- redeemed out of my captivity
....sl03.html#g07
- during this period of European wars that extended to fighting
between the colonies of England and France (in Canada) some white
civilians were made captive by Native Americans, usually as agents
of the French Roman Catholic forces. Their families could pay
ransom money to get them back in some cases. Others chose to stay
with their captors. Captivity narratives were popular books for
some years. Ransoming captives was common in European wars as well.
The overtones of the capitivity of the Hebrews in Babylon and Egypt
would be apparent to readers of the Old Testament as the Puritans
were. At the time of Hawthorne's writings a Native American in
his native clothing would be a great curiosity in Salem or Boston, since New
England Indians had been mostly exterminated by war or
disease.
- the Daniel who shall expound it
....sl03.html#g10
- Daniel was a prophet who in his Old Testament book interpreted
some encoded writing on a wall. (Daniel 5: "Thou art weighed
in the balance and found wanting.") The Puritans used references to the
Bible in everyday life.
- a living sermon against sin ....sl03.html#g13
- instead of being put to death, Hester is being forced to wear
the red letter A (standing for adulteress--we asssume, since
Hawthorne never outright uses that word nor tells us
authoritatively what the letter stands for--we have to use our
resources to read something into the text--whether that is true or
not perhaps only God knows). Thus anyone seeing the letter would be
reminded of that sin. The Puritans believed that everything had
religious significance and that people had free will to do good or
evil. The scarlet letter is a text, just as this book is. The text,
then, of the message is being engraved--it cannot be erased by
man--and the meaning is supposed to be fixed, not subject to
interpretation, just as the Bible can be read by every person but
is not be be interpreted just as one wishes, as if that
interpretation were directly from God (as the Antinomians believed,
contrary to the Puritan church). Hester as a sinner is not to speak
her own message or interpretation, and this message or sermon is to
be her whole life, being even the emblem on her gravestone. For
this her life is being spared. However, if she repents--of her own
free will--publicly confesses her sin, and names the daddy, then they will
let her take the letter off her chest. Otherwise she must undergo
the period of standing on the scaffold and listening to a dreary
sermon. We will discuss this public confession requirement
later, but it seems odd at the
moment for Hester to have to publicly confess her crime and
sin--after all, it is obvious from the circumstances--but indeed
public confession would be part of proving repentance, and this
would have an effect on the sentence of the crime (we do not
really know if Hester got a jail sentence, we only assume so, but
that might have only been that she had to have the baby in jail,
which might not have been much of a penalty if she had no other
place to stay.)
The slight logical contradiction between the first idea of
the fateful permanent message, and the second idea, that the
message can be altered by free will, is not explicitly pursued in
this text. (Of course, Hester is a character in a novel and so
subject to the author's will, not hers, but that is another
level.)
- public exposure ....sl03.html#g15
- This point Hawthorne raises about the difference between public
communication and private might relate to several other themes,
such as the old law and the new, the predestined and free will, men
and women roles in public, and the important issue of how an
individual in either Puritan Boston or Whig Salem can relate to the
community. It also suggests another theme that is not pursued so
much in this novel as in others: the difference between the small
town and the big one--anonymity can create privacy in a crowd,
while gossips are always spying on you in a small town. The United
States was in 1850 going though a new industrial revolution that
was rapidly changing town life.
- darkly engraved portraits...old volumes
of sermons ....sl03.html#g18
- Hawthorne discovered some of these in the attic of the Old Manse where he had lived. However, the
portraits on display there now look more like Bellingham than
Wilson--the wigs are very fancy--and since those portraits were
from a later period in New England history he probably is referring
to earlier, cruder, and more severe woodcuts rather than
engravings.
- proof and consequence thereof ....sl03.html#g21
- the Puritan rhetoric was based strongly on the logic of Petrus
Ramus, and their sermons largely consisted of his special style of
demonstrating by a form of logic multiple points about a subject
(in a moment, Wilson will draw out in an long--an hour or
three--sermon all the points relating to the scarlet letter). This
training in speaking therefore gave the clergymen special power and
authority. However, public confession does not seem to be a
prominent Puritan religious practice, though it was done
voluntarily in special circumstances, and, in this case, Wilson was
quite prepared not to have it. More likely, Hawthorne is
simplifying history for dramatic purposes here.
- the speech of an angel ....sl03.html#g22
- Dimmesdale is at the same time a Romantic hero here (beautiful
angel) and an anti-hero and sinner (fallen angel). He later even
wonders himself if he has been possessed by the devil (the red mark
on his chest would be a sign of that). Hawthorne cleverly paints
him like a child, but we will see from Pearl that the morality of
children is uncertain too. Dimmesdale is intelligent and persuasive
like either angel, but it is ironic to describe him as an angel in
the text. As one who delivers moving sermons Dimmesdale is an
artist like Hester and Hawthorne. (Also, note the irony in
Dimmesdale's use of the second person, as "thou"-- it
was a form of speech that was used both for a minister to
parishioner as well as lover to lover.) His parishioners trust him
to tell the truth, and eventually he does, but they fail to believe
his strictly logical interpretation, being more moved by the beauty
than the truth--failing to see that the "tremulous" voice
was strung taut between two ironic poles here. Hawthorne
communicates this mainly by describing the sound of his voice and
its effect, and hardly ever by relating the content. That content
apparently also relates to the perception of political and moral
progress made by the Puritans in Boston, another irony considering
both the plot and Hawthorne's introduction. If the progress was
owing to God's favor, would Dimmesdale be excused his sin,
especially as he was a minister ("divine"), or would his
sin be considered even worse?
- Dimmesdale's appeal ....sl03.html#g27
- The Reverend Dimmesdale seems on the surface to urge Hester to
name him, but every word he says makes that more difficult for her.
He as her pastoral advisor also condemns her to a life of public
shame of wearing the scarlet letter as the only solution for the
"evil within" her and the "sorrow without." He
is telling her in code that he wishes to suffer in secret and
refuses to join her in public. If you think about it, you see that
Dimmesdale is in words telling the truth, but the more he tries to
do that, the more he gets involved in hypocrisy. He needs to be
true to himself emotionally instead of trying to mouth the truth.
Even Pearl seems to realize that. Can you think of any famous
person today who got into more and more trouble by trying to talk
about his adulterous relationship?
- the scarlet letter threw a lurid
gleam ....sl03.html#g34
- did it or not? Well, the author says that some people whispered
that it did, just as in the introduction he wrote that it
seemed to burn his chest (also in the next chapter). Thereby
the mystery is heightened and the symbol becomes more
significant--perhaps it is a supernatural power that is causing it
to behave this way--God or Devil? The child's screaming might
be evidence for the latter (the author seems to use Pearl though
the book as another way of pointing out interpretations, possibly
the truth). We will see more allusions to the Black Man or Devil
throughout. Was Hester's sin an act of love for a beautiful
angel, or was it caused by the Devil, the fallen angel? What is the
"real" significance of the scarlet letter?
Summary. Hester Prynne's husband, now called
Chillingworth, appears on the edge of the crowd and learns that his
wife has had a child by another man, whose identity he will now
seek. It seems that he was considered lost at sea. He immediately
decides to signal Hester to be quiet about the fact that her
husband has appeared. Hester is asked to confess and name the
father of her baby, but refuses, to the evident relief of her
minister, Dimmesdale. The minister John Wilson sermonizes for an
hour or three while Hester is publicly shamed. Then Hester and the
child go back to prison.
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