Completing the Circle: A Study of the Archetypal Male and Female in Nathaniel Hawthorne's <em>The Scarlet Letter</em>.

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Completing the Circle: A Study of the Archetypal Male and Female Completing the Circle: A Study of the Archetypal Male and Female

in Nathaniel Hawthorne's in Nathaniel Hawthorne's

The Scarlet Letter

. .

Kathy H. Hallenbeck

East Tennessee State University

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The Scarlet Letter

." (2002).

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Completing The Circle: A Study of the Archetypal Male and Female in Nathaniel

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

_______________

A thesis

presented to

the faculty of the Department of English

East Tennessee State University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts in English

_______________

Kathy H. Hallenbeck

May 2002

____________________

Dr. Mark Holland, Chair

Dr. Kevin O’Donnell

Dr. Michael Cody

Keywords: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Archetypes, Myth Criticism, Dionysus,

Feminine

ABSTRACT

Completing the Circle: A Study of the Archetypal Male and Female in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s

The Scarlet Letter

Kathy H. Hallenbeck

This thesis examines the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the archetypal images therein. The

Scarlet Letter is discussed extensively with references made to The Blithedale Romance.

Characters in the following short stories are referred to: “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” “Young

Goodman Brown” and “The Birthmark.” An overall analysis of feminine repression in both

male and female characters is explored. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Pearl are the

subjects of lengthy discussion. Journeys, both inward and outward are explored in the

characters. The context is nineteenth-century culture of which Hawthorne is a product.

The characters in The Scarlet Letter search for a complete existence, an integration of the

unconscious and the conscious. Through a mythological study of Hawthorne’s work, we draw

closer to understanding this complex example of nineteenth-century literature.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to my thesis committee for their

support and encouragement throughout this project. Their willingness to share

knowledge and ideas has been an invaluable source of inspiration as I worked

through the thinking and writing process to complete my study.

I would also like to thank my family. Their constant love and understanding of the time

involved in an undertaking of this magnitude has made my task easier.

CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………… 2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………… 3

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………. 5

2. THE NATURE OF FEMININE REPRESSION………………………….. 10

3. BOUNDARIES: AN ARCHETYPAL LOOK AT MOVEMENT IN

HAWTHORNE’S WORKS……………………………………… 25

4. HESTER PRYNNE: FEMININE POWER ENCOMPASSED

WITHIN THE MAGIC CIRCLE………………………………… 36

5. PEARL: THE POTENTIAL FOR WHOLENESS………………………... 49

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE FEMININE: DIMMESDALE

AND HESTER ACHIEVE FULFILLMENT………………….… 60

7. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………….. 73

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………….. 78

VITA…………………………………………………………………………….. 82

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

“The human Heart to be allegorized as a cavern; at the entrance there is sunshine, and flowers

growing about it. You step within, but a short distance, and begin to find yourself surrounded

with a terrible gloom, and monsters of divers kinds; it seems like Hell itself. You are

bewildered, and wander long without hope. At last a light strikes upon you. You press towards

it yon, and find yourself in a region that seems, in some sort, to reproduce the flowers and sunny

beauty of the entrance, but all perfect. These are the depths of the heart, or of human nature,

bright and peaceful; the gloom and terror may lie deep; but deeper still is this eternal beauty.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne The American Notebooks (1835-1853)

This quote from one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s journals, later edited and compiled into

The American Notebooks, shows the author’s interest in the depths of human nature. The

passage illustrates Hawthorne’s idea of layers and dark shadows that one might wander through

in search of the eternal beauty within. Like the quote, Hawthorne’s writings are caverns that, at

the beginning, may bewilder and overwhelm the reader but with study, embody an eternal truth.

Encompassed within the idea of a search and the human heart, Hawthorne writes much

about the individual, both men and women, as well as the relationship between them. These

individuals are on an inner quest, looking for answers to questions that they are hesitant to ask.

The female characters that beckon from within the pages of Hawthorne’s writings are strong,

powerful women not quite at home in the society to which they belong. The male characters,

though sometimes more at home in their society, are not comfortable with themselves as

individuals. The search for an identity within the pages of Hawthorne’s works mirrors the search

for an American identity that was prevalent in the nineteenth-century world in which Nathaniel

Hawthorne lived.

Patriarchal culture and institutions are part of the fabric of life in nineteenth-century

America. In Disorderly Conduct, feminist historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg writes,

“Nineteenth-century American society provided but one socially respectable, nondeviant role for

women—that of loving wife and mother” (213). Attitudes toward women were changing from

the previous century. Medical writers of the early 1800s acknowledge women’s sexual vibrancy

but “By the 1860s and 1870s, however, their professional counterparts counseled husbands that

frigidity was rooted in women’s very nature. Women’s only sexual desire, these doctors argued,

was reproductive” (213). Women are now pushed into the role of motherhood exclusively of

other feminine desires. The male desire to dictate and restrict the acceptable roles for women is

prominent. Women who did not reproduce “endangered society—and herself” (23). This is the

view of the male patriarchal culture toward women and it is significantly different than that held

in the previous century. Ideas toward sexuality in general are undergoing tremendous change

during this time.

Hawthorne plays with the idea of the feminine throughout his works. As a necessary

entity of a human being, the feminine side of both males and females is an inevitable part of the

human equation. Women’s roles in the nineteenth century were defined by family more than

they had been in the past. There was movement toward a more equal and rational view of

women and an acceptance of the feminine. Seneca Falls, a gathering of women that took place

in 1848, marked the beginning of an idea that would move women into place beside, rather than

behind, their male counterparts. But this would not be accomplished overnight. Women would

not be allowed to vote until 72 years later.

This repression of the female gender is an outgrowth of a patriarchal movement that

devalues the feminine side of all human beings, both men and women. As the patriarchal

appreciation for logic and reason grows in society it is accompanied by a decline in appreciation

of outward emotion and intuition. The need to ignore feelings becomes an over-riding concern.

Institutional morals and societal roles are constructed to protect a rising middle class and a

growing economy. The emphasis is on movement and economic growth as America carries the

torch from the eastern shores in the 1600s to the western wilderness in the 1800s. There is little

time or place for an appreciation of beauty and art.

Much goes into this molding of an individual that can withstand the change and

movement of the time. In Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision, Roy Male discusses the idea of

transformation of the individual as one searches for an identity. A movement away from the past

is a necessary step as we embark on a journey of personal development. Male writes,

“Transformation occurs only when action and passion, head and heart are fused in the fiery

crucible. […] The heart is a foul cavern; but for the man it is the source of life, the great

converter” (16). This reconciliation of the head and heart, the masculine and feminine, is a

recurring theme throughout Hawthorne’s writings. Hawthorne is intent on showing the need for

an individual to achieve wholeness and connect with himself and others in a way that will accord

itself with his society.

Male is quick to point out the “[…] romantic strain that runs through Hawthorne’s

fiction” (33). Hawthorne’s way of dealing with the past is to bring it forward into his fiction but

without the idealization that so often accompanies our backward glances. In The Scarlet Letter,

Hawthorne exaggerates the Puritan qualities of sternness and rigidity, thus enhancing his ideas of

the Puritan influence on the lives of individuals living in that society. The characters in these

settings experience difficulty in living as individuals searching for their own unity of wholeness.

Many of Hawthorne’s works engage in a repression of the instincts and characteristics of

the feminine in the society as a whole as well as in the lives of individuals. By closely

examining these works, one can see Hawthorne’s attempt to understand the paradoxes that occur

in nature, both physical nature and man’s inner consciousness. An archetypal view of these

forces of opposites remind us of their role in society and in the individual. These paradoxes

affect man’s understanding of himself as well as his relationships with others in his culture. The

ultimate search for truth, the journey within, and the final self-actualization that comes from

completing the circle of wholeness is the subject of interest to this psychological novelist.

Acceptance of both sides of man’s nature, as well as movement beyond the categories of the

patriarchal culture that controls its members, will result in a complete human being. A study of

Hawthorne’s works reveals the author’s knowledge of the difficulty of the search for identity.

Hawthorne is aware of the impossibility of the denial of any part of man’s nature. We can see

the need for an interior journey to illuminate the interiors of darkness that reside within man.

This darkness is real, forceful and connected with both joy and terror. To go beyond what is

known, facing the terror, is the true test of strength and courage. To make new boundaries and

categories while transcending those that already exist takes a holistic vision of life and an

understanding of the interconnectedness of nature with all that is physical and spiritual.

Hawthorne acknowledges the need for feeling and emotion, linking life with death. The

voice of Hawthorne’s narrator is often detached, assuming the role of an outside observer of

human nature. Yet there is also a definite interest in the development of the actions and the inner

nature of the human soul. Hawthorne goes beyond the accepted explanations of his day. The

discrepancy between appearance and reality is evident as Hawthorne removes masks and veils,

moves beyond walls, crosses thresholds, and finally goes beneath the outer coverings of

individuals and institutions to the truth that resides underneath. This idea of truth is an

overriding theme in Hawthorne’s works. What we often think of as truth is a poor imitation at

best and, more often than not, only a weak substitute for the real thing. To seek the truth, not

from without but deep within individual unconsciousness, is a painful and terrifying task as

Hawthorne shows us by the suffering his characters undergo. The truth lies in the world of

causes beneath the effects that are the outwardly visible. Hawthorne engages his characters in

the task of unification, looking for the wholeness, the completed circle, of man’s existence.

CHAPTER 2

THE NATURE OF FEMININE REPRESSION

“The discovery of twoness means the splitting of the original undifferentiated One

not only into man and world, but also into female and male.”

Edward C. Whitmont

The nineteenth century is a time of rapid change and development. Robert Spiller, in his

monumental work The Literary History of the U.S. says of the nineteenth century:

Never has nature been so rapidly and extensively altered by the efforts of man in

so brief a time. Never has a conquest resulted in a more vigorous development of

initiative, individualism, self-reliance, and demands for freedom. Never have the

defeats which preceded and accompanied this conquest of nature led to more

surprising frustration, decadence, sterility, and dull standardization. (xix)

This aptly characterizes the changing landscape of the New World, both spiritually and

physically. According to F. O. Matthiessen: “[…] the terminus to the agricultural era in our

history falls somewhere between 1850 and 1865, since the railroad, the iron ship, the factory, and

the national labor union all began to be dominant forces within those years, and forecast a new

epoch” (ix).

With the extremes of change for the society at large, women’s roles are defined

differently. The culture is becoming more materialistic. The subsequent rise of the middle class

is accompanied by a fear of losing their economic security. Protecting the identity of the middle

class causes a strengthening of societal structures, values are influenced by money, and there is a

strict adherence along class lines to right and wrong, proper and improper. This patriarchal

culture emphasizes ideas and movement with political and business strength deemed

praiseworthy. Scientific realities are respected rather than emotion and intuition.

Women, often seen as emotional and intuitive, are no longer part of the economic well-

being of the family. They are separated from the world of men and viewed as mothers, not as

sexual companions to men. Males endow females with virtues that relate to spiritual matters

such as patience, kindness, loyalty, and piousness. Women are considered the moral and

spiritual guides of the home. Medical writers perpetuate the idea of women as mothers and not

as possessing sexual desires or fleshly appetites. Sexual feelings are repressed and women

disdained if they admit to experiencing these feelings. Females are revered only as child-

bearers, causing women to lose their independence along with their ability to be economically

self-sufficient as they are confined to home and hearth.

This loss of economic viability contributes to changing roles and continual submergence

of feminine ideals and characteristics. The patriarchal culture represses those characteristics

associated with the feminine such as emotion, intuition, and sexuality in favor of the more

masculine characteristics such as logic, order, and control. In essence, the head is valued over

the heart. Respect for intuition is a thing of the past.

In looking at the idea of the feminine in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, we must first

define the term “feminine” for our purposes. When speaking of the feminine, we refer to the

archetypally feminine, not to gender or sexual ideas of the feminine. Margaret Fuller, in her

book Woman in the Nineteenth Century, said “Male and female represent the two sides of the

great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens

to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman”

(69). Fuller’s concept of the individual is one in which the two parts, masculine and feminine,

are no longer separate but integral parts of the whole. Margaret Fuller is considered “America’s

first major female intellectual” (Reynolds ix). Her friends include Ralph Waldo Emerson and

Henry David Thoreau, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Published in 1845, Woman in the

Nineteenth Century is a leading text of its time promoting the idea of women’s rights in the

nineteenth century. Hawthorne is in the midst of the social and intellectual thought of his day

and these cultural ideas are part of the realm in which he moves.

These ideas and the controversy that ensues are visible in Hawthorne’s works.

Characters struggle between societal modes and expectations along with their own personal

attempts to reconcile their inner life with the concerns of the outer world. We can look at the

repression of the feminine in male characters or female characters in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet

Letter, as well as in some of his short stories. Nature, beauty, art, and instinct are relegated by a

patriarchal culture to the frivolous, unnecessary aspect of life.

As Fuller attempts to explain in her book, men and women share characteristics of the

opposite sex. Men have feminine characteristics as well as male characteristics. Known as the

anima, this femininity is not welcome in a male-dominated society. Females have male

characteristics, referred to as the animus, as well as feminine characteristics. Edward Whitmont

says in his book Return of the Goddess, “[…] we must deal with a repression of femininity in

women and men” (127). Thus, the virtues of the archetypally feminine are repressed. This

phenomenon affects the cultures in which it occurs. It is important to understand that, according

to Whitmont:

Male and femaleness are archetypal forces. They constitute different ways of

relating to life, to the world, and to the opposite sex. The repression of

femininity, therefore, affects mankind’s relation to the cosmos no less than the

relation of individual men and women to each other. (Return 123)

Hawthorne is aware of these forces at work in human nature. In his writing, he explores the

individual’s relations to natural instincts and rhythms while one continues to live and work in a

particular society. This society enforces rules that may not be conducive to the growth of the

individual. Hawthorne takes off the mask, so to speak, and watches the reaction of the individual

who removes it as well as the reactions of those who witness the unveiling. It is this interplay

that fascinates Hawthorne.

The idea of personal relationships between men and women also seems to intrigue this

author. As Hawthorne views society, he is aware of the tendency to idolize women in one sense

while at the same time devaluing the idea of the feminine. We see an example of this in

“Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Beatrice Rappaccini is an idealized woman, radiant and beautiful.

The story takes place in her father’s beautiful garden. Beatrice’s beauty and delicate nature

attract the interest and arouse the emotions of Giovanni, a university student new to the town of

Padua. In the midst of unfamiliar surroundings, Giovanni discovers Beatrice and her garden

located below his living quarters. Hawthorne places Giovanni in unfamiliar surroundings to

emphasize the unease Giovanni feels concerning his world. But, although Beatrice is beautiful,

she has an aura of death surrounding her. Her breath kills insects that fly too closely to her.

Intensely attracted by Beatrice’s physical beauty, Giovanni is also repelled by her apparent

ability to kill. Rather than the breath of life, Beatrice expels the breath of death.

Hawthorne does not condemn Beatrice for her ability to cause death. The author presents

it as a part of Beatrice’s character. Beatrice accepts the death of those things around her in a sad

but matter-of-fact manner. Hawthorne’s interest focuses on Giovanni’s reaction to this

phenomenon in Beatrice and his inability to reconcile the two sides of her nature. Giovanni

separates the unity of life and death as it exists in Beatrice, wanting desperately to accept the side

of life while rejecting the side of death. The young man is torn between the emotions of the

heart and the logic of the head. Unable to follow the longings of his heart, Giovanni attempts to

rationalize the experience with his head. Beatrice begs him to listen to her words: “Forget

whatever you may have fancied in regard to me. If true to the outward senses, still it may be

false in its essence. But the words of Beatrice Rappaccini’s lips are true from the depths of the

heart outward. Those you may believe!” (405). But Giovanni cannot accept this and, finally, he

gives an antidote to Beatrice as well as to himself in an attempt to cure Beatrice of the “evil”

which possesses her. Giovanni attempts to take control.

Like the patriarchal culture of the nineteenth century, Giovanni is quite comfortable with

Beatrice as beautiful, angelic, and spiritual. But the reality of the other side of her nature, the

acceptance of both sides of woman, is not possible for him. The patriarchal culture has given

Giovanni the need to control his environment, trying to perfect or change those things he does

not understand. He cannot accept, on faith, anything that is out of the realm of the head. How

typical of nineteenth century culture and how very interesting of Hawthorne to write a story

where woman is victim to man’s lack of understanding and his need to control. Hawthorne

shows his readers the fear that constricts men in a world where they are required to face death.

As the archetypal feminine, Beatrice represents the complete circle of life and death.

Giovanni recognizes in her a gentle, virginal beauty as well as a sexual allure, the combination of

the two difficult for him to acknowledge. Giovanni’s journey is not only physical, but

psychological and moral as well. Feminine repression appears in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” with

Giovanni’s refusal to accept the emotions of feeling rather than the logic of the head.

This refusal mirrors Giovanni’s inability to accept both sides of himself. He, too,

embodies life and death. Giovanni enters the story lonely and isolated, living in “a high and

gloomy chamber of an old edifice” that “exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings of a

family long since extinct” (388). The garden below his window may represent the Garden of

Eden, suggesting a correlation of this story to the story of Adam and Eve. With the rise of the

patriarchal culture, the story of Woman’s link to Man’s fall from grace becomes an accepted

phenomenon. An adherence to the one, all-knowing male god rises with the perpetuation of this

thought along with the subsequent repression of the feminine. The paradoxes of life, good and

evil, become separate entities rather than being part of a united whole. The idea that woman,

who embodies the characteristics of the feminine side of nature, must be repressed or man will

once again lose himself, begins the web of deception. Giovanni subscribes to the cultural idea

that man must repress the dark side of his nature, those natural instincts, emotions, and feelings

that are alive within him when he is near Beatrice. This is the energy of life. This is what

Giovanni is searching for, yet unable to accept. Joseph Campbell says that woman, according to

mythology, “represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to

know […]. The hero who can take her as she is, without undue commotion but with the kindness

and assurance she requires, is potentially the king, the incarnate god, of her created world” (116).

Giovanni has a chance to redeem himself as the New Adam, hero of the new Garden of Eden.

To accept what his heart tells him, he must ignore all outward semblance of death and evil

surrounding the flowers and Beatrice. But surrender is difficult. The male ideal of control

makes this a task of monumental proportions. He denies those urges within the depths of his

soul, the regions of the unconscious, and struggles with his intellect and his own ego against the

pull of the anima, his feminine nature. Seeing the reflection of himself, Giovanni cannot accept

the whole person. Life and death are two parts of the whole. As the young man gazes into the

mirror, the narrator tells us, “He did gaze, however, and said to himself, that his features had

never before possessed so rich a grace, nor his eyes such vivacity, nor his cheeks so warm a hue

of superabundant life” (414). Giovanni has obviously taken on Beatrice’s outward radiance but

does not recognize the vision in the mirror. He denies that her poison has infiltrated his body.

Then, he realizes the flowers he is holding have begun to droop and “Giovanni grew white as

marble, and stood motionless before the mirror, staring at his own reflection there, as at the

likeness of something frightful” (414). As Giovanni recognizes what has become part of him,

“ –he shuddered—shuddered at himself!” (414). Hawthorne shows us man’s struggle to see

within and acknowledge what he finds. Both sides of man’s nature are necessary. This

acceptance lessens the divisions of the self. If Giovanni can accept what is there, both sides of

nature, life as well as death, then it becomes possible for man to become a unitary, undivided

self. But this is not what Hawthorne shows us. Instead, we are given a vision of man’s failure to

accept both sides of the feminine. With the death of Beatrice, Giovanni loses the opportunity to

become whole.

“Rappaccini’s Daughter” is fascinating because it raises many questions concerning the

“angelic” qualities ascribed to desirable women. Giovanni accepts these qualities in Beatrice.

After their first meeting, Giovanni goes home and remembers Beatrice: “She was human: her

nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine qualities; she was worthiest to be worshipped;

she was capable, surely, on her part, of the height and heroism of love” (407). But these are not

the qualities that attract Giovanni down from his apartment above the garden. It is the emotion

that he feels within perpetuated by the power of the feminine that propels Giovanni down his

stairs and through the hedge surrounding the garden. This power generated by Beatrice is

alluring but at the same time frightening. While the feminine serves to attract, Giovanni innately

feels that the feminine aspect must be repressed. Hawthorne distinguishes between the two and

writes the story of a man’s failure to meet the challenge of acceptance.

Nineteenth-century patriarchal culture gives women a role and encourages repression of

everything outside that realm. Therefore, women are left to embrace the spiritual and home-life

relegated to them while the idea of intuition, sexuality, sensitivity and emotion is devalued in

men as well as in women. Beauty and artistry are given a value in economic terms alone. Men

often view women as objects – quiet, subservient, and dutiful – and see them in economic terms.

In Hawthorne’s story “The Birth-mark,” we observe a beautiful woman and a scientist. This

time the scientist is her husband rather than her father. Aylmer seeks physical perfection in his

wife Georgiana, whose only flaw is a birth-mark on her cheek. Rather than accepting his wife as

she is, Aylmer attempts to make Georgiana perfect. He decides this flaw must be removed and

becomes convinced that he can remove it, thereby creating perfection. Aylmer wants to improve

on nature. His power will reign above that of nature, a feminine entity perpetuated in the body

and spirit of Georgiana.

Of course, this process kills Georgiana, who wants to be accepted as she is. She is happy

with herself, accepting the flaw without undue consideration: “To tell you the truth, it has been

so often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so” (260). However,

Georgiana soon sees herself as her husband sees her, flawed and imperfect, and desires either

perfection, which would insure Aylmer’s acceptance, or death. The birth-mark is part of

Georgiana’s body, yet Aylmer treats her as though she were an object, dehumanizing Georgiana

with his concern for his own desires and need for control. Hawthorne illustrates man’s inability

to accept a flaw in those around him. The natural flaw must be eradicated, nature’s work

improved upon. Aylmer represses emotion for logic and the patriarchal culture is responsible for

the death of woman because of man’s insistence on control. Georgiana’s changing view of

herself characterizes many women’s vision of themselves. Desperate to find a place in this

patriarchal culture, women join in the devaluing of certain feminine or natural characteristics

while at the same time claiming power where they are allowed, in the home or in the spiritual

arena.

Though both men and women sometimes repress certain individual characteristics, this

repression causes problems in the societies in which it appears. Undaunted by a task of

enormous magnitude, Hawthorne struggles with nineteenth-century ideals of women as well as

all things feminine, relationships between men and women, and man’s dilemma with guilt and

the culture’s definition of sin. His writing reflects the times in which he lives by bringing the

chaotic and rocky foundation of the New World to the level of the always rocky foundation of

the individual as he or she seeks an identity. Society’s views and values are changing and

threaten to surge out of control, mirroring the feeling of the person caught in this web of turmoil

who also, at times, feels out of control. The paradox that exists within these ideas holds a

fascination for Hawthorne and he does not back away from presenting them as he sees them in

the world at large. The author’s air of detachment lends a puzzling ambiguity to his texts,

making for rich and fertile ground for critics to work as they try to piece together the author’s

meaning.

In “The Custom-House,” Hawthorne’s introduction to The Scarlet Letter, we read these

words:

Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge

themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be

addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect

sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were

certain to find out the divided segment of the writer’s own nature and

complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with

it. (3-4)

Hawthorne writes about man’s struggle to unite the two halves of himself. The idea of two sides

means separation of male and female characteristics. These characteristics are fragmented into

opposites, allowing one to oppose one side while valuing the other. This preference for one over

the other becomes mutually exclusive rather than mutually inclusive and one side is avoided and

ignored. We name them “good” or “bad” and pass moral judgments. This affects feelings and

emotions and allows the world to take on more and more of a male, or patriarchal,

consciousness. Now, rather than one combined reality, we make a choice between two sides,

never accepting the reality that the two are part of one united whole.

We see the separation of opposites and fragmentation of the whole in The Scarlet Letter

amplified to proportions it is hard to miss. Woman, as she exists in the archetypally feminine, is

exiled. Now, “Women must be good, nice, nurturing, and receptive in the orderly, wishfully-

thinking, androlatric world” (Whitmont, Return 61). When women break this mold, as in the

case of Hester Prynne, the transgressor “ […] is excluded from the community in proportion to

the severity of the nonconformism. A cordon sanitaire is erected against him in order to protect

the group from infection, from the evil or danger he has stirred up” (Whitmont, Return 63).

Whitmont continues by explaining that evil is merely a threat as perceived by the group. This

threat involves change or disturbance of the normal order of the community. On a mythic level,

this early “literal physical expulsion and banishment becomes at the later stages of moralistic

and ethical justification, social ostracism and shaming” (Whitmont, Return 63). Hester Prynne is

excluded from Hawthorne’s Puritan community because her transgressions are not hidden and

therefore force a confrontation within that community.

However, Arthur Dimmesdale’s transgressions are hidden, unknown to the society he

inhabits. This split between the masculine and feminine, and the subsequent need to repress the

feminine side of nature, does not affect only the female members of the world; this split touches

each member of the community and the health and well-being, not to mention success, of the

society. Dimmesdale’s anima, that side of himself that is associated with the dark and feeling

side of life, comes forward with Hester Prynne. Hester’s feminine power, the energy from the

instinctual side of nature, draws Dimmesdale like a magnet. When this power is not dealt with in

an open, mindful way it will appear in a disruptive, chaotic, and potentially destructive way.

One cannot relegate these needs and desires to the realm of the unconscious. In his book

Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung says: “For everything in the unconscious seeks outward

manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to

experience itself as a whole” (3). Whitmont follows this thought with the idea of confrontation

and our own borders: “When we confront the myth—the mythical (archetypal) core of our

complexes—we confront the ultimate border line of our place in transcendental meaningfulness”

(Return 84).

Dimmesdale’s feelings are manifested outwardly toward Hester but are then submerged.

Consequently, as The Scarlet Letter continues, Dimmesdale’s life slowly disintegrates. The

Puritan community, and other societies as well, often confuse discipline with repression. What is

the difference? If we do not understand the nature of discipline, how can we understand the

repression of the one from the impeding nature of the other? One must acknowledge the

presence of desire and understand it as a normal human function and as part of one’s whole

person, while repression involves an inability to acknowledge the need for discipline. To call

upon the need for discipline, one admits the dark side of the human psyche, that side that we

spend so much time trying to pretend is nonexistent. Whitmont explains that repression “is the

act of shutting our eyes in order to avoid the suffering of discipline” (Return 133). He also says

that “Repression will always call forth a compensatory counteractivity of the unconscious which

will, through the backdoor, force upon us, the very thing we are trying to repress” (Return 133).

Understanding this dynamic as an explanation for Dimmesdale’s response to the situation in

which he finds himself helps the reader see Dimmesdale’s problems in a more sympathetic light

than viewing them as a deliberate attempt to inflict pain and suffering on Hester. Dimmesdale is

repressing the feminine side of his nature, feelings and desires that he, as a minister and

respected member of the Puritan community, cannot admit he harbors.

Therefore, we will deal with the repression of the feminine in a way that shows the

effects of this phenomenon on an entire culture rather than as simply the repression of women

from a gender perspective. Feminine repression includes this aspect as well, but in its entirety it

is a disturbance that infiltrates every aspect of the societal expectations of both sexes as well as

the response to their personal lives and the rules and regulations they set for others to live by.

Everything is a combination of both male and female characteristics. This is not to be

confused with the positive or negative connotations our culture may associate with one or the

other of these traits. As symbolic images, they do not directly reflect men or women as such.

Whitmont explains this idea by saying, “These basic principles are purely symbolic

representations of energies which are inclusive of what we commonly call maleness and

femaleness” (Symbolic 170). Therefore, they are not meant to describe individual human beings.

Female principles have been relegated to the dark unconscious world of instinct and feeling.

Whitmont gives this description: “[…] it is not spirit but nature, the world of formation, the dark

womb of nature that gives birth to drives, to urgings and instincts and sexuality; it is seen in the

symbolism of earth and moon, darkness and space; it is negative, undifferentiated and

collective”(Symbolic 171). The masculine is described as orderly, distant, free of emotion,

logical, rational, and controlling. When looking at Arthur Dimmesdale in light of this

knowledge, we can surmise the difficulty he encounters in his life as he attempts to fit into a

culture that represses the feminine, finding only masculine attributes acceptable. This denial of

an entire side of life and human nature is an inherent cause of the problems that ensue in The

Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale is living by the idea that “Subduing one’s spontaneous emotions

and desires means subduing the realm of the feminine for the sake of the masculine ideal of self-

control” (Whitmont, Return 65). This patriarchal culture’s survival depends on male control.

The men wield the power, fearful of any who question the reality of the appearances they

manifest outwardly. The minister’s self-control is in danger of complete disintegration, but he

masks the effects of this repression as long as he can. The ensuing breakdown of the spirit leads

to an enervation of Dimmesdale’s soul and physical condition. Gone is the energy and the

strength that comes from within. Patriarchal cultures ignore the idea of a combined reality that

insists on both sides of one’s self being acknowledged and dealt with. Society ignores the

disorderly, chaotic realm and fears its appearance. The need to be in control of all things at all

times makes a culture fearful of anything that lessens its ability to control.

But one cannot control by repressing these opposites forever. They will not be kept

apart. Dark and light, order and disorder, all of these polar entities are parts of the whole. The

paradoxical nature of life is everywhere and, along with it, the energy of living. Dimmesdale

experiences this when he is with Hester. The experience of life and the experience of death each

has an equally volatile quality. The idea of male-female polarity is one of a conflict of opposites

and “[…] we experience it in terms of duality and conflict: conscious – unconscious, light –

dark, spirit – nature, positive – negative and, for consideration here, male - female” (Whitmont,

Symbolic 170). The world that Hawthorne gives us shows a repression of the feminine where

“[…] its total absence means petrification, rigidity, and grim, joyless boredom” (Whitmont,

Return 59). We see this in the Puritan culture that Hawthorne draws for us in The Scarlet Letter.

Dimmesdale’s repressed nature will not be extinguished. His dark side is never absent from the

picture, merely ignored. When this is no longer possible, it disrupts the community and the

individual lives of several within. A lack of acknowledgement does not mean these feelings go

away, nor can one refuse the inherent responsibility for their feelings. In The Symbolic Quest,

we see that “[…]the anima consists of the man’s unconscious urges, his moods, emotional

aspirations, anxieties, fears, inflations and depressions, as well as his potential for emotion and

relationship” (Whitmont 189).

In The Scarlet Letter, human nature is linked to instinct. Both of these are considered

evil and things one must repress. Hawthorne paints a picture of a world practically void of

beauty, color, warmth, and laughter. If Hawthorne’s picture of the Puritans is exaggerated, it

succeeds from the artist’s wish to emphasize the stark quality of life that exists when a society

represses the feminine side of life. The Puritan society that Hawthorne portrays in The Scarlet

Letter shows a culture’s inability to acknowledge sin and, while their outer lives are dark with

decay, so their inner lives reflect this gloomy transmutation of life. No longer glorious and

joyful, life itself has become a dimly lit candle that can only flicker in the midst of a repression

so void of true compassion that the only life-giving energy present is that of hatred and

suspicion. Hawthorne is aware of the need for a society to accept both sides of nature, good and

evil. The paradoxical unity exists and cannot be divided. His works show the effects of man’s

struggle to divide and conquer that which he cannot accept. Those characteristics considered

dark, foreboding, and demanding repression are necessary and valid components of a conscious,

independent, responsible human being. Hawthorne presents his ideas of man’s relationship to

his culture, his drive for individual wholeness, and the development of human consciousness.

CHAPTER 3

BOUNDARIES: AN ARCHETYPAL LOOK AT MOVEMENT IN HAWTHORNE’S WORKS

“The adventure is always and everywhere a passage beyond the veil of the known into the

unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet

for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades.”

Joseph Campbell

Nathaniel Hawthorne draws the reader into his settings with the idea of boundaries. As

we look closely at this theme, it is an inherent quality in many of Hawthorne’s works. We come

upon this idea in his short stories as well as his novels. Boundaries are physical, tangible lines

drawn around places people live or the places where action takes place in a story. These exterior

boundaries can mirror internal boundaries and indicate a movement from one level of

consciousness to the unconscious.

In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne draws boundaries throughout the text. Hester lives on

the outskirts of the township, at the edge of the forest and at the edge of the ocean. These

boundaries accentuate Hester’s isolation. She belongs not simply to one area but has the ability

to move from one area to another. Hester is protected from the community by her sphere but the

community is protected also by this same sphere. What Hester represents is dangerous to the

structure of this society. They are not yet ready to face what lies beyond their own boundaries.

We see the societal boundaries between the prison and the rest of the community. The

outer barrier is reminiscent of an inner barrier built and carried by Hawthorne’s Puritans as they

strive to control sin with legal sanctions against it. Their need to control and ultimately repress

this side of human nature reflects their constant struggle to manipulate behavior with fear of

isolation from the community. This isolation equates with death, as Hawthorne shows us by the

proximity of the graveyard to the jail. Boston is described by Hawthorne as “[…] this roughly

hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the Western wilderness” (57). So Boston is its own

civilization, maker of its own rules and morals. The wilderness, the unknown, lies on the edge of

the town. Exterior boundaries separate this society from the wildness of nature and interior

barriers of fear serve to imprison the inhabitants from within. This exemplifies boundaries that

are external as well as internal. The Puritan townspeople imprison themselves in their iron will

and determination to overcome the forces of sin and evil. The scaffold upon which Hester

climbs stands “[…] at the western extremity of the market-place” (55).

But just outside the prison-door “ […] on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the

threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems […]” (48).

This sign of nature, this “wild” beauty stubbornly grows within this stifling society. Nature

invades the Puritan world of grim sternness. This sight of nature, not to be overwhelmed and

subdued, is “ […] on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue forth from that

inauspicious portal” (48). And so enters the indomitable Hester Prynne. Nature does not

observe these boundaries so carefully drawn and fearfully kept by the members of this

community.

Hester crosses this boundary from the confinement of prison to the society that condemns

her. Physically free, Hester crosses the threshold into the world of the community entering, once

again, as a member of this society. But Hester wears the scarlet letter that will serve to enclose

its wearer in a sphere and set up boundaries around her to keep her from participating fully in the

life of the community. In the isolation that follows, Hester speculates freely on the “iron bars”

that make up the society in which she finds herself. Pearl is her constant companion and her

presence embodies the meaning of the scarlet letter. Hester is angry at the punishment forced on

her and the judgment of those she deems as unworthy as herself. Yet, Hester is unable to face

her own guilt and see herself in light of the reality of her being. Her nature makes her a much

feared member of this community. The Puritan civilization, “[…] so remote and so obscure[…]”

(79), borders the western wilderness. But Hester chooses, as her home, a small cottage “ […] on

the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other

habitation[…]” (81). Hester’s cottage borders the town, the sea, and the forest but “[…] its

comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the

habits of the emigrants[…]” (81). She isolates herself by choosing a dwelling that borders both

civilization and nature.

These boundaries between natural and man-made societies serve to keep the worlds

within themselves and outsiders afraid to enter. Things change when one moves across the

boundaries. The rules are different and the old laws may not apply. Hawthorne describes

Hester’s existence: “[…] she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere,

or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human

kind […]” (84).

Hawthorne uses the idea of boundaries to show us different worlds and characters’

reactions to these differences. Boundaries confine the action of one area to that distinct place

while the characters may move across boundaries. The differences become inherent in the

characters themselves, allowing us a clearer vision of them. Thus, Miles Coverdale moves from

the city to the country, a place where nature abounds and man generally stands in awe of nature’s

power and essence. But Coverdale brings with him, as do other members of the group at

Blithedale, many of the same restrictions and institutional attitudes they are hoping to escape.

By separating civilization and nature in The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne emphasizes their

differences, both within these outer worlds and by the character’s identification with the

characteristics of one world or the other. The author emphasizes the wild side of nature and the

wilderness to the west of Boston. The town itself is bounded on all sides with rules and

regulations, laws and morals in an attempt to separate itself from a nature which the Puritans

consider evil and sinful – the dark side of human nature. This dark side of human nature is the

symbolic meaning for the unconscious. It is the unknown, that which lies beyond, or death.

In The Blithedale Romance, we see Miles Coverdale’s life within the confinements of the

city. These confinements are physical, but they represent an inner confinement for Hawthorne’s

character. The institutions and societal proprieties of the nineteenth century require that certain

standards of behavior and living be met. When in the city, Coverdale has comfortable rooms,

comfortable friends, good food and drink and a satisfactory life all around. But our narrator feels

he is missing something. Coverdale says, “The greater, surely, was my heroism, when, puffing

out a final whiff of cigar-smoke, I quitted my cosey pair of bachelor-rooms—with a good fire

burning in the grate, and a closet right at hand, where there was still a bottle or two in the

champagne-basket, and a residuum of claret in a box, […]” (10). He writes poetry but he wants

to write better poetry. Upon his arrival at his new surroundings Coverdale replies to praise of his

poetry, “I hope, on the contrary, now, to produce something that shall really deserve to be called

poetry—true, strong, natural, and sweet, as is the life which we are going to lead […]” (14). It is

for this purpose, then, that he decides to leave his comfortable life with all its attending social

restrictions to enter a world in the country. Coverdale “[…] —quitted, I say, these comfortable

quarters, and plunged into the heart of the pitiless snow-storm, in quest of a better life” (10).

Therefore, we see another crossing of a boundary, both external and internal. Externally,

Coverdale leaves the city and moves to a farm in the country. Internally, Coverdale hopes to

leave behind the constrictions of the persona he has adopted for city living and take up a new

way of living in a society based on equality. Blithedale is a social experiment quite outside the

realm of anything that might be possible within the boundaries of the city. The participants

desire to reclaim a human connection to nature and to the land that is slipping away in the

nineteenth century. The inhabitants of Blithedale Farm also desire a communal society where

individuals share the tasks of day-to-day living, making them equal on a social scale. Coverdale

wants to cast off his inhibitions as well as his inability to express true feeling and depth of

emotion within his poetry: “[…] even to the extent of quitting a warm fireside, flinging away a

freshly lighted cigar, and traveling far beyond the strike of city-clocks, through a drifting snow-

storm” (11). He sees the city as representing his old life with all its restrictions, institutional

obligations, and involvement. This old life paralysizes the poet within the man. Once at

Blithedale Coverdale thinks of his life in the city and we read, “[…] I felt, so much the more, that

we had transported ourselves a world-wide distance from the system of society that shackled us

at breakfast-time” (13). Miles Coverdale desires a removal of the “shackles” of society.

Coverdale’s move across the boundary is heralded with a snowstorm, a demonstration of

the power of nature. Leaving the walls of the city and life that is lived inside and protected, the

travelers experience nature from the beginning: “[…] Air, that had not been breathed, once and

again! Air, that had not been spoken into words of falsehood, formality, and error, like all the air

of the dusky city!” (11). They leave the comforts they know to experience nature in all its raw

strength, moving into the realm of the unknown and carrying their “shackles” with them. These

internal restrictions are not physical objects that can easily be left behind, but deeply rooted

ideals and expectations that cross the borders on the journey from the city to Blithedale farm.

Once there, we encounter restrictions that the inhabitants had hoped to leave behind. The

farmhouse becomes the domestic sphere and the women are relegated to the household activities

within while the male figures take on the outside components of maintaining a farm with all its

incumbent hardships. Hawthorne shows us the difficulty in forging new paths when the old ones

are deeply ingrained. Zenobia answers the question of assigned tasks by saying:

[…] ‘we women (there are four of us here, already) will take the domestic and

indoor part of the business, as a matter of course. […] these, I suppose, must be

feminine occupations for the present. By-and-by, […] it may be that some of us,

who wear the petticoat, will go afield, and leave the weaker brethren to take our

places in the kitchen!’ (16)

Old ideas come forth from within the inhabitants. Societal expectations are rooted deeply within

individuals, even those who claim to want to “throw off the shackles” of their old world.

So what exactly are these boundaries? Boundaries serve either to enclose or to separate

one thing from another. The known is separated from the unknown. That which is known is

comfortable and safe. While one may feel stifled and bound by the expectations and rules of

society, the unknown is a far more dangerous entity. Often there is a feeling of foreboding when

one crosses the boundary from the known, even with its dimensions of good and bad, to the

unknown. There is a pull that one who moves cannot resist. The expectation of an answer is a

strong motivator. Coverdale crosses this boundary and enters an unknown world of nature.

Hawthorne sets the stage:

The storm, in its evening aspect, was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen

for our especial behoof; a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful phantoms that

invariably haunt the mind, on the eve of adventurous enterprises, to warn us back

within the boundaries of ordinary life. (18)

Coverdale fails to realize that these institutions and societal expectations are within rather than

without. He thinks, “We had left the rusty iron frame-work of society behind us. We had broken

through many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on the weary tread-mill

of the established system, even while they feel its irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did”

(19). Coverdale is eager but apprehensive as he begins his journey and crosses the boundaries of

his known world.

We see a journey and an apprehensive boundary-crossing in “Young Goodman Brown.”

Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, to journey into the forest one evening. Hawthorne calls

the forest a “heathen wilderness” (140). There is a marked difference between the forest and the

town where Goodman Brown lives. Hawthorne writes of Brown, “He had taken a dreary road,

darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path

creep through […]” (134). Brown crosses the threshold between the two with foreboding. We

read, “It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude […]”(134).

The peculiarity is the discrepancy between what Brown sees and what he expects to see.

Hawthorne’s intentions are clear as we observe Brown’s encounters on his journey and the

shattering of his expectations.

Brown meets Satan in the form of an old man. Brown is introduced to the dark side of

man, the shadow, or the hidden side that is repressed. Brown is frightened and then sickened at

the sight. This is the opposite of what he has experienced as reality. This is not what Brown

knows or what he wants to know. To see this in others, to see behind the mask or the veil, one

must have an understanding that what one sees has been there all along, but we have not been

conscious of its presence. This shadow, the unconscious, has been repressed, masked, or veiled

but not eliminated. Brown does not want to accept what he sees either for himself or for the

others he recognizes. When Brown sees Faith’s pink ribbon, he is horrified. As we assess

Brown’s reactions to the revelations of the forest, we see Hawthorne playing with the idea of

man’s naked inner self. Brown is afraid to journey into the forest, but he feels compelled to

venture forth. Faith, too, is fearful of the unknown that lurks in the forest. The forest represents

nature and embodies the world of the unknown, the feminine realm of the dark unconscious.

When Brown sees Faith’s pink ribbon he realizes that she, too, is part of this world of shadows

and, though he has not been aware of it before, she belongs with the rest of mankind, bringing

together within herself both sides of nature – good and evil.

This frightening work of nature serves to illuminate the other side of human beings, the

side that is hidden behind the persona of the individual or the mask we wear to get through life

within the strictures of our society. Brown becomes aware of the sin of others. Goodman Brown

is unable to reconcile the discrepancies he finds in others. Brown lives the rest of his life with an

angry attitude of hopelessness because he cannot accept the reality of what he sees in the forest.

This desire to see man as one thing or the other, either good or evil, is shattered as he sees that

his reality is only appearance. There is a failure to accept the inevitability of man. Nature, in the

experience, represents reality versus appearance.

Nature takes on the role of a character in many of Hawthorne’s works. Again, this

reflects nineteenth-century attitudes of a culture that exhibits constant movement. Spiller says,

“Everywhere bordering on New England is another land, whose geography human beings

imagine but cannot chart” (Literary History 431). Everything is alive with the energy of a

society that exhibits rapid growth and development. Hawthorne views nature in much the same

way as many of his nineteenth-century colleagues. In describing the wilderness, Hawthorne

gives to the Puritans the view of nature as dark and foreboding with a life and atmosphere all its

own. There are boundaries everywhere adamantly upheld by the community. The wilderness is

both solitary and wild. It is not part of the Puritan society, and those who go there have

extraordinary things happen once within the sphere of nature. Outside the walls of the town,

everything is “beyond.” Those that venture forth do so with fear and trepidation.

Nature, through Hester, takes on a life of its own. It is in the forest that Hester comes

alive, her innermost being drawn out of the shadows and allowed to pour forth through her

physical body. Her feminine nature is at its most vivid and her archetypal consciousness comes

alive. Hester moves through the forest, its character alive and communicative within her. Hester

lives at the edge of the wilderness, but also at the edge of the community from which she has

been ostracized. Hester is bounded on all sides by something from which she is separated,

something from which she is not a part. She lives on the edge of the forest, the community, and

the ocean. Yet Hester is isolated, with only Pearl by her side. Hester moves from one physical

realm to another within a sphere of her own.

In “Rappaccini’s Daughter” Hawthorne once again delineates the world of the characters

within boundaries while isolating the female character. Giovanni enters an unknown world and

lives in rooms of a family that Hawthorne describes as “long since extinct” (388). Giovanni is

“for the first time out of his native sphere” (388).

Giovanni crosses the threshold and enters a world that is different as well. Once he is

aware of the nature of the garden and of Beatrice herself, Giovanni is torn between the desire to

cross the boundaries of all that he knows and enter a place with unknown realities, rules, and

possibilities and the desire to stay within the realm of safety and familiarity. With the help of an

old woman, waiting just as he crosses the “threshold” to his lodgings, Giovanni is shown a secret

entrance into the garden and, though filled with misgivings, he cannot keep himself outside the

realm of Beatrice’s garden. Therefore, Giovanni crosses another boundary, moving into the

unknown, where the world that awaits is very different from the world he knows.

As these characters move across boundaries, they begin a journey. The outward journey

is reflective of the inward journey as they move from consciousness toward the dark unconscious

labyrinth of the mind. Hawthorne’s characters experience a sense of unease as they move across

boundaries. Miles Coverdale is unsettled as he moves from the city to the country, anticipating

an inward journey that will enable him to write with true depth of feeling, to translate his inner

thoughts to the pages of poetry. Goodman Brown is uneasy as he journeys from the town to the

forest. Giovanni feels isolated and lonely as he moves into his new rooms in an ancient city, and

even more fearful of crossing the threshold of the garden below.

Boundaries may separate or enclose one and can serve as a barrier, both to wanted and to

unwanted things. Hawthorne created different worlds within his works, and boundaries, when

crossed, indicate a change, a movement within to the realm of the unknown or the unconscious.

There is fear as Hawthorne’s characters face their boundaries. They move forward, on an

imminent journey. Joseph Campbell says that a movement takes place when “A blunder –

apparently the merest chance – reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a

relationship with forces that are not rightly understood” (51). Campbell interprets these not as

blunders of chance but as, “[…] the result of suppressed desires and conflicts” (51). The

repression of the feminine in Hawthorne’s characters surfaces, destroying the sense of order in

the character’s everyday world and demanding action. Though frightening, the draw is difficult

to ignore. The powers that propel one forward are strong and hard to resist: “[…] for they carry

keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of the discovery of the self”

(Campbell 8).

Hawthorne uses nature to represent the unknown or the dark unconscious. The repression

of the feminine here is the unwillingness or inability to see the unconscious and the idea of

nature. The shadow that is repressed is alive and well whether it is confronted or ignored. If left

on its own too long, it may come forward at a most inopportune moment. But it will come

forward. Energy that is repressed can not stay hidden nor does it disappear.

CHAPTER 4

HESTER PRYNNE: FEMININE POWER ENCOMPASSED WITHIN THE MAGIC

CIRCLE

“The life of a woman, who, by the old colony law, was condemned always to wear the letter A,

sewed on her garment, in token of her having committed adultery.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne The American Notebooks (Winter 1844-1845)

Hester’s isolation is apparent from the beginning of The Scarlet Letter. Hester has borne

a child, yet she has no husband within the community. The Puritans physically separate

themselves from Hester by putting her in prison to have her child. As the story opens, Hester

emerges from this prison. The reader is struck by the paradoxical qualities immediately apparent

between the crowd of onlookers and Hester Prynne.

The crowd that gathers is described in the first sentence as “A throng of bearded men, in

sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing

hoods, and others bareheaded […]” (47). The setting consists of a prison with a “beetle-browed

and gloomy front” and around it “was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed,

apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation […]” (48). The Puritan women are harsh in their

judgment of Hester, anxious to keep her away from their society. Of the women, Hawthorne

writes:

Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and

maidens of old English birth and breeding, than in their fair descendents […].

There was moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as

most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in

respect to its purport or its volume of tone. (50-1)

These women, too, are responsible for the repression of the feminine in their lives and in the

culture they inhabit. Anxious for acceptance in a world which relegates them little, if any, power

they begin to see themselves in the same light that the patriarchal culture shines on all things

feminine. They mirror the culture’s disgust with emotion, beauty, and passion. They fear nature

and the world of instinct and impulse.

From this dull, colorless world Hester emerges, sharply contrasting with her

surroundings. She is bright and beautiful, her “[…] dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it

threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of

feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and

deep black eyes” (53). Hester’s feminine qualities shine from within, and she radiates a beauty

and force that is breathtaking to those watching her as she walks to the scaffold. The contrast

between Hester and her surroundings, both the physical setting and the people, is striking, and

the Puritans are shocked by Hester’s powerful radiance. Hawthorne writes, “Those who had

before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud,

were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the

misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped” (53). This is the first mention of the

halo, but with it, we see the spiritual separation of Hester Prynne from the Puritan community.

With this passage, the author tells us that the crowd has expected Hester’s time in prison and the

humiliation she has suffered to take its toll on her and wipe the shine from her features,

vanquishing the light within.

None of these expectations are fulfilled; it is the very untoward events and humiliation

that Hester has undergone that serve to wrap her in a halo and separate her even further from the

crowd. Though no longer in prison, she is still within a sphere of her own. The scarlet letter,

which she will wear on her bosom for the rest of her life, “[…] had the effect of a spell, taking

her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere by herself” (54).

From within this sphere, Hester is successfully cut off from the Puritan community.

Hester’s isolation from the rest of society is important to the Puritans because of the danger they

sense within her. Hawthorne’s Puritan community sets its rules and standards, and they identify

with their definition of absolute good. In this crowd Hester has broken the code of moral law

and the “Individual dissenter is, by definition, evil and a public enemy” (Whitmont, Return 91).

Hawthorne tells us that her clothing “[…] seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the

desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity” (53). Hester’s

feminine spirit will not be tamed by her time in prison or her humiliation.

In this community, goodness involves self-denial and is an act of will. This puts control

in the hands of the individual. Rather than acknowledge and deal with both sides of human

nature, the Puritan world that Hawthorne describes acknowledges what it deems good and

represses everything else. Since each includes the opposite, these two sides of man’s being

cannot be successfully ignored or repressed. Good includes evil and evil includes good. These

paradoxical qualities coexist in the nature of man. The repression of the dark qualities of nature,

emotion, and beauty serves to emphasize the rigidity of this stern, cold world that Hawthorne

creates for the reader.

The Puritan’s clothing is dull and colorless, matching the severity of their spiritual world

within. The vivid, dynamic nature of someone like Hester Prynne is threatening to this tired, sad

group and they fear Hester. Inside and out, Hester represents a contrast as she exudes the

feminine nature this patriarchal culture has tried to excise from their world, both the world within

the individual and the outer world of nature. This society separates itself from its natural

instincts. Hawthorne comments on a “wild rose-bush” that grows outside the door of the prison.

As the author describes the scene outside the prison, this is the one spot of beauty and color in

the entire picture. The fact that the rose bush is “wild” alludes to nature and the forces that are

untamable, or ungovernable, even in this setting. As Hester’s wild nature refuses to be

subjugated by her time in prison and the essence of the community itself so, too, this wild rose-

bush stubbornly grows amidst the weeds and grim qualities of the Puritans. Since Hester cannot

be controlled, she must be isolated.

Hester’s strong, earthy nature is enclosed by the magic sphere as she takes up her life in

the community. But she is not completely alone. This magic sphere includes Pearl, the child

Hester has born in prison. Contained within the circle, they move, always together, through their

world. We read, “ Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without

her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there […]” (93). Further emphasizing their

alienation from society and their bond within the circle, Hawthorne writes, “Mother and daughter

stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society […]” (94). Pearl is isolated

from the community, her nature as dangerous to the Puritan way of life as her mother’s nature:

“Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she

had no right among christened infants” (93). Pearl is not an earthly creature. Encircled by the

magic sphere with her mother, she is a constant reminder from the underworld of the darkness

and the wild nature of the feminine.

Not part of the earthly world or civilization as the Puritans have defined it, Hester and

Pearl live on the edge of the town, near the forest and the sea. The isolation of her dwelling is

emphasized: “[…] its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity

which already marked the habits of the emigrants” (81). Hester establishes herself physically, as

well as spiritually, outside the town, reflecting her isolation from the human beings of this

community. Hester’s cottage is “On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula,

but not in close vicinity to any other habitation […]” (81). These boundaries of nature surround

the Puritan settlement, enclosing and keeping them separated from the rest of the world. The

town is described as “[…] on the edge of the Western wilderness” (57). Hester can cross these

physical boundaries but in truth “[…] she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited

another sphere […]. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost

that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt […]” (84).

Life within this sphere allows Hester freedom of thought. Hawthorne tells us that

Hester’s outward coldness is because “[…] her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion

and feeling, to thought” (164). Isolated from the traditions and expectations of any community,

Hester lives in a world of ideas and thoughts foreign to those who live within the confines of the

structured existence of the Puritans. Hester dares to contemplate ideas that would never be

acknowledged by someone whose identity depends on his or her acceptance within a community

that teaches subservience and blind dedication to a patriarchal leadership. Hester’s situation and

the humiliation that tests her also endows her with a knowledge that frightens her: “[…] she felt

or fancied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to

believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin

in other hearts” (86). The sphere that surrounds and isolates Hester allows her to feel the pain of

others, a pain that is familiar. This is not a comfort for Hester. She is fearful and is in anguish to

understand the meaning of these feelings. Hester does not wish to believe “[…] that the outward

guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter

would blaze forth on many a bosom […]” (86). Hawthorne tells us that, “In all her miserable

experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense” (86-7). From within

the sphere, Hester can see across boundaries that transfix the rest of the world. Hester’s scarlet

letter gives her the freedom while she is enclosed within her sphere to speculate on matters that

others would not dare. Hester hovers between worlds, not able to be part of an earthly sphere or

a heavenly realm. Hester has a vision that the Puritans do not possess. She has a sense of the

plight of others whose hidden sins trap them in this repressive community. Hester begins to lose

faith in those around her, and “Such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin” (87).

The folly of the world in which she lives and those within its walls is Hester’s vision of the

world as she moves through it alone.

Mircea Eliade says, “A boundary situation is one which man discovers in becoming

conscious of his place in the universe […]” (Neumann 77). Boundaries are drawn by us to

shelter ourselves from the outside world and those things we cannot see. If we are to move

beyond these boundaries and move deeper within our own consciousness, we must face our

borders. In searching for the unity of opposites, one needs to confront one’s boundaries.

Hawthorne’s characters cross boundaries as they move to establish a relationship or experience

something outside their known world.

The power within the magic sphere not only allows Hester to cross boundaries and feel

sympathy toward others, but it can strengthen and energize those outside the sphere. Nowhere is

this more evident than during the forest scene where Hester meets Arthur Dimmesdale. Long

suffering under the code of banishment and loneliness inflicted upon her, she has managed to

subdue some of the power that smolders within: “All the light and graceful foliage of her

character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a

bare and harsh outline […]” (163). Hester represses feeling and replaces this feeling with

thought as she wanders through her existence, looking for answers to questions that most people

never ask. And so

The world’s law was no law for her mind.[…] She assumed a freedom of

speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our

forefathers, had they known of it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that

stigmatized by the scarlet letter. (164)

It is in Hester’s mind that these thoughts dwell in this Puritan community. Hester is already

removed from the community and is free to entertain thoughts that would frighten a member of

the society with their boldness. But Hester is no longer a member of the society in which she

dwells. Her transgression, which has brought so much pain to Hester’s life, has also opened a

door for ideas and speculation. Hester cannot be hurt further by the outcome of such bold, new

ideas. She experiences an inner freedom though outwardly she is still constrained by the scarlet

letter. Hawthorne is aware of the power and the strength of the feminine nature.

However, Hester Prynne wanders in her moral wilderness despite her power and strength.

When she talks to Chillingworth, she cries, “There is no good for him,-- no good for me, -- no

good for thee! There is no good for little Pearl! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal

maze” (173). Hester is in a sphere, neither of the earthly world nor a part of the spiritual realm,

which allows for the contemplative thoughts in which she engages. Pearl, too, stays within her

mother’s sphere as her companion.

Hester and Pearl enter the forest together to await Dimmesdale. Again, Hawthorne

emphasizes the moral wilderness of Hester Prynne. The narrow path into the forest “[…] imaged

not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering” (183). The forest is

dark and gloomy, a place in nature where anything can happen. The forest is outside the

boundaries of Puritan society. In this romantic space, transformation can occur. One leaves

behind what one knows to be reality. The categories of the society on the other side of the

boundary do not fit into the world of the forest.

Hawthorne uses sunshine imagery with both Pearl and Hester throughout the Scarlet

Letter but its importance is greatest in the chapters of the forest with Hester, Pearl, and

Dimmesdale. When Hester and Pearl enter the forest, they see patches of sunlight amid the

darkness of the shadows that prevail. Pearl laughs and says, “The sunshine does not love you”

(183). Pearl runs after the sunshine and it allows her to stand in its glow. Pearl seems to

“actually catch the sunshine” (183). Hawthorne says the sun delights in the energy of the child,

reflecting as well her constant movement and sense of joy and play. Hester, too, reaches for the

sunshine and, “[…] as she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished” (184). Hester senses that

the sun does not actually disappear but rather “[…] the child has absorbed it into herself” (184).

Hawthorne connects Pearl to nature while showing Hester’s estrangement from the side of light

that exists in nature. Hester contemplates Pearl’s dynamic personality: “There was no other

attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigor in Pearl’s

nature as this never-failing vivacity of spirits; she had not the disease of sadness […]” (184).

Jung says that “Day and light are synonyms for consciousness, night and dark for the

unconscious. […] Hence the “child” distinguishes itself by deeds which point to the conquest of

the dark” (Essays on a Science of Mythology 86). Pearl is the bringer of light, the consciousness

that can unite both Hester and Dimmesdale.

Hester has her moment in the sun when she and Dimmesdale make plans to leave

together. In the forest, Hester removes the scarlet letter, takes off her cap and her wild nature,

the feminine side that she has repressed for the past seven years, presents itself in full force.

Hawthorne puts Hester into the realm of sunshine as he writes, “All at once, as with a sudden

smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, […]”

(202-3). Hester’s nature now matches that of the forest and nature itself. Hawthorne is intent on

connecting the wild nature of man to the wild forces around him. We read, “Such was the

sympathy of Nature—that wild heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor

illumined by higher truth—with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born, or

aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create a sunshine […]” (203). Nature’s laws

operate in a world of their own. Man’s attempts to control nature, whether within himself or the

outside forces that surround the world, will meet with failure. The unconscious within, the dark

forces of man, seek the light.

Hester and Dimmesdale inhabit a sphere in the forest that does not include Pearl. As they

clasped hands “They now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere” (190). After

they make plans to run away together, Hester tries to bring Pearl back into their sphere. Pearl

will not join her mother with Dimmesdale. Still bright with sun they call Pearl to join them, but

“Hester felt herself, […] estranged from Pearl; as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the

forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together […]” (208).

Hawthorne puts the fault for the separation with Hester and writes:

[…] the child and the mother were estranged, but through Hester’s fault, not

Pearl’s. […] another inmate had been admitted within the circle of her mother’s

feelings and so modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer,

could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where she was. (208)

Hester has separated, mentally and physically, from Pearl by throwing off the scarlet letter and

standing with Dimmesdale. Hester is invigorated with her sense of freedom from the

consciousness of her actions and thinks she can bring Pearl back into her sphere. But Jung says,

“[…] the conscious mind knows nothing beyond the opposites and, as a result, has no knowledge

of the thing that unites them” (87). However, Hester’s action of throwing off the scarlet letter is

the same as casting off Pearl. Pearl and the scarlet letter are much the same as they represent

wild nature in man. Pearl demands to be accepted, but with a conscious acceptance by Hester of

her actions. Taking off the scarlet letter and refusing to wear it condemns her actions just as

much as the rest of the town that insist she wear this symbol. Dimmesdale must enter the sphere

with Hester and Pearl. He must join the two as only he can complete the circle. But he must join

through an acknowledgement of his feminine side, the unconscious side that seeks the light.

Pearl refuses to accept Dimmesdale when her mother asks her to love him and greet him. As

Pearl looks at him, he still has his hand over his heart, unwilling to face his guilt, feeling

ashamed of his part in the situation in which they find themselves. He is unable to acknowledge

Pearl. Pearl awaits Dimmesdale’s ability to openly accept her and her mother. When

Dimmesdale departs, Pearl once again joins her mother in her sphere: “[…] -- now that the

intrusive third person was gone, -- and taking her old place by her mother’s side” (214).

The sphere which Hester inhabits encapsulates the power that lives within Hester. When

Hester and Arthur meet and begin to talk in the forest, the reader finds that the feminine essence

within Hester has not been lost, only repressed. Hawthorne hints at this when he writes, “She

who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if

there were only the magic touch to effect the transformation” (164). Dimmesdale touches

Hester. The power that is contained within the sphere is unleashed and its entire force engulfs

Dimmesdale. The author writes, “Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester’s face with a look in

which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her

boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak” (199). The power

does illicit fear. Hester takes off the scarlet letter, lets down her hair, and “Her sex, her youth,

and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and

clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic

circle of this hour” (202). This is the force so feared by the Puritan community. The world will

no longer be the same if this force is allowed freedom.

Dimmesdale gains strength from this feminine power, finding the courage to accept his

need for the feminine. Dimmesdale looks at Hester and says:

‘Do I feel joy again? […] Methought the germ of it was dead in me! O Hester,

thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself—sick, sin-stained, and

sorrow-blackened—down upon these forest-leaves, and to have risen up all made

anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful? This is

already the better life! Why did we not find it sooner?’ (201-2)

Now Dimmesdale can acknowledge the wild side of feminine nature that cannot be repressed

forever.

But the Puritans were right about the ramifications of the disorder inherent in the

feminine nature. Chaos ensues. Dimmesdale returns to the community a changed man. We

read, “The minister’s own will, and Hester’s will, and the fate that grew between them, had

wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore; but the same minister returned

not from the forest” (217). The power within the sphere has done its work. The minister

experiences a transformation as he is filled with the energy of life. Dimmesdale dares to

acknowledge feelings that he would not typically allow himself to be conscious of. Tempted to

wickedness throughout the next four days, Dimmesdale uses his strength to subdue his

temptations. But Hawthorne writes, “That self was gone! Another man had returned out of the

forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former

never could have reached” (223).

This wiser man is empowered by the strength of the feminine. He burns the old sermon

he had been preparing, making way for a new sermon. This new speech touches the Puritan

spirit. After giving this sermon, Dimmesdale climbs upon the scaffold to acknowledge his sin

and Pearl as his daughter. With this confession, Dimmesdale joins Hester and Pearl within the

sphere. Hawthorne writes, “Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. […] Towards her mother,

too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled” (256).

Hester Prynne’s power is real and dangerous to the Puritan way of life. Her magical

sphere allows her to cross boundaries and enter into a special communion with others and with

nature. Hester’s femininity represents everything the Puritans want to repress; therefore, Hester

is isolated, her special radiance enclosed within the circle. The feminine side of nature, with its

chaos and disorder, would disrupt the Puritan idea of order, severity and a joyless existence. In

The Scarlet Letter, Hester is no longer part of the earthly world. The humiliation she endures,

and the pain of her sin remove her from earthly society and cast her into a magical sphere. From

within the circle, Hester is alienated from the world she knows and enters into a world of

contemplation and thought. This world is unreachable by those who a claim a space within the

Puritan society, closed to those whose identity is set. Hester is no longer part of the Puritan

civilization. She transcends her old identity and searches for a new identity in the moral

wilderness where she now resides.

The Puritans in The Scarlet Letter fear the path to individuation, the path to personal

growth and self-knowledge. This basic fear of life denies one the joy that comes from wholeness

and an acceptance of both sides of one’s nature. Fear is a natural companion to the unknown and

the loss of control that comes with accepting the call to the unconscious. In man’s struggle for

freedom, delving deeper and deeper into the unconscious is a necessary step. In The Symbolic

Quest, we read, “Freedom seems to lie in the capacity for conscious choice” (Whitmont 90), and

“Without consciousness of one’s potentials, limitations and necessities, freedom is a fancy

concept” (Whitmont 91). This is the struggle for man in the nineteenth century. Freedom will

inevitably come to those who can accept themselves and complete the circle.

CHAPTER 5

PEARL: THE POTENTIAL FOR WHOLENESS

“The ‘child’ is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time divinely powerful; the

insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal end.”

C. G. Jung

Hawthorne gives us Pearl as a powerful symbol of nature in The Scarlet Letter. She is at

once a child of darkness and a child of light. She is troubling from the beginning, springing from

the reader’s knowledge of and identification with a normal, human child. Yet Hawthorne

describes an elf-like creature who seems more at home in nature with the natural world as her

playmate than in the Puritan world of human beings in which she lives. Pearl moves across the

boundaries between the community and the forest freely, alone and isolated along with her

mother. Both occupy a sphere, separated from others as they hover between worlds. Hester and

Pearl are neither earthly creatures nor heavenly spirits; they are incomplete and searching for

wholeness. Hawthorne tells us that “Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world” (93).

Children in the nineteenth century are often thought of in the realm of innocence and

light. Emerson and Thoreau write of children’s qualities and their childish innocence. In

Walden, Thoreau says, “Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly

than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by

failure” (Walden 65). These are traits they portrayed as valuable for human beings, and adults

could do no better than to try to recapture these qualities. Children are the picture of hope and

future, possessing an innate innocence and joy in the here and now that adults can only hope to

imitate.

In The Scarlet Letter, children represent the future, but it is a future destined to be fraught

with the same problems as the past. Hester “[…] saw the children of the settlement […]

disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at

going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the

Indians” (94). The Puritan children mirror the fears and prejudices of their parents. Hawthorne

calls the children “those somber little urchins” (90). The children mock both Hester and Pearl

and, while Hester ignores their actions, Pearl is enraged and does not accept their behavior

calmly. Hawthorne writes:

But Pearl, […] after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with

a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies,

and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant

pestilence,--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment,--

whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. (102-3)

Pearl smiles after this scene as she continues to walk along the path with her mother. The

difference is inherent here, as well as in Hawthorne’s other characters, between appearance and

reality. Hawthorne makes the distinction quite clearly when he says “The truth was, that the

little Puritans, [were] the most intolerant brood that ever lived,” (94). This picture of children,

especially from a group so religious in its outward manifestation of Godliness and Christian

charity, is completely at odds with Thoreau or Emerson’s view of the nature of the child. The

nature of the Puritan child appears to be quite without sin, striving to be holy and accepted by

God. The reality is that these children are judgmental, unfeeling and uncharitable in their

actions, often mirroring the behavior of the adults that serve as their spiritual guides through life.

Their feelings of superiority which their religion gives them, along with their closeness to God,

allows, in their minds, for such behavior as this. When the children see Hester and Pearl, they

say, “ Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!” (102). Pearl instinctively knows this

behavior exhibited by the children is wrong and she fights back.

Pearl, too, represents hope in The Scarlet Letter. It is through Pearl that Dimmesdale

and Hester’s conflict can be resolved. Pearl is an ethereal presence, a symbol of what Hester and

Dimmesdale lack. Hawthorne tells us that “[…] Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting

link between those two” (154). She can unite the opposites.

Pearl is described by the author in various ways. Sometimes she is compared to a demon,

an elf, or a witch-child. Almost always, she is other-worldly and not human. Pearl is a

combination of Hester’s anger and Dimmesdale’s guilt.

The name “Pearl” reflects the idea that the child is a treasure, her mother’s jewel. We

read, “ But she named the infant ‘Pearl,’ as being of great price,--purchased with all she had,--her

mother’s only treasure” (89). This reference to the Christian Bible and a passage in Matthew,

reflects the dichotomy of the situation. Hawthorne goes on to explain that this beautiful gem is

the gift of God for a sin committed by the mother. Pearl is Hester’s “ sole treasure, whom she

had bought so dear, and who was all her world” (97). The irony of the situation is that Pearl is

the real treasure, a spiritual treasure, while Hester’s virtue is a treasure of merely human

proportions.

Hester’s situation when Pearl is born is quite desperate. With Pearl in her arms, Hester

climbs the scaffold steps to stand alone. Thinking of a time more pleasant than her current

circumstance, Hester disassociates herself from the reality of the present and its torture on the

scaffold. She thinks of her childhood: “Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial,

passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her

maiden years, came swarming back upon her” (57). Hester returns to her childlike state of

unconsciousness. Once here, Hester refuses to name the father of her child because of her

unconscious repression of the reality of her situation. Hester retains the hope that she and

Dimmesdale will unite, if not in this world then in the next, the reality of which is not possible.

The present reality is too much for this young woman to bear. Hester has no spiritual guide to

complete her circle of unity and help her to become whole. Pearl is incomplete without a father.

Both Hester and Pearl are lost and alone.

When considering the child archetype, we discover a link to Pearl. The “child hero” is

semi-divine, half human and half divine. The appearance of the child, the “third thing of an

irrational nature” heralds the meeting of opposites. Jung says that “ […] the ‘child’ distinguishes

itself by deeds which point to the conquest of the dark.” (86). As the child enters the world in its

unconscious realm:

Nothing in all the world welcomes this new birth, although it is the most

precious fruit of Mother Nature herself, the most pregnant with the future,

signifying a higher stage of self-realization. That is why Nature, the world of

instincts, takes the “child” under its wing: it is nourished or protected by animals.

(Jung 87)

Pearl is this “child” in The Scarlet Letter. She is at home in nature and with her mother, but not

with the other inhabitants of this rude civilization.

Pearl as a symbol of nature is quite detailed throughout the story. Her wild, fiery nature

is as unruly as her mother’s and the Puritans fear her as they fear Hester. Pearl’s radiance, too,

indicates a strength that is inherent, even in a small child. Hawthorne writes, “[…] there was an

absolute circle of radiance around her, on the darksome cottage-floor” (90). In the forest, Pearl

picks wild berries to eat and plays with the wild animals. The wildness in the child is nourished

by the wildness in nature. Pearl adorns herself with the beautiful and colorful wildflowers and

greenery of nature as she plays: “Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on

her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother’s. A letter, -the

letter A, -but freshly green, instead of scarlet!” (178). Pearl visibly transforms the scarlet letter

worn by her mother to a symbol of nature and, by wearing it on her own bosom, provides the

connection for Hester to see. But Hester does not link the two. Pearl’s instincts govern her

actions; she is not to be disciplined by outward notions or man’s world and its laws. Pearl gives

way to a higher authority in her nature, ruled by instincts and an inner sense of a momentary

judgment. Her high spirits are alien in Hawthorne’s depiction of a somber world ruled by a

repression of all that is natural, instinctive and pleasurable.

Hester, therefore, questions Pearl’s organic, flesh and blood nature for she is acutely

aware, at times, of the play of opposites within the child. Hester recalls a look that Pearl takes on

that her mother finds troubling. We read that “It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so

perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that

Hester can not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl was a human child” (92). Over

and over Hawthorne refers to Pearl as “an airy sprite”; she often seems to be “hovering in the

air.” She is “the little elf,” quite at home in the world of nature and its surroundings.

In Pearl, Hawthorne gives us a child with certain child-like attributes, then hints

throughout the story that Pearl is no ordinary child. The author describes Pearl as beautiful, in a

manner reminiscent of the way he describes Hester. Her beauty is dark, vivid, intense and

“There was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a

passionate moment” (101). And that is, of course, exactly what Pearl was. Hawthorne goes on

to describe the way Hester views Pearl as she works diligently to “[…] create an analogy

between the object of her affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture” (102). He writes,

“But, in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as the other” (102). Pearl is both guilt and affection for

Hester.

Pearl is otherworldly. Hawthorne’s descriptions leave the reader unable to question this

preternatural picture of Pearl. Pearl brings with her disorder and disruption of the natural order

of things everywhere she goes. Her very wildness and adherence to her instinctive, natural

desires is the Dionysian influence at work in The Scarlet Letter. The child is born from the

disruption of the natural order of the Puritan community. Yet Pearl is also symbolic of the

potential for wholeness or for completeness. The child is seen as the potential for the future. In

speaking of the child, Jung writes, “As bringers of light, that is, enlargers of consciousness, they

overcome darkness, which is to say that they overcome the earlier unconscious state” (Essays

88). Life moves toward a cycle of renewal and rebirth, constantly in flux as it changes to meet

the demands of the individual. Pearl is symbolic of psychic wholeness. The child, says Jung

“[…] is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; of

ways and possibilities of which our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing; a wholeness

which embraces the very depths of Nature” (89). The child is instinctual, as Hawthorne shows

us in Pearl. Pearl obeys the laws of nature both without and within.

When humans are born, they enter into the world in a state of unconsciousness and move

through life toward a state of consciousness. As one ages, one moves slowly back toward a state

of child-like passivity, toward a state of unconsciousness once again. Therefore, the child is

representative of both the pre-consciousness and the post-consciousness that exists within man

(Essays). This is the movement toward the completeness of the circle and Pearl is the answer for

the completeness which Hester and Dimmesdale are missing in The Scarlet Letter.

Carl Jung says that “The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of

all that lives” (Essays 96). Pearl comes from the dark unconsciousness of the beginning, the

origins of life. When Hester looks at Pearl, she sees the dark side of her nature staring her in the

face. This is difficult for Hester to accept. When Pearl looks into the stream or pool of water,

she can see her reflection: “[…] she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by

the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in” (168). Hawthorne writes of Pearl’s

reflection as though a separate being looks out from beneath the pool of water. We read, “But

the visionary little maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say, -- ‘This is a better place!

Come thou into the pool!’” (168). Pearl joins her reflection in the water. Pearl is divided and

we see her consciousness and unconsciousness reflected in the water. Again, at the brook in the

forest, “ […] so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the

brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but

more refined and spiritualized than the reality” (208). In the brook beneath stood another child, -

- another and the same,-- with likewise its ray of golden light” (208).

Hawthorne shows us this paradox throughout The Scarlet Letter as he illustrates the idea

of the two sides of Pearl’s nature. The idea of another side to Pearl is revealed in the text.

Hester, upon looking into her daughter’s eyes expecting to see her own image mirrored there,

was surprised with a different image: “[…] she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature

portrait, but another face in the small black mirror of Pearl’s eye” (97). Pearl is a symbol of

unity, but she is not whole. Hawthorne tells us, “ […] And Pearl was the oneness of their being”

(206-7). Jung says, “Wholeness consists in the union of the conscious and the unconscious

personality” (Essays 94). Hester, however, cannot see her reflection because she is not united

with her own unconscious. When Hester visits the Governor’s hall, she looks into a mirror, but

does not see her own reflection: “[…] the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and

gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth,

she seemed absolutely hidden behind it” (106). Pearl once again seems to embody another spirit

with a look reflected in the mirror of mischief at her mother’s puzzled expression. Hester feels

that “[…] it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould

itself into Pearl’s shape” (106). The split in Pearl, her consciousness and her unconsciousness, is

apparent to the reader.

Dimmesdale does not accept Pearl, for she is a product of his unconscious nature as well.

This symbol of feminine wholeness, this disruptive, instinctual natural force is representative of

the potential for wholeness, for “cyclic” completeness. To return to one’s origins, to accept both

sides of oneself, is to achieve wholeness. This is both Dimmesdale’s and Hester’s struggle and

they continue to repress this natural essence in their lives.

Pearl is Hester’s constant companion and a continual reminder of the wild nature that is

part of them. Pearl demands acceptance as she is. She will not adhere to rules that are outside

her realm and part of man’s world. Hester wants to accept Pearl as a human child but the forces

of nature that are so much a part of Pearl’s character are frightening and do not seem human at

all. The scarlet letter has been branded onto Hester as a symbol of her dark side, but Hester, the

artist, remolds and reshapes the letter so that it does not look evil or hideous. Of this letter,

Hawthorne writes, “It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous

luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which

she wore” (53). The scarlet letter is remade into a beautiful, vibrant accessory which adorns

Hester’s breast as a symbol of artistry and life. Pearl is analogous with this symbol. Yet Hester

cannot remold or reshape Pearl. She demands to be acknowledged by both Hester and

Dimmesdale. Here we see that, “ […] the primordial idea has become a symbol of the creative

union of opposites, a ‘uniting symbol’ in the literal sense” (Essays 93). In The Scarlet Letter,

Pearl is the uniting symbol and, though a “mere child,” is also divine. Thus we see the

discrepancy in her character and the two sides, her reflection, in nature.

Dimmesdale finally acknowledges Pearl in the last scaffold scene just before he dies.

This acknowledgement gives Pearl a human identity and allows her to complete the cycle of

wholeness. Pearl can now live as a human being in the world. Therefore, there is no longer the

sense of abandonment that Pearl has felt since birth. Dimmesdale’s acceptance of this side of

himself, as represented by Pearl, is a representation of the acceptance of the feminine side. The

strength for this acceptance comes after his meeting in the forest with Hester. This is where he

gets the strength for the last sermon, a sermon that bespeaks genuine emotion because it comes

from the heart not from the head alone. This provokes genuine emotion in those who hear it. It

is not the words from his lips that translate his message, but the feelings and emotions that

accompany these words. This is why Hester can understand the sermon even though she cannot

discern the words. It is an acknowledgement and acceptance of those things one cannot explain

that make their mark on humanity and its culture. One side, alone, cannot properly govern the

self. It is the balance of nature, the balance of opposites as recognized in the idea of man and

woman, male and female, that is necessary for a successful life.

Pearl completes the circle. She is the origin and, as a recognition of this origin takes

place, Pearl is made whole. The primordial child, the unconscious beginning, has united the

opposites — Hester and Dimmesdale. The individuation process continues.

Not only is Pearl potential for Hester and Dimmesdale, she also represents potential for

the Puritan community as a whole. As the “child,” Pearl emerges from the darkness, from the

depths below. She moves from the sea to land and begins the search for consciousness. If she

can be recognized and accepted, she can unite the dark with the light, consciousness with

unconsciousness. Jung says, “The ‘child’ is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten

out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of living Nature herself. It is a personification of

vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind;…a wholeness which embraces

the very depths of Nature” (Essays 89). Pearl’s wild nature is mentioned often by Hawthorne.

When Pearl and Hester enter the “primeval forest” to wait for Dimmesdale, Hawthorne writes,

“Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as

mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the

little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course” (186-7). Pearl’s life

comes from below, and she is happy with this knowledge. She finds the forest alive, filled with

her true playmates and it seems “[…] that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it

nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child” (204-5). In reading about the

primordial child, we learn from Jung that the Child that appears in this situation is an isolated

being: “That is why nature, the world of the instincts, takes the ‘child’ under its wing: it is

nourished or protected by animals” (Essays 87). Pearl’s nature is not of this world but from the

world of instincts. Pearl is truly at home in this primeval wilderness. And, with Hester and

Dimmesdale watching, Pearl approaches: “In her was visible the tie that united them” (206).

Hawthorne makes it clear to the reader that Pearl is the answer for unity for both Hester and

Dimmesdale.

Hawthorne’s Puritans consistently repress from their very being all aspects of the

feminine in the form of nature and human instinct, resulting in a culture barren and void of

feeling, warmth, and beauty. Their unmitigated fear of instinctual human nature has left the

Puritans wandering and empty, avoiding all aspects of that which is part of an unknown world.

The world these Puritans inhabit continues to be dominated by opposites which they cannot see

as part of a whole. If they can accept Pearl and see, through her the unity of opposites as a

possibility, their world can encompass the dark as well as the light, the feminine as well as the

masculine, and a degree of consciousness never before approached. The repression of the

feminine has caused a culture to be fragmented and broken, its members bereft of the energy of

life. Hawthorne gives his reader the answer with Pearl.

CHAPTER 6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE FEMININE: DIMMESDALE AND HESTER ACHIEVE

FULFILLMENT

“Identity does not make consciousness possible; it is only separation, detachment, and agonizing

confrontation through opposition that produce consciousness and insight.”

C. G. Jung

When Arthur Dimmesdale leaves the forest, a transformation occurs. Hester has given

him the strength to face the feminine side of himself that has been hidden for so long.

Dimmesdale finds himself wanting to participate in deviant behavior. The desire to shock those

who are still locked behind the doors of their institutions and imprisoned by their guilt are targets

for the unseemly desires of this Puritan minister. He meets with a deacon and “ […] it was only

by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous

suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion-supper” (218). Dimmesdale has a

desire to “ […] stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little

Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk” (220). Upon

encountering a ‘maid newly won’ to the church, Dimmesdale “ […] felt potent to blight all the

field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word” (220).

The feelings that Dimmesdale has been repressing are working their way into his consciousness,

forcing him to deal with unbidden desires. The Dionysian side of Dimmesdale’s consciousness

appears at last, and along with it, the freedom to experience the feelings he has so long denied.

Experiencing these feelings brings about a realization of the possibilities of life. An

ecstasy of emotion envelopes Dimmesdale as he slowly moves to acknowledge the unconscious

realm of his mind. Myth is about the borderline where we move from living unconsciously to

living consciously. Dimmesdale is moving across that border. The breakdown of order as he

knows it is taking place. The patriarchal order is being called into question as this repressed side

moves to the front of his consciousness along with a disruption of the institutions that

Dimmesdale is clinging to. Upon his arrival home, Dimmesdale looks around: “There was the

Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God’s voice

through all!” (223). Dionysus will not allow the word, the old order, to stand as before. This

disruption of the accepted forms of Christianity by a Pagan culture has been accomplished.

Things have changed. Dimmesdale burns the pages of the sermon he had written earlier and

begins to write a sermon with “ […] an impulsive flow of thought and emotion […]” (225).

Dimmesdale’s power in the Puritan culture has come from his use of oratory. The word is a

powerful tool in this society. Dimmesdale’s words have been coming from an intellectual side of

himself that, though knowledgeable and impressive, is void of sincere feeling and emotion. This

keeps him disconnected from his inner self and from those around him. The repression of the

feminine was as much a part of Arthur Dimmesdale’s existence as it was the Puritan’s. Without

the feminine element in his life, Dimmesdale is lost, wandering in a world that is false, void of

feeling and void of life. Understanding and accepting the paradox of masculine and feminine

forms as necessary leads to an understanding of the reality of living.

In the mythological world, Dionysus is the god of paradox. Born of a mortal mother,

Semele, and an immortal father, Zeus, Dionysus is half human and half divine. Therefore,

Dionysus is the god of tragic contrasts. He is the god of both joy and terror, life and death (Otto

186). This is the paradox of Dimmesdale’s life and his desire to repress rather than accept that

side of himself that was not acceptable to society. When Dimmesdale and Hester sit in the forest

shade, they sit not only in the shade of nature but in the shade of the underworld. Dionysus is

part of the wild, unconscious nature that is at once beautiful and deadly (Otto 186). Dimmesdale

connects to this feminine underworld and is frightened at the feelings that ensue. He loses

control, coming out of the sheltered world he has wrapped himself in for the last few years. As

Dimmesdale opens up, he must face the forces that are not outside but within himself. Dionysus,

the god of confrontations, insists on this awareness. Dionysus is not distant, as is Dimmesdale.

All the old categories fall apart, making room for new ones. Good and bad merge into one and

the minister begins putting himself back together again, but this time the pieces are in a different

configuration, this time unifying both sides of himself.

Nineteenth-century America is not comfortable when dealing with Dionysus. Emerson

and Thoreau are far more comfortable with the Apollonian side of man’s nature where control,

order, and distance are the categories that exist. Thoreau is not comfortable with the feminine

side of himself, looking to nature for structure and balance rather than a wild, undiminished

freedom. The freedoms gained by the New World begin to look for structure and the desire for

control rears its ugly head. Hawthorne fictionalizes a patriarchal culture with somewhat

exaggerated forms to make clear what is often hidden beneath the surface. Women are

dangerous since they represent so many things this patriarchal culture hopes to conquer.

Understanding Dionysus is about understanding the force of life and its inherent disruption of the

control of the life this society so desperately desires. This connection to life, and the power

inherent in it, is life at its very best. This is the experience of living with all the power at one’s

command. This power was determined to be an evil power at the beginning of a monotheistic

culture. Dionysus, the dark twin of light, “ […] representing dissolution, transformation, the

nonrational, and the destructively violent aspect of the Yang, is demonized, rejected, and

repressed. The Dionysian night side of existence—ecstasy, passion, death and rebirth—is

gradually relegated to the sinister […] ( Whitmont, Return 61). But the dark side of man’s

nature, death and suffering, cannot be denied. To achieve wholeness one must be ready to accept

all these things. That also means accepting the responsibility for dealing with them as part of the

natural order of things. When Dimmesdale meets with Hester and Pearl in the forest the energy

of their meeting, the power of the feminine reinvigorates him and fills him with the sense of

being alive. He experiences both joy and terror, joy at his strength and forcefulness and terror of

the emotions he must now acknowledge and accept responsibility for.

The old order and structure of the society that Dimmesdale has held sacred dissolves in

the forest. The opposites, Hester and Dimmesdale, have come together and the energy this

meeting creates infuses Dimmesdale’s physical as well as mental state. Chaos reigns supreme

and Dimmesdale accepts the wild impulses, so long denied, that take over his normally

controlled self: “At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other,

with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself yet growing

out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse” (217). The minister meets his

shadow, that part of himself he has been taught by his culture to repress. Dimmesdale finds

himself in cloaca, a metaphor for the internal mythological world. In this messy, dark place,

Dimmesdale feels helpless; yet this is where he must go if there is any hope for him in his search

for truth. Dimmesdale must confront and learn to live with who he really is, not just who he

thinks he is supposed to be. This confrontation includes dealing with his dark side, his shadow,

and the things within himself that society has labeled evil. Dimmesdale submits his ego by

leaving what he knows and what he is to submit to those things he thinks he is not or should not

be. The minister goes beyond what has previously been his reality to a reality closer to the truth

of what actually is. Here, social order does not exist as Dimmesdale knows it, and all the old

categories fall away. They do not fit the new ideas that spring up. Life reconfigures itself into a

new pattern of consciousness.

This is what happens when the unconscious finally becomes aware of the other side of

itself, the shadow that has developed into a sense of the twoness, or duality, of the individual. In

The Symbolic Quest, Whitmont quotes Jung, “[…] everything in the unconscious seeks outward

manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to

experience itself as a whole” (84). Dimmesdale can no longer feel as he once did. He has faced

his unconsciousness and the two have merged into one: “He seemed to stand apart, and eye this

former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone! Another man

had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the

simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!” (223). Yet,

it is knowledge. Dimmesdale has reached a depth of understanding that his energy from the

forest has allowed him to face and to comprehend. No longer paralyzed by the guilt that has

been his constant companion for the last seven years, Dimmesdale proceeds to make conscious

choices. The confrontational Dionysus was to be denied no longer! Whitmont says that often,

“When we confront myth – the mythical (archetypal) core of our complexes – we confront the

ultimate border line of our place in transcendental meaningfulness… . But the myth must be

confronted with a full realization of its import in terms of personal impasses and problems; only

then is there a channel for the new flow of life” (84). This channel is Dimmesdale’s oratory and

the “new flow of life” is the energy that flows throughout his being as he is finally able to go

beyond all the old ideas and societal regulations and connect to others purely through his

emotions.

The hero’s quest is about submission to a higher power, giving up control, and gaining a

wholeness that allows one to experience life with all its incumbent joys and terrors. The comic

vision, the acceptance that anything can happen at anytime, helps one get through the impending

tragedies. It is the paradox and the contrasts that give us the energy to let one experience life

rather than just “be alive.” The difference may seem small, but it is significant. It is the

difference between life and death. Dimmesdale experiences life when he leaves the forest. The

rules have changed, old ones no longer apply. Dimmesdale is a new man, whole and complete in

his final days.

To try to exclude the paradoxical nature of life is, in essence, to try to exclude death. The

opposites exist as part of the whole and to understand this is to accept the dark side of nature and

man’s path toward self-actualization. Along with this acceptance comes a responsibility for

one’s actions. No longer can we blame someone else , plead ignorance, or put forth the familiar,

“ I don’t know why I did that.” To be fully conscious is to “know,” to be fully awake and to take

responsibility for all sides of one’s nature. To be conscious is to live deliberately. To repress the

feminine side of oneself is to insure an unbalanced approach to life and one that is, eventually,

destructive.

As a new man, the forces of life stir frantically within Dimmesdale and he experiences a

passion that he has seldom, if ever, known. Dimmesdale now eats “with ravenous appetite”

(225). He begins another sermon, “[…] flinging the already written pages of the Election

Sermon into the fire” (225). Everything about him, as well as the action he takes, is alive with

energy and forcefulness. The physical movements of his body as well as the inner movements of

his mind reflect this change. Dionysian energy flows throughout Dimmesdale’s body, bringing

his spirit to life where it has been so long repressed. Dimmesdale is free both in mind and body.

The iron bars of his religion that support him crumble and he stands, alone and frightened, but

with an energy he has not possessed before.

In her book The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career, Nina Baym successfully illuminates many

relevant aspects of The Scarlet Letter. However, a shift of emphasis may help to further clarify

some thoughts within the text. Baym writes that Dimmesdale, “[…] cannot sustain the posture

of defiance once Hester’s support has been removed and he is back in the community. He

reverts—rather quickly—to the view that society has the right to judge and therefore that its

judgment is right” (129). Dimmesdale does not lose his courage nor does he revert to his old

ways of looking at the world. Indeed, he looks at himself as though he were a new man and

looks at the old self with scorn. Rather than reverting, Dimmesdale moves forward and

transcends the boundaries that have plagued his growth. The strength from Hester, from the

feminine in the forest, is absorbed by Dimmesdale as this strength becomes his own. A light

dawns on the dark unconscious and he is now aware of the possibility, as well as the necessity, of

bringing this side of man’s nature into the light. Life is no longer about guilt and repression,

categorizing those things we do not understand. Dimmesdale is effectively able to move beyond

these rusty ideas into a new realm of consciousness. He is not exhibiting a posture of defiance

but one of acceptance and renewal which encompasses the dark side of man’s nature. Baym

later says that, “ The aftermath of the forest scene breaks his will to resist, convincing him that

he is as evil as he had feared” (140). The minister has a breakthrough at this point, able to

acknowledge his desires and actually resisting temptation as he walks home. If Dimmesdale sees

himself as evil, it is an evil that is a vital part of life, a vital part of the nature of man to the

experience of living. By acknowledging the existence of these feelings, Dimmesdale participates

in life, and experiences the thrill of life. Rather than guilt and sin, Dimmesdale finds truth and

reality. He will later aid Hester in her search for both.

As Dimmesdale works on his new sermon, he lets his impulses flow onto the paper and

“he fancied himself inspired” (225). When Dimmesdale has written with a spiritual voice before,

he has not been satisfied with the results. The minister is now truly inspired, not by what comes

from above, but by the energy that comes from below, the energy that manifests itself in the

forest through Hester Prynne. Hawthorne writes, “The night fled away, as if it were a winged

steed, and he careering on it” (225). This image of the “winged steed” reminds the reader of

Pegasus, the horse with wings that flies man toward the heavens. Man rides him, thus

conquering or subduing the power of the horse. But this power that careers through the night,

this wild, indomitable frenzy, is not the spirit of heaven, but the spirit from below. Dimmesdale

fancies himself inspired by God. This Dionysian spirit “ […] is the world of embodied raw

nature, of desire and of passion in its double aspect of rapture and suffering. It expresses the

primacy of longing, lustfulness and joyous ecstasy which includes raging violence,

destructiveness, and even the urge for self-annihilation” (Whitmont, Return 59). He writes at

night, in the darkness, and then “morning came, and peeped blushing through the curtains; and at

last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study, and laid it right across the minister’s bedazzled

eyes” (225). The sun shines on the joy-filled existence and power that has infiltrated the study of

the minister. Hawthorne’s choice of words “peeped blushing” makes one think of something

that belongs to the night, not the day. The unconscious inhabits the nightly realm, and it is the

consciousness of day that brings sunshine into the minister’s study. In his book Of Human

Freedom, F. W. J. Schelling says that “In man there exists the whole power of the principle of

darkness and, in him too, the whole force of light” (38). These two forces converge in Arthur

Dimmesdale and unite, becoming as one.

Dimmesdale’s sermon at the end of the novel is vital to The Scarlet Letter. Dimmesdale

no longer needs the words or the structure of language to communicate and touch the hearts of

others. Hester listens outside the church, unable to distinguish the words, but “Like all other

music, [the sermon] breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native

to the human heart, wherever educated” (243). The crowd that listened to the sermon agreed that

“ […] never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day”

(248). Dimmesdale transcends the old structures and finds the words that will be understood by

those who listen on a level of feeling rather than purely intellectual ideals. In his article “Ahab’s

Greatness: Prometheus as Narcissus,” Thomas Woodson discusses Ishmael’s and Ahab’s

inability to find a language to convey their thoughts. Woodson writes:

And Ishmael’s desperate search for words is really parallel to Ahab’s ‘bold and

nervous lofty language’ which, as we soon learn, has not brought him definite

knowledge of nature’s secrets […]. Ahab, addressing the captured whale’s head,

senses the inadequacy of all human language to the problem he insists on solving.

( ELH 342)

Ahab encounters frustration as he works to move beyond the confines of language and the

structure that is naturally part of the system of language. Dimmesdale struggles with this

difficulty along with Ahab and Ishmael, and it is Dimmesdale’s acceptance and incorporation of

the feminine that occurs in the forest that allows this transcendence to take place. He moves the

people by more than words. It is the rhythm and the music of the soul – genuine feelings

normally repressed by this society – that touch the listeners. This patriarchal culture represses

emotions and feelings because it can not deal with the disorder and lack of control that would

necessarily be brought about by their appearance. Man’s nature is paradoxical, both good and

evil.

Dimmesdale’s confession at the end of the novel is the culminating scene. It is with this

act that Hawthorne ties together the parts into a unitary whole. Dimmesdale walks through the

streets after his sermon and, upon reaching the scaffold, he faces Hester and Pearl: “’Hester,’

said he, ‘come hither! Come, my little Pearl!’ It was a ghastly look with which he regarded

them; but there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it” (252). Dimmesdale

proceeds to acknowledge his role in the tragedy that has caused Hester so much grief. His

remorse for his actions is genuine and sincere and Dimmesdale joins Hester and Pearl in the

magic sphere. The circle is complete and, with it, Dimmesdale’s unity of spirit. At his request:

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild

infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her

father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow,

nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too,

Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled. (256)

With this passage, Hawthorne begins to complete his circle as well. Pearl can now live as a free

woman. Her job is complete. Pearl brings Dimmesdale to the unconsciousness and makes it

conscious. She is the link of truth between Hester and Dimmesdale.

Hester becomes whole after Dimmesdale’s acknowledgement, an act that allows both

Hester Prynne and Pearl to become complete. This final acceptance gives Hester the spiritual

guidance she has needed to bring her out of the moral wilderness where she has wandered for so

long. The scarlet letter allows her to contemplate a freedom of thought that few could imagine.

But Hester’s thoughts and anger have “taught her much amiss” according to our author.

Dimmesdale gives her the spiritual guidance she needs to become whole. Hester wants to

believe that she and Dimmesdale can live together in their immortality: “’Shall we not meet

again?’ whispered she, bending her face down close to his. ‘Shall we not spend our immortal

life together? […]” (256). This is the hope Hester has clung to throughout – a hope that she must

accept will never come true. Dimmesdale tells her that they cannot be together for eternity:

“The law we broke!—the sin here so awfully revealed!—let these alone be in thy thoughts! I

fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our God,--when we violated our reverence each for

the other’s soul,--it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting

and pure reunion” (256). Hester must accept the unconscious side of herself represented by

Pearl. Hester and Dimmesdale have represented what is missing in the other and Pearl brings the

two parts together. It is in her that they are united and are one. Rather than guilt and sin, there is

life, death, and rebirth. Hester can now go forth accepting the spiritual truth of a divided self that

will not stay divided. Hester, too, must acknowledge and accept this wild nature within and the

need for guidance and discipline it elicits. She must come to terms, as Dimmesdale did, with the

reality of the scarlet letter. Campbell says that after one has come to terms with the

inappropriateness of motives, be they conscious or unconscious, which lead to “self-

aggrandizement,” this person “[…] is competent, consequently, now to enact himself the role of

the initiator, the guide, the sundoor, through whom one may pass from the infantile illusions of

‘good’ and ‘evil’ to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at

peace in the understanding of the revelation of being” (137). Dimmesdale can now act as

Hester’s spiritual guide to wholeness.

Hester does succeed in her acceptance of the past and the scarlet letter. Hester and Pearl

leave town, but years later Hester returns and places the red letter A on her breast. “She had

returned, therefore, and resumed, -- of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that

iron period would have imposed it, -- resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a

tale” (263). This return, and her resumption of wearing the scarlet letter, marks Hester’s final

triumph. The scarlet letter has changed for Hester, as well as for those who see it. It no longer

carries the meaning of the magistrates when they force her to wear it. Hester imbues it with her

own meaning. It is part of Hester, her sadness and her life, but it has lost the significance it once

had. The letter simply “is.” It is part of Hester’s past as well as her present. Hester has moved

past the meaning given by the letter to its acceptance within herself. She is no longer separated

from the community. It was to Hester that “[…] people brought all their sorrows and

perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble”

(263). Hawthorne tells us that Hester “comforted and counseled them, as best she might” (263).

Hester moves freely with an understanding and an acceptance of her life and as a guide to

others.

This completed circle of wholeness includes death as well as life. Dimmesdale dies on

the scaffold after acknowledging his relationship to Hester and Pearl. With the acceptance of the

feminine, Dimmesdale is able to accept both sides of himself, take off his mask, and submit to a

higher power. This power is a culmination of the completed circle of Hester, Pearl, and

Dimmesdale. The minister is able to integrate his shadow with his consciousness and experience

life with genuine emotion.

Dimmesdale cannot exist as before. He experiences a complete dissolution of the

categories of his society, blending both good and bad, and acknowledging the co-existence. This

completes the experience of life, including death and rebirth. Dimmesdale “has gone inward to

be born again” (Campbell 91). He transcends the old order, moving to the richness of a

complete existence, leading the way for Hester and Pearl to do the same.

CHAPTER 7

CONCLUSION

“Whatever we may do or attempt, despite the embrace and transports of love, the hunger of the

lips, we are always alone.”

Guy de Maupassant

Just as one is afraid to enter the depths of the cavern, one is also afraid to contemplate the

depths of the unconscious. Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us the reluctance of the individual to

face the unknown, while at the same time displaying the pull or the magnetic force that propels

one forward to this event. The unknown is a frightening thing that lends itself to the horrors of

the imagination. However, Joseph Campbell these fears “[…] are fiendishly fascinating too, for

they carry keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of the discovery of

the self” (Campbell 8). Probing the unconscious results in a breaking up of the old order that we

have known and building a new world, or a new self. Hawthorne’s characters often find

themselves in the midst of this drama.

Part of this dilemma of self-actualization involves the role of the feminine in the

individual and in the cultures that make up the settings of Hawthorne’s stories. In both instances,

the repression of the feminine sets the stage for problems that must be articulated and solved if

one is to live a life of wholeness as a complete person. We see these problems in Hawthorne’s

short stories that have been discussed as well as in his longer novels, especially The Scarlet

Letter. Arthur Dimmesdale is in cloaca, the depths of despair, when this story opens because he

cannot acknowledge the relevance of the feminine side of his nature. He has repressed that wild

disruptive force that eventually demands freedom. The Puritans that Hawthorne would have us

envision have also denied their need for laughter, beauty and art – things that stand in opposition

to the logic and distance they so value. The Puritans’ freedom from the confines of other’s rules

and regulations results in fear which brings with it a stern determination to erect institutions of

iron bars far stronger than any they left behind. Hawthorne uses Hester to show us the

impossibility of such a task. The power of nature that manifests itself in the feminine is far

stronger than any restrictions put on it by a patriarchal culture.

These patriarchal restrictions are an attempt to allay the forces one is uncomfortable

with. Giovanni is not comfortable with Beatrice’s sexual allure, but can only recognize her as an

idealized version of woman. He attempts to control by “fixing” what he sees as Beatrice’s

problematic nature. Beatrice, of course, dies. Aylmer, too, attempts to make Georgiana his

version of the “perfect woman” by attempting to remove what he perceives as a flaw in her

beauty. She, too, dies because of Aylmer’s need to control. A repression of the feminine is a

repression of an entire side of one’s self, of one’s own personality. The paradox of opposites

exist together, not as separate entities, but as a significant part of the complete unit of the human

species. Aylmer and Giovanni cannot accept the side of themselves that they see manifested in

the women they admire.

The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne are carefully contrived scenarios. As capable as an

artist with a paintbrush, Hawthorne composes his portraits of man’s and woman’s inner

struggles. His works are reminiscent of Vermeer, whose paintings carry with them a sense of

inner drama. Vermeer’s stark, severe figures are often engaged in a simple, everyday life that

the observer senses is anything but simple and everyday. Hawthorne, too, shows us that

outwardly simple affectations belie an inner course that may rock the foundations of those who

eventually understand what has happened. With Hawthorne, as with Vermeer, there is that sense

of expectancy – of an inner fire that just verges on the out-of-control. The mirrors in Vermeer’s

paintings and the windows his subjects often stand beside, sometimes only half open, represent

small movements on the outside but the inner core of humanity that is within the canvas swells

with the depth of feeling that moves on forward through life. Hawthorne’s figures often look in

mirrors or through windows to see reflections of either who they think they are or who they want

to be.

As they struggle to understand what they see in these reflections, the characters in

Hawthorne’s works continue the inner journey. This solitary excursion is not pleasant for it

includes “[…] death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the

passing of the forms that we have loved” (Campbell 26). That is why one undertakes the journey

and crosses the threshold into a world beyond the boundaries that surround us. This movement

involves a “leaving behind” and may be undertaken physically or mentally. The knight gets on

his horse and journeys to adventure or James Joyce leaves Ireland to write about his much-loved

Dublin. It is from this new vantage point of freedom that one can see more clearly. The blinders

of reality are cast aside and one moves to the idea of the subject, the only reality. This is truth.

Sometimes the subject carries with it all the trappings of the culture that defines it – rather, it

becomes a mere definition rather than a reality. This is not helpful in a search for truth.

Coverdale makes this journey in The Blithedale Romance. He leaves all that he knows

for a new life. One can “journey” to new places with new ideas or with a reconsideration of old

ideas. Leaving behind the vestiges of the society that determines right and wrong, acceptable

and unacceptable, all the way to what is and what is not – sometimes allows one to see truth and

reality without their mask or veil. All conscious ideas that have colored and shaped attitudes and

feelings are removed. We are left with an entire world with few, if any, paths. There are no

signs or markers telling one which way to go. A world of opposites comes into view leading one

into a sphere with no shape, form, or direction. The accompanying feeling is one of panic and

disorientation. When Coverdale arrives at the farm, he becomes ill and goes to bed for several

weeks. His world is shattered and the new forms are frightening. Coverdale needs to face a part

of himself that he has not before recognized. He wants to write poetry with depth of feeling, yet

he is not comfortable with his emotions. This time when the old order is abolished and one is

moving through unchartered territory is a terror-filled journey. When there is complete and total

destruction of all that is known and of all that holds the world in the form it is in – only when the

last bond is broken – is there freedom to rewrite, remold, and reshape our conscious world.

Joseph Campbell says that “Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the

forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible” (28).

This is what happens to Dimmesdale. In The Scarlet Letter, we see both “tragedy” and

“comedy.” When the feminine can no longer be repressed and is, instead, accepted by

Dimmesdale, his world takes on a new form. The old categories are surpassed and replaced with

new ones. Dimmesdale is filled with the joy of living, but it is a Dionysian joy. This is the

energy of life, the feminine energy from below. Dimmesdale is led by his emotions and is

reborn into a new truth, a new life.

Dimmesdale, Pearl, and Hester complete the circle of unity at the end of The Scarlet

Letter. Hawthorne closes the circle with Dimmesdale’s death, Pearl’s ability to “grow up amid

human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it,” and Hester’s

remarkable transformation (256). Dimmesdale’s confession brings about both changes. Pearl

now has a father and Hester has a spiritual guide. Pearl and Hester leave but, years later, Hester

returns. Wearing the scarlet letter, Hester crosses the threshold of her old cottage and takes up

her life in the community. But this time it is with the knowledge of the true meaning of the

scarlet letter. It is as much a part of Hester as if it had been branded on her breast. She serves as

a counselor for those in need. Hawthorne says that Hester believes, “at some brighter period,

when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be

revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of

mutual happiness” (263). For Hester, the categories of “good” and “bad” no longer exist. With

Dimmesdale and Pearl, as well as the scarlet letter, she transcends the boundaries that surround

her. Though not the one intended by the Puritan magistrates who bestowed the punishment, the

scarlet letter has done its office.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources:

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale Romance. 1852. New York: Penguin, 1986.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 1850. The Centenary Edition of the Works of

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Fredson Bowers, et al. Vol. 1. Columbus: Ohio State UP,

1962. 20 vols. 1962-1999.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Selected Tales and Sketches. 1846. Mosses From an Old Manse. New

York: Penguin, 1987.

Secondary Sources:

Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1976.

Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Office of The Scarlet Letter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,

1991.

Bickman, Martin. The Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism.

Chapel Hill: UNC P, 1980.

Brodhead, Richard H. The School of Hawthorne. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.

Brown, Gilliam. “Hawthorne’s Endangered Daughters.” Western Humanities Review 4

(1997): 327-31.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 2

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Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968.

Crews, Frederick C. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne’s Psychological Themes. New

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Crowley, J. Donald, ed. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Collection of Criticism. New York:

McGraw Hill, 1975.

Downing, Christine. The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine. New York:

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Fogle, Richard Harter. Hawthorne’s Fiction: The Light and the Dark. Norman: U of

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Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. 1845. Ed. Larry J. Reynolds. New

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Hallissy, Margaret. Venomous Woman: Fear of the Female in Literature. New York:

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Hawthorne, Julian. Hawthorne Reading: An Essay. Cleveland: Rowfant Club, 1902.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Claude M. Simpson, et al. Vol. VIII. Columbus: Ohio State

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Idol, John and Melinda Ponder, eds. Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and

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Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis. 1949. Trans. R.F.C. Hull,

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Jung, C. G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Pantheon, 1973.

Kerenyi, Carl. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Trans. Ralph

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Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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Neumann, Erich. The Origins and History of Consciousness. Princeton: Princeton UP,

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Person, Leland S. Aesthetic Headaches: Women and a Masculine Poetics in Poe,

Melville, & Hawthorne. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1988.

Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in

The Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.

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Schelling, F. W. J. Of Human Freedom. 1809. Trans. James Gutmann, Ph.D. Chicago:

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Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian

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Spiller, Robert E. The Cycle of American Literature: An Essay in Historical Criticism.

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… et al. Literary History of the U. S. 3

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Thoreau, Henry D. Walden and Resistance to Civil Government. 1854. Ed. William

Rossi. 2

ed. New York: Norton, 1992.

Whitmont, Edward C. Return of the Goddess. 1982. New York: Continuum, 1997.

---. The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology. 1969.

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Woodson, Thomas. “Ahab’s Greatness: Prometheus as Narcissus.” ELH: A Journal of

English Literary History 33 (1966): 351-69.

VITA

KATHY HAWTHORNE HALLENBECK

Personal Data: Date of Birth: July 29, 1957

Place of Birth: Bristol, Tennessee

Marital Status: Married

Education: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee;

Merchandising, B.S., 1980

East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee;

English, M.A., 2002

Professional

Experience: Clerical Assistant, Graduate Studies Office - East Tennessee State

University, Summer 2000

Research Assistant, English Dept., East Tennessee State University,

August 2000–May 2001

Teaching Assistant, English Dept., East Tennessee State University,

August 2001- May 2002; Taught Freshman Composition 1010 and

1020

Writer and contributor to WETS Public Radio Show – The Environmental

News, 2001

The Mockingbird Poetry Judge, East Tennessee State University, 2001

-- 2002

Poetry Contest Judge – Happy Valley Middle School – March 13, 2002

Publications: “Erosion.” Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville: UT Press,

forthcoming.

Honors and

Awards: Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society

Modern Language Association

Member of the Association of Graduate English Students (A.G.E.S.)

Vice President

Conference Presenter – Southern Writers, Southern Writing

Conference,University of Mississippi - July 2001

“For the Major: Female Masks and Post-Civil War Struggles in

Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Appalachian South”

Conference Presenter – New Voices 2001 Conference – Georgia State

University - Atlanta, Ga.

“Beatrice and the Garden of Eden In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s

Rappaccini’s Daughter”

Conference Presenter – Tennessee Philological Association – Middle

Tennessee State University – Murfreesboro, TN. “A Man of Character

Follows His Fate: The Philosophy of Thomas Hardy in The Mayor of

Casterbridge”