The Christ of Boston: A Character Study in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
Noor Kadhoum Jawad
Assistant Lecturer
(M.A. in English Literature)
General Directorate of Education in Ad-Diwaniyah,
Ministry of Education, Republic of Iraq
&
Hassan Qanood Jabir
Assistant Lecturer
(M.A. in English Literature)
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Suleyman Demirel University
Turkey
Abstract
Critics point out that the Christ figure is a character who displays more than one
correspondence with the story of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Bible. In general, the
character could demonstrate one or more of the following characteristics: performance of
miracles, manifestation of divine qualities, healing others, display loving, kindness and
forgiveness in spite of his agony, fight for justice, death and resurrection. Christ figures are
often martyrs, sacrificing themselves for causes larger than themselves. They might be
crucified, believed to have had a confrontation with the devil, and possibly tempted.
This article attempts to study the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter, Hester Prynne in the light of some of these qualities. This is because the presence of
a female figure in Hawthorne’s novel that parallels the Biblical Jesus Christ to certain extent
is a worth studying topic.
The article adopts the analytical approach to pursuit the development of Hester
Prynne’s character; from a sinner to a Christ-like figure.
Keywords: Christ, Hester, Hawthorne, love, Puritan, Dimmesdale, love, shame
www.ijellh.com
504
Oh, Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself…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?
–Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Foreword
Hester Prynne, in Diane Telgen’s words, is “the central and most important”1
character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Born in England to a once noble
family, Hester is consigned to what Harold Bloom calls “a loveless marriage of
convenience”2 with Master Prynne, later known as Roger Chillingworth. After a brief season
in Amsterdam, it is decided that they will join the Puritans in Boston. Hester ventures across
the Atlantic first while “her husband” plans to join her later. After roughly a year, she has
received no word of Chillingworth, and many speculate he is dead en route to America,
Hester commits “adultery” with the local minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. She becomes
pregnant, and so “the crime” is discovered and punished. After being released from custody,
she is forced to hang the letter “A” on her bosom as a symbol of “adultery.”
The following lines are going to be an answer to the following question: Could it be
that Hawthorne’s Hester is reckoned a Christ-like figure from sheer artistic point of view,
away from any religious considerations? Answering this question conjures into the mind S. T.
Coleridge’s notion of “poetic faith” as far as the aesthetic value of a literary piece of a certain
composition and its reader’s beliefs are concerned.
In one of the most memorable critical phrases–“to produce…the willing suspension of
disbelief [in the reader] for the moment which constitutes poetic faith”–Coleridge (1772–
1834) throws a heavy emphasis on the aesthetic significance of a literary work away from
beliefs and disbeliefs. When a reader, says Coleridge, picks up a literary work knowing it is
against his beliefs, whatever they are, he must willingly suspend this disbelief while reading
in order to gain the pleasure which the work promises.3
Not away from this, Thomas C. Foster, commenting on the relationship between
literature and religion, points out that when a reader reads literature, he needs to put aside
what is called “belief system.”4 This putting aside is at least for the period during which the
reader reads, so he can see what the writer is trying to say. As he is reading that story or
poem, religious knowledge, says Foster, “is helpful, although religious belief, if too tightly
held, can be a problem.”5
www.ijellh.com
505
Anyway, Foster lists a group of qualities which make a character in novels a Christlike figure.6 Hester, as this paper assumes, has six of these qualities:
-
She is crucified.
-
She lives in agony.
-
She is self-sacrificing.
-
She is good with children.
-
She is possibly tempted.
-
She is very forgiving.
-
And, she rises from death.
These qualities are going to be examined one by one in relation to Hester.
The Agony of a Lonely Soul
The Scarlet Letter starts as Hester near the end of her prison duration for “adultery.”
Adultery is regarded a serious threat to the Puritan community and death is considered a just
retribution for it. The Puritan authorities take in consideration the long absence and possible
death of Hester’s “husband” in their sentence.7 Therefore, they, in Telgen’s words, “settled
on the punishment of permanent public humiliation.”8 Hester, as Telgen observes, “is to
forever wear the scarlet letter ‘A’ on the bodice of her clothing.”9
“Hester’s dark glossy hair,” says Hyatt Howe Waggoner, “shines in the sunlight as
though it were surmounted by a halo, making her almost an image of ‘the divine
maternity.’”10 However, the Puritans keep looking at her only as “an adulteress.”11 The
readers of Hawthorne’s novel are, as Waggoner believes, “likely to feel that she is only a
suffering woman.”12 Commenting on the agony that Hester has gone through, Richard
Benson Sewall points out that “the seven-year action” which is sedimented by “Hester’s
Antigone-like independence, or . . . stubbornness, involved her and those whom it touched
intimately in deep suffering and loss of irretrievable values.”13 Sewall goes on to say,
Hester lost her youth, her beauty, her promise of creativity, and any sure hope she
might have had of social or domestic happiness. She lost Dimmesdale, whom a full
confession at the outset might have brought to her side, and whose life was ultimately
ruined anyway. She was the cause of Chillingworth’s long, destructive, and selfdestructive course of revenge. She anguished over Pearl’s bleak and bitter
childhood.14
Her own isolation and solitude accompanied by her warm and rich nature were a continuing
pain and a reminder of her guilt. Accordingly, the sort of agony she has endured is much
www.ijellh.com
506
heavier than what Antigone15 or Medea,16 who in other ways are like her, had known in
similar duration or quality.17
“Honestly,” says Ernest Sandeen, “Hester can never bring herself to regard her
relations with Arthur Dimmesdale as sinful.” 18 Yet, she submits herself to the harsh and lifelong penance that the scarlet letter inflicts upon her. Besides, she suffers patiently the various
agonies which this “badge of shame” (SL, 87)19 imposes on her daily because she can tell
what the letter means to the community of Boston and feels the shame which was projected to
be her retribution.20 Her agony, as Sandeen thinks, “is not the price she has agreed to pay for
her guilt but the cost she is glad to bear for her love.” 21 When Hester refuses to expose her
partner’s name during the interrogation, she asserts that she will appreciatively suffer her
agony in addition to his own.22 This situation leads to her crucifixion.
The Crucifixion of Hester
When Hester is imprisoned, where she gives birth to her baby girl Pearl Prynne, she
is, in Bloom’s words, “pressured”23 by the Puritan officials of Boston to reveal the identity of
the child’s father. But she refuses to do so. Hester, however, is led later to the platform in the
marketplace and is exposed to the crowd in an act which is similar to the leading of Christ to
the summit to be crucified. To meet the wish of the officials, Hester is entitled to stand there
and allow them to nail their stares at her. Thus, they would be satisfied to impose and impress
their disapproval upon her.24 Their words and swears are nailed in her soul in the same way
the nails have already fastened to the body of the Christ.
Bloom observes that in this place “Hawthorne explains that, while Hester has the
strength to bear insult, this demeaning public display taxes her to the utmost limit of her
emotional endurance.”25 Ironically, the priest that questions her is Dimmesdale, the main
reason behind her ordeal. He issues his first speech in the novel by urging her to answer,
Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester,
though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy
pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. (SL,
54)
He asks her to name her partner in love but all she says in response is silence. Bloom
observes that Dimmesdale is astonished by “her extraordinary strength of character” and
appreciates “her sacrifice for him.”26 As for her partner in love, he, says Bloom, “has no such
magnanimous feelings.”27 Chillingworth also presses on her to confess his name, but she will
not.
www.ijellh.com
507
While apparently free to leave the society of Boston and even America at her will,
Hester makes her mind up to stay. In the narrator’s words,
Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene
of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at
length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost: more
saint-like, because the result of martyrdom. (SL, 65)
According to this reasoning, Hester assumes her residence in a small abandoned cottage on
the outskirts of the community.
Hester Rejects a Faustian Bargain28
In large part, while the novel is a presentation of the agony Hester suffers under the
burden of her symbol of shame, finally, after the implied marriage of her daughter Pearl and
the deaths of both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, Hester becomes, in Bloom’s words, “an
accepted and even a highly valued member of the community;”29 the community of Boston.
Sewall believes that with the capacity of “giving comfort and counsel to the perplexed or
forlorn,” Hester” goes out of her own ken, a gray figure.”30 Having her scarlet letter on her
bosom, she
resumed of her own free will . . . lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise; moreover, not
through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love
should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end. (SL, 203)
Hester, however, is tempted by Mistress Hibbins, who makes several provoking
appearances in the novel. This woman represents the actual historical figure Ann Hibbins
who was executed for witchcraft in 1656. Mistress Hibbins entices Hester to enter in the
league of the “Black Man,” who haunts the wild forest as a representative of the devil.31 But
Hester’s response is:
I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from
me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the
Black Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood! (SL, 91-2)
Hester’s Sacrifice, Resurrection, and Compassion
Speaking about Hester’s good heart, readers can notice that she manipulates her own
finance to assist the needy, who scorn her in return. What is remarkable is that she throws a
heavy emphasis on loving her Pearl,32 “as being of great price,—purchased with all she
had,—her mother’s only treasure!” (SL, 71)
www.ijellh.com
508
Talking with the Revered Wilson, Hester, in Bloom’s words, “forcefully defends her
right to keep Pearl.”33 She even recourses to Dimmesdale for support who points out that
Hester must be permitted to keep Pearl. He argues that God has sent her this child as a
blessing and a curse, a lesson to be learned through love and a medium “to keep the mother’s
soul alive” (SL, 90).
Through her talent in embroidery, says Sandeen, “Hester has converted the shameful
‘A’ into such an arresting work of art that it makes a mockery of the punitive intention of her
judges.”34 Sandeen continues that she hits upon a place in those neglected areas of communal
life where impulses for good are called for which cannot be commanded by force, and where
mercy, sympathy, and pity are more appropriate than justice or legislated goodness. She
fashions clothes for the poor and even feeds them from her meager supply, although
frequently the only thanks she gets is a jibe. In the more prosperous families, indeed in the
best families, she comes to have a welcome and intimate place in times of pestilence,
sickness, and death.35
Hester resurrects from a death in life and wins her vigorous and good personality
back. Waggoner states that Hester “rises to saintliness as she becomes an ‘angel of mercy’ to
the community.” 36 He also remarks that she has dreams of “a new order of society can find
no expression in her life and resignation is all she has to take the place of happiness.” 37 Some
“of us,” says Waggoner, may feel jealous of “her rise.”38
Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed
one . . . the world’s heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she
looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
helpfulness was found in her--so much power to do, and power to sympathise--that
many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said
that it meant Abel, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength. (SL, 126)
As a lover she has been an outcast, but as a “self-ordained Sister of Mercy” (SL, 126),
she is warmly welcomed, although her charity contributions come from, in Sadeen’s words,
“the same fertile depths of her being as the passion which has made her an outcast.” 39 As a
matter of fact, Hester becomes, as Sadeen believes, “the pariah that the human family takes to
its heart in times of affliction; she bears the burden of man's affective nature, including
outlawed passion,” which the Puritan community attempts to “suppress but which it cannot
do without.”40 Bloom states that Hester’s “charity [and] goodness . . . have not gone
unnoticed; many regard the A on her breast to mean ‘angel,’ in light of the many good works
www.ijellh.com
509
she has done.”41 What is amazing is that even Governor Bellingham himself wears some of
her needlework on his ruff (SL, 66).
“A stately, robust, and darkly beautiful woman,” as Bloom puts it, Hester sounds to
have a great amount of “the grace and poise of the aristocracy from which she is descended;”
and she probably looks like her forefathers “in her self-reliance and confidence in her own
conscience.”42 Hester shows remarkable strength of character during the course of the novel’s
events, absorbing her agony without complaint. She radiantly comes to be, in Bloom’s words,
“a benefactor to the community that has judged her sternly and ostracized her for a not
incomprehensible crime.”43 She comes to be a sign and a prophet to the Puritan society of
Boston, accumulating different interpretations as time goes by. Hester is “severely” put under
test “by the gross cruelty of her community toward her” and “by her concern over the fate of
Pearl,” Bloom concludes.44
Concluding Words
In fact, Hester goes through immense amounts of emotional sufferings. The entire
town of Boston turns its back on her. No doubt Hester sometimes feels like she is not worthy
at times when women throw venomous names at her. This is unbearable agony. Hester also
shows self-sacrifice. She takes full blame of the whole matter and refuses to name
Dimmesdale, accepting all the consequences. Defiantly, she does not even deny him or the
love she has for him in the bottom of her soul. Hester, however, is good with children as well.
She brings up Pearl alone and Pearl seems to love her back for the most part. To speak about
temptation, Hester is confronted with temptation when she is asked to go into the woods to
sign the Black Man’s book, in other words, to be a slave of the devil. She refuses and just
goes home. Finally, Hester possesses the ability to forgive. She does not retaliate to the rude
remarks of the Puritan people of Boston. She forgives their heart-piercing comments and
continues to make clothes for them in addition to helping them. With her huge heart, Hester
forgives and forgets how everybody treated her. To conclude it, Hester deserves to be
regarded as a Christ-like figure and she worthy to be addressed as the Christ of Boston.
www.ijellh.com
510
NOTES
1
Diane Telgen, ed., Novel for Students, vol 1 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1997), 312.
2
Harold Bloom, ed., Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (New York: Infobase
Publishing, 2011), 17.
3
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (London: George Bell, 1905), 145.
4
Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and
Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 2003), 65.
Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and
Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 2003), 65.
6
Foster, 65-6.
7
Telgen, 312.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
Hyatt Howe Waggoner, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Minneapolis: University of
Minneapolis Press, 1962), 36.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
Richard Benson Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy (London: Yale University Press,
1980), p.89.
14
Ibid.
15
In Greek mythology, Antigone is the daughter/sister of Oedipus and his mother,
Jocasta. She was locked in a tomb by King Creon for mourning her brother Polynices
who was killed while he and his brother fought for the throne. Wikipedia, the Free
www.ijellh.com
511
Encyclopedia s. v. “Antigone,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigone (accessed May
7, 2016).
16
In Greek mythology, Medea is a sorceress who was the daughter of King Aeëtes of
Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason.
In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of Corinth, offers him his
daughter,
Glauce.
Wikipedia,
the
Free
Encyclopedia
s.
v.
“Medea,”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea (accessed May 7, 2016).
17
Sewall, 89.
18
Ernest Sandeen, “The Scarlet Letter as a Love Story” in PMLA 77, no. 4 [Sep.
1962] 425-6,428, http://www.jstor.org/stable/460567 (accessed May, 31, 2012).
19
All further quotations from The Scarlet Letter will be made to Nathaniel
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Henceforth, it will
be marked by (SL) followed by page number.
20
Ernest Sandeen, “The Scarlet Letter as a Love Story” in PMLA 77, no. 4 [Sep.
1962] 425-6,428, http://www.jstor.org/stable/460567 (accessed May, 31, 2012).
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid.
23
Bloom, 22, 25.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid., 23.
27
Ibid.
28
To read more about Faustian Bargains, please see, Noor Kadhoum Jawad, “Faustian
Bargain in Irish Fiction: A Study in Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer and
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray” (M.A. thesis, University of Al-Qadisiyah, 2013).
29
Bloom, 27.
30
Sewall.
31
Telgen, 311.
32
Ibid., 308.
33
Bloom, 32.
www.ijellh.com
512
34
Sandeen, 426-7.
35
Ibid.
36
Waggoner.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Sandeen, 427.
40
Ibid.
41
Bloom, 28, 37.
42
Ibid., 17.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid.
www.ijellh.com
513
Bibliography:
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. NP: Project Gutenberg, 2002.
Telgen, Diane, ed., Novel for Students, vol 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997.
Bloom, Harold, ed., Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. New York: Infobase
Publishing, 2011.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria. London: George Bell, 1905.
Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature like a Professor: A Lively and
Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines. New York: Harper Collins Publishers,
2003.
Jawad, Noor Kadhoum. “Faustian Bargain in Irish Fiction: A Study in Charles Robert
Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.” M.A.
thesis, University of Al-Qadisiyah, 2013.
Waggoner, Hyatt Howe. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Minneapolis: University of
Minneapolis Press, 1962.
Sewall, Richard Benson. The Vision of Tragedy. London: Yale University Press,
1980.
Sandeen, Ernest. “The Scarlet Letter as a Love Story” in PMLA 77, no. 4 [Sep. 1962]
425-435, http://www.jstor.org/stable/460567 (accessed May, 31, 2012).
www.ijellh.com
514