Symbolism of Plants in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Essay Example

Topic: Discuss how Hawthorne frequently uses plants, trees, and the forest, as symbols of wildness and equates (or relates) that wildness with sinfulness and darkness. Particularly discuss Hawthornes references to wild rose bushes as a symbol for the girl Pearls wildness, supposedly inherited from her mothers sinfulness. The Scarlet Letter is a beautiful collage of contrasting imagery and indirect technique of symbolism. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote this novel with rebellious ideas about love and romance but probably telling it just the way ordinary eyes see things would not have done justice to express the gravity of betraying social norms and limiting beliefs. Without the use of symbolism there would be no colors in his book. The Scarlet Letter will not be able to touch the heart and soul of the readers and it will never be able to have the impact it now has on the readers. In the book’s puritan society, if a person embraces their nature, as in love and sex outside of the accepted and restrictive expectations of the community, they are punished for sin (as Hester was when pursuing an affair outside of her loveless marriage.) The Puritan community sees these things as dark and evil, and that is how they view the forest, the wilderness -- wild and dark and sinful. This symbolizes the community seeing human nature (particularly sex) as wild and dark and sinful. The wild rose symbolizes the wild romance of Hester and of the child Pearl. In this literary masterpiece, Hawthorne in fact takes the symbolism of garden to a new level. Garden, shrubbery and bushes are an expression of pure human nature, whereas the city life (at least what it was considered back then), the Puritan society is projected through uniform grass and everything touched and where there is ‘nip and tuck’ done on the wild nature. Where everything is filtered (like taking out the pure content from the ground wheat) and that’s how social norms are manufactured. Readers from all walks of life get the idea what Hawthorne does by referring ordinary things (many times extraordinary things) with plants and garden items. Why he did it? And why plants? Probably there is no other imagery that instantly comes to mind when nature and purity comes to mind. He did it to ‘make his point’, simple as that, and from the acclaim he got for his novel, he seems successful. And the use of plant symbols gave him the freedom to relate almost every aspect of his novel. The dark side as well as the pure human nature, both have been used in the book in a very stylish way. Hawthorne has been very wise in relating the gloom and doom with garden goodies and at the same time the pleasant things about life also get a hiding place inside flowers. For instance the “black flower of the civilized society” (73) is associated with the door of the town prison and gives a powerful image of the door and what it means author’s imagination. The civilized society is the beautiful garden, lush green and blossoming, giving its fragrance and the sight pleasure but then there is a black flower. It is part of the garden but it stands out as something dark, something which beautiful in its own way, the dark way. But the garden needs it; flowers after all belong in the garden, just as the city needs the prison. No matter how ugly the prison is, it is important, useful. On the same page, Hawthorne uses garden symbolism again; “But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.” (p. 73) Inspiration can from anywhere and from anyone. These lines are self-explanatory, the wild rose bush represents hope for the prisoner, a lesson may be. The fragility of the flower’s beauty is a lesson that people often walk on a tight rope, that’s how fragile life is. One wrong move can make them end up in jail. That wrong move could be ‘wrong’ according to anyone. But what matters is who is in charge to decide what act is wrong. That’s the fragility that Hawthorne introduces the readers to. The beauty and fragrance of roses is short lived, but still, as a constant reminder that there is hope for them out there. Inside the prison, they can still smell the fresh roses, no one can stop them for inhaling that nature’s gift. Instead of rotting in there and cursing their own deeds and mistakes (depends if they did them or not) they would still feel cared for and hope that once they might get out of that rotten cell and might see the word again they would probably hold that flower in their hand then smell it, so close, so real, so bright red. And to the prisoner, bound to suffer the wrath of the society in this world and the destructive power of nature when he leaves this world after he is dead, the innocent flower is a ray of hope, something which he would use it to heal his faith, to repent and to make peace with the nature in the hope that probably in the deep heart of the nature there is still hope for him and he would be pardoned or probably rewarded, because this society would hang him for something that he didn’t do, a wrongfully charged prisoner is not a sinner in the eyes of nature. So for the gloom destined prisoner, the sight of the rose bush is hope that nature will do justice and will shower him with mercy and forgiveness. The rosebush is symbolic of the main character of the novel, Hester. The beautiful rose grows in the monotony of the garden as if in defiance of the norm and beauty grows right out of the heart of confining restraints of the society, like Hester and Pearl. “…when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!” (p. 215) Plants don’t like to grow in rotten barren lands. They like fertile soil, where nature loves to shower its bright sunshine. Not every patch of land is suitable for grass to put on its show. Arthur Dimmesdale considers himself cursed, a man who has committed such a ‘heinous’ act that probably such an innocent and beneficial thing like grass would not grow on his grave. This is the power that societal decisions and labels have, when someone gets tagged by the society as an outcast, it becomes his fate. Being the father of an ‘illegitimate’ child was a cardinal sin in the eyes of that puritan society. And that affects one’s own judgment about one’s self. Other’s perception and their judgments becomes the reality. Same happened with this guy. He considers himself an accursed and is afraid that grass might not grow where he lays dead. “Pearl accordingly ran to the bow-window, at the further end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden walk, carpeted with closely-shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery.” (p. 159) This is the essence of the whole novel. People who are well aware of the contents of the book would know that this is the real symbolism that puts the whole novel in a few lines, the picture of this garden, the view that Pearl sees. Close shaved grass, all the same all along the way, nothing inspirational, nothing that steps out of the line, just like that puritan society. The rude and immature shrubbery is the people that step out of line, those who stand out. Grass is a single stemmed plant (most of the grass grown is single stemmed), whereas the shrubbery is a perennial plant that has many stems. Just like various attributes of a human. To have a romantic fling outside the social cage, like loving someone for no reason or apparent benefit, just pure love with no strings attached. Not planning before jumping into the love boat. That is rude, like the shrubbery there that stands out from the grass-uniform soldiers. And referring to things that can’t be undone, Hawthorne continues; “By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity…. Let the black flower blossom as it may!” (p. 261) Once something is done, it’s done. Here Hawthorne uses plant and seed terminology to put life in his text, that the evil seed has been planted and the shoot is out, now don’t smudge it. Let it be! Let the flower blossom, let Pearl come in the world. Let her see this cruel society that restricts and puts laws and chains on nature. Let that black flower raise her head and see the cruel people herself. Let the black flower shine with all her colors and all her magic and let her mock the whole garden (society), and ridicule the monotonous life it lives and breathes in. Coming back to the civil life and all the ‘manufactured’ norms and the people who live by them; “The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the Peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a foot-path. It straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest.” (p. 274) Here the road is a symbol of civilization and it is imposing order on the wild. But the ‘road’ doesn’t know that a forest can’t be tamed, love is a bird and no one can put it in cage, nor can it be tamed to speak the civil words and the syllables that make one a slave of the norm. The primeval forest was there when there was no road, no civilization, no nothing, how can road overshadow and beat the forest into submission and confirm to its so called norms? Everything starts from nature, just like before road and civilization, there was forest and nothing but pure instincts, love and no laws to tag people with filthy labels (like the letter ‘A’) and cast them out. Like everything, the road also returns to its origin, the forest and gets lost in its mysteries. "This hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hesters mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering." (p. 274) Moral wilderness -- here Hawthorne is drawing an obvious comparison between the wildness of nature and the sinfulness of human nature which is contrary to morality. Some morals restrict happiness by restricting human nature. And Hester feels the same wilderness and confusion here, she can’t see the sky clearly but little patches some here, some there in strange shapes, nothing is mere black or white, there is more grey than ever before and in many shades than Hester can fathom. This is not only the comparisons of the two extremes purity and wildness of nature, and the human sins and his devilish deeds, there is a lot more in between. Just like the sky hides behind the forest and sometimes it is visible to Hester. There is a collage of things, human cannot live in one extreme alone. It can’t always by wild bushes and red roses blossoming in a monotonous garden like neither grass soldiers, nor it can be only wild shrubbery everywhere. The nature’s wildness lives in harmony with the civil and law abiding society like Hawthorne’s Puritan society and this strike a chord when it is in balance. However, confining raw emotions and passion like love and romance is definitely an extreme of the civil restriction which prevents the rare wild roses to grow. Without such imagery it would have been a very dull story about a man and a woman conceiving an illegitimate child and becoming the victim of the cruel society, the symbolism enhanced the flavor of the story, the emotions that the characters go through and their intensity could not have been told without the symbolism that Hawthorne used so effectively. Source Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Pleasantville, NY: Readers Digest Association, 1984. Print. Read More