the bush, the breeze, and the brook

an essay on The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Though Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter takes place within the city of Salem, Massachusetts, there are several moments sprinkled throughout the novel when Nature plays a vital role as the story unfolds. Hawthorne uses the elements to whisper certain truths that words cannot, whether it be on the beach or somewhere deep in the forest. The natural world tells the audience of beauty in the midst of despair, the joys and pains of motherhood, and the separation between Hester – the adulterer – from the society she lives in. 

Chapter one, “The Prison-door,” is quite short, as the narrator is simply describing the old prison, where Hester Prynne is about to show her face. It is a sad place, already ancient (though built not long ago), which the townsfolk naturally associate with darkness and perhaps a fear of broken people. Sorrow does loom about the area, but there is a small detail that the narrator brings his readers close to: “a wild rose bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him” (p. 407). Even in this civilized, desolate place, there is a piece of wonder brought forth by Nature, perhaps a metaphor for Hester or her daughter Pearl. In the next chapter, Hester is described to have never appeared “more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison” (p. 410). The prison is undoubtedly an unholy place, but Hester, who holds her daughter tightly against her chest, and the rose bush, which grows miraculously on the side of the building, both act as signs of beauty in the midst of utter chaos. 

The relationship between Hester and her daughter, Pearl, is complicated and full of tears, as is the case with many single parents in the process of raising their children. The narrator, in chapter twenty-five, describes it as:

…an April breeze, which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanours, it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then begone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart (p. 478).

The audience is able to witness this metaphor come to life throughout The Scarlet Letter, as Pearl sweeps through like a breeze and leaves Hester comforted and frustrated by this tiny human. Wind is unpredictable, uncontrollable. It has the power to destroy houses and stir oceans, to make sailboats move forward and carry dandelion seeds over miles and miles of ground, thus turning it yellow in the spring. Again, Hawthorne has quite brilliantly used Nature to represent a major theme and gain the reader’s sympathy for Hester by showing them what single parenthood might look like. 

In chapter twenty-six, “A Forest Walk,” the audience is introduced to the little brook in the woods where Hester goes to meet Dimmesdale, the minister. The scene is mystical and serene, caught by a ray of sunlight that sparkles in the trickling water, which makes a constant mournful sound. “‘O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook! …Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!’” says Pearl, to which her mother replies, “‘If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it’” (p. 482-483). This little body of water represents many things, for it is a sacred place, located in the forest where they are safe from the eyes of a society that itches to point its fingers. Water is a strangely versatile material, a source of life that is also capable of causing death. In The Scarlet Letter, it represents division, a “boundary between two worlds,” as Dimmesdale fears (494). Two countries are separated from one another by rivers or oceans, the Israelites were separated from freedom by the Red Sea, and Hester Prynne is separated from the rest of society as a sinner on the other side of the brook. This brook, however, is forgiving, and it mourns their sorrows with them, and Pearl remembers it vividly as she kisses her father for the last time. 

Works Cited

Levine, Robert S., editor. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 10th ed., vol. B, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2022.