Q. Many critics maintain that the organization of The Scarlet Letter is based on the three scaffold scenes. Yet other critics suggest a fourfold organization, with each part centering on a different character. Can you distinguish these four sections? Which character dominates each section?
The Scarlet Letter has four central characters whom the story revolves around. They each have a section of the book devoted to them. This is perhaps because the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is providing an alternative organization to the three-scaffold scheme. The first section is for Hester Prynne, the protagonist. The second section features Pearle, Hester's strange daughter. The third is Roger Chillingworth's showcase (Hawthorne could've thought of a better villain name than Chillingworth). The fourth, and longest, section is for the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Because Dimmesdale's portion is the longest and because he is deeply affected, like Hester, by Old Roger, it can be argued that Dimmesdale is the protagonist. By already touching on two of the other possible topics of this paper, it shows how intertwined the four characters' lives are. They're all related to each other and to their Puritan settlement. As much as their setting dictates their lives, the characters also steer their own course of actions; much of the conflict in this book is man vs. self. This type of conflict is most evident in the guilt of both Hester and Rev. Dimmesdale. The other two characters, Pearle and Roger, have another kind of conflict - man vs. man. Two man vs. man sections and two man vs. self sections give this novel more balance than a three-scaffold scene organization.
Beginning at the start of the book, The Custom House has nothing to do with the rest of the book, and I don't know why he included it. After this chapter we begin the real book and Hester is introduced. We meet her when all the dirty deeds are done, which means Hawthorne wasn't angling for a blockbuster movie here. She has commited adultery and been outfitted with the scarlet letter. She has already been in a state of shame for some time and the "A" is already burdening her heart. She is a strong woman and as she gets up on the scaffold in front of the hushed multitude she refuses to break the silence with a scream. The next event is the worst possible thing that could happen to her. Her husband, whom she sinned against, shows up. Her terror of public exposure is nothing compared to the sight of him. She can only try to take refuge in the crowd from her husband. When Roger shows up and sees Hester on the scaffold an immediate change comes over him. It lasts only a split-second externally, but internally he changes his quest from a quest for knowledge to a quest for revenge. His whole life from then on will be consumed by the will to destroy the man who has taken his wife.
He thought his wife was taken from him. He could no longer be associated with her and still carry out his evil mission safely. He would never be able to love her or be a father. He had worked hard his whole life and now he wanted to start a new, peaceful life in New England. When he spotted her and the "A" it was all over and he became enraged because he'd never have a normal life. Instead of going to the New World for good, he came for evil. It seems strange that he would react so extremely to having something stolen when he had also stolen something: Hester's youth. He took the brightest years of her life and locked them up in a library with him. He even realized the fact of his theivery and still proceeded to wreak havoc.
Hester sinned with Rev. Dimmesdale on that fateful day of her betrayal of Roger. It's not like the Rev. Dimmesdale stole her; she wanted to be taken. The New World had opened her eyes to a brighter, unburdened life without Roger. But, she overstepped her bounds without knowing if it was safe and paid for it the rest of her life. The scarlet letter tormented her every day by reminding her of her greatest sin. It's like replaying the biggest screw-up of your life over and over until it starts killing you or turning you to stone. The effect the letter took on Hester was to turn her to stone. The letter drained the life and remaining youthfulness from her, and only when she cast it off in the forest was she her former self. Her biggest conflict was not with the letter or Roger, but with herself and trying to live with her sin.
The coping method she used with her inner struggle was, as seen above, to turn herself to stone so she wouldn't have to feel the pain of the scarlet letter. The catalyst of her dehumanization was little Pearle, whose section is chapters six to eight. She was born as another reminder of Hester's sin, but one that might be turned into something holy. Pearle was Hester's opportunity to make up her debt to the community by creating something useful to them like a good, Puritan, God-loving girl. Unfortuneately for Hester, Pearle was too wild to be a normal Puritan.
Hester wanted to make Pearle a good citizen and also to turn herself to stone. To achieve both she transferred her vitality to Pearle via the scarlet letter. She held the baby to her breast where she could give it life and use it as a shield for the letter. The transfer was successful, but the letter warped the transition a little, turning Pearle into an extremely energetic elf-child. She was full of mischief and she was unpredictable - everything Puritans find suspicious. She was also very intelligent and knew how to manipulate children her own age, as seen in the scene where she scares the kids who are pestering her. She sees herself as the one bright spot in her mother's life (which she is). When Hester throws away the accursed letter with the Rev. Dimmesdale in the forest, Pearle gets scared. She senses that her mother is now supplying her own light, and she feels alone, and starts crying. She knows that, besides her, only the Rev. Dimmesdale can bring out the light in her mother, and therefore she is wary of him as a competitor for her mother's love. Pearle's main enemy is the community at large. They see her as some sort of demon or elf. The adults want to reform her wild ways by taking her from Hester. The kids tease her and keep her out of their group. This makes mother and daughter each other's only companions. If the community splits them apart it would be like splitting light and dark, and one can't survive long without the other. That makes Pearle versus the community her biggest struggle.
After Pearle comes Roger Chillingworth in chapters nine and ten. He is the antagonist to Hester and the Rev. Dimmesdale's enemy. His veiwpoint is that of someone who feels betrayed and is seeking revenge. He doesn't want to take it out on Hester or Pearle because they were his property and were stolen. He takes it out on Arthur Dimmesdale, the thief. He is a very intellingent man and knows much of medicine. He comes to the town and attaches himself to the most respected man there, the Rev. Dimmesdale. He cares for Arthur's ailing body and becomes respected by the townsfolk. Eventually he moves in with the minister. He actually probes and figures out that this is the man Hester cheated with, and begins to hurt him. He turns the trusting Reverend's mental anguish into physical problems - eventually leading to death. He literally takes the guy's heart and puts a red "A" over it, like Hester's; only this one's au natural. He does this with great cunning, not allowing the townspeople or even the minister to uncover his evil mission. When it's over and Arthur dies, Roger shrivels up and dies quite quickly because he was feeding on the suffering he caused. He made his life's work a conflict between him and Dimmesdale.
Dimmesdale is one of the most prominent characters. His section is from chapter 11 on - almost half the book. It is argued that he is the rotagonist, since the conflict is great between him and Chillingworth. The problem with that thinking is that the first scaffold scene would then have to be the inciting incident, which implies a three-scaffold scheme, while this paper is attempting to support the four-way organization. Dimmesdale is a mentally weak character who is devoted to God. The townspeople look up to him as an almost heavenly creature, going so far as to make rumors that God sent him to Earth. His devotion is his downfall because everyday he tells others not to sin when he has sinned himself. That eats away at him. With the aid of Roger it ultimately kills him. He's a unique character in that we know little of his past. We know Hester and Roger are from England and all about Pearle's life, but we don't know about the minister. The days go by and so do the years as he becomes weaker and weaker physically. His vitality is drained into Roger while Hester's is drained into Pearle. As Roger steals the Reverend's life, he dies. As Hester gives her life freely, she lives. That's the difference between good (Pearle) and evil (Roger). The only time Dimmesdale shows hope is when he's in the forest with Hester. During that time she takes off the "A" and begins to give her life to him, not Pearle. There is hope that he might live if they stay together, but Hester and Pearle won't be separated. In the climactic scene, when he dies, he releases all the burdens of their world by revealing his dark secret. He let Pearle be a woman living in the world, not fighting it. He took back his life from Roger, and left him empty. He let Hester know they'd spend eternity together after their earthly suffering. He made right all the wrongs by bearing his deadly secret for seven years and all the while sustaining Chillingworth's evil medicines.
This book shows that Hawthorne thought women to be strong, capable and kind. He gave us two men and two women characters and only the women survived the crisis. They also both went on to be successful in their own ways. The only problem with the four-way organization is that the inciting incident would have happened before the book started. In a three-way scaffold scheme the inciting incident and climax occur on the scaffold. In the four-way organization the inciting incident is when they have sex and the climax is on the scaffold. In either organization The Scarlet Letter is a very well organized book, and the inclusion of male and female man vs. man, and male and female man vs. self conflicts only lends to that organization.
