The Letter 'A' as Symbol

The Letter 'A' as Symbol is the central emblem of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, a piece of red cloth embroidered with gold thread that Hester Prynne is sentenced to wear on her bosom as a punishment for adultery. Initially a mark of shame and social ostracism, the letter undergoes a profound transformation in meaning over the course of the novel, becoming a symbol of Hester's identity, her secret sin, her isolation, her eventual good works, and finally a complex, multivalent sign that different characters and the community interpret in conflicting ways—as 'Adultery,' 'Able,' 'Angel,' and even as a personal stigma that burns on the breast of the minister Arthur Dimmesdale.

Physical Description and Origin

The letter is made of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, with traces of gold embroidery that are greatly frayed and defaced. By accurate measurement, each limb of the letter proves to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It was wrought with wonderful skill of needlework, employing a stitch that gives evidence of a now-forgotten art. The narrator of the Custom-House sketch discovers this rag of scarlet cloth—reduced by time, wear, and a sacrilegious moth to little other than a rag—in a package of old documents left by the long-dead Surveyor Jonathan Pue. When the narrator places it on his breast, he experiences a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, as if the letter were not of red cloth but red-hot iron. The letter is first seen in the novel on the breast of Hester Prynne's gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, so artistically done that it has all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel she wears, which is of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age but greatly beyond what is allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The Letter as a Mark of Shame and Punishment

Hester Prynne is sentenced to wear the scarlet letter for the remainder of her natural life as a mark of shame upon her bosom. The sentence is described by a townsman as a wise one, making her a living sermon against sin until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. The scaffold of the pillory, where Hester stands in public exposure, is the platform of a penal machine that embodies the very ideal of ignominy, and the letter is the visible token of that punishment. The women in the crowd, particularly the most pitiless among them, express outrage that Hester has made a pride out of what the magistrates meant for a punishment, and one suggests stripping her rich gown and bestowing a rag of rheumatic flannel to make a fitter letter. The letter is thus from its first appearance a contested object, with the wearer's defiant artistry clashing with the community's desire for degradation.

Transformation of Meaning: From 'Adultery' to 'Able' and 'Angel'

Over the years, the public's interpretation of the scarlet letter shifts. Many people refuse to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification; they say that it means 'Able,' so strong is Hester Prynne with a woman's strength. Her helpfulness, her power to do and to sympathize, her self-devotion during times of pestilence and calamity, cause the letter to become the symbol of her calling. The letter is seen as the taper of the sick chamber, throwing its gleam across the verge of time. The rulers and wise men are slower to acknowledge this change, but even they begin to relax their rigid wrinkles into something approaching benevolence. The scarlet letter comes to have the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom, imparting to the wearer a kind of sacredness that enables her to walk securely amid all peril. After the minister's death, the sexton interprets a great red letter seen in the sky as standing for 'Angel,' because the good Governor Winthrop was made an angel that past night. The letter thus accumulates a range of contradictory meanings, each reflecting the perspective of the interpreter.

The Letter as a Personal and Internal Stigma

The scarlet letter is not only a public symbol but also a deeply personal and internal one. For Hester, it is a constant source of agony; she feels a human eye upon the token as a dreadful agony, and the spot never grows callous but grows more sensitive with daily torture. The letter endows her with a new sense, a sympathetic knowledge of hidden sin in other hearts, which she finds awful and loathsome. For Arthur Dimmesdale, the letter is an invisible but burning mark on his own breast. He keeps his hand over his heart, and the narrator suggests that the letter is imprinted in his flesh, whether by self-inflicted torture, by the agency of Roger Chillingworth's magic and poisonous drugs, or by the ever-active tooth of remorse gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly. The minister's final revelation on the scaffold involves tearing away the ministerial band from before his breast, revealing the letter to the horror-stricken multitude. The letter thus exists both as a public emblem on Hester's bosom and as a private, hidden stigma on Dimmesdale's heart, linking the two characters in their shared guilt.

The Letter as a Multivalent and Open Symbol

The scarlet letter is a deliberately multivalent symbol, open to multiple interpretations. The narrator of the Custom-House sketch finds the letter a riddle, with some deep meaning most worthy of interpretation, streaming forth from the mystic symbol but evading analysis. The novel's conclusion offers several conflicting accounts of what was witnessed on the scaffold: some testify to seeing a scarlet letter imprinted in the minister's flesh, while others deny any mark at all. The narrator presents these theories without definitively choosing among them, leaving the reader to decide. The letter's meaning is thus not fixed but is continually renegotiated by characters, the community, and the reader. The final moral drawn from the minister's experience is 'Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!'—a call for authenticity that the letter itself, in its shifting significations, both enables and complicates. The letter's ultimate fate is to be engraved on a shared tombstone for Hester and Dimmesdale, bearing the device 'On a field, sable, the letter A, gules,' a heraldic motto that serves as a brief description of the legend, sombre and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow.