Using Mother Nature to Reveal Human Nature

In Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne explores human nature in the
revealing setting of 17th century Puritan Boston. Although Puritan society tends to repress and
shame many natural human feelings, Hawthorne uses varied motifs and symbols of nature to
bring out who the people of Boston truly are underneath their Puritan shells.
Hawthorne makes an important distinction between the town and its surrounding forest;
each setting represents its own corner of human behavior. Boston is, at this time, strictly
controlled and restrained by Puritan ideals, and the forest is the only place that anyone can get
away from that. Of Hester and Dimmesdale, Hawthorne writes, She thought of the dim forest,
with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting
hand-in-hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur
of the brook. How deeply had they known each other then! (Hawthorne 358). Hester and
Dimmesdale are never truly able to be themselves when they are in the town, but the natural
beauty of the forest brings out their genuine human nature. Yet even though Hester recognizes
how liberating it feels to not have everything one does be directly determined by society, she is
still embarrassed to show it when she is not in the forest. When Pearl, in the marketplace with
Hester, talks to her mother about something that happened in the forest, Hester hushes her and
whispers, We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the
forest (359). Hester is unable to sincerely be herself when she is within the bounds of Puritan
dominion, so Hawthorne releases her from that control and shows her inner character in the
forest.

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When Dimmesdale stands on a scaffold with Hester and Pearl and witnesses a meteor
depict the letter A in the sky, Dimmesdale views the event in a largely different way than the
rest of his community does. While the Boston community believes that the A stands for
angel and signifies that Governor Winthrop has entered heaven (238), Dimmesdale perceives it
as a symbol of his own sin. In fact, Hawthorne describes Dimmesdales thoughts as having
extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear
no more than a fitting page for his souls history and fate (234). Dimmesdales perception of the
meteor is so far removed from the rest of the community that he considers the whole event to be
about him and his sin. This is a striking difference of interpretations; one represents virtue, the
other selfishness and sin. In this society of conforming, only nature is able to make people think
for themselves as individuals.
In addition, the light from the meteor gives Dimmesdale insight into who Chillingworth
really is. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness
that admonished Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Roger
Chillingworth have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to
claim his own (235). Seeing Chillingworth in the meteors light gives Dimmesdale immediate
intuition of the scowling mans evil. While not entirely realistic, Hawthorne makes it clear that
his intention is to show that nature brings out peoples true selves in a transparent way.
In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses nature to contrast the repressive Puritan
society with true human nature. Either by physically separating them, in the case of the forest
surrounding the town, or by briefly having nature enter the artificial Puritan lifestyle, in the case
of the meteor, Hawthorne utilizes nature as a tool in order to reveal who his characters are
underneath their Puritan masks. But Hawthorne also wants to express that the Puritan people are

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not too different from us and while we do not share the same Puritan ideals, perhaps nature can
break our own masks and shells as well.

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Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Planet PDF, n.d. PDF file.