The Scarlet Letter Round 2

  I have finished The Scarlet Letter, dear readers. For some reason I just had the hardest time sleeping the other night, so voila! 20 chapters finished in 4ish hours. My general impression of the book? Well, it was incredibly sad for me. You know the feeling you get when you are watching a movie, and you can't help but like the hero of the story, but you have a certain kinship for the villain as well? Or that moment in a movie when everything is exquisitely and poignantly perfect for the leading couple, but you know that it can't last, that their happiness is doomed even as it enfold before your eyes? Yeah, I had that feeling through the majority of the narrative. A kind of doomed bittersweetness. Sort of. Maybe. :) Or maybe I was just a little woozy from the lack of sleep.
  I should also probably note that I come to finish this post at least 4 different times and have been unable to finish it. For some reason I got the hugest mental block when I came to write stuff down. Then, I realized that I was overthinking it and actually kind of viewing it like an English paper that I have to write. My dear readers, this is not English class (despite the fact that I love my En classes) and you are not my professors who will be giving me a grade. So, I am just gonna...wing it. And use totally unacceptable academic writing terms such as 'gonna'.

  One more thing: Spoiler Alert! Beware!

  A prevailing theme that I noticed throughout the novel was beauty. Physical beauty, beauty of things (i.e. luxurious things), beauty of the personality, total absence of beauty, etc. What I also noticed was that the idea of beauty was implicitly connected to the idea of secret sin...sorta. Bear with me, I have some evidence.

  In chapter five, 'Hester at Her Needle', Hawthorne details Hester's normal life after the incident on the scaffold; how she got her living, where she lived, but most importantly how she and her village interacted. Keep that thought, I am jumping really quickly to a relevant point. Later on in chapter eight, 'The Elf-Child and the Minister', there is a little passage about Puritans and luxurious things.

   "But it is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers...made it a matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp"  (pg. 96).
  I should say not. In chapter seven, Hawthorne gives details of the governor's house, which has these fantastic outer walls with crushed glass in them that sparkled like a jewel whenever the light hit the house (92).  This makes me think Real Housewives of Atlanta, not Puritan Colonial New England. The list of luxurious things that the governor brought over from England and kept goes on throughout the chapter.     Okay, back to the other point. In the middle of chapter five, there is a passage about the scarlet letter (which, despite its ignomious meaning, we know from the text is a beautiful thing) giving Hester a second sense about her fellow townsfolk:

  "Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast  would give a sympathetic throb as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice....'What evil thing is at hand?' would Hester say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint!" (77, emphasis mine).

 Is it just coincidence that Hawthorne details for us the beauty of the governor's house, especially in light of this tidbit? Perhaps...but I don't really think so. Another thing about beauty and secret sin; when we finally get Hester and Dimmesdale (her unfortunate and rather wishy-washy lover) together to have a decent conversation, they hatch up this plan to escape the confines of their mutual guilt by running away with little Pearl back to the Continent where they can live in relatively perfect anonymity. Which is where the whole poignancy thing comes in, by the bye. We know that the whole happily ever after scheme (which, how HEA can it be, if the reason they had to run was adultery and deceit?...) cannot work, just because it is that kind of story, but you desperately wish for these people to just get some sort of peace and happiness. Anyway, they hatch up this plan. The notable thing about this encounter is the temporary change in Hester and Dimmesdale while they sit in the woods and talk details about this plan. We have it that after she had Pearl and everything, all her former beauty was apparently gone forever; she hid her glorious dark hair in a cap, she wore only the dingiest-colored clothes, her face was drawn and worried all the time. Yet see this transformation in her after she flings away her scarlet letter:

  "By another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of  softness to her features. There played around her mouth and beamed out of her eyes a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had long been so pale. 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." (185, emphasis mine).

  Hawthorne also details the beauty of the little forest enclave they sit in, and how the sun finally peaks through the branches and further stuff like that. It is only when Hester has a hope of escaping the consequences of her sin that her lost beauty returns, and only for a brief period; she and Dimmesdale must return for what they think is just a few days to the village so they can prepare for their journey.
  There are even more allusions in The Scarlet Letter; allusions to the supernatural, to freedom, and to Satanic influence (which I suppose can be placed under the supernatural umbrella...). However, I think it is time for me to put aside the Hester and Chillingworth and Dimmesdale for now. After all, in a few weeks I have to get deep into it again for my classes.
  Speaking of which, my classes started today! It is a lot of work already, and I don't know if there was much wisdom in choosing to do 3 classes online. But I guess I will find out....
  So, for now, my friends, farewell!