On the contrary, imprisoned in the Puritan way of thinking, the scarlet letter leads Arthur Dimmesdale to his fall. He is indeed gnawed by guilt and secrecy. *** The scarlet letter symbolises the Puritan’s stance on adultery and is considered as a deadly sin. The scarlet letter is referred to in almost every page. One has the impression that the letter represents the Puritan’s message that is drilled to the population in order to anchor it in their mind.
Red has a history. People back in the day had to wear a red letter "A" for committing adultery. Ethan is branded with a mark. The mark is a red scar ("The Color Red" np). The color red on Mattie's scarf represents her passionate nature and the love that Ethan feels for her ("Ethan Frome" Litcharts np).
Symbolism in the Scarlet Letter: The Threshold "But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it." (Hawthorne 83).With these words, this was the life of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” Hester Prynne has committed the sin of adultery and becomes pregnant with her lover’s child. She has to live and wear the letter a, which is embroidered on her clothing. Because of the symbolism of the threshold in “The Scarlet Letter,” Hester Prynne’s life is doubled by the actions she has done. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” Hester Prynne is sent to prison for her sin.
Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter is a hardworking symbol, it represents: adultery, sin, hard work, skill, charity, righteousness, sacredness, and, of course, grace. At first, there is no doubt that it symbolizes the sin of adultery, and Hester wears it as punishment. From the very beginning, she is not willing to let it dictate the terms of her punishment. “On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter 'A.' It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony” (Cain 630).
In Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, he focuses on the conflicting views of society and nature in the Puritan society and uses contrast, symbolism, and imagery to convey his beliefs. From the beginning of the novel, color was used symbolically, representing everything from life to death; punishment to freedom. The color red was used throughout the novel, most notably as the scarlet letter. A letter “A” was forced upon Hester’s chest by the Puritan society as punishment for her sin of adultery in the beginning of the novel, with gold lining surrounding a vibrant, red cloth. It felt to Hester as though the red cloth emanated a “burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron” (30).
The analysis of the main characters, Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Holden of The Scarlet Letter and The Catcher in the Rye show that they’re impostures and the main theme of the books’ is hypocrisy. Hester Prynne, the woman in The Scarlet Letter who commits adultery, is mostly the reason why everyone else suffers and the reason of the hypocrisy in the story. During the first scene, she exits the prison with a scarlet letter sewed on her clothing, “in fine red cloth surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread" (Hawthorne 46). From the start, it is shown that Hester
A small crime was considered to be as terrible as the worst of crime, and criminals were punished strictly. For example, a child will be beaten in the town square as a punishment for being ungrateful to his parents. The punishment to Hester Prynne for adultery is the scarlet letter "A" on the front of her dress after seven years prison life. Therefore,at first, the scarlet letter "A" symbolizes "adultery" here and means AD which is short for Arthur Dimmesdale, who is Hester's lover. With the development of plot,the scarlet letter"A" represents "amazon".
As she was tried for the very thing he should be tried for. The only thing they didn’t know was who was involved with her. She was forced to wear the scarlet letter. An “A” on the chest of an adulterous woman. The scaffold was the place of public trial, the sin that she committed was told to all.
‘She had full rouged lips and wide spaced eyes, heavily made up,’ which suggests that the author wanted us to presume the worst of her before she’d even spoken and we set ourselves up for her to be a character we feel a lot of resentment for. The fact that her ‘finger nails were red,’ along with ‘red mules’ and ‘red ostrich feathers’ shows us how Steinbeck’s use of colour goes well alongside her sexual appeal. The colour red is used in two ways. One is a strong representation of love or a form of attraction, the other is the inner appeal of sexual preference and seduction. The intention of making the reader perceive her early on as a ‘tart’ foreshadows that something later is going to happen and there could be trouble.
Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter has been read by many and interpreted in many ways. Hawthorne is one of the most known symbolists in American Literature and a study of his symbols is necessary to understand his novels. According to the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary a symbol is “a letter, group of letters, character or picture that is used instead of a word or group of words.” Hawthorne uses a great amount of symbols to deal with the sanctities of human heart, the consequence of tragic sin and the impossibility of running away from the consequence of sin. In literature an allegory is a story where characters, objects, and events have a hidden meaning and are used to present some universal lesson. Hawthorne has a perfect atmosphere for the symbols in The Scarlet Letter because the Puritans saw the world through allegory.