Scarlet Letter and a Pair of Eyes
In Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne seems to intimate that what Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmsdale shared wasn't quite as sinful as is supposed. The real sin seems to lie in the marriage of Hester with Chillingworth. Similarly, "A Pair of Eyes; or Modern Magic" by Louisa May Alcott also portrays the marriage between Max Erdmann and Agatha Eure in a sinful light. Though Hawthorne takes the route of abandoning the marriage for infidelity, Alcott focuses on the union and examines what becomes of a decaying marriage: both authors concludes that a marriage derived out of anything less than love is doomed to failure. By doing so, Alcott derives a different reason for the failure of the marriage structure than Hawthorne's. Hawthorne manipulates the fact that beauty is something which is universally pleasant and the reader will sympathize with "beautiful" things. The notion of "beauty" seems to be a measurement of Hester's "goodness". Upon first mention of Hester, Hawthorne sets this precedence which will be applied throughout the novel. Upon emerging from the prison walls, Hester was "characterized by a certain state of dignity, rather than by delicate, evanescent, and indescribable race, which is now recognized as its indication. And never
"If Agatha could have joined me in my work we might have been happy; if she could have solaced herself with the other pleasures and left me to my own, we might have been content; if she had loved me less, we might have gone our separate ways, and yet been friends like many another pair," (186). Hawthorne suggests Roger never really had anything worth living to live for-no source of nourishment, hence he was already festering. Both Hester and Arthur feed upon this vitality. With his final breath, Chillingworth can only repeat "thou hast escaped me!" (249). When Arthur Dimmsdale took Pearl's hand in his while standing on the pillory scaffold "there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through his veins, as if the mother and child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. This unity is governed by the self rather than the divine, yet once entered into the union, one cannot opt for divorce because it is, quite simply, not an option. The marriage was the product of Louis's greed. Agatha resembles Chillingworth much more than she does Hester. Everything about the adultery-the punishment, the emblem, the product-all suggest this "sin" is not a sin. She is replenished by her writing and will devote her time and energy to it. I lavish tender names upon him, but receive no sweet sound in reply; I gather him close to my desolate heart, but meet no answering caress; I look with yearning glance, but see only those haunting eyes, with no gleam of recognition to warm them, no ray of intellect to inspire them, no change to deepen their sightless beauty; and this fair body moulded with the Divine sculptor's gentlest grace is always here before me, an embodied grief that wrings my heart with its pathetic innocence, its dumb reproach. Max's retort is indeed true, no human or divine law binds them, instead, it is Agatha and Max's own wills which bind them. It seems that the marriage between Agatha and Louis was a greater evil than that of Roger and Hester.
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Acceptance Essays
