the scarlet letter-puritanism
...at Dimmesdale's weakening and slowly killing him As the Puritans would call Dimmesdale a sinner, the Romantics level him as a human. The Scarlet Letter is wrapped in a deluge of allegorical theories and philosophies. Ranging from Puritanical to Romantic, Nathaniel Hawthorne embodies his ideas to stress his Romantic philosophies through Pearl, Hester, and Dimmesdale throughout the whole of the novel. Nathaniel Hawthorne has a sufficient reason for repeatedly making reference to mirrors throughout his refined novel, The Scarlet Letter. The use of mirrors in the story serves a beneficial purpose of giving the reader a window to the character’s innermost thoughts. When viewed in a mirror no longer its Hester’s beauty the first thing we notice, but rather Hester’s “A” has now become the most noticeable part of not only her physical features, but her spiritual being. The reflection of Pearl Prynne in the mirror uncovers her hard shell and brings out the loneliness, the innocent recklessness, and the wild beauty within her. Reverend Dimesdale’s image radiates the dark, gloomy truth of his impurities as well as the severe internal conflict within that is threatening to tear his soul. The allegorical mirror that Hawthorne uses to show the deepest thoughts and ideas in each of the characters is the readers passageway into the lives of characters that are withdrawn from the society in the book. In chapter two while Hester is standing on the scaffold, she tries to hid from her grim reality by reminiscing of the better days of her youth. Hawthorne notes, “she saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it.” Hester knows that from now on the image in the mirror will no longer be her own but rather the image will always resemble that of the mirror on the breastplate at the governor’s mansion in chapter seven, “owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature to her appearance.” It is highly ironic that Hester’s largest signs, the letter A and Pearl herself are the symbols of her sin, but Pearl is also the symbol of her happiness. Hester, once looked at as a beautiful woman is no longer looked in the same light in society, and in the mirror, “she seemed absolutely hidden behind it (the scarlet letter).” As for her child, Hawthorne writes “that look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl’s shape.” Pearl’s image is a reminder of Hester’s sin, “Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child’s eyes while Hester was looking at her own image in them. . . . 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, fiendlike, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the resemblance of features that she had known full well, through seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them.” This quote shows that Hester sometimes regrets Pearl’s birth. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of mirrors plays a crucial part in portraying the hidden side of Pearl Prynne. Pearl is shown in a negative light, the town viewed her as a child of witchcraft and evil. However the reader knows that beneath the town’s perception of Pearl lay a deep and endearing child. In chapter fourteen by the ocean, Pearl “came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark glistening curls around her head and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid, whom Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand and run a race with her.” This pool shows te reader that Pearl is an innocent and beautiful child who is very lonely. It is easy to understand that concept as Pearl cannot make friends with other children in the town because of her status, thus leaving her only with nature and her mother as companions. In chapter fifteen, Pearl “flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and--as it declined venture--seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime.” Pearl’s reflection is very real, and chapter sixteen smoothly continues this concept through another body of water--the brook in the forest. “Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from. . . . like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of somber hue.” As interpreted through the description of the brook, Pearl lacked many simple experiences in her childhood, and therefore, lacks the sympathy and emotions that numerous individuals take for granted. In chapter nineteen, Hawthorne compares the brook to Pearl, “the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesque ness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality.” Hawthorne used the forest brook in relation to Pearl, to show that she is untamed like the forest. Branching from that wild gift within Pearl, the wrath she is compelled to carry is also compared to the brook that flows beneath her. “Seen in the brook, once more, was the shadowy wrath of Pearl’s image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of it all, still pointing its small forefinger at Hester’s bosom!” This passage reveals that...