How an Introduction Destroyed the Hope of Transcendentalism: A Review of the Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter grabs the reader’s attention in much the same way a wreck between a Ferrari and a Porch does. But the most remarkable facet of the book is not Nathaniel Hawthorne’s mishmash of tedious descriptions and keen insights into the psychology of shame and repentance but rather his inability to overcome with his own hubris. In his attempt to show how humanity has progressed beyond the cold and unflinching, intolerance of puritanism, he inadvertently reveals humanity’s nature to be unmovable. And he accomplishes all this before the reader event gets to chapter one.

Too Many Words

Before introducing readers to the firmly resolved Hester Pryne who is branded with the infamous letter for her infidelity, the unstable Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale who is the father of Hester’s child, and the ever-scheming Roger Chillingworth who seeks to covertly punish the pastor for his unconfessed sin, Hawthorne invites his readers to hear about the story behind the story. Although he could have recounted it in the space of two or three pages how he stumbled upon the scarlet letter that inspired this American classic, Hawthorne devotes some forty-seven pages to this tale. Those pages quickly put the transcendental author on the defensive. About a month after his book went to print, Hawthorn found himself having to add an addendum to the second edition of his book this story behind the story had “created unprecedented excitement.”

Somewhat understandably, Hawthorne’s first audience took exception to his negative description of those old men who propped up the Boston Custom House which once employed the author. Hawthorne portrayed his coworkers as being indolent if not outright incompetent government employees. Having, “flung away all the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had…so many opportunities of harvesting (18-19), most of Hawthorne’s aged coworkers now spent their days mastering the skill of napping with one’s chair propped against the wall. Even the two people who managed to earn some respect from Hawthorne still proved less than laudable. Though the inspector did his job well, according to Hawthorne this leader still possessed “no soul, no heart, no mind, nothing.”  The patriarch of the Custom House knew nothing of beauty and talked only of food. Food. To quote Hawthorne, “It was marvelous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually rising up before him…A tender-lion of beef, a hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey.” Hawthorne spoke a touch more kindly about the rusty general. Though Hawthorne avoided conversation with the now decayed man, the author still found some delight in watching the general’s “almost slumberous countenance” because he could at times display “a ray of humor” or some other praiseworthy trait (25).

Though Hawthorn believed that his soul had benefited from being forced “into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself,” he still found those who had abandoned the ideals of nature for the doldrums of the Custom House as being less than good. He described them as having fallen victim to the “Devil’s wages.” Thankfully, Hawthorne ‘escaped’ from such enchantments among other things through his meditations upon the scarlet letter that produced the book by the same name. He was in the truest of senses, “a citizen of somewhere else.”

A New Letter for A New Age

Given the vast distance between myself and the author, I happily defer to Hawthorne’s knowledge of his coworkers and presume his descriptions of them to be accurate. But they cannot be said to be kind or needed. Criticisms of others that only highlights one’s own abilities and merits cannot help but appear selfish and thereby somewhat petty.

By going after his coworkers, Hawthorne reveals that his new ethic has not advanced beyond “the blackest shade of Puritanism” that had “so darkened the national visage.” The scarlet letters still exist in Hawthorne’s age albeit now slightly reworked.

Instead of condemning Hester and the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale for breaking a religious law that had been so mangled by society that it prevented the very displays of love and goodness that it should have protected, Hawthorn now condemns his contemporaries for a much less harmful crime, the crime of dullness. But instead of placing the criminals of his age on a platform for a few hours, our author has placed the objects of his disdain atop the pages of his book so readers can view his coworkers letters of shame for posterity.

Despite all his efforts to elevate humanity from the depressing confines of Christendom, Hawthorne’s ethic proves not to have reached upward but rather sidewise. The pettiness of his ancestors that he so hated is still alive and well in Hawthorne’s heart. Though freely critical of his coworkers, Hawthorne maintained a much more favorable view of himself writing, “I was, A Surveyor of Revenue, and, so far as I have been able to understand, a good a Surveyor as need be (28).” Just like the crowds who stared at Hester, Hawthorne failed to heed Jesus’s warning against seeing “the speck that is in your brother’s eye” while refusing to “notice the log that is in your own eye (Mat 7:3).” Ironically, Hawthorne sought to atone for his forefathers sins by committing them anew. To borrow the words of Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, one might say of Hawthorne, “He spoken the very truth, and transformed himself into the verist falsehood.”

How Sin Made the Book a Classic

Moreover, I suspect the book remains a classic because humanity has not fundamentally changed with the passing of time. The modern reader can still relate to Hawthorne’s description of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale for they too have experienced shame, offered half-hearted confessions, and languished under the sorrow of unrepentant sins. Others know the sorrow that comes from nobly enduring injustice at the hands of the self-righteous. And I suspect many too have enjoyed the liberation that comes through confession described in the books closing pages. Moreover, the twenty-first century reader could just as easily say as Hawthorne did that his political opponents might “guillotine” him if given the chance. Humanity is still the same.

But perhaps most of all, today’s readers can relate to Hawthorne because they too long to find life outside the law. In one sense, such an urge is good and proper for salvation does not come through the law. As the apostle Paul notes in Romans 7:10: “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.” But unfortunately for Hawthorne and his readers, it also does not come through the removal of the puritanical or biblical law. When men and women remove the law of Scripture, they always fill the newly created void with another law of their own creation, a new letter of some other color to be branded onto a new generation’s chest. Rather salvation comes through the fulfillment of the law in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who dies not so that we can discover ourselves but so that we can be good and know the joy of a clean conscience. In other words, we need not go to the woods but to the cross to find ourselves. Sadly, Hawthorne’s book reveals that he never grasped the beauty of this truth, the truest of truths that alone explains and redeems the human condition. In other words, Hawthorne understands something of the human condition but is powerless to improve it. And we discover all this simply by reading the introduction.