摘 要：Sin and isolation are the main subjects Hawthorne attempted to probe in The Scarlet Letter. Generally speaking,"isolation" is always the result of "sin,"but the meaning of the sin in the book cannot bu generalized.Different characters hold different views about sin.Accordingly,the isolation as the result of the sin is not alike.
Through a series of analysis of the three major characters in the article,the problems such as who is the truest sinner, what their own views about the sin are and what the profound impacts on their successive acts are are revealed. Hence, a more penetrating understanding about the book and the author"s writing style is obtained.
关键词：sin；isolation；penitence；penance
中图分类号：G642 文献标识码：A 文章编号：1002-7661（2012）23-014-02
Sin and isolation are the two main subjects that Hawthorne attempted to deal with in The Scarlet letter.
Generally speaking, isolation is the result of sin in the book. Different characters hold different views about sin and isolation. To one character, adultery is transgression against God"s law, to another, no more than a violation of the natural order of things. Likewise, to one character, “ hypocrisy is a violation of his own nature, to another, a transgression against the moral code of the community”. Furthermore, as the nature of the sin differs, the nature of the isolation as its result differs. To be specific, when a character feels isolated, he feels isolated from someone or something. Therefore, isolation is a feeling of estrangement from those persons or things whose code the individual feels he has violated. To make the problem clearer, we need to consider the three major characters respectively.
As a symbol of sin, Hester is regarded by the strict Puritanical town as a presence of evil detested by God. Under the harsh condemnation, she never truly does extricate herself from segregation in her life. She has absolutely no communication with the world except for her occasional trips to town and there is nowhere for her to escape the glares of humanity.
Actually no one of the three major characters comes into the story guiltlessly. Of the three, however, Hester has the misfortune of being the only one unable to hide her guilt, and so it is upon her that the penalties of the community fall. Hester experiences the most evident and apparent form of isolation and alienation. It is unnecessary to go into detail about her public humiliation or her subsequent life in the small cottage at the edge of town. What interests us is her own attitude toward that enforced estrangement or toward her misstep. In the first place, it is evident that Hester does not feel she has sinned against God, partly because God has never been a real presence in her life. But chiefly, we can infer that, it is because she experiences no new sense of estrangement from God as the result of her adultery. She attends church" trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father". Moreover, though man has punished her for her sin, God has given her " a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her has parent for ever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven". God, then, has not looked with unkindness upon her deed.
Hester is certain that she has not violated any law of her own nature. She is by nature affectionate. Her relation with Dimmesdale, consequently, has been the result of her own nature, not a violation of it. In fact, it is also out of the same affection that she remains in Boston.
In the third place, it is clear chat Hester dose not feel she has sinned against the community. Indeed, from the very beginning it is evident that the selectmen"s attempt to induce inward repentance by outward penance is a result of failure. “Though Hester submits to the public exhibition and to the wearing of the scarlet letter, it is plain that her heart has not been touched.” With the passing of time, she tones down her dress and softens her attitude, but she continues to manifest rebellion in the bright and imaginative embroidery of the letter that the community regards as a heavy sign of guilt. She clothes Pearl, another symbol of her error, in the gayest of colors. Therefore, Hester feels she has not sinned against the community, and that the community has no right to inflict penalties. The only real result of the community"s action is to isolate Hester from her neighbors spiritually and physically.
Yet in spite of all this, Hester knows her deed has not been right. This is manifest in her anxiety for Pearl, whom she watches constantly, fearful of detecting some" dark and wild peculiarity". Soon she finds it in Peal"s waywardness and unpredictability. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great Law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.
Hester is awfully sorry for her sin, but the proper and improper methods of dealing with guilt lead to moral triumph and moral failure. She is completely isolated. The penalties of the community finally fall upon her. The great law which Hester feels she has broken, therefore, is the law of order. She is aware of the fact that she and Dimmesdale have introduced an act of disorder into an orderly universe. Knowing this, she can realize that some estrangement from the natural life is her due.
In the seven years that follow, Hester has been in the state of isolation all the time. Heaven and earth" have frowned on her"; society has never really accepted her save in time of sickness or death; God, seems to have become less real in her life; nature"s sunlight vanishes on her approach; and her own personality has lost its womanly charm. But these precipitate her intellectual speculation that is altogether foreign the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wildness".
When Hester has found the minister almost on the edge of insanity, she is awfully sorry for her sin of hypocrisy to conceal the doctor"s real identity on one hand and is eager to escape from her act of adultery on the other hand. The proper and improper methods of dealing with guilt have formed the two striking contrasts here. One leads to moral triumph and the other to moral failure. The former is owing to her sense of responsibility for wrongdoing. The latter is related to her attempt to overcome the isolation imposed by the adultery. For Hester, truth has been the one virtue to which she might have held. She finds that" a life is never good, even though death threaten on the other side". In short, she is unwilling to be false to her own nature. Realizing the terrible result she has brought to Dimmesdale, she becomes deeply and earnestly repentant. Until her lover replies, "I do forgive you, Hester, "she obtains some peace. It is truth to her own nature that leads her to repent for her sin of hypocrisy, but ironically, it is still her own nature that provides her with a justification of her act of adultery. "What we did had a consecration of its own! We felt so!" We said so to each other. Confident in this belief, she proposes that they dispel their sense of moral isolation by changing it into physical terms-to flee to Europe.
In the New England holiday, by contrast with her previous aggressiveness, Hester"s mood in the market place sinks from loneliness to almost complete despair. Seldom has she seemed so completely isolated. Her frozen calmness, we are told, is due to the fact that she is "actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy" and has" departed out of the world, with which she still seems to mingle". The good people of the town sidle away from her. Even Dimmesdale she sees moodily as existing in a sphere remote and" utterly beyond her reach". From above, we can see clearly that “ it is Hester"s personality that makes her isolate from her society and it is the different view about sin that leads her and her lover"s lack of mutual understanding.” After Dimmesdale has died and some years have passed in a foreign country, Hester returns to Boston and resumes the scarlet letter of her own will. Though even then she does not think her adultery as a sin against the community, she has lost her resentment and has come to feel that her sin can be fully expiated only when it is made known freely in the world, particularly in that part of the world which will recognize it and profit most from the repentant sinner. “There was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin, here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence". And she still does not regard her adultery as a sin against God, as she does not repent in the orthodox Calvinistic fashion. Clearly, she still thinks of her guilt in terms of a natural order. Her vision is that some day, the whole relation between man and woman will be established" on a surer ground of mutual happiness". And, finally Hester has overcome her isolation in her own way. In this sense, the earthly penalties she has docilely endured over the years are a symbolic moral triumph and a pathetic virtual failure as well.
Through Arthur Dimmesdale, a more secret feeling of solitude and alienation is conveyed in this novel. Unlike Hester, who has been treated with disdain and taunt by society, “ Dimmesdale ‘s desolation originates and thrives from the bottom of his own heart.” In dread of ruining his public appearance, Dimmesdale is secretly haunted and tortured by his own guilt, and consequently feels inner isolation towards humankind. Nonetheless, the whole town embraces him as a chaste messenger of God and "a miracle of holiness". Paradoxically, Dimmesdale considers himself to be an evil fiend and punished himself with daily starvation. In the end, when Dimmesdale finally does release his guilt and shame, he succumbs to sickness and dies, finding for the very first time, his peace of mind.
As a greatly respected "godly pastor" to the fellow townsmen, it is not surprising for Dimmesdale to confess his act of adultery as a violation of God"s laws. When we first see Dimmesdale, we see a man already conscious of having sinned against his Lord. The resulting estrangement has already made its mark upon him. Moreover, for Dimmesdale, his sin cannot remain simple so long as he remains in Boston, for the righteous colony of Massachusetts is a place" where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine". To hide one"s sin is to violate the basic principle of the community"s moral code. Thus, Dimmesdale becomes twice the sinner and twice the outcast. By Chillingworth"s step-by-step wringing a confession from him, he is made even more sinful and lonely. He begins to make frantic attempts at expiation. He tries foe instance, the device of declaring himself before his congregation to be the worst of sinners. But this is only to sin again, for the specious act of penance is proved to be a violation of his own nature as a result. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the very falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self!
The depths into which Dimmesdale has been thrust by Chillingworth are best demonstrated in the midnight vigil scene on the scaffold. Here we can see that Dimmesdale is not only incapable of changing his sinful situation by the action of his own will, but by assistance of outside agents. The vigil is another of Dimmesdale"s attempts at penance. He might feel a moment"s peace in it. Once on the scaffold, the sense of isolation sweeps over him, and he involuntarily shrieks aloud. At the moment that follows, three persons appear: Governor Bellingham, Mistress Hibbins, and the venerable Father Wilson. Here are three opportunities for him to break his loneliness and to establish connection with one of the great societies-earthly, hellish, or heavenly. A voluntary confession to any of the three, Dimmesdale would gain help. However, he cowers silently upon the scaffold and the figures disappear. Thus Dimmesdale reaches the extreme of his isolation. For the time being, earth, hell and heaven are all closed to him. Had he chosen hell, his fate would have been more terrible, but his immediate suffering could not have been greater.
After a talk with Hester in the forest, Dimmesdale has" a total change of dynasty and moral code" in himself. He has gained new impulses and he has lost his loneliness, his cowardice, and his naivete about sin, In the last chapters, since “the world is no longer illusory or his heart confused, Dimmesdale apparently has made his peace with the natural order and with himself.” But he still feels estranged from God and from the community because of his sins of adultery and hypocrisy. His confession on the scaffold, therefore, is necessary as penance for both these sins.
“God knows; and he is merciful; he hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this burning to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red heat! By bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people! ”Dimmesdale has made his peace with the natural order and with himself, but his confession is necessary as penance for both these sins.
In such a manner does Dimmesdale perform true penance and make his death a true relation with all the things against which he has sinned.. As the revenge-seeking villain, Roger Chillingworth commences his own sin, doubtlessly the most grievous one in this book, along with his plans of undressing other people’s sins. He undergoes the isolation in a most hidden and obscure way. He is physically separated from Hester. Except for Hester he speaks to no other person about his plans or motives of revenge. Wickedness leads to his departure from his prior life and isolates himself to live in a world filled with bitterness and hatred.
Like Hester, Chillingworth does not come into Boston guiltlessly. He errs first when he persuades Hester to marry him. "Mine was the first wrong, "he admits, "When I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay". Having admitted this responsibility and violation of the natural order, Chillingworth is unwilling to go further.
He disguises himself as a doctor and begins a cruel and destructive search for the father of the child. He abandons Hester, his lawful wedded wife, he withdraws his name from" the roll of mankind"; he continues his investigation against the counsel of the authorized representative of Puritan Massachusetts; and he cares ostentatiously for Dimmesdale"s ailing body while plotting secretly against his sin. “Such a formidable multiplication of ‘sin,’ however, seems to give the physician no awareness. The reason is simple that a more primary matter-a perversion of his zeal for intellectual truth-has driven these relatively secondary transgressions from his mind.” By Dimmesdale"s standards, Chillingworth may be the greatest sinner of them all, but by his own he is understandable in his moral code.
When Dimmesdale has “cost his life to deliver from his sin and sense of guilt”, Chillingworth becomes isolated extremely. As a result, "all his vital and intellectual force seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun". So he has really isolated from his prey and his spiritual prop at last!
Throughout the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne highlights the intricate themes of sin and isolation. These two forms of torturous estrangement are experienced by the key figures, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth, each due to different situations and to various degrees.
Hester is condemned and convicted for adultery - an unforgivable crime in the eyes of her Puritans fellow man. She is then forced to wear a reminder of her sin, the scarlet letter, as an eternal symbol of humiliation and alienation by the community. As a worthy public figure, Dimmesdale’s secret sin haunts his soul and torments him days and nights. He goes through such an agonizing trauma and suffocative loneliness that they eventually take his life. Representing the sinister sides of humanity, Chillingworth reaps nothing but emptiness and loneliness while revenging other people’s sin. All the three major characters experience isolation as a result of sin-committed by themselves or by others. With The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne reveals the agony and anguish that humanity sets upon each other and forlorn situations individuals are faced with. In this book two tangled clues follow and fuel each other all the way: isolation comes in the wake of sin, and sin springs up from the deserted land of isolation. However Hawthorne expresses an incisive criticism for hypocritical morality and his deep-felt compassion for those who suffer in a dilemma between human nature and established values.
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