symbols in the scarlet letter essay

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'The Scarlet Letter' Themes and Symbols

Shame and judgment, public vs. private, scientific vs. religious beliefs.

Quentin Cohan is a graduate of Williams College with degrees in both English and History. He covered literature for ThoughtCo.

• Williams College

The Scarlet Letter , Nathanial Hawthorne ’s 1850 novel of a 17 th century adulterous affair in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, centers on several themes that would have been very meaningful to the highly religious, pre-industrial community in which it is set: the nature of shame and judgment; the differences between our public and private lives; and the conflict between scientific and religious beliefs.

Additionally, several important symbols pop up throughout the novel to highlight these themes, including the scarlet letter, the scaffold, and Pearl. Through the use of these themes and symbols, Hawthorne constructs a world of Puritanical guilt and redemption in the earliest days of America’s history.

The novel’s most central theme is that of shame and judgment—it is the focal point of the story’s first scene, when Hester Prynne is publicly ridiculed on the scaffold in the town square, and it permeates nearly every part of the book from there on.

Prynne is forced to wear the eponymous token over her clothes for the rest of her days in the colony, which is itself a judgment she must endure, as well as an ever-present symbol of her shame and lowly position in the community. As such, wherever she goes she is quickly identified as the person who committed adultery, an act for which the townspeople pass judgment on her, causing her, in turn, to feel some degree of shame. This comes to a head when the townspeople try to take Pearl away from Prynne, an act that mostly stems from their misguided assumptions and views of the mother and daughter. Over time, both the town’s estimation of Prynne and her own feelings of guilt begin to dissipate, but for many years these feelings are quite strong for each party and serve as a central, motivating force within the story.

The flip side of this form of judgment and shame is experienced by Dimmesdale who, though he has committed the same crime as Prynne, deals with this fact very differently. Dimmesdale must keep his guilt to himself, a state of affairs that drives him mad and eventually to death.

Dimmesdale's position provides an interesting insight into the nature of judgement and shame when felt privately, not publicly. For one thing, he receives no negative judgment from the others in the colony, as they don’t even know of his involvement in the affair, so he only continues to receive their adulation. Additionally, he has no outlet for his shame, as he must keep it hidden, so it eats away at him over the course of several years. This is not to say that this is worse than Prynne's fate, but the differing situation creates an alternative result; whereas Prynne eventually works her way back, somewhat, into the town’s good graces, Dimmesdale must hide his own shame and literally cannot live with it, as he reveals it and then promptly dies. Through the different ways in which these two are made to endure judgment as well as feel shame, Hawthorne presents a compelling look into the nature of human guilt, as both a public and private phenomenon.

Through the relationship between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, Hawthorne explores the differences between scientific and religious modes of thought and understanding. Given that this novel is set in a 17 th century Puritan colony, the characters are deeply religious, and have little understanding of scientific processes. Most of their understanding of the world, in fact, comes from a place of religious belief. For example, when Dimmesdale—who, admittedly, is a priest—looks to the night sky, he takes what he sees as a sign from God. Dimmesdale filtering his perceptions through the lens of his profession is largely the point, though, as he and Chillingworth are used to represent these opposing views.

Chillingworth is a new addition to the town, and, as he is a physician, represents the encroaching of science into the religious New World colonies. Additionally, he is often described as representing darkness or evil, or just the devil outright, indicating that his mode of thought is at odds with the others’ in the community, as well as antithetical to God’s order.

Interestingly, the two men get along at first, but ultimately grow apart when Chillingworth begins to probe Dimmesdale’s psychological state, suggesting that science and religion are incompatible in analyzing one’s mental anguish. One area in which they do align, however, is over Prynne, as each man attempts at one point to win her love. In the end, though, she rejects both of them, showing that an independently minded woman has no need for either.

The Scarlet Letter

Given the book’s title, this object is unsurprisingly a very important symbol throughout the story. Even before the main narrative begins, the reader catches a glimpse of the letter, as the anonymous narrator of “The Custom House” describes it briefly in the book’s opening section. From there, it appears pretty much right away, and comes to be the story’s most prominent symbol.

Interestingly, though the letter represents Prynne’s guilt to the other characters in the book, it has a somewhat different meaning to the reader. It symbolizes not just Prynne’s actions, which, of course, it does symbolize, but it also embodies the town’s viewing of her actions as wrong, and as a punishment forced upon her by her community. As such, it says more about the wearer’s environment, than it does about the wearer herself. It shows that this group is willing to make a very public example of people whom it believes to have transgressed.

Notably also, Dimmesdale burns a symbol of some sort—which some claim is an “A”—onto his chest as a sort of atonement for his role in the affair. This highlights the public vs. private theme in the novel, as the two bear the burden of guilt very differently.

The Scaffold

The scaffold, which appears in the first scene, serves to divide the story into beginning, middle, and end. It first appears in the opening scene, when Prynne is forced to stand on it for several hours and endure harassment from the community. In this moment, it symbolizes a very public form of punishment, and, as this is the beginning of the book, establishes that tone going forward.

Later, the scaffold shows up again when Dimmesdale goes out walking one night and ends up there, whereupon he runs into Prynne and Pearl. This is a moment of reflection for Dimmesdale, as he ruminates on his misdeeds, changing the book’s focus from public to private shame.

The scaffold’s final appearance comes in the book’s climactic scene, when Dimmesdale reveals his role in the affair, and then promptly dies in Prynne’s arms atop the apparatus. At this moment, Prynne literally embraces Dimmesdale, and the town collectively embraces the two of them, acknowledging the minister’s confession, and forgiving them both of their crimes. The scaffold, therefore, comes to represent atonement and acceptance, completing its journey, much like the characters themselves, from punishment through reflection, and, ultimately, to forgiveness.

Though Pearl is very much a distinct character in her own right, she also acts symbolically as the living embodiment of her parents’ infidelity. As a result, whenever Prynne looks at her, she must confront what she has done, almost more so even than when she looks at the scarlet letter. Importantly, though, she represents not just her parents’ infidelity, but also her mother’s independence. This is epitomized by some of the townspeople trying to take Pearl away from Prynne, which forces the mother to argue before the governor for the right to keep her child. Essentially, she must fight to prove the validity of her desires and affections in the face of this highly rigid and patriarchal society. Pearl, therefore, represents the sinfulness and the gracefulness balanced in tandem inside of her mother—that is, she is wild but still worth loving nonetheless.

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The Scarlet Letter

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Discussion Questions

The scarlet A that Hester wears is both the most important and the most complex of the novel’s symbols. On the face of it (and to the community that sentences her to wear it), the A stands for adultery, and thus for Hester’s guilt. This explains not only the letter but its color: Red evokes images of blood and fire, and is consequently associated with passion, shame, and sin. The novel itself often makes these connotations explicit; for instance, to those who witness Hester’s public punishment, the letter’s color recalls the “flames of the infernal pit” (63).

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The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel hawthorne.

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Scarlet Letter: Introduction

The scarlet letter: plot summary, the scarlet letter: detailed summary & analysis, the scarlet letter: themes, the scarlet letter: quotes, the scarlet letter: characters, the scarlet letter: symbols, the scarlet letter: literary devices, the scarlet letter: quizzes, the scarlet letter: theme wheel, brief biography of nathaniel hawthorne.

Historical Context of The Scarlet Letter

Other books related to the scarlet letter.

• Full Title: The Scarlet Letter
• When Written: 1848-1850
• Where Written: Salem, Massachusetts
• When Published: 1850
• Literary Period: Transcendentalism
• Genre: Novel
• Setting: Boston, Massachusetts in the 1640s
• Climax: Dimmesdale's confession and death
• Antagonist: Roger Chillingworth; the Puritans
• Point of View: Third person omniscient

Extra Credit for The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne and the Salem Witch Trials: Nathaniel Hawthorne was a direct descendent of John Hathorne, (1641-1717), a Puritan justice of the peace. Justice Hathorne is best known for his role as the lead judge in the Salem Witch Trials, in which he sentenced numerous innocent people to death for allegedly practicing witchcraft. Nathaniel added a "w" to his name to distance himself from his infamous ancestor.

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The Scarlet Letter

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Themes and Analysis

The scarlet letter, by nathaniel hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is stuffed with themes that border around aspects of religion and human morality such as sinning, confessing, and being penalized for such sin - much to the author’s intention of sending some strong moral lessons to his readership.

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Hawthorne’s move to go by such name as ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ for the book’s title is symbolic in itself and already hints at the themes of penitence and punishment for the crime of adultery committed by two of the book’s major characters in Hester Prynne and the priest – Arthur Dimmesdale. There are some foundational themes as there are other subsets that still carry a vital message in them. The most important ones will be analyzed in this article.

Sin and Punishment

These are probably the two most obvious themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ and they are very clearly executed throughout the pages of the book – beginning from the first chapter. 

Hester Prynne, who is the heroine of the book, is one of the characters who bear such guilts of sin and punishment. The sin for which she is being punished is that of adultery – which she commits with a Christian preacher, Arthur Dimmesdale.

Being she lives in the era of a Christian-inspired puritan society, her punishment becomes one of massive social shaming and disgrace – whereby she has to wear a dress with a large inscription of the letter ‘A’ appearing on her chest in blood red color. 

Contrition and Penitence

Hester and Dimmesdale – two prominent characters harboring the most damnable sin of their era – appear to have had a contrite heart after the act, particularly with Hester, who is publicly announced and disgraced. 

Readers could feel the genuineness of Hester’s contrite heart, having been legally married to Roger Chillingworth, her long lost husband – even though she would never regret the love she feels for Dimmesdale and the product of such love being her child, Pearl. 

Gender and Status Inequality Before the Law

Nathaniel Hawthorne, through ‘ The Scarlet Letter ,’ may have tried to point out the sheer inequality of the purity society before the rule of law. Hawthorne’s time is critical of several aspects of Puritanism, and here questions why preacher Arthur Dimmesdale doesn’t get served the same amount of humiliation as Hester gets. 

Though an argument can be raised that the executors of the puritan laws don’t punish Dimmesdale because they do not know for sure if he committed the crime – especially with Hester refusing to give that information out. Still, one can easily sense that they don’t do enough to get the man who’s responsible. 

Two hypotheses here are one; their interest in not punishing men but the women in such crimes. Two, Dimmesdale’s religious status makes him a very important person, so the executors would be tricky with handling a case of such a class. 

Necromancy and witchcraft

There is a massive dose of talks and meetings about and with witches, and even the devil – who is referred to in the book as ‘ The Black Man .’ These subjects are part of what gives the book its dark, spooky ambiance characteristic of gothic fiction. 

Mistress Hibbins is a high-profile suspect whose behavior is, by a puritan society’s standards, termed diabolic and hellish. Hibbins goes about negatively influencing people – like Hester and Pearl – instilling strange, anti puritan mentality in them, conducting and attending meetings and conventions where they invoke and commune with ‘The Black Man’ or devil himself. 

Key Moments in The Scarlet Letter

• After losing his job with the Salem Custom House, a man puts together a piece of the manuscript that he had discovered littering in the attic of his former job. On the cover is an inscription, ‘Scarlet Letter A .’ 
• The story which he has assembled from it narratives the story of a young woman called Hester Prynne who lives in a 1600s puritan society. 
• She appears to have been imprisoned for a heinous crime and is processioned out and made to stand over a public platform wearing a dress with the scarlet letter ‘A’ written boldly on her breast, on which she also carries her baby. 
• The crime for which she is paraded is adultery, and under a typical puritan leadership, social shaming and scorning are the repercussions for such acts. 
• While she faces the worse moment of her life, a man stands a stone’s throw away in the crowd observing the whole event. His name is Roger Chillingworth, the long-lost husband of the woman being punished at the platform. 
• On the platform with Hester is a popular preacher of the town, rev. Arthur Dimmesdale publicly pressures her to say who’s responsible for her baby, but Hester wouldn’t tell and is thrust back into her cell.
• With a keen interest in the matter, Chillingworth lies that he is a doctor to get access to his wife, and when he gets past security into the cell, he threatens her not to let anyone know she is married to him and that if she does, he would search out the man responsible and hurt him very badly.
• Following her release, Hester moves away from town and tries to survive as a dressmaker with young Pearl. Chillingworth is still in town posing as a doctor as he tries to unearth the father of his wife’s baby. And by now, Dimmesdale, the popular town people’s preacher, has failing health and is being tended to by Chillingworth. 
• Pearl grows fond of the scarlet ‘A’ on her mother’s breast, but Hester wouldn’t tell her the truth about it. 
• With Chillingworth now spending so much time with Dimmesdale, he starts to notice an unusually strange correlation between Hester’s case and the preacher’s health history. 
• One faithful day during Dimmesdale’s medical examination, Chillingworth finds that his patient has a similar scarlet letter ‘A’ etched inside his chest. He is convinced Dimmesdale is Hester’s lover and father of the illegitimate child, Pearl. 
• With this knowledge, Chillingworth decides to exert revenge on Dimmesdale by giving him the wrong meds and treating him so much so that his health deteriorates further by the day. 
• For Dimmesdale, it seems that his inability to confess publicly is eating him up and causing him constant emotional trauma and heartache. And on several occasions, he doesn’t eat and chastises and whips himself for his mistake. 
• On a faithful day, just after twilight, troubled by his guilt, Dimmesdale climbs up the platform and is joined by Hester and her daughter shortly, while Chillingworth skulks by the shadows observing them before a shooting star shimmers through the night sky to reveal his presence. 
• What follows next is an exchange of emotions. Hester begs Chillingworth to stop torturing Dimmesdale, but he argues he’s lenient to him. 
• Hester then plans a rendezvous with Dimmesdale in the wilderness, where she exposes Chillingworth’s real identity and begs Dimmesdale to elope with her across the Atlantic to start afresh in a new, distant town. He agrees to go with her after he has delivered a scheduled sermon. 
• On the day of the sermon, Dimmesdale is moved by his preaching that he decides to confess publicly that he is Hester’s lover and the father to Pearl (both of who had joined him on the platform). Opening his chest, he exposes a scarlet cut he had been carrying in his chest and dies as soon as Pearl kisses him.
• Chillingworth’s revenge is taken from him, and he dies a few months later. Hester leaves town with her daughter – explores Europe and marries a wealthy home, and seldom writes her mother. 
• When Hester dies, she is laid to rest beside Dimmesdale, and the later ‘A’ is erected in their resting place.

Style and Tone 

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing style is typically one that deploys a lot of metaphors and symbolism to execute his works – with the end goal often having a ton of morals to impact on the reader.

Hawthorne’s works are mostly mysterious, somber, and morose in terms of their themes and storylines. ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ is no different from his typical style and follows his trademark standard for novel writing. 

The tone in ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ is mostly sad and contrite, but also critical and disenchantment about puritan cultures, their leaders, and their tendency for being highly hypocritical.

Figurative Languages

Hawthorne brings the pages of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ to life with his heavy use of figurative expressions. Among the figurative language used include metaphor – which seems to appear pervasively throughout the book.

The author also uses tools like irony and personification to highlight his critiques of the purity legacy and traditions. 

Analysis of Symbols in The Scarlet Letter 

This is perhaps the foremost symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book and represents a variety of things. One such thing is that it serves as an identity for the transgressor or sinner of adultery – as is the case with the protagonist, Hester Prynne. 

Hester’s daughter’s character also has an allegorical attachment to its overall essence. Pearl is a direct repercussion of Hester’s son of adultery, but also a symbol of hope for a better life, in the latter part of the book.

Chillingworth

In the book’s reality, he is the husband of Hester, but in terms of the motif to which he represents, Chillingworth proves to be as his name appears; cold. He’s a cold and means man towards the people around him, and this is perhaps one of the reasons Hester could never find love with him. 

What is the main theme in ‘The Scarlet Letter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne?

Sin and punishment are probably the two most discussed themes in ‘ The Scarlet Letter ,’ and these subjects are pervasive and heavily indulged in by the author throughout the book. 

What does the color red represent in ‘The Scarlet Letter’?

The color red represents sin, and in the book’s case, the sin of adultery – which Hester, the protagonist, is indicted of from the onset of the book. 

What narrative style is deployed by Nathaniel Hawthorne in ‘The Scarlet Letter’?

Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes the third person narrative technique in his book, ‘ The Scarlet Letter, ’ as this allows the narrator to tell his story subjectively – but from a rounded, three-dimensional standpoint on the characters. 

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The Scarlet Letter

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The Scarlet Letter , novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne , published in 1850. It is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a classic moral study.

The novel is set in a village in Puritan New England . The main character is Hester Prynne , a young woman who has borne a child out of wedlock. Hester believes herself a widow, but her husband, Roger Chillingworth, arrives in New England very much alive and conceals his identity. He finds his wife forced to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as punishment for her adultery . After Hester refuses to name her lover, Chillingworth becomes obsessed with finding his identity. When he learns that the man in question is Arthur Dimmesdale , a saintly young minister who is the leader of those exhorting her to name the child’s father, Chillingworth proceeds to torment him. Stricken by guilt, Dimmesdale becomes increasingly ill. Hester herself is revealed to be a self-reliant heroine who is never truly repentant for committing adultery with the minister; she feels that their act was consecrated by their deep love for each other. Although she is initially scorned, over time her compassion and dignity silence many of her critics.

In the end, Chillingworth is morally degraded by his monomaniacal pursuit of revenge. Dimmesdale is broken by his own sense of guilt, and he publicly confesses his adultery before dying in Hester’s arms. Only Hester can face the future bravely, as she prepares to begin a new life with her daughter, Pearl , in Europe. Years later Hester returns to New England, where she continues to wear the scarlet letter. After her death she is buried next to Dimmesdale, and their joint tombstone is inscribed with “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.”

The scarlet letter A that Hester is forced to wear is finely embroidered with gold-coloured thread. As both a badge of shame and a beautifully wrought human artifact , it reflects the many oppositions in the novel, such as those between order and transgression, civilization and wilderness, and adulthood and childhood. The more society strives to keep out wayward passion, the more it reinforces the split between appearance and reality. The members of the community who are ostensibly the most respectable are often the most depraved, while the apparent sinners are often the most virtuous.

The novel also crafts intriguing symmetries between social oppression and psychological repression. Dimmesdale’s sense of torment at his guilty secret and the physical and mental manifestations of his malaise reflect the pathology of a society that needs to scapegoat and alienate its so-called sinners. Eventually, personal integrity is able to break free from social control. Perhaps more than any other novel, The Scarlet Letter effectively encapsulates the emergence of individualism and self-reliance from America’s Puritan and conformist roots.