The Scarlet Letter

Scarlet Letter

Hester's Transformation as Romantic Symbol of Patriarchy

To the modern collective perception, art is one facet of life that is governed more by individual thought and emotional predisposition than by institutional prejudices. It should seem a natural disposition of the artist to look within himself for expression, rather than to the very established conventions from which he may seek to provide asylum. Likewise, it strikes a chord of logic to us that an artist makes his primary appeal to his own imagination, rather than to millennia of intellectual rules. This, however, is a new perspective as compared to the age of humanity. From Enlightenment through the mid eighteenth century, classical rules intended to preserve the integrity and exclusivity of artistic expression were the prime determinant in the nature of societal artistic output. However, a surge in the population of the bourgeoisie, an overall expansion in the international middle class, opened up the possibility for artistry without the condition of aristocracy. Many of the formalities and superficialities of literary expression, for one, were subverted and thus began the original age of Romanticism. Now there is much evidence to suggest that romanticism, of all artistic ethos, has been the most influential, perpetuated most significantly in today's varied fields of artistic expression. Where prior approaches to literature promoted form and function most essentially, the inception of romanticism sparked a form of writing whose key identifiers were on man's struggle with morality and his capacity for heroism. This is a novel approach evidenced by the female protagonist of the 1850 novel, the Scarlet Letter, a representative work of the genre by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In Hester Prynne, a women with no objectionable qualities, Hawthorne uses the device of a red 'A' to signal her transformation into a social pariah.

In this way, Hawthorne would be a crucial early interpreter of America's cultural vagaries. Exploring through the body of his work such aspects of the nascent democracy's social order as its proclivity toward an unquestionably dominant patriarchy, its wanton superficiality and its ambitiously constant pursuit of perfection, Hawthorne would remark compellingly on the vices of the American experience during the early 19th century. (Stewart, 85) on the subject of adultery, Hawthorne introduces us to convicted adulteress, Hester Prynee, who has been so identified by the scarlet a affixed to her at all times as a punishment for her indiscretions. Unpunished in this affair are the secretive priest Dimmesdale, who has fathered Hester's precocious daughter Pearl. The third party to this love triangle is husband Roger Chillingworth who remains at a distance from his wife as he attempts to exact an investigative revenge on Dimmesdale. In a story where none of the characters are 'bad,' we do find each of them individually subjected to the deeply moralistic pressures of puritanical Massachusetts.

So much is this the case that it is stated with some explicitness by a stranger to Chillingworth, arriving in Boston some years behind his wife, just in time to witness her public disgrace. In his inquiry on the subject, a stranger describes him as fortunate "to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly New England." (Hawthorne, 71) This statement of intent strikes as a core romantic value, contending with no small degree of irony that there is a sense of moral authority in the air which bears a dominant effect on the lives of New Englanders. Indeed, this is consistent with our understanding of Hawthorne's critical response to the forces of Puritanism.

That the author is from the infamous settlement of Salem, Massachusetts, commonly referenced for its dark rash of institutionalized colonial era murders, all directed toward women accused of witchcraft, may be perceived as a meaningful context through which to understand the generally damning perspective which the author demonstrates in his work toward the gender order defining civil life. As we see in the Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne was generally fixated on the destructive dynamic which governed man's relationship with woman in such a society. That Hester could be so transformed against her will is to denote the effective actualization of social perspective created by the symbol of the 'A.' By expressing the notion that man's unrealistic expectation of woman to conform to his image of perfection, behaviorally or physically, would ultimately destroy the woman herself, Hawthorne serves up an indictment of the patriarchal order in America that at once suggests both an unrealistic regard for human nature and an emphasis on the moralism that fully subverts the values of personage or even love. As one critic would observe of the romantic penchant for social critique, there is a complex implication to a feminist plaint composed in the middle of the 19th century, with Hester as a martyr who has been willfully transformed by the ownership of man. Such a statement would be largely unprecedented as a critical response to conditions between men and women in post-colonial America, where changes were really only beginning to improve the lot of female social status. Accordingly, one critic notes that "The Scarlet Letter addresses the anonymous toil of women under the barbarism of patriarchy, but we must go farther to undertstand its immediate and continuing power long before feminism became an unavoidable presence." (Arac, 248) the sense that Hester had been wronged by the impositions of society resonates in this text.