Most persons of culture, if asked who was the foremost American writer of fiction would undoubtedly answer, “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Among his works “The Scarlet Letter” is, I think, the most generally read and widely known. This high estimate of Hawthorne is in most respects well deserved. His works have a fine literary and poetic quality. The style is faultless; the dramatic situations are admirably conceived; and the structure of the plot, while simple, is extremely artistic. Hawthorne generally deals with the darker phases of human life, with scenes of wickedness and crime. His description of the emotions awakened by criminal acts is extremely powerful. And yet it seems to me, in reading his pages, that Hawthorne had little knowledge of what were the actual motives and feelings of the guilty, and that his account of the development of passions and character came rather from reflection and abstract reasoning than from acute observation.
The book begins dramatically rather than historically—that is to say, in the very middle of the impressive story which it relates. Hester Prynne, the heroine, had married old Roger Chillingworth, a union unnatural and without affection, which was followed on her part, during her husband’s long and unexplained absence, by a guilty passion for Arthur Dimmesdale, the eloquent clergyman of a Puritan New England town. All the incidents connected with the growth and development of this passion, and with the birth of the child which followed it, are omitted from the narrative, which opens with a scene at the door of the prison, from which Hester comes forth to suffer the punishment prescribed for her crime,—to stand for a certain time in the scaffold by the pillory, and to wear for the rest of her life the scarlet letter A upon her breast. We have nothing to tell us how the temptation began, nor how it grew, nor the terrible anxieties which must have preceded the discovery of her wrongdoing. Possibly these things are the more impressive because left wholly to the imagination.
But among the multitude that gaze upon the unfortunate woman in the hours of her public exposure is a face that she knows only too well. Old Roger Chillingworth, who has been so long absent, and supposed even to be dead, appears and recognizes her. He visits her afterwards in prison, and exacts from her an oath that his identity shall remain unknown. The terrible punishment of the scarlet letter to a sensitive mind is powerfully portrayed; her shame at every new face that gazes upon it, and the consciousness of another sense, giving her a sympathetic knowledge of hidden sin in other hearts, a strange companionship in crime, upon which Hawthorne lays much stress in many of his works. Even little Pearl, her child, gives her no comfort, for the child’s character is wayward, elusive, elf-like. She is a strange creature, whose conversation brings to her mother constant reminders of her guilt. Hester, with great constancy, refuses to disclose the name of the child’s father, and Dimmesdale, the honored pastor of the community, is tortured by a remorse which constantly grows upon him. Old Chillingworth suspects him, becomes his physician, lives with him under the same roof, discovers a scarlet letter concealed upon his breast, and enjoys for years the exquisite revenge of digging into the hidden places of a sensitive human soul and gloating over the agonies thus unconsciously revealed to a bitter enemy. An account is given of Dimmesdale’s self-imposed penances, and of the concealed scourge for his own chastisement. One night he resolves to go forth and stand on the same scaffold where Hester has undergone her punishment. The bitterness of his emotions is finely drawn; the wild shriek which barely fails to rouse the citizens of the town; the passing of Hester on her way from her ministrations at a death-bed; the standing together of the three, father, mother, and child, upon the scaffold; the letter A which appears in the sky; Pearl’s keen questions; and the face of old Chillingworth, who has come forth to look on them.
Hester at last resolves to disclose to Dimmesdale the identity of his evil companion. Her character has grown stronger through openly bearing the burden of her guilt, while the poor clergyman’s soul has become shattered through his constant hypocrisy. She meets him in the forest, and in a scene of great natural tenderness and beauty tells him that Chillingworth is her husband. He reproaches her bitterly for her long concealment, then forgives her. She urges him to flee, as his only hope.
“‘Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or,—as is more thy nature,—be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life!—that have made thee feeble to will and to do!—that will leave thee powerless even to repent; Up, and away!’
“‘O Hester!’ cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, ‘thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!’
“It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach.
“He repeated the word.
“‘Alone, Hester!’
“‘Thou shalt not go alone!’ answered she, in a deep whisper.