Warmth In The Scarlet Letter

Quinn Keyes
Advanced American Literature, Hour 7
Mr. McCormick
March 9, 2023

Warming House (get it, like “Custom House”) What a strange concept warmth is. It can be a representation of comfort, good, and purity. Yet it may also provide an unnerving, eerie, even evil feeling. The absence of it causes one to miss it, yet its presence gets taken for granted. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a story of overlapping sins and sinners, accountability, and finding one’s identity, warmth gets folded into many aspects. The story takes place in Puritan Boston. Puritans are incredibly religious, ‘good’ folk who take sin quite seriously. Because of this, the book deals with many ideas regarding innocence, a core tenet of American Romanticism.

She depicts the three of them in a home, warmed by a fireplace, a warm image in which Pearl and Dimmesdale are together and happy. This cozy, warm image depicts the comfort she tries to provide for Pearl in a difficult situation; she provides warmth for her daughter. Similar to the quote dealing with Chillingworth, a fireside is present here. Chillingworth provides comfort for someone, however, in a different way. Like how Hester provides warmth for her daughter, Chillingworth gives warmth to the minister. Where the two separate is the care and intent of the warmth they now give. Hester is trying to comfort her daughter with kind and genuine warmth. Chillingworth tries to destroy Dimmesdale as an inside man. Thus, the comfort he provides for Arthur may come off as inviting, but in reality, it is an ironically chilling warmth. This furthers the idea that Chillingworth’s internal warmth for others has become corrupted while Hester’s has remained pure despite her sin. Following the night of the scaffold scene, the narrator explains,
…Hester’s nature showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one... The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret

She then gathers her hair and puts it underneath her cap. As these two events unwind, like a spell, all the happiness and good in Hester fade beneath the surface, departing like ‘fading sunshine.’ A shadow falls over her as it did previous to her taking the letter off. When Hester was detached from the scarlet letter and thus her sin, she felt free and happy. The sun shone on her when she disregards her crime. But once she wears the letter again, that all fades. This conveys that the sun shines on only the pure-hearted. Not that taking the scarlet letter off makes Hester so, but by being free of its burden she becomes free of the burden of her sin as well. Shortly after an interaction between Roger and Hester, Hester