The Scarlet Letter: Social Irony and the Paradox of Justice - Research Paper Example

The Scarlet Letter: Social Irony and the Paradox of Justice The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorn is a story about the imposed shame by a community upon a woman whose pregnancy is evidence of her infidelity, creating a rich discourse on the irony of social condemnation. In an attempt to shame her, she is given a scarlet red colored A to wear upon her chest so that she is forever “branded” as an adulterer. In the end, however, she resumes wearing the A because her child, so used to it upon her breast, cries when she removes it and tosses it away. She resumes wearing it despite its intent, serving as a sense of security for Pearl, her child, and because what is most important rises to the surface. Bercovitch states that “the law, embedded in the cultures sacred text (the Bible), generates a conflict of interpretation that the law itself cannot resolve - which, indeed, remains unresolved until Hester resumes the letter beyond legal judgment or, rather, in a visionary spirit that incorporates the law in the very act of transcending it” (71). One of the strongest examples of irony within the story is embodied within the character of Arthur Dimmesdale, the Puritan minister who is the man with whom Hester has the affair. Known for his physical attractiveness, his health suffers throughout the story as his own immorality eats as his body. Bloom states that “Dimmesdale’s characterization is filled with irony: the irony of the corrupt man responsible for the moral well-being of his flock, the irony of deepest guilt and confession revealed only at a moment of triumph, the irony of a weak man praised by society in contrast to the strong woman who is abandoned by it” (19). Hester, who is marked as weak by society, maintains her silence and does not reveal Dimmesdale as her lover, her loyalty to him an ironic turn against the disloyalty she is accused of by her peers. The letter A represents a series of principles throughout the novel. The surface reason, of course, is that it was intended to be a source of constant shame for Hester, her identity defined as an adulterer throughout the rest of her life. However, the A comes to represent a number of principles that were in contrast with that the social intent. The letter A represents the name Arthur, Dimmesdale’s first name and as it is worn on Hester’s chest, she bares the weight of it as her secret, the love she has for Dimmesdale emblazoned along with the shame. Her love for him, controverted for the pain she suffers because of it, still held close to her heart through the physical emblem. As Hester becomes a caretaker within her community, the letter comes to represent the angelic presence that she holds. The irony of her the love she feels for Dimmesdale, the place she holds within the community, and the way in which she conducts her life, suggests that she is more than the sum of her sin, thus the letter becomes a badge of honor, the emblem close to her heart as she bares the mark of a time in her life when she created life through love (Wall and Wall 32). The letter A that she creates through her own needlework insults those who witness her public shame. The women find it to be too extravagant, a prideful mark rather than the shameful one that is intended. The petty way in which the crowd behaves is contrasted through the irony of the beadle who proclaims “Make way, good people, make way….A blessing on the righteous colony of Massachussetts” (Hawthorne 67). The use of the terms “good people” and “righteous colony” are intended to be seen for their irony, the humor with which Hawthorne creates in order to allow a contempt to rise within the reader, creating Puritan society as a hypocritical place in which justice cannot be found (Canaday 17). The primary resources that fueled this novel for Hawthorne are based upon his own understanding of the injustice of the world. For Hawthorne, “it came from a dark world where human injustice was done, but only because men fumbled in their understanding of justice” (Van Doren 26). The lack of true justice, the imbalance between the obvious nature of Hester’s condition that revealed her infidelity in balance against the secret that enable Dimmesdale to hide his shame, creates the conflict in which the greatest irony is revealed. Clareson compares Chillingworth, who inflicts as much pain as he can upon Dimmesdale, with Frankenstein’s monster as he taunts his maker to follow him to the ends of the earth. He states that “Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge” (179). Through knowing of their adversary, through the intimacy of their knowledge, they destroy the object of their obsession. However, the character, unseen but personified within the story, that Hawthorne might have been directing his commentary towards is that of the American Dream, the failure of attaining that dream, and the ironies that are involved in pursuing that end. This unseen character looms in the background of his discourse, rising up to shadow the desires of the community in contrast to the actions against Hester, her fate tied to the oppression that pushes down on those in pursuit of the dream. Verhoeven states “against this vision of betrayed innocence we set the comic and ironic sense that man is inevitably limited in his possibilities, that success and failure are more matters of luck than of characters, and that we are all potential victims of human folly” (15). The puritans came to a new world to express their faith and to find the freedom to do so, but in doing so they constructed a society that oppressed those within it. Hawthorne recognized the irony of this, the concept of the ideal against the reality as it created fates that were not within the hands of those who had sought to wrench it into their grasp in the first place. The Scarlet Letter represents romantic irony, a place in which, according to Dekker, “authorial commentary briefly holds the stage”, and in which the author represents the duality of positions as being the creative omnipresence over the discourse, while acknowledging the limitations of being human (148). In the presence of the concept of the higher power that deems the sin under which Hester has suffered, Hawthorne becomes the higher power of the universe that he has created, constructing his play around the precepts that he has supposed about those within the culture that he represents within the work. Hawthorne creates his discourse by becoming those that he condemns. In discussing the irony of the story, the feminist point of view must be considered for the ways in which Hester has been presented. According to Colacurcio “Hester Prynne is an extraordinary woman who falls afoul of a theocratic and male-dominated society: and the problems which cause them to be singled out for exemplary punishment” (461). Hester proves, throughout the story, that she is made of strong moral character with a defined sense of service and righteousness. Yet, she is compelled to serve as an example of how not to live life through the public humiliation she suffers over the details of her private life. Biologically, the sins of sexual intercourse leave a visible sign within a woman, thus her hell is external, while Dimmesdale’s is internal. She lives a shame that he must experience in silence, a silence that is his undoing as he falls into an abyss of moral pain. Still, she is the one who carries the burden of public humiliation, for even after his confession he is released from any public persecution through death. Part of the irony within The Scarlet Letter is that Hawthorne has created a mythology of the life within the Puritan community, and then made a commentary through the creation of a historically referenced of a fictional event. In attempting to portray a feeling, he bastardizes history and frames a people within a context that suggests the injustice he intends, but applies an evil that places the very shame his literary work places upon Hester, upon the Puritans (Dekker 148). In this respect, the novel in itself, is ironic, its existence placing upon a social group the same shame that he writes about within his work. The Puritans became defined by his novel, the historical remembrance of their existing intrinsically linked by the injustice done to Hester Prynne. While Bancroft, an inspiration for Hawthorne, expounded the virtues of the Puritans and their profound dedication to citizenship, Hawthorne saw the dark side of this, the required obedience and the effect of going against the social rules that prevailed. Hester becomes the ultimate example of a good citizen when she returns to Boston and becomes unselfishly committed to her community, serving them for whatever need they would bring to her (Thomas 183). The life of Hester Prynne is intended to show the conflict between the person and the perceived shame that a person is forced to bear through the opinion of a hypocritical society. Works Cited Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Office of the Scarlet Letter. 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Indianapolis, Ind: Alpha Books, 2005. Print. Wright, Sarah B. Critical Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2007. Print. Read More