The Struggle of the HeartSometimes it is easy to tell if someone is going through something, while other times it is not. Humans don’t always show their true emotions, or what they’re feeling on the inside. Many people are good at hiding their heart, and they’re good at guarding it too. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are a few examples of how characters are struggling with something on the inside, and it starts to show, and others can start to pick up on it. Arthur Dimmesdale is carrying the weight of his guilt all on his own, Hester just wants people to recognize that she is more than the letter she bares, and Roger Chillingworth wants a form of revenge.
Arthur Dimmesdale seems like the perfect man of God. The people of Boston view epitome of a good man. Truthfully, he’s more like the townspeople than they think he is. Dimmesdale feels this crushing guilt every single day of life. In Chapter 11, Nathaniel Hawthorne states, “All of that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, the Unforgiving!”(pg. 91). Most people, not just Dimmesdale, hide things from the world; they they tend to keep their hearts guarded and feelings hidden from the world. Dimmesdale has done something that the Puritan Church views as horrendous. This pain and guilt causes Dimmesdale to feel the need to punish himself as a way to balance out this sin he’s committed. Also in Chapter 11, part of Dimmesdale’s self torture is described; “He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking glass, by the most powerful light”(pg. 96). Dimmesdale hurts himself constantly. He becomes so tired that he often has visions or hallucinations. Thus, Dimmesdale is essentially sleep deprived, malnourished, and in constant pain as a result of the injuries he’s given himself.
Hester lives her life with two different forms of punishment for her sin; the scarlet letter “A” she bares on her chest, and Pearl. The townspeople associate Hester with the letter she wears everywhere she goes. Hester is shunned; she is not treated very well by the townspeople who she does work for. In Chapter 8, Governor Bellingham says to hester; ”Woman, it is thy badge of shame!” and then continues on to say, “It is because of the stain which that letter indicates, that we would transfer thy child to other hands”(pg. 61). Now, the Governor wants to take Pearl away from Hester and place her in a new home with a new family, mostly because of the scarlet letter Hester wears. They say all sins are the same in God’s eyes, but the Puritans treat Hester like she has done the worst thing a person can do. But when Hester finds out that there is talk of her being allowed to take it off, she does not really like the idea. In Chapter 14, Hester tells Chillingworth, “It lies not in the pleasure
to be seen around the town but in the blood he has to keep. The governor goes to Hester in bed, but when Chillingworth comes back and tells him to lie to the Puritans, he replies that he really does not want him to tell them that Hester is coming. He then wants Hester to stay for longer‡‡ as if all has been forgotten that was hidden in his subconscious. Thus Hester and Pearl do not return the following season.
[p. 61]
The Puritans and Horace also have their own stories from when they first met. One Puritan, who has a daughter under the age of three, is a slave. They both had a strong desire to be married, but their actions led them to think about going out of their way to have children. Hester says that as soon as he became aware of his wife’s fate, that was when he felt that being a slave was not a good thing. He then wrote a letter about her to his family‡‡, “I think I should tell that tale now!‡ If your heart would rather live under that condition, then you will accept that your mother is a kind child, but only if that child is her second bride!
In Chapter 26 of the series, Horace says that Hester had the honor of marrying for the first time three years earlier, but her husband is not happy because of it in any significant way. Horace and Pearl have to convince the governor that Hester did marry for the first time and that what made him mad wasn’t that this happened to him, or not that he loved her; it was that he was also trying to make her more perfect. His brother later told Horace that he wanted to hear that from Hester. Horace says that he could never forget the story, but he can’t bear to believe the state of things today. Horace says that for his family to think that they got a daughter from a previous marriage is sad.
[p. 62]
As for Pearl, she always felt that she was being accepted as a slave to her new family. Because the idea of getting into a new life for a family member was as important as the fact of being a slave. To her, living in the same house meant going out of your way to have children like her, and it was hard not to get those children just by being with her. In The Crucible of Solomon, she remembers being in the house of Joseph Joseph for many years so that Joseph could do everything for her, but she never got to know him. During this time, there was also the rumor that Joseph’s brother, Jules, had given a very small amount of money to Pearl in exchange for a better life in the house. The rumor also was believed by many to be true.
[p. 63]
In Chapter 39, Horace tells Horace of his daughter, Rose. This one has been on display every season. Before this, she had wanted to have a daughter so that she could raise their children, but she wanted to be the one her daughter’s husband was living with. Horace knows that Horace’s daughter had gone missing to go live with him, but he had no choice. In one scene he is given a choice by his brother, Jules, because he feared the future and had no idea what to do.
[p. 64]
This was not true as there was a great deal of trouble and suffering for every family member with the possibility of being lost and being sent to a higher place. Horace tells Chillingworth that even though