Shame And Guilt In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

One of the distinguishing marks of a Puritan in early colonial America was an intense fear of “backsliding… …into a previous sinful state” (Minguic 214). This, coupled with obsessive self-scrutiny lead to a sense of shame and guilt endemic to Puritan society. Shame and guilt, while hailing evolutionary roots, emerge from and are subject to society and its institutions, creating a subjective character of shame dependent on the society that creates it, as demonstrated by Hester Prynne and Rev. Dimmesdale in their Puritan society in the novel The Scarlet Letter. Furthermore, the effects of shame on the individual is relative to both his/her place in society and the society itself. Finally, in taking this idea to its fullest extent, the scaffolding

This novel details the life and legend of Hester Prynne, a woman living in Puritan America during its infancy. Her story begins when she is accused and tried for the crime of adultery on the grounds of her extra-marital pregnancy. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns to her life soon after and keeps his relation to Prynne secret. While Prynne struggles through both self-inflicted and penal shame, her lover, the Reverend Dimmesdale, silently suffers through a shame and guilt of his own while simultaneously being plagued by the parasitic revenge of Chillingworth. This dynamic continues, showing the growth of the mother and her daughter, Pearl, and the decline of the father, Dimmesdale. Finally, in the climax of the novel, Dimmesdale dies a tragic and public death, thereby triumphing over the torture inflicted by Chillingworth, who dies several months later. Throughout the entire novel, shame and guilt are woven through both the complexities of the plot and the details of the main characters. Furthermore, each character, and the development thereof, demonstrates a certain quality about the nature of shame. Lastly, a comparison between the ways each character is affected by shame and its consequences is developed through the narratives of these characters and serves to demonstrate the subjective quality of shame as described in the above