EXPLICATOR
(Vol. 53, No. 4)
Summer 1995, pp. 200-201

Copyright © Heldref Publications Summer 1995. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

By John Reiss
Saint Michael's College

     It is surprising that so little critical attention has been given to the allegorical representations of free will and predestination in the main characters of The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne is clearly associated with free will, Roger Chillingworth with predestination and the Puritan minister Arthur Dimmesdale wavers between a desperate practice of Papist penance and a more dominant belief in Calvinistic predestination. Pearl seems to have the freedom and fate of nature.

     Hester's allegorical representation of free will is much closer to the free will doctrine of the Papists than to the sense of predestination found in the beliefs and practices of the Puritans. Hester's first act in The Scarlet Letter seems to be an act of free will. Although it is the town beadle who releases Hester from prison, "on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked by natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will" (chapter 2). As Hester stands on the scaffold and holds her child, Hawthorne describes the scene as reminiscent of a Papist image of Divine Maternity. In the years following her day of public shame, Hester leads a life of good works--comforting the poor, the sick, and the afflicted. Hawthorne describes her as a self-ordained Sister of Mercy (chapter 13).

     Roger Chillingworth is associated with predestination. When he first arrives in Boston, he announces: "I am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will" (chapter 3). Chillingworth later tells Hester: "My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity" (chapter 14). Chillingworth does not want Arthur Dimmesdale to repent; the vengeful Chillingworth desires the minister to become more sinful, more hypocritical, as evidence of his damnation.

     Arthur Dimmesdale scourges himself and fasts "more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome" (chapter 11), but his beliefs seem to remain Protestant and Puritan. Being too true a Calvinist to believe his good works could win him forgiveness, Dimmesdale tells Hester "the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it," and Hester, with her self-reliance and with her faith in free will and the efficacy of good works, tells him he has "deeply and sorely repented" by his "good works" (chapter 17). After Dimmesdale publicly confesses his guilt, as he is about to die (he never clearly confesses the adultery he committed with Hester), Hester says to Dimmesdale: "Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another with all this woe" (chapter 23). The idea of ransoming one another from the penalty of sin is heretical to both Papist and Puritan, and Dimmesdale cautions her and then says: "God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of all in my afflictions."

     In his last acts and pronouncements, Dimmesdale affirms his Puritan faith. Hester remains true to her allegorical character. After Dimmesdale's death, she and Pearl leave New England, but Hester returns years later, and "of her own free will" resumes wearing the scarlet letter.

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