The Theme Of Love In Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Due to Hawthorne’s ability to play with emotion, once reading The Scarlet Letter in its entirety, readers are unsure what to feel. It is difficult to explain the tone and mood of the novel mostly because that it makes readers become connected with all their different kinds of emotions. It is possible for readers to react to certain situations in their own ways, but for the most part, readers to undergo a rollercoaster of feeling. In having scenes of suffering, anger, rejoice, romance, and relief all confined into a relatively small paperback book, the tone tends to change quite constantly. Though there are individualized moods depending on what is occurring in the novel, there is an overlying tone of hope. The Scarlet Letter encompasses hope

The Scarlet Letter covers much pain but the underlying romance throughout provides readers with a little happiness. Throughout the book, readers are rooting for the future romance between Hester and Dimmesdale. In being exposed to Dimmesdale’s extreme guilt as well as Hester’s constant suffering, everyone desires the happy ending where they run away together in order to make better life. The underlying tone being romance and devotion, Hawthorne continuously plays on the idea of forbidden love. He subtly expresses this idea through Dimmesdale’s emotional remarks such as “love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world” (Hawthorne, 282). Loving tones such as these only shine through when readers catch a glimpse of how caring and affectionate their relationship

In being a very emotional character, the mood that surrounds changes constantly. Switching from depressing, to selfless, to leaving, Hawthorne manipulates the tone of the chapter depending on what he’s going through and how he feels. The most significant moment where readers feel this sense of relief is the scene in which he admits to his sin and claims his child. In this moment Dimmesdale exclaims ‘e, that have loved me!—ye, that have deemed me holy!—behold me here, the one sinner of the world” (Hawthorne, chapter 23) to express his regret for not coming forward much earlier. After much anticipation, he stops being a coward and takes ownership of the situation, allowing readers to finally feel at peace with the situation. Not giving them any time to relax though, Hawthorne throws another shocking total shift into the mix. The sudden death of Reverend Dimmesdale allows the novel to come full circle and revisit its somber tone. Surprises and details such as these provide perfect places for the slight changes in how the readers feel as they experience The Scarlet Letter. Overall, though not as expected, the melancholy tone of the novel took many shifts as the story progressed. Underlying tones such as romance and hope provided for a more pleasing mood as the characters seemed to experience constant misery. In creating an complicated and emotional tale,