The Scarlet Letter and the Book of Esther: Scriptural Letter and Narrative Life

Abstract

Why does Hawthorne give Prynne name Hester? question seems an inevitable one for writer like Hawthorne, works at least partly in Spenserian tradition of allegory. Dimmesdale's first name, Arthur, and Hawthorne's daughter's name, Una, suggest some of influence of Spenser on Hawthorne's acts of naming. Hawthorne himself, as is well known, changed his family name from Hathorne, to distance himself from those Puritan ancestors whose achievements and excesses haunted his fiction. Scarlet Letter tells of Roger Prynne's reinvention of himself by an act of naming: when he finds his wife in disgrace in new he adopts name Chillingworth. names Pearl with reference to gospel of Matthew: she named infant 'Pearl,' as being of great price, - purchased with all she had, - her mother's only treasure! (1:89).(1) romance's central symbol, on other hand, scarlet letter A, resists sort of hermeneutic rigidity that naming entails. As an initial letter, or simply as an initial, A notoriously hints at all sorts of names while claiming none. As great orchestrator of meanings, Hawthorne is aware that names are full and even overfull of meanings, and he could in no way be said to arrive at his characters' names casually. It is surprising, then, that critics of Hawthorne have not carefully considered question of Hester's name. In The Custom-House Hawthorne calls up the figure of that first ancestor, Puritan who came so early, with his Bible and his sword (1:9), and Scarlet Letter participates deeply in Puritan biblicism. Chillingworth identitifies himself as the Daniel shall expound (1:62) riddle of identity of Pearl's father; on another biblical - or perhaps rather Miltonic - level he is version of Satan. Dimmesdale, when in final scaffold scene he declares himself the one sinner of world (1:254), becomes Christ figure. Hester, exposed to eyes of multitude, is likened to the image of Divine Maternity (1:56); in Conclusion Hawthorne plays with idea of as prophetess. D. H. Lawrence found in Hester's seduction of Dimmesdale story of Eve's temptation of Adam to eat forbidden fruit.(2) tapestry of chamber shared by Dimmesdale and Chillingworth depicts the Scriptural story of David and Bathesheba, and Nathan Prophet (1:126). multiplicity of biblical intertexts may reflect Hawthorne's desire to write story of new Puritanism that would acknowledge and, moreover, incorporate extreme textualization of that society. Puritans could perhaps only be brought back to life in fiction if fiction were as saturated in Bible as Puritans were themselves. Yet one key biblical intertext, Book of Esther, which serves as sort of sunken groundwork or hidden scaffolding for Hawthorne's tale, has been missing from discussion of Scarlet Letter. That is named for biblical Queen Esther has been briefly noted in handful of critical studies, though it has probably been quietly taken for granted by many more readers. Sacvan Bercovitch remarks that Prynne builds upon tradition of biblical Esther - homiletic exemplum of sorrow, duty, and love, and figura of Virgin Mary . . . . But primarily Hawthorne's 'sermon' traces education of an American Esther. He continues that a major source for Hawthorne, it seems probable is Cotton Mather's Ornaments for Daughters of Zion, conduct manual in which Esther is one of biblical heroines adduced as models of proper behavior.(3) Bercovitch does not draw any further parallels between Book of Esther and Scarlet Letter. Kristin Herzog and Luther S. Luedtke mention coincidence of names in reference to Hester's magisterial bearing.(4) Jean Normand observes elliptically that Hester before Governor is comparable with Esther before Ahasuerus, but elaborates no further. …