Department of British and American Studies at the - Univerzita ...

In this passage, Hester Prynne undergoes a transformation nearly worthy a conjuror‘s effort.
She becomes a different person entirely, as if her previous, indistinct and dulled identity were
a tabula rasa on which her new self could find fertile ground to sprout. The very physical and
naturalistic description of Hester‘s temporary liberation, the glow that replaces the paleness,
and her new inner glitter – all that serves as a memento that the power of symbols which are
considered so important by Hester‘s judges and fellow Puritans relies on the human capacity
to perceive and interpret them. The symbols themselves are meaningless, but combined with
theocratic tendencies, they bring along de-personalizing and de-humanizing susceptibilities.
Thus, minister Hooper terrifies his parishioners, becoming ―a monster for the symbol beneath
which [he has] lived and [will] die‖ (Hawthorne 1987: 157). Hooper‘s last words vibrate with
Hawthorne‘s significant message, namely that in symbolizing his own inability to deal with
sin, grief or utter depression, Hooper represents all people: ―I look around me, and, lo! on
every visage a Black Veil!‖ (157).
Hawthorne attaches great value to the innermost self of his characters and places them
in situations in which they either emerge from underneath their symbolic surface (Hester), or
stay covered and hidden forever (Hooper), or – ironically enough – manage to do both
(Goodman Brown). The inner personality – the human heart – is for Hawthorne a source of
one‘s true identity and therefore the most important and primary element necessary for
improvement, like, for example, in the story Earth‟s Holocaust:
The heart, the heart […] Purify that inward sphere, and the many shapes of evil that
haunt the outward, and which now seem almost our only realities, will turn to
shadowy phantoms and vanish of their own accord; but if we go no deeper than the
intellect, and strive, with merely that feeble instrument, to discern and rectify what is
wrong, our whole accomplishment will be but a dream. (247)
There is both sunshine and gloom in Hawthorne‘s texts – just like Herman Melville wrote
about his fellow writer and friend in the essay Hawthorne and His Mosses: ―For spite of all
the Indian-summer sunlight on the hither side of Hawthorne‘s soul, the other side – like the
dark half of the physical sphere – is shrouded in a blackness, ten times black‖ (Melville,
Parker, and Tanselle 1987: 243). It is this darkness, unfathomable and seemingly unjustified,
which acts both as an aspect of Hawthorne‘s art and identity as a writer descended from
Puritan forebears, whose social predicament came to constitute an important part of
America‘s past. Though conformist and controversial from a modern point of view, the
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