Examples Of Symbolism In The Scarlet Letter

Chapter 21 begins with Hester and Pearl walking into the marketplace on a national holiday in the Puritan town. It is the inauguration day of the village’s new Governor. All the townspeople are in the village center for the celebration. Hester is wearing grey so she can fade out into the background, but the scarlet letter makes her standout, “It had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while, again, the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness.

She is very stoned face and shows no emotion in fear of revealing her plans to leave with Dimmesdale. Hester is ready to leave but also feels regret because the scarlet letter and the town have become her life and she feels wrong for leaving her home behind and defying her religion, “Nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in Hester’s mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply incorporated with her being”.

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On the other hand, Pearl is wearing very vibrant colors and is very jittery and excited, making it difficult to tell they were there together, or that Pearl is even Hester’s daughter. After the passage we learn that Pearl is feeling uneasy and nervously excited. This is a symbol of her perceptiveness and foreshadows the event which occurs later in the book when their plan doesn’t succeed, and Dimmesdale dies after they announce they are leaving.

Another example of symbolism in The Scarlet Letter can be found in Pearl’s clothes. The clothes symbolize her personality and her nature. Hathorne says, “The dress, so proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly’s wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature” . This is also an example of diction because Hawthorne uses beautiful and flowery words to describe the dress to match the dress itself. This passage uses a lot of characterization as well. From Hester’s outfit and emotions to Hester’s excitement and garments. Finally, the theme of this passage is the irony of the puritan community.

Hawthorne likes to expose the Puritans as much as he can in the book. He describes the day as less puritan because usually they are strict, gloomy, and work, whereas in this passage they are excited, not working, and running around the marketplace.