The scarlet letter: themes and literary analysis

¶ … Scarlet Letter

The use of light and dark in the Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne's the Scarlet Letter inverts the traditional associations of light with goodness and darkness with evil. This underlines how the supposedly bad character of an adulteress like Hester Prynne is actually superior to the character of the Puritans who condemn Hester and her child Pearl. Within the Puritan's understanding of light and dark, there is always metaphorical confusion and this is reflected in the novel's language. The good Puritans wear the colors of darkness, for example. The novel suggests that there is no black and white, no clear division between good and evil because even hell is ablaze with light, and the Puritans wear dark clothes, to symbolize their austerity. Lightness and knowledge only becomes synonymous with good in the novel when Dimmesdale admits his mistake.

The metaphorical confusion of light and darkness is seen early on in the Scarlet Letter when Hester Prynne is first condemned, in Chapter 3. The letter on Hester's chest is supposed to be ablaze with light, as she stands in the stocks, as Dimmesdale watches her: "So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which is periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit." The letter on the supposedly evil woman is blazing red, even though light should be synonymous with heaven and the angels. Governor Bellingham who has condemned Hester, has "a dark feather in his hat "and a black velvet tunic. Christian symbolism of lightness and goodness and darkness and evil has become perverted through human institutions. Later, it is said in Chapter 6 "The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery luster, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance." Once pure, the rejection of society has stained Hester's perception of the world, as well as her garments in the form of the dreaded red a.

The darkness and fire of Hester stands in contrast with Roger Chillingworth, a harsh, cold judgmental man. His quest for the truth and illumination of Hester's condition becomes an evil quest. When the reader is fully introduced to him in Chapter 10, the perversion of light is seen as Hawthorne writes of his gaze: "Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace." The Reverend Dimmesdale, Pearl's true father, can only meet Hester in darkness and night, and vision is given only by a "little glimmering light" by moonlight. Rather than goodness, the knowledge and light of Pearl's parentage cannot survive the fuller light of day. Truth comes in darkness, and the light brings concealment of Hester's secret once again. This constant confusion of light and dark shows how truth and morality are confused in the novel.