Sexuality and American Culture

One important issue that Hawthorne sheds light upon in The Scarlet Letter is the relationship between the public sphere and the private sphere and the general trends concerning the two in relation to sexuality and its deployment. This issue figures prominently in Hawthorne's portrayal of the Election Day festivities. The positions of Hester Prynne and Minister Dimmesdale, respectively, in relation to the festivities are of particular interest and worth further analysis.

Hester's position within public and private spheres is multi-layered. If we could imagine a Hester without the scarlet letter, such a Hester would mainly operate within the private sphere. Her daily business would be to perform domestic duties and attend to her needle-work. Although both of these activities could be viewed as having public functions, they do not take place within the public eye and are rather confined to the private sphere of the home. When this Hester would enter public arenas—the church and market-place—she would be viewed as a part of the mass as opposed to those individuals of power and public authority such as the governor, the minister, and other magistrates. She would have very little input into the operation of the public as a whole with the exception of the possible participation in ritual ridicule as exemplified by the gossiping quintet of goodwives in second chapter. However, the scarlet letter transforms Hester's position within the public sphere, primarily, in that she becomes a public spectacle. When she wears the scarlet letter in public arenas, her humiliation assumes a public function: “She would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion” (Ch. 5 p.54). And this function is formed through a process which she does not directly partake in because her other operations for the most part are of a private nature.

Dimmesdale on the other hand is a public figure. His preaching takes place within the public arena of the church and directly contributes to the formation of public opinion. When he walks through the market-place, he is a symbol of the public. Yet, there is also a private and very different Dimmesdale. This is the Dimmesdale who stands with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold in the middle of the night (note the strange collision of private and public here), and conversed with Hester in the privacy of the forest.

There is a great amount of tension when all of these spheres and functions collide in the festivities of Election Day. The tension first emerges in a conversation between Hester and Pearl: “'And will the minister be [in the procession]?' asked Pearl. 'And will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side?' / 'He will be there, child,' answered her mother. 'But he will not greet thee to-day; nor must thou greet him'” (Ch. 21 p.157). Pearl then notes how “strange” and “sad” Dimmesdale in that he acts one way in private and another way in public. Then, as the procession moves along and Dimmesdale approaches, he is described as having incredible exuberance and energy, as his public role would necessitate. Upon seeing him, Hester can barely recognize the man she so passionately (and privately) conversed with in the forest: “Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. . . She could scarcely forgive him . . . for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world.” She stands outside of the church while he gives his much acclaimed election sermon, and a crowd of spectators surround her seeking amusement. Emphasizing the tension of the scene, Hawthorne writes:

“While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her for ever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience, whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet letter in the market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both?” (Ch. 22 p.169)

Finally, the tension is released in the massive collision created by the two characters being reunited by their mutual sin and humiliation on the public stage of the scaffold.

How Hawthorne portrays public and private spheres, the ways in which they collide, and the positions of various figures within them is significant because the 18^th and 19^th centuries saw the rise and reign of an immensely powerful public sphere as well as the strict divide between public and private. In a sense, Hawthorne is probing and twisting existing notions of the nature of such spheres. On the one hand, the authority and benevolent intention of the public sphere, embodied in Dimmesdale, is undermined by a raging and hidden corruption. On the other, that which is subjected and vilified by the will of the public, embodied by Hester, is in truth the purest of all.