Hawthorne's Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter and Black Veil

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Life and Literary Context

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) is considered one of the great masters of American fiction, with tales and novels that reflect deep explorations of moral and spiritual conflicts. He descended from a prominent Puritan family, and when he was fourteen years old, he and his widowed mother moved to a remote farm in Maine. Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825, and afterwards devoted himself to writing, publishing his first novel in 1829. He attempted living at Brook Farm, a community experiment begun by a group of Transcendentalists, but was less than enthusiastic about what he saw as hypocrisy and excessive idealism.

In 1842, he married Sophia Peabody, a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and they settled in Concord. To support his family, he took a job as surveyor of the port at Salem from 1846 to 1849, during which time he began writing his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850. The novel is set in seventeenth-century Puritan New England and delves deeply into the human heart, presenting the problems of moral evil and guilt through allegory and symbolism. It is often considered the first American psychological novel. Hawthorne was equally celebrated as a short-story writer and is credited with helping to establish the American short story as a significant art form through his tales of loneliness, frustration, hypocrisy, eccentricity, and frailty. Among his stories considered most brilliant is "The Minister's Black Veil."

Hawthorne's Themes: Evil, Religion, and Symbolism

According to Mark Canada, English professor, Nathaniel Hawthorne authored some of the most respected fiction in American literature. American novelist Henry James once wrote, "The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it" (Canada pp). Hawthorne was especially interested in the nature of evil, perhaps leading Herman Melville, in his essay "Hawthorne and His Mosses," to write that half of Hawthorne is "shrouded in a blackness ten times black" (Canada pp). Moreover, Hawthorne had a fascination with religion, as demonstrated in many of his works including The Scarlet Letter and "The Minister's Black Veil." His studies of evil thus often coincide with his studies of religion, especially Puritanism, which was practiced by his ancestors in Salem during the seventeenth century.

Much like Melville and Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne made extensive use of symbols — such as the scarlet letter — and these symbols play important roles in all of his major short stories, including "The Birthmark." Moreover, his works tend to hint at the supernatural, the unreal, or the uncommon, and as he explains, the romance writer may "mingle the Marvellous" in his work (Canada pp). Canada points out that Hawthorne often used the "metaphor of everyday objects seen in moonlight to explain the material of the romance," such as in the essay "The Custom-House," which precedes The Scarlet Letter, in which the ordinary objects he sees there "are so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect" (Canada pp).

In fact, one of Hawthorne's main concerns is the separation of the head and heart — intellect and soul. He once wrote that an unpardonable sin is:

"a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity — content that it should be wicked in whatever kind or degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart" (Canada pp).

He explored these ideas extensively in several short stories, and they also helped to shape The Scarlet Letter.

The Minister's Black Veil: Interpretations of the Veil

In "The Minister's Black Veil," Hawthorne's protagonist, Reverend Hooper, is a young minister who, in the prime of his life and for reasons unknown, begins wearing a black veil over his face. At first, this behavior creates quite a stir in the village and speculation abounds, but as time passes his odd behavior becomes fairly accepted, though the curious always hope to gain a glimpse beneath the veil. Hawthorne writes that for all its bad influences, "the black veil had the one desirable effect, of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman" (Hawthorne3 pp). Hooper became a man of great power over sinful souls, and the veil seemed to enable him to "sympathize with all dark affections ... dying sinners cried aloud" for him and would not draw their last breath until he came, and as he "stooped to whisper consolation, they shuddered at the veiled face ... such were the terrors of the black veil, even when Death had bared his visage" (Hawthorne3 pp). Even on his deathbed, an old man by then, he refused to allow anyone to remove his veil, and so he was buried in it — "good Mr. Hooper's face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the Black Veil" (Hawthorne3 pp).

N.S. Boone writes in the March 22, 2005 issue of Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature that "The Minister's Black Veil" is perhaps Hawthorne's most "enigmatic tale." The majority of criticism focuses on interpreting the meaning of the veil and the character of Hooper. Samuel Coale summarizes this criticism, noting that Hooper has been regarded as "sinful, almost demonic, faithless, proud, sacrilegious, preoccupied with evil, a misguided religious zealot, a rigid Calvinist, an arch villain, a man afraid of women, a selfish soul fleeing from the darkness of sexuality, and a living parable who dooms himself to isolation and despair. The veil, on the other hand, has suggested a symbol for mortal ignorance, a false signum diaboli, a demonic object whose effects on the townspeople are such that its very presence vindicates Hooper's behavior" (Boone pp).

J. Hillis Miller claims that the veil is actually impenetrable, and that the story is simply an allegory of the reading of the story itself, wherein the reader can only come to the knowledge that full disclosure is an impossibility: "the face itself is already an impenetrable veil ... A veiled face is a veil over a veil, a veiling of what is already veiled" (Boone pp). Hawthorne once wrote that masks are harmful but veils may be necessary, and Clark Davis accordingly argues that Hooper's veil is a mask and completely opaque to interpreters. Davis suggests that the veil is an emblem signifying Hawthorne's authorial ethics, keeping a necessary distance between himself and others (Boone pp).

One of the most famous theories is Edgar Allan Poe's assertion of "a crime of dark dye" in this story, leading critics to consider the veil as a symbol of ambiguity — a symbol of symbolism and signification itself. Theories abound concerning the meaning of the veil. Frederick Crews finds "an obviously sexual scandal," while Nicholas Canaday maintains that "Hawthorne is not stressing secret sin ... especially sexual sin" (Emmett pp). Richard Fogle summarizes: "Hawthorne holds out the suggestion that the veil is a penance for an actual and serious crime, while at the same time permitting no real grounds for it" (Emmett pp). Paul Emmett notes that the narrator is very much like the "highly respectable witnesses" to the revelation of Dimmesdale's scarlet letter, whose suppressive denial of the entire incident is exposed by the narrator of The Scarlet Letter in language that "should make us suspicious" (Emmett pp).

Works Cited

Barna, Mark Richard. "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Unpardonable Sin." World and I. March 01, 1998. Retrieved October 13, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.

Boone, N.S. "The Minister's Black Veil and Hawthorne's Ethical Refusal of Reciprocity: A Levinasian Parable." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature. March 22, 2005. Retrieved October 13, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.

Canada, Mark. "Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804–1864." Retrieved October 13, 2005 from

Emmett, Paul J. "Narrative Suppression: Sin, Secrecy and Subjectivity in 'The Minister's Black Veil.'" Journal of Evolutionary Psychology. March 01, 2004. Retrieved October 13, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Columbia Encyclopedia. 2005. Retrieved October 13, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.

Hawthorne1, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark." Retrieved October 13, 2005 from

Hawthorne2, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter." Retrieved October 13, 2005 from

Hawthorne3, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil." Retrieved October 13, 2005 from

Meyers Skredsvig, Kary. "Eve's Daughter, Mary's Child: Women's Representation in Hawthorne's 'The Birthmark.'" Revista de Filologia y Linguistica de la Universidad de Costa Rica. July 01, 2000. Retrieved October 13, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library.