Maximal Life

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF THE SYMBOL

OF COLORS IN SCARLET LETTER

Every life has an important thing shown in many ways, ways of meaning, signs, and symbols and each of them sometimes is an analogy to represent the hidden meanings of something. Not everything can be shown as facts and the people’s ways of thinking make this to show easy things for others. Also, not everyone understands what they have read from something else, but it will be understood comprehensively by analyzing what they are reading and what they want to understand.

In The Scarlet Letter, symbols appear everywhere. Hawthorne uses several different concrete objects to represent something of deeper meaning. Among these symbols is the Scarlet Letter “A” itself. It is artistically made of red cloth and beautifully embroidered;

“On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and and which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony” (39-40)

It is a literal symbol of the sin of adultery. The letter “A” appears in several places and several forms. It is the letter that appears on Hester’s heart that she is condemned to wear for the remainder of her life

In this paper, as it has been mentioned above, at least, three colors will be delivered after doing analysis from the Scarlet Letter novel. The colors are red, black and white. Firstly, I would like to explain and deliver more about the deep meanings of red in Scarlet Letter and what actually the meaning of red in the novel is.

The most important of Scarlet Letter is the symbol of a red “A” for it shows what Hester Prynne has done which is not suitable to the teaching of the era of Puritanism and because of what she has done, she must do her punishment by standing on the scaffold;

“…who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom!” (44)

In this case, I will not explore the meaning of the symbol of letter “A” but I will further show and explain the meaning of red color in the novel of Scarlet Letter. In the Scarlet Letter, the letter of A was made with the red. There are many definitions of red but the definitions of red here will be more referred to the Scarlet Letter itself. Scarlet Letter uses the symbol of red because the red is frequently used as a symbol of guilt or sin, often as connected with blood (en.wikipedia.org). Red most noticeably represents the sin committed by Hester Prynne, as shown by the scarlet “A” she is forced to wear on her bosom. The scarlet letter, like her sin, is something that she will never be able to forget and is something she can never escape from. The symbol of red in Scarlet Letter shows a guilt or sin who was done by her. Knowing the meaning of red which is defined as a symbol of guilt or sin, the letter of a red “A” which was also embroidered upon her bosom, the writer, Hawthorne says in her novel that Hester Prynne who had an infant born as illegitimate child has a sin and guilt;

“…something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman’s beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne” (42)

This symbol of red can be found in the novel that the letter of a red “A” as a symbol of guilt, sin and infamy becomes a part of her illegitimate child mentioned as the sin-born infant;

“…with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms” (47)

The symbol of red becomes a symbol to the cloth of Hester Prynne’s daughter when she wore the red cloth. The color red is used to represent the result of the sin, as Pearl is usually dressed in red clothing. Pearl is called a wide variety of names pertaining to the color red in the book such as “Ruby”, “Coral”, “Red Rose”, and “a little bird of scarlet plumage;

“I am mother’s child,’ answered the scarlet vision, ‘and my name is Pearl!’ ‘Pearl?—Ruby, rather—or Coral!—or Red Rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue!” (82)

Red is used to represent the sin further with the red “A” formed from meteors and the “A” appearing on Dimmesdale’s chest;

“We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter—the letter A—marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud, but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it, or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another’s guilt might have seen another symbol in it” (116)

Besides of the meaning of red on the letter of A itself, there are many deep meanings of red from the whole of the novel content and I would like to mention one by one by giving statements from the novel itself. The symbol of red also refers to how human has passion and anguish in this life. Hester Prynne has an anguish in her life because of the punishment shown to the all people around her and she has to face many people’s view about her, showing the Scarlet Letter flaming on her breast. As written in the novel that Hester Prynne has a sinful passion and he sinful passion to be an attention for many people and moralist;

“Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast—at her, the child of honourable parents—at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman—at her, who had once been innocent—as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument” (59, 60)

This passion has been a part of Hester’s life in facing the reality of life;

“To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life” (63)

And she acknowledges that there are many sins hidden in the deepest heart of people;

“She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts” (65)

The symbol of red is also associated with lust, passion, love, and beauty as well. The association with love and beauty is possibly related to the use of red roses as a love symbol (eb.wikipedia.org). The symbol of red is also talking about lust. Hester Prynne’s daughter, Pearl, was born as an illegitimate child, born by the lust of this world and the father’s guilt and actually by a love of Hester Prynne with the child’s father, Arthur Dimmesdale. However, nobody is perfect and the love of God is still upon this child so that she came into this world.

“This child of its father’s guilt and its mother’s shame has come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly and with such bitterness of spirit the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing—for the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution, too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her bosom?” (85)

Furthermore, Red is also used as a symbol of courage and sacrifice, as in blood spilt in sacrifice or courage in the face of lethal danger. The courage of Hester Prynne makes her keep staying with her own being. This shows that encourage in the novel of Scarlet Letter is one of the important thing to Hester Prynne to be stronger from the gaze of other people;

“ Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger—so fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she now did, with the hot mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms” (47)

She is not only as a gaze of many people but she is also estranged from others. What she has in her life can not be lost and it can bring her life to live in the middle of those who always think something bad coming from her life. The courage in her life brings her to be more enthusiastic in her daily life;

“with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate.” (150)

This color of red is also defined as a symbol of sacrifice. Hester Prynne has to work hard for her life continuity, doing some rude works instead of what she has done in her life;

“Much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork” (63)

This interpretation of Hester’s sacrifice can be seen when Pearl was born. It looks like that she doesn’t remember her sinful deed when her daughter came into this world because of her sacrifice to bear her. A little Pearl has come to this real world without knowing before why she came. A lovely mother kept her dear daughter for she was born from Hester Prynne’s loved one. Everything is as if changed when Hester Prynne heard her daughter’s voice. Everyone looks at the daughter as a product of sin;

“…with what strange rapidity, indeed did Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother’s ever-ready smile and nonsense words! And then what a happiness would it have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling’s tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children. But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants” (70)

The symbol of color in the novel of Scarlet Letter is to be so important to show the hidden meanings. I will keep continuing to show further the meaning of red. In terms of the meanings of red, this will be related to the text and the interpretation of the text. The last one for the symbol of red is talking about spirit, the strong spirit in facing the problem of life. Fire is something red that can burn something and if the fire burns our spirit, we will be enthusiastic to do anything that brings something better in our daily life.

Another frequently used color used by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter is black. Black is mainly used to represent the darkness and evil that is living throughout this book. In the introduction of the novel, it says that the custom house is in black paint;

“The Custom-House marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, I hope, will never go again” (21)

Very early in the book, Hawthorne refers to the prison as the “black flower of civilized society,” meaning it as a place representing evil and darkness;

“Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grassplot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, applepern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently

found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison” (35)

The rose has something beautiful meaning and value in this life. Many times, the rose is defined as the symbol of love and beauty. The black rose is a rose that its color is dark and it is something unclear. In the novel, it is written that the rose has been kept because the symbol of love is also the symbol of life and beauty;

“This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is far authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine” (36)

To the en.wikipedia.org, rose was sacred to a number of goddesses and is often used as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. It is also said that the red rose has different meanings from the other color of rose. In the Scarlet Letter, most of color uses red and the red rose means “love”. This sign of black also shows that the people around Hester Prynne as if they are clear from the sin. They do not know if they actually have sin in their life. They just see the guilt of other people meanwhile they can not see their own guilt. As mentioned in the novel that something hidden in people’s heart;

“…that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts” (65)

In the novel, there is a black shadow emerging into sunshine. A black shadow shows that life of someone is actually not clear. A good way is put to the wrong way and it seems that it has been done well but the facts, it’s not. The black shadow also shows something dismal and it can not appear clearly;

“The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold of the prison-door…”(39)

In the Puritanism, the people tend to look for the purity in their daily life and they obey the rule of religion. The symbol of black is something which can not be seen well and sometimes it is hidden. The people who are sinful is also the kind of blackness that can not be known by others and who knows if we or somebody is sinful? Nobody can predict if someone is sinful. They just look from outside of someone and nobody knows someone’s heart and only God who knows that our life has a guilt. A sin also refers to the black thing;

“…and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and blackness of our sin” (49)

The little Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter also has the kind of blackness. She was born by her mother, Hester Prynne who had sin and guilt before bearing Pearl. The symbol of black means that the black guilt and hidden guilt that Hester Prynne does, it will transfer to her daughter that also brings the same thing from her mother. In the novel says that there is another face in the small black mirror of Pearl’s eye. The black mirror shows that Pearl has something strange which is seen by others that she has a smiling malice in her own life;

“Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child’s eyes while Hester was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; and suddenly for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face in the small black mirror of Pearl’s eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of

smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion.” (72-73)

People who lived in puritanical era try to keep their life to be pure. The father of Pearl – before Pearl was born – had hidden the black things for others in relation with Hester Prynne. The black deed brings him to difficult situations. He was a preacher and everyone believed in him. Nobody knows if he had done something bad where everyone knew that he might not do that;

“…thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life.” (105)

The black soul will show something worse for many people because it will tend to make others can not feel and they are always brought to the same thing having a black soul. This means how people save something secret in their life. This is not a good secret but a black secret. The black soul has also a black life. What the novel has mentioned is that Mr. Dimmesdale had a black secret in his soul;

“More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps until he should have spoken words like the above. More than once he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul” (107)

The lust of Hester Prynne had pleaded her to live in the mocking of others. She had to face other bad response about her life. The novel writes that she lived in the same platform or scaffold and this kind of scaffold was black. This shows how Hester Prynne is so close with the will of devil. From the beginning of her guilt, it seems that she indeed tried to be strong and she had a great passion in facing that but what she had done is actually the deed black things which refers to devil’s will;

“…Hester Prynne had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meetinghouse” (110)

Darkness is occasionally turned to light, suggesting that darkness represents a place of hiding, where true emotions are not shown and characters hide from their problems. The black things represent the darkness and the hidden things;

“…the secrets that may be buried in the human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution” (98)

Hester Prynne is also said by her husband, Roger Chillingworth that she has hidden sinfulness;

“There goes a woman,’ resumed Roger Chillingworth, after a pause, ‘who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet letter on her breast?” (100)

The Puritan’s refer to Satan and evil beings as the “Black Man” in the forest, as he represents darkness and all that is evil about society. Black is used as a tool to show the most evil part of a person or object, as it can only be countered by the color of white;

“Why dost thou smile so at me?’ inquired Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. ‘Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?’ ‘Not thy soul,’ he answered, with another smile. ‘No, not thine!” (58)

The last one is white which is also used by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter to represent light and change. The light shows that someone is given a bright way to run his or her life because without the light, we sometimes do not know what to do. The novel also mentions that the light comes upon someone’s life and this is to be the lamp of life;

“If his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest gleamed out upon his features, proving that there was light within him, and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp that obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared” (16)

The symbol of light shows us something powerful where it can bring us to a better way that guides our path to step. When doing a guilt, it always intimidate us to do more the sinful deed. When the light appears, it means that someone still has a chance to correct their deed from the bad deed that they have done;

“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 which he could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own” (108)

The novel also writes how Mr. Dimmesdale can see the wide light in the sky as the relation between earth and sky;

“But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light The wooden houses…” (115)

White is also the color employed by Hawthorne to oppose black and darkness as a method of self-containment. Pearl, who has never committed a sin herself, is almost always portrayed with a light shining upon her, symbolizing the good, her existence, coming out of the bad, her conception through adultery;

“So magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness” (68)

The white also refers to changes. The changes of life will be always needed and spontaneously, it often happens into our daily life and it is actually looked for many people to make a better life. The Scarlet Letter also talks about the changes as it can be read from this quotation;

“…himself strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even when change might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on taking charge of my department, I found few but aged men. They were ancient sea- captains, for the most part, who, after being tossed on every sea, and standing up sturdily against life’s tempestuous blast, had finally drifted into this quiet nook, where, with little to disturb them” (10)

And this one is further found how the change of life is missed by everyone;

“…a low whisper in my ear, that within no long period, and whenever a new change of custom should be essential to my good, change would come” (20)

Hester, who is looked down upon by the entire town throughout the book, removed her letter and faced her sin and pride, causing the sunlight to shine upon her for the very first time;

“All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy” (152-153)

This shows the way that coming out of the darkness of hiding Hester Prynne’s emotions, let loose the powerful force of sunshine, as Hester was able to relieve her feelings of guilt and sorrow, which she had carried for such a long time. White was the symbol that offset all of the negative effects of the story, and showed the characters for what they truly were.

The color of white can show that everything is clear to see and there is no hidden and secret. White is also giving something visible;

“Moonlight, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly—making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike a morning or noontide visibility—is a medium the most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs, with each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sustaining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extinguished lamp; the sofa; the book-case; the picture on the wall—all these details, so completely seen, are so spiritualised by the unusual light, that they seem to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect” (26-27)

The white also shows something pure;

“…the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride” (62)

CONCLUSSION

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter uses many forms to display the emotions and feelings of the characters, especially through the colors of red, - the most colors used in Scarlet Letter - black, and white. Red was used to display the sin committed by Hester, representing the passion and sensuality of the characters, relating to the scarlet letter. The red is also used as a color to the letter of a red “A”. Black was used as a symbol of darkness and evil, as all of the negative events within the book were described using the color of black. The black is also used to show something hidden from the people’s secret.

White was used to counter the use of black, as it symbolized the opposition to darkness and the purity of many of the characters true feelings. This color of white also shows the light how the light can be shown for everything which has deep definition and also it shows that the light can lighten our path, guide us to keep staying in a right way. The white also refers the change of life and how we can have a new in this life. The change of life is leading us to the better life.

The analysis of Scarlet Letter whose topic is “The Symbol and Interpretation of Colors” has mostly shown, explained and stated the deep meaning of colors. The deep meaning of the colors sought from the definitions of the color itself that have been related to the content and statement or quotations from the novel of Scarlet Letter.

Finally, reading and understanding the content of the novel can lead and remind the reader what lessons can be got and it can teach how to see our own deed before looking for the guilt of others./Analyzed by Immer

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Mackays of Chatham plc, Great Britain 1992

Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. 02 Jan. 2008. The Wikimedia, Inc. 07 January 2008

Oracle ThinkQuest. 15 Aug. 2005. Oracle ThinkQuest: Education Foundation. 07 January 2008