References to mythological characters that people consciously or unconsciously recognize offer the writer good examples of allusion for use in all genres, but the metaphorical quality of archetypes in Greek mythology begets powerful plots and characters in fiction. How many stories have we all read – or maybe movies we’ve seen – in which a woman saves the man she loves thanks to her own ingenuity? The Greeks perfected this tale, the one, for example, in which Theseus volunteers to enter the labyrinth with the intention of killing the Minotaur, but he succeeds only thanks to the woman who loves him. Ariadne gives him the blueprint for Daedalus’ labyrinth, as well as a ball of twine to find his way back from this deadly trap.
Or Medea, whose rage leads her to destroy those she loves most, her own children, to spite the man who has betrayed her? We all know real-life stories of women possessed by mental illness who tragically choose this path. Even Medea’s lover, Jason, reminds us of her harrowing consequences when, despite the woman who sacrifices everything for him, he avoids her in favor of someone richer and more politically connected. Sounds familiar? They should. These examples from ancient mythology are the sometimes obscure archetypal patterns of our own lives and, later, the lives of literary figures whose consequences evolve from this tension. One such character is Hester Prynne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s well-known heroine. the scarlet letter.
Hawthorne and Greek Mythology
Hawthorne, the most celebrated fiction writer during the American Renaissance of the 19th century, drew ideas for several of his characters and plots from his knowledge of Greek mythology, the stories he admired and eventually retold for children in The book of wonders Y The Tanglewood Tales. While the structure of the fiction often parallels motifs from mythology, the three Fates, or Moirae, lend Hester especially well to the image of the thread and weave of fate.
Parallels between Hawthorne and Hester
Life is the stuff of literature, and Hawthorne chose to create a character whose situation, at least the emotional outrage he felt, mirrored his own. He had lost his job at Customs, money was tighter than ever, and he still hadn’t earned the distinction of established writer that he thought he had. Pouring his sense of loss and injustice into Hester’s problems, he gave his publisher Ticknor and Fields a partial manuscript of the scarlet letter, and the book was published on March 16, 1850, resulting in good reviews. Scholars today consider the 17th-century novel’s protagonist, Hester Prynne, a moral and practical exemplar of the 19th century, a literary exemplar of the modern age. The book also established Hawthorne as a literary example in her own time.
Hilo and the three destinies
In the patriarchal setting of the 17th-century book, Puritans regard women as the weaker sex, an attitude that actually saves Hester from the gallows, the usual punishment for the crime of adultery. Her new husband, who two years earlier sent her to Boston without him and then was lost at sea, returns unexpectedly to find her publicly humiliated on the scaffold with a child that is not hers, but the name of this child’s father will be cared for and painfully held by the mother until the end of her life. Before she begins the story, Hester has already fallen in love with her minister, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. Although the minister is supposed to protect this helpless woman alone in the New England wilderness, he becomes the father of her child, but she is adamant in her decision not to reveal her identity and ruin her esteemed position in the Puritan community. At this point, if she wants to stay close to him in Boston, she must look after her and her daughter Pearl’s welfare, and she does so through her skillful sewing and embroidery.
Thread and stitching in any context seem to suggest connections or bonds that bind people, places, actions, and ideas. The Greeks personified this thread imagery in the form of the three Fates, or Moirae: Clotho the Spinner, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis the Arrangement of Lots, who assigned a length of thread to each man or woman; and Atropos, who cut the thread at the end of that life. Hester Prynne embodies the three Fates as she literally uses her needle and thread to weave her own destiny, to thrive in a hostile environment and alter an entire community’s perception of her, from adulteress to Angel Y can-and at the end of her life return to the place of her sin and her love commitment to live her life and be buried next to her partner Arthur Dimmesdale.
thread like the World Axis
In ancient mythology the thread that runs through the sphere of the pearl is the world axis, and Hester’s beloved daughter Pearl, the union of fire and water, is the center of her world, a constant reminder of the mother’s sin. Only when mother and father stand together on the scaffold in the final revelation of the truth will demon child Pearl recognize her dying father, an act that will calm her spirits and allow Pearl to move on, to become a woman to have. her own family, which she does.
After Dimmesdale, the man who cuckolds Hester’s husband dies, the evil disguised husband who calls himself Roger Chillingworth, has no desire to live now that Dimmesdale is gone, and dies too, leaving Hester’s daughter, Pearl, with her wealth. Mother and daughter disappear in Europe, but Hester, now an old woman, returns to Boston to minister to women who need the kind of comfort and solace Hester wanted long ago. She wears the finely embroidered HAS once more, albeit faded, and when she dies, she is buried next to her beloved Dimmesdale. They are separated in life but also separated in death, with a space between them, and there is only one tombstone that says: “On a field of sable, the letter of gules”.
If the thread of life weaves and binds Hester Prynne’s universe, it is also a major motif of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s personal journey, as well as the microcosm of our own lives.
For more information about Hawthorne and Tthe scarlet letter, see the following sources:
Hamilton, Edith. mythology. New York: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, 1969.
O’Connor, Susan. Dance of language. Bloomington, IL: AuthorHouse, 2008.
Reynolds, David. Beneath the American Renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1988.
Wineapple, Brenda. Hawthorne, A Life. New York: random
