Hester Prynne: The Search for a More Congenial

Hester Prynne: The Search For a More Congenial

Human Condition

“Do onto others as you want others to do onto you.” Hester, the main character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter embraces this “golden rule” in an attempt to return from a newly found life of isolation and alienation brought upon her by her sin. Continually treating others with respect and dignity, Hester works as hard as physically and mentally possible to transform her image and escape the unhappy human condition in which she and her daughter are now forced to live. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne grasps the thematic idea of escape from the unhappy human condition of alienation and isolation, where one must experience the consequence of sin through repentance, and at times must follow the path of alienation, to experience the freedom of redemption. This is accomplished by the author’s use of literary symbols, primarily the rose bush, the scarlet letter and the scaffold.

Hawthorne uses symbols throughout the text to illustrate Hester’s painful alienation from the Puritan society and even from herself. One specific symbol used to demonstrate this unhappy human condition is the single rose bush that grew outside the prison. The only positive image in the whole setting, the rose bush has numerous yet indecisive meanings throughout the text, but is used primarily to display Hester’s alienation and isolation.

But before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street was a grass plot much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. 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 […] ( 45).

This rose bush, in its brightness and beauty is a symbol of survival. It characterizes Hester and her alienation from the Puritan society. Hester is beautiful like a rose and is surrounded by the Puritans that look down upon her, in this metaphor, the weeds. The delicate gems produced by the vegetation also represent what Hester’s sin sprouted, lovely Pearl who becomes an essential force in her journey back from alienation. Hester receives only the punishment of isolation; she could have just as easily been executed, for many wished a harsher punishment, yet Hester was allowed to live.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it merely survived out of stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, -- or whether […] believing, it sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchinson as she entered the prison door. ( 46).

The Puritans granted Hester life, as the rose bush has been preserved. She endures through the remainder of her existence in the “stern old wilderness” while remaining alienated among the weeds, representing the Puritans, as does the rose bush. This rose bush possibly “sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchison,” a Puritan outcast and sinner in her own right, who became more holy than most, possibly paralleling Hester’s journey to the depths of sorrow and back. In spite of the darkness of their situation they live in truth, pride, goodness and honor, openly confessing their sin, becoming martyr like while suffering in silence. The rose bush also represents hope