¹ Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1948), pp. 263264.

² Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Writers Series (New York: American, 1934), pp. xxix-xxxi. For statements of positions that lie between the extreme views of Stewart and Warren, see Gordon Roper, ed. The Scarlet Letter and Selected Prose Works (New York: Hendricks House, 1949), pp. xix-xlvi, and John C. Gerber, “Form and Content in The Scarlet Letter”, NEQ, xvii (1944), 25–55. Roper agrees that sin works for ultimate good in Hester and Dimmesdale (p. xxix).

³ He writes that Hawthorne's central moral is “the importance of understanding mankind in whole, and the need of man's sympathy with man based upon the honest recognition of the good and evil in our common nature” (Hawthorne, p. 265). It is my contention that this is only half of Hawthorne's moral, that there are implications here which need further development.

⁴ Hawthorne, p. xxxi. See footnote 24 below.

⁶ American Renaissance (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1941), pp. 337–351, esp. p. 345. I wish to thank too Professor Richard H. Fogle of Tulane University for introducing me to the possibilities of this interpretation and for reading and criticizing the manuscript.

⁶ The recognition of evil in the world is a central idea in Hawthorne. In The Scarlet Letter alone one may cite numerous references to the omnipresence of evil, e.g., the presence of

Mistress Hibbins in the town, and Hester's recognition of evil in Chapter v of that book, in which she senses evil in magistrate and minister, in sanctimonious matron and blushing maiden.

⁷ See the conclusion of “Earth's Holocaust”, Works, Riverside edition, 13 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1883), n, 455. This edition will hereafter be referred to as Works, and documentation in my text will be to volumes and pages in this edition. See also Randall Stewart, ed. The American Notebooks (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1932), p. 98, for a long passage in which Hawthorne describes the heart as a cavern containing several levels of good and evil, the greatest good being deepest. In his footnote to the passage, Stewart cites passages from the Works in which the heart is compared to a cavern.

⁸ Hawthorne stresses the point that Hollingsworth's finest gift was his great heart, but since it overbalances the head, the reformer is somehow incomplete. Because he lacks controlling intellect, Hollingsworth's heart is destroyed as philanthropy becomes his one “ruling passion, in one exclusive channel” (Works, v, 595).

⁹ He says, “That cold tendency, between instinct and intellect, which made me pry with a speculative interest into people's passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing my heart” (Works, v, 495).

¹⁰ The inward-looking tendency is objectified by Holgrave's interest in daguerreotypes and the “Alice Story”, and in his temptation to violate the sanctity of Phoebe's soul with mesmerism.

¹¹ Similarly it is through the agency of his wife that Roderick Elliston is retrieved from his isolated state in “Egotism; or, the Bosom Serpent”; and in “The Great Carbuncle” the anonymous young couple who seek the Carbuncle are solicitous of each other's welfare and selfless in their devotion. They submerge themselves in life, finally, in much the same way as do Holgrave and Phoebe.

¹² It is doubtful that Clifford would have survived his leap from the window into the great center of humanity (Works, in, 199–201), and it is impossible for Hepzibah and Clifford to go to church and so mingle again in the great surge of humanity (iii, 202–204).

¹³ Hawthorne wrote: “The Unpardonable Sin might consist in a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity,—content that it should be wicked in whatever kind or degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be a separation of the intellect from the heart?” (Stewart, The American Notebooks, p. 106). The intellectual curiosity overbalances the warm sympathy of the heart.

¹⁴ Aylmer, in “The Birthmark”, fails in his noble quest to remove “the fatal flaw of humanity” (Works, ii, 50). Aylmer fails to achieve the final human understanding that the stain he tries to remove is as deep as life itself. The spiritual perfection he seeks cannot be projected into human form, for even the best of men share in the general sinfulness of mankind. Aylmer is doomed to fail, and he commits the sin of divorcing head and heart in himself, but Hawthorne seems to me to hint here that every man of genius must do the same thing and likewise fail.

¹⁵ He and Annie would have become another Holgrave and Phoebe, another couple of the type found in “The Great Carbuncle.”

¹⁶ It would, perhaps, not be unfair to say that here, as in “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” and “The Gentle Boy”, the Puritans represent the head divorced to a large extent from the heart.

¹⁷ Chillingworth, Rappaccini, and Ethan Brand are three seekers whose hearts have been so withered by intellect that they are incapable of being softened by remorse.

¹⁸ I consider the Puritans to have committed the sin of egotism—a sin of the head. Chillingworth's sin comes then to be an intensification of the Puritans' overbalance of intellect.

¹⁹ Works, v, 78, 91, 107, passim.

²⁰ Ibid., v, 88, 151, 153, passim.

²¹ Works, ii, 532–533. Warren interprets the last paragraphs of The Scarlet Letter to mean that Hester has become warped rather than educated by her sin, that she can point to the Promised Land but not enter (Hawthorne, p. xxix). I believe rather that Hester's understanding of her own sin, her realization of her own relation to the rest of humanity, and her recognition of the fact that only a semi-divine creature could become the prophetess she once aspired to be bespeak an insight into human life which she could have gained only by sinning. For other interpretations of this passage, see Roper (Scarlet Letter, p. xxix) and Gerber (“Form and Content”, p. 55).

²² Works, v, 289–290. It can be argued that when the evil background of the Election Sermon has been considered, the sermon itself is the supreme hypocrisy. We must recognize, however, that this is the only way that the minister can produce his good results. The sermon may be considered, then, the supreme consummation of the artist's gift.

²³ To a certain extent he is another Holgrave, and he follows Holgrave's path. Both eventually turn their backs on speculation and immerse themselves, through love and marriage, in the great sea of humanity.

²⁴ Warren believes (Hawthorne, p. xxxi) that it is Hawthorne who turns his back on this speculation, implying that Hawthorne is speaking through the characters of Hilda and Kenyon. I rather believe that he is speaking through all four characters, and that it is a mistake to look for a single reconciliation in the book. Warren does not consider that there may be more than one possibility for reconciliation; that there may be more than one path for Man to follow in this life.

²⁵ I take this to mean that Hilda is no longer repulsed by Miriam and her crime, but now understands and sympathizes with Miriam and her spiritual suffering. Hilda has added to her own quality of heart.