The Community's Role in The Scarlet Letter

One topic we have touched briefly upon in class is the role of the village community in The Scarlet Letter. While we mentioned that the villagers--in theory--have no real reason to involve themselves in Hester and Dimmesdale’s private affair, they serve a larger purpose by assigning the letter A’s symbolic meaning and signifying its adaptability. In the beginning of the novel, the audience observing Hester’s public shaming ceremony reinforces the letter A’s symbolic meaning as a physical manifestation of her adulterous actions and enduring shame. The community members are passive witnesses of Hester’s public humiliation, but their active ridicule and interpretation of the A she wears assign the scarlet letter meaning. Hawthorne highlights the villagers’ role in confirming the letter’s symbolic meaning through his description, “when strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter,--and none ever failed to do so,--they branded [the letter] afresh into Hester’s soul,” and consequently, “Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token” (498). The physical letter provokes an emotional effect on Hester, but this effect is only made possible by the villagers’ active gaze on her letter of shame.

Throughout the novel, the villagers reinterpret the letter’s meaning and therefore change their attitude toward Hester and her adulterous act. Recognizing Hester’s positive and charitable contributions to the women in their society, many villagers subsequently refuse “to interpret the scarlet A by its original significance” and instead believe “it mean[s] Able” and signifies her female strength (539). While Hester willingly and consciously commits charitable acts, the villagers are empowered by their ability to change the letter’s significance and reassign its meaning.

            The end of the novel ultimately highlights the villagers’ significance and their ability to confirm the meaning of the external symbolic A. The villagers passively observe the moment in which Dimmesdale reveals his own branded scarlet letter; however, their act of viewership and confirmation of the external symbol Dimmesdale wears enables him to finally liberate himself from his own internal emotional agony and self-destruction. In this way, their act of witness transforms the letter A from an externalization of shame and guilt in the beginning of the novel to one of freedom in the novel’s last few pages.