Silence in the Scarlet Letter: Golden and Otherwise

"Silence has so much meaning," says a proverb from the Native American tribe of Yurok. Throughout the history of literature, speech, or lack thereof, has symbolized many things. In ghost stories, such as Mary Wilkins Freeman's The Wind in the Rose-Bush, silence brings about a sense of horror, while in other novels, like Chaim Potok's The Chosen, silence is a form of communication. Here, in Nathanial Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, silence symbolizes defiance, indecision, and evil vengeance. Hester Prynne's defiance to authority and religious extremism, Arthur Dimmesdale's fatal equivocation, and Roger Chillingworth's cold-hearted revenge all include silence as either a vehicle or a major characteristic in their actions throughout the plot of the novel. Indeed, it can be argued that the way Hawthorne depicts the various moments of silence for each character defines the course of the book and the interaction between major protagonists and antagonists, offering the reader several choices and their respective outcomes.

The most evident and most profound verbal restraint is found in the heroine of the book, Hester Prynne. Throughout the novel, she has little to say, even under duress, yet she has accomplished infinitely more with her devotion to quietude. When faced with severe punishment for what the readers presume to be adultery in the beginning of the novel, she carries on with an "attitude of spirit" that "had the effect of a spell...enclosing her in a sphere by herself." (41) The author has, in the opening pages of the novel, juxtaposed Hester against a society hostile to her because of her behavior. While she has carried herself, and Pearl, with dignity, the other women in the town are depicted as boorish and hypocritical. Instead of self-reflecting on the possibility of such a crime of passion by themselves, the women view Hester as someone whose transgressions far exceed their own. Hawthorne leaves the true nature of the "sin" up to interpretation, the silence in a way critical of the underlying Puritanical values present in the second chapter. Hawthorne unveils to his readers one of the central themes of the book, that sinfulness may not always be completely evil, in that it may result in positive personal growth, and through the intimate silence shared between her, Pearl, and Dimmesdale, a sort of paradoxical yet greater spiritual purity is achieved.

The less apparent, but more crucial aspect of Hester's reticence is found in her first encounter with her husband, Roger Chillingworth. Her refusal to tell him the other member in the sinful partnership preserves the integrity of the plot and the process of his revenge, and sets the stage for Hester to show her true inner strength. The dark promises kept by each other's silence stirs up the ingredients necessary, in Chillingworth's eyes, to avenge his own honor and cause the demise of Dimmesdale. Hester loves the minister deeply, but as the book skipped through seven years, one can only imagine the pressure she felt in upholding this dual silence: one of her husband, the other of her lover. Indeed, Ellen Weinauer suggests that Hester, in "her role as feme covert", betrays Dimmesdale by keeping from his the nature of his enemy's identity. While Weinauer's broad interpretation of the Scarlet Letter in terms of possession (demonic or otherwise) is one which is related to common themes offered by Hawthorne: that of the supernatural in gender, the most important one here is of the relationships between husband, wife, and lover, and the ties of secrecy which reflect their effect on one another. (381)

However, by maintaining her reserve, Hester, by the end of the book, forges the letter A, so delicately and beautifully ornamented on her breast, into a symbol of her own unique identity, transforming what one originally construed to mean adultery to become "able" or, perhaps even "angel", with the passing of the meteor in Chapter XII. In his essay Mrs. Hawthorne's Headache: Reading the Scarlet Letter, critic Leverenz notes that there is a significant change in Hester's personality as a result of the effects of the characters and their communication, turning her from a "perceptive radical to sad-eyed sympathizer." (470) Hester Prynne epitomizes silence as a source of strength, a foundation of defiance to authority and punishment over natural feelings. Hawthorne is thus able to offer the reader the choice that a noble silence is the best defense against evil and the repression of a narrow-minded society.

Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is limited by his indeterminacy in revealing the truth, and is so steadily weakened throughout the plot. The reader, initially, may view the minister as a one-dimensional character who is focused solely on religion, and suffers from deteriorating health due to reasons, his parishioners suggest, possibly related to the burden of his office. This physical and mental weakness is all but confirmed in the forest, with him unable to escape from Hester's embrace in her search for forgiveness, and his subsequent surrender and transformation, as he tells her, "Be thou strong for me! Tell me what to do." (127) His admittance of powerlessness emphasizes his mental and moral collapse when under such crisis. While Hester is able to physically wear the shame on her chest and receive the disapproval of the community, Dimmesdale must bear it internally, something much more self-destructive. Hester, through her experience, builds identity and power, while Dimmesdale is seen in increasingly worse health and mental woes he attempts to resolve by self-flagellation.

Dimmesdale's inability to choose between the influence of God and his own natural self-interests leads him into a quandary which he takes no action to get out of. Dimmesdale suffers from a lack of willpower in admitting responsibility. Just like John Cotton with Anne Hutchinson, Michael Colacurcio writes, "Both men sit in public judgment of an outrage against public order in which there is reason to believe they bear equal responsibility with the criminal." (307) Colacurcio introduces to the readers a strong connection between Hutchinson - Cotton and Hester - Dimmesdale, and with regards to both ministers, the morally ambiguous line they walk as the women are socially ostracized. Their silence indirectly calls into question the inequality of a "woman's morality...
The only way he would be able to triumph and escape from Chillingworth's revenge would be death, because by breaking the silence regarding his own scarlet letter, he will have not only removed Chillingworth's means of survival, but also brought closure to Hester and positive development for little Pearl. In his address after the election, Dimmesdale finally reveals his transgression, confessing his sins by opening to the crowd his breast, with an A burned into it. In doing so, he dies, but at the same time, he escapes free of the fear of the same shame that Hester has worn for almost a decade. Arthur Dimmesdale epitomizes silence as a deceptive escape from society, and the inability to break such a silence fatally weakening. Where silence helped create Hester's identity, here it destroys Dimmesdale's. The author is able to present the audience with another choice, one in which repressed silence is cowardly, shameful, and ultimately destructive.

Roger Chillingworth, his name no doubt allegorically interpreted, has but one major part to play in Hawthorne's novel. His silence is also related to one of identity, but it is a more subtle, sinister one, driven solely by malicious intentions, the most single-dimensional of all the major characters. His love for Hester as a scientist and a scholar has been transformed into hatred and revenge, the one sin more unforgivable than the sins of Hester and Dimmesdale. While his interview seemed like an act of kindness at first, this "preservation of secrecy is anything but kind," Korobkin writes. This silence, more importantly, enables him to take on the role of a doctor, and through the town's assent, the position of Dimmesdale's personal physician. (444) The silence here becomes more metaphorical than literal, as he is able to find a way into the young minister's ailing heart by relentlessly seeking and questioning Dimmesdale, while at the same time withholding information about himself so that he may achieve his ultimate goals better.

Chillingworth is able to discover the mark on Dimmesdale's breast one night, confirming his suspicions, and through not revealing his true self, he has reaffirmed the reader's impressions of his transformation from a man into a monster. While men have multiple aspects, and Hawthorne offers many interpretations for them, there exists only one apparent conclusion that can be drawn about Roger Chillingworth, one of pure evil. Perhaps, as David Leverenz writes, "Chillingworth's rage has its base in intimacy... [Thus] punished far more severely." Leverenz concludes that Chillingworth's anger is characterized by "unloving strangeness within oneself" and a "possessive malice", while Hester is shown far more sympathy, in which sin is transformed into romance. (476) One of the central themes Hawthorne presents throughout the novel is that of the nature of evil, embodied in the "Black Man", describing no one other than Chillingworth. His refusal of love to Pearl, his own daughter, strengthens that view of evil, and perhaps here, one can compare the duality of wilderness and civilization. Wilderness, having transformed an otherwise meek and busy scientist into a monster in Chillingworth, is sharply contrasted against the classical authoritarian civilization, which imposes its hostile oversight on Hester and Pearl, simultaneously protecting Dimmesdale's name even after his death. Not only is Hawthorne speaking out against hypocrisy and silence, here, he attacks sexism as well.

Contemporary colloquial language address the doctor as a leech, and here, the author's symbolism is most evident. Without a victim, the leech has no purpose, and therefore dies. Anne Abbott, in her critique posted in the North American Review, regarded Roger Chillingworth as something "so little in common with man, he is such a gnome-like phantasm, such an unnatural personification of an abstract idea." (245) In the Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth epitomizes silence as a form of evil, a deliberate method used to bring about vengeance. Where silence changed the two young lovers' identities and subsequently their fortunes, here it assumes a dark role in which misinformation and sly manipulation characterize the monster itself. Hawthorne introduces and clarifies a third choice by the end of the novel, that dark silence, the worst of all, begets evil, destroying not only the victim, but also the perpetrator himself.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has been able to create and expand upon the plot of this novel by focusing on the character's selective attitudes and silence (or lack thereof) with one another. He thus offers the reader choices on the interpretation of silence and the results it produces. One is better exposed to the other themes of the book through contrasting the nature of the degrees of such a silence over the course of the novel. While Hester Prynne faces her shame and exile from society with a defiant quiescence, Arthur Dimmesdale is constantly tormented and fatally paralyzed by the implications of revelation, and Roger Chillingworth uses the dark secrets available to exert his power in a hunger for evil revenge. The varying forms and degrees of silence propel the plot and drive it towards the climax, without which it could not be as complete, exposing such themes of wilderness and civilization, true evil, and the triumph of true humanity over false and hypocritical society, the true meanings each of which the author has left to interpretation. Indeed, one begins to wonder if the Yurok Indians have read Hawthorne after all.