Characters in “The Scarlet Letter”

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Name : Radha B. Ghevariya 

Std. : M.A. SEM-3

Sub : The American Literature

Roll no : 22 

Topic : Characters  in  “The Scarlet Letter”

Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English 

Characters  in  “The Scarlet Letter”

  INTRODUCTION

“Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued is always beyond our grasp, but if you will sit but if you will sit down quietly , may alight upon you”

                                                                         -Nathaniel Hawthorne

            Hawthorne talks about the life happiness and the inspirational human life. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4,1804, in Salem Massachusetts. He came of a distinguished puritan family which had played an active role in the history of Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s basic reputation was that of a short story writer and sketch writer. Nathaniel Hawthorne write many great and famous novel like,

1)    The scarlet letter (1850)

2)    Twice told tales (1837-1842)

3)    Mosses from an old manse (1848)

4)    The Blithedale romance (1852)

5)    The marble fuan(1860)

               Nathaniel Hawthorne’s had built up his reputation as a writer of fine and delicate craftsmanship , but his best was in front of him yet.in 1845 Hawthorne again went to work as a  custom surveyor, this time, like the narrator of the scarlet letter at a post in Salem.in 1850, after having lost the job, he published the scarlet letter to enthusiastic, if not widespread, acclaim. The scarlet letter was Hawthorne’s first full length story if we ignore the earlier failure funshawe (1828) . he died in 1864, a few years after returning to America. Hawthorne’s work takes America’s puritan past as its subject , but the scarlet letter uses the material effect. the scarlet letter , Hawthorne  uses the repressive , authoritarian puritan society as an analogue for humankind in general. The puritan setting also enables him to portray the human soul under extreme pressures. Hester Prynne, reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and roger Chillingworth, while unquestionably part of the puritan society in which they live, also reflect universal experiences.

“To do nothing is the way to be nothing”

# Characters List

·       Hester Prynne

·       Roger Chillingworth

·       Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale

·       Pearl

·       Governor Bellingham

·       Reverend Mr. John Wilson

·       Mistress Hibbins

·       Narrator

·       Governor Winthrop

·       The sexton

·       The commander

·       Master Brackett

1)    Hester Prynne

                 Hester Prynne , an attractive young woman living among the puritans of Boston during the 1650s. Hester is the book’s  protagonist and the wearer of the scarlet letter that gives the book its title. The letter, a patch of fabric in the shape of an “A” , signifies that Hester is an “adulterer”. As a young woman, Hester married an elderly scholar, Chillingworth. Who sent her ahead to America to live but never followed her. While waiting for him, she had an affair with a puritan minister named Dimmesdale , after which she gave birth to Pearl.

     “ She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief”

                She became a martyr because she, presumably a window, bears a child out of wedlock; this sin result in her being jailed and than publically exhibited on a pillory for three hours. After she is released from jail, she must wear for a lifetime a scarlet “A” upon her bosom. Hester gave birth to pearl but Hester refuses to name the child’s father, who is the father of the child ? who is the reverend Arthur  Dimmesdale, her minister but Hester is passionate but also strong- she does not quail when her supposedly dead husband, roger Chillingworth comes from out of the forest to witness her appearance on the pillory ; an without complaint or self-pity , and also endures years of shame and scorn. She fight her way back to respectability and the rights of motherhood also she equals both her husband and her lover in her intelligence and thoughtfulness.

“she wanted-what some people want throughout life-a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy”

                Her situation is made more poignant and heroic by Dimmesdale lack of   sufficient moral courage to confess that he is pearl’s father. Hester seems to need no partner to  share her guilt. Her alienation puts her in  the  position to make actuate observations about her community , particularly about its  treatment of women and the end of the novel tragedy  befalls her when Dimmesdale dies, but the reader feels that Hester will stoutly and resolutely make her way through life and Hester is also maternal with respect to society : she cares for the poor and brings them food and clothing by the novel’s end. Hester has become a protofeminist mother figure to the women of the community.

“ the scarlet letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent , capable, but not necessarily extraordinary women. It is extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important figure”

2) Roger Chillingworth

              Roger Chillingworth is the pseudonym assumed by Hester scholarly old husband. In the beginning he was caring person but later on become an evil friend. Roger Chillingworth is actually Hester’s husband in disguise. He is much older than she is and had sent her to America while he settled his affairs in Europe because he is captured by native Americans,  he arrived in Boston belatedly and finds hester and her illegitimate child being displayed on the scaffold. The pseudonym assumed by Hester Prynne’s aged scholar husband roger Chillingworth a ‘physician’. Who might better be called ‘evil’. He is a symbol of evil of the “devil’s handyman” of one consumed with revenge and devoid of compassion. Thought to have been killed by Indians, he Reuters Hester’s life when she first stands on the pillory. Pretending to minister to  the physically ailing dimmesdale tries only to confirm his suspicion that the minister is pearl’s father. When Arthur and hester in a    desperate act of hope book passage on a ship to England Chillingworth also signs up for the voyage and Hester knows she can never escape him.

                Roger Chillingworth lusts for  revenge and thus decides to stay in Boston despite his wife’s betrayal and disgrace. He is a scholar and uses his knowledge to disguise  himself as a doctor , intent on discovering and tormenting Hester’s anonymous lover. Although motivated by the  fact of his wife bearing another man’s child, Chillingworth nevertheless seems inordinately twisted toward vengeance.

“love, whether newly born or aroused from a death like slumber, must always create sunshine , filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world”

              Chillingworth is self absorbed and both physically  and psychologically monstrous. His single-minded pursuit of retribution revels him to be the most marvelant character in the novel. Conniving, sly, and monomaniacal, he is more a devilish force than a man. his desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and dimmasdale’s sin which had love , not hate as its intent. Any harm that may have come from the young lover’s deed was unanticipated and inadvertent, whereas Chillingworth reaps deliberate harm.

“no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true……..”

3)    Arthur Dimmesdale

             The Arthur dimmesdale a minister  in Boston. Dimmesdale is a young man who achieved fame in England as a theologian and then emigrated to America. dimmesdale is the unmarried pastor of heater’s congregation and he is also the father of Hester’s  daughter pearl. At the opening of the novel dimmesdale reminds Hester that her refused to name him as her fellow sinner will “tempt him-yea compel him as it were to add hypocrisy to sin”. As the novel progress dimmesdale justifies his decision to keep his guilty secrets on the grounds that some men retain.

“ A zeal for god’s glory and man’s welfare”

              And that in order to be of further service to his fellow creatures he must of necessity suffer unutterable torment. It is only when dimmesdale recognizes the folly of this time of thought that he is able to confess his sin openly before the town and die in relative place. Dimmesdale secrets guilt and anguish provide much of the tension throughout the novel. Dimmesdale is a living man, but inwardly he is the rubble and wreckage resulting from a puritan conscience. Dimmesdale is an intelligent and emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of eloquence and persuasiveness. Finally, at the end of his election day sermon he takes Hester and Pearl by the hand ascends the pillory , confess publicly , an sinks down dead.

4)    Pearl

           Pearl is the illegitimate daughter of Hester and Dimmesdale pearl’s name is symbolic. Pearl is much expensive. She was ‘as she had’. She was everything that hester had. Hester soon discourse that pearl cannot “be made amenable to rules” and she fears that pearl’s personality was formed at wrong time. Pearl become the living manifestation of Hester’s sin, hester sees the child as,

“endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin!”

            When hester tries to had scarlet “A” from her dress during her forest rendervous with reverend dimmesdale , it is pearl who insists that hester return the scarlet “A” to her dress.  Pearl receive a considerable inheritance from Chillingworth at his death and at the end of the novel. Once her father’s identity is revealed pearl is no longer needed in this symbolic capacity; at dimmesdale’s death she becomes fully human leaving behind her other worldliness and her preternatural vision and she is rumored to be living in Europe the wife of a member of the nobility.

5)    Governor Bellingham

              Governor Bellingham is a wealthy elderly gentleman who spend much of his time consulting with the other town father. He is an actual historical figure who arrived in Boston in 1634. He witnessed Hester’s punishment as she stands an the public scaffold. Despite his role as governor of a fledging American society , he very much resembles a traditional English aristocrat. Governor Bellingham , the leader of the Massachusetts colony.

6)Mistress Hibbins

                She is a historical figure Higgins was executed for witchcraft in 1956. Mistress Higgins is a widow who lives with her  brother, governor Bellingham in a luxurious mansion in the novel who was executed later as witch. She commonly known to be a with who ventures into the forest at night to ride with the “Black man” she is simply  and literary a witch. Her appearances remind the reader of the hypocrisy and hidden evil in puritan society.

7) Reverend Mr. John Wilson

              John Wilson was Boston’s elder clergyman. Reverend Wilson is scholarly yet grandfatherly . he is a stereotypical puritan father a literary vision of the stiff , starkly painted portraits of American patriarchs. John is the historical figure on whom this character is based was an English born minister who arrived in Boston in 1630. He delivered a long sermon on the sin of adultery to the crowed. he is also the old priest , john Wilson is Hawthorne’s model priest. He is not only pious and sincere, but also open-minded. He is careful of his duties to Hester and the dead. He is humble and sympathetic.

8) Governor Winthrop

                 Governor Winthrop who shifted the seat of government of Massachusetts from Salem to Boston in 1830 plays a very small role in the scarlet letter . on the night of his death a light forming letter “A” appears in the sky. According to the sexton, this symbolizes the goodness and the purity of the now dead governor’s life.

9) Master Brackett

     He is the jailer.

10)  The Sexton

      A minor employ at the church.

11)  The commander

        He is the captain of the ship on which hester and dimmesdale planned to lane Boston.

12) Narrator

                  The unnamed narrator works as the surveyor of the  Salem custom-house some two hundred years after the novel’s events take place. he discovers an old manuscript in the building’s attic that tells the story of Hester Prynne ; when he loses his job, he decides to write a fictional treatment of the narrative. The narrator is a rather high-strung man , whose puritan ancestry makes him feel guilty about his writing career the writes because he is interested in American history and because he believes that America needs to better understand its religions and moral heritage.

Conclusion:

               To conclude we can say that the novel is an expression of the conflict in the mind and heart of expression also the novel The Scarlet Letter is political game of (A) at last we can say that,

“Society can not be flat ,because they are up and down”

:work cited:

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Scarlet Letter.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

Van Kirk, Susan. CliffsNotes on The Scarlet Letter. 30 Oct 2015
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