In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the themes of exposure and justice are prevalent throughout. The author uses the image of a scaffold in the center of town as a symbol of two contradicting ideas: public shame and freedom. The Puritan community in which the story takes place lives by strong Biblical and legalistic standards with the ultimate goal of establishing a utopian society. In the words of Hawthorne, the strict Puritan law code was set up for the purpose of dragging iniquity out into the sunshine (38).
The scaffold acted as a method for doing so. By the final chapter, however, the scaffold which the Puritans thought so little of prior to the events of the novel comes to represent something entirely new and different in their minds. The novel revolves heavily around this symbol, as all three of the main characters are tied to it in some form or other. The scaffold acts as a major source of conflict, as it is the reason for significant turmoil, whether internal or external, in the development of each of the three main characters.
In the case of Hester Prynne, the scaffold is the source of her initial exposure; it brings her sin outward and gives it a face. At the beginning of the novel, Hester is known to be an adulteress because of her child. Consequently, the community punishes her by forcing her to wear a scarlet letter on her chest for the rest of her life. The Puritan community in which the story takes place seeks to create a Utopia; they would not allow any substantial stain in the purity of the colony to go unnoticed.
The town officials make an example out of Hester, placing shame on her to discourage the rest of the community from committing sin of a similar caliber. To make absolutely certain that no one fails to learn from the sinner’s mistake, a scaffold is set up in the middle of town. Hester is forced to stand on the platform with the eyes of the entire community staring at the letter on her chest. In doing so, “she will be a living sermon against sin” (44). The scaffold introduces the people to Hester’s immorality. From that day forward, the image of Hester standing on the scaffold is ingrained in the minds of the townspeople.
She becomes a symbol of sin within the community. Whenever someone lays eyes on her, all he or she sees is the scarlet letter, and the only thing that comes to mind is the day when she stood on the scaffold. In addition, Hester’s appearance on the scaffold draws the attention of her husband, whom she wronged in committing the act of adultery. As a result, her husband, working under the alias of Roger Chillingworth, now knows of the sin and seeks to take revenge on the man with whom she defiled their marriage, the man Hester loves dearly.
This only adds to the piteousness of Hester’s unfortunate situation. Because of the shame it brings her and the seed of revenge it plants in the heart of her husband, Hester fears the scaffold throughout the novel as the very source of her life’s anguish. For Reverend Dimmesdale, the scaffold represents both condemnation and freedom, causing him great internal confliction up until the very end of the novel. During the initial scaffold scene, wherein Hester is the focus of attention, Dimmesdale addresses her almost as if he is speaking to her alone.
Feeling pressure from rest of the town officials behind him, Dimmesdale instructs Hester to reveal the identity of her lover only “If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation” (46-47). The way in which he phrases this command essentially reveals that he does not want her to identify him as the fellow sinner. A moment later, however, he conversely tells her that he wants her to disclose his identity.
This clear contradiction in the minister’s words informs the reader that Dimmesdale longs to confess his sin but knows the ramifications would be perhaps more than he could bear. These conflicting thoughts pain Dimmesdale up until the very end of the novel. As if once was not enough to reveal the contents of the minister’s heart, he appears on the scaffold twice more in the course of the novel. In the dead of night, Dimmesdale feels compelled to stand on the scaffold, again revealing the emotional battle raging within himself. His actions in this scene mirror his words spoken to Hester in the previous scene.
Reverend Dimmesdale knows he must confess in order to obtain the ultimate relief of emotional freedom. At the same time, however, he needs the darkness to conceal his sin from not only the rest of society but also from himself. Dimmesdale inherently possesses a “desperately held longing to rise to the highest level of human life, to move toward perfection, and to strive toward his God” (Stubbs 419). Thus he tries for seven years to deny the fact that he could descend to such a disgraceful moral state as would allow him to commit a sin so distasteful as adultery.
Not long after, Dimmesdale returns to the scaffold in broad daylight standing hand in hand with Hester and Pearl. At this point, the minister finally “recognizes the full range of his own heart” (Stubbs 420). At last Dimmesdale learns to accept his own capacity for sin and is thereby free from the pain of physical penance and grave emotional distress. Throughout the novel, Chillingworth works against the power of the scaffold in an effort to prevent it from ruining his plan for revenge. The scaffold is the device by which Hawthorne propels Chillingworth into action.
He learns by way of Hester’s public humiliation that his wife has cheated on him. More importantly, he learns that some man within the community has severely wronged him. As a result, now Chillingworth’s sole focus is revenge against this man, who is later revealed to be Reverend Dimmesdale. As the events of the novel progress, Chillingworth makes a gradual but drastic transition in character from a generally good-natured scholar to an agent of the Devil himself. His overwhelming desire for revenge consumes his heart in blackness.
In pursuit of his goal, Chillingworth becomes a leech to Reverend Dimmesdale; he spends all of his time seeking and practicing different methods of revenge on the minister in order to feed his unappeasable need for vengeance. The only threat to Chillingworth’s objective is the power of the scaffold. As long as Dimmesdale lacks the courage to reveal his sin to the community and thereby receive both mental and emotional freedom, Chillingworth can torture the minister as much as his heart desires.
In fact, “Dimmesdale himself plays Chillingworth’s part” in the way that he inflicts pain upon himself, supplementing Chillingworth’s work (Stubbs 416). Ultimately, Chillingworth knows the greatest revenge he could force upon the minister would be to prevent him from receiving forgiveness, thereby condemning him to hell for eternity. When Dimmesdale finally does ascend the scaffold stairs in front of the entire town, Chillingworth pleads with him to step down. The scaffold is the mode by which the minister could receive forgiveness, therefore it is the enemy of Chillingworth’s evil intentions.
As Dimmesdale stands confidently on the platform, Chillingworth tells him that “there was no one place so secret,no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,-save on this very scaffold” (173)! Thus the scaffold ruins the physician’s plan for revenge, and, as revenge is the sole reason for Chillingworth’s existence, he dies shortly afterward. Therefore, the scaffold accounts not only for the demise of Chillingworth’s plan but also for the death of Chillingworth himself. The scaffold changes the direction of the lives of each of the main characters.
It gives Hester a reputation for immorality within her community, results in both confliction and freedom in the heart of Reverend Dimmesdale, and thwarts Chillingworth’s plan for revenge. As a result of these events, the symbolism and meaning of the scaffold changes significantly over the course of the novel. The long-established source of shame unexpectedly transforms into a source of something quite the opposite: liberation. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold is not only the core of the exposition but also that of the resolution.
