conceives a feeling of dismay and hostility within the persons of Boston. They are not only shocked that she has done such a thing, but also because she won't disclose the name of the father of the child. Although the common penalty for adultery is death, the Puritan magistrates have determined to be merciful to her declaring that Hester's penalty will be to stand for some hours on the scaffold, in full outlook of everyone.

In this 'powerful but sore story,' (Chorley 184) Hester realizes her sin, and acknowledges that she must pay the price for her crimes. She might, Hawthorne notifies us, have left the narrow-minded colony to start life all over again in a location where no one knew her story. The ocean directs back to England, or for a woman of Hester's power, the pathway directs onward into the wilderness. But Hester turns her back on these get away routes. She resides in the town, shackled, as if by an metal chain of guilt, to the view of her crime and punishment. As Hester stands on the scaffold, conceiving of her husband, he seems before her startled eyes at the brim of the crowd. And his first gesture is indicative of the man. Whatever shock or dismay he may seem at glimpsing his wife on the scaffold he directly supresses his emotions and makes his face the likeness of calm. The glance he angles on Hester is enthusiastic and penetrative. Here is someone used to discerning life rather than participating in it. His is a 'furrowed visage' (43). Chillingworth examines like a man who has cultivated his mind at the 'expense of another faculties - a perilous enterprise, in Hawthorne's view' (Loring 187). Where his overbearing intellect will take him, Hawthorne likes us to believe that he could be the catalyst for great conflicts subsequent in the novel.

Hawthorne displays that while Hester recognizes she should pay for her sins, her activities illustrate a ...