Though Nathaniel Hawthorne contributed much to the fiction of America, he is remembered today mainly as the author of The Scarlet Letter. This book has had so great an impact on the world of literature that it has some times been described as the ‘greatest book ever written in the Western Hemisphere’.

Hawthorne’s imagination brooded over the past and the figures that appeared in puritan America. He was quite good at recapturing the atmosphere of the period which he chose as the setting for his novels. But it is not as a historical novel that we remember The Scarlet Letter today: we cherish it rather as a brilliant psychological novel, unrivalled in its penetrating study of the human mind. When Hawthorne started writing, the popular taste was all for romantic histories and grand epics which offered heroic characters in splendid scenes. The historical romances of Sir Walter Scott and James Fennimore Cooper had won the reading public entirely. These novels satisfied the public not so much by convincing characterization, as by spectacular elements and melodramatic situations. There was no subtlety in character-delineation for characters were merely stereotypes, the gallant, brave dashing hero fighting against thaw all black villains. The heroine was all sweetness and purity and very often the perfect damsel in distress. Hawthorne was well acquainted with these characters for he was familiar with the literature of his time. He did not entirely discard these conventional figures of fiction; rather he accepted such conventions and transformed them. Hawthorne preferred for his book the term ‘romances’ to ‘novels’. He called his books psychological romance and proclaimed that what he aimed at doing was to “borrow into the depths of our common nature.” Hence he was given to the characters a depth and psychological intensity undreamt of in the fiction before him.

Hawthorne displays a deep psychological insight into the accumulation of details about various characters in the pages of The Scarlet Letter. In this book he minutely analyses the inner workings in the minds of main characters, and their impact upon their deeds and personalities. It is here again that the internal working of the minds of main characters is shown. Now we shall discuss the internal working of the minds of the characters individually:-

Hester Prynne and the Working of Her MindIt is not the purpose of the novelist to depict the custom-ridden society which crushes the physical weight of Hester Prynne. That is the external aspect of her suffering. What is more important is her strong will and passion. According to David Levin; “She is a complex figure and Hawthorne sees that her natural vigor must also lead her into further trouble. In being faithful to what he called the truth of the human heart. Hawthorne had to see that the most interesting battle was not between the heart itself. Hester is not properly penitent. She compounds the sin of passion with the sin of pride. She embroiders the scarlet letter as an elaborate expression of ambiguous defiance and guilt, and she dresses he daughter in equally flamboyant colours.”

She has been psychologically treated. She recalls the memories of past life while standing at the scaffold. This is a view of her past when compared to her present. The pictures of her parents, of the Old World, and of her England village come up before her eyes at a time of harsh punishment. Taken back to prison, she suffers a nervous breakdown which should be viewed as a reaction of her calm and serene endurance of disgrance on the scaffold.

After her return from Boston she is full of repentance. This too is a self-realization prompted by the dictates of her own mind. The novelist has also shown her inner conflict. For example, “Thus, Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind.”

Arthur Dimmesdale and the Working of His MindIn the delineation of Dimmesdale too Hawthorne shows his deep psychological knowledge and interest. His psychology is the best example of his being the founder of the psychological novel. He is a remarkable study in psychology. The secret of his sin burns within him prompting him to confess. Yet Dimmesdale is afraid to reveal himself for what he is. Hence his attempts at confession remain as veiled suggestion of his own unworthiness which really win for him greater admiration. Thus he goes deeper and deeper into the pit of sin for he violates the Puritan belief that a man must be a true confessor. As in the case of Hester, we find that Dimmesdale’s sin is not the simple one of adultery, but a more complex one. But sin eats into him and as an outward symbol he is forced to seer the letter into his flesh. He has taken thirst for self-torture, both physical and mental, as he is goaded on by an impulse for self torture. The sure way in which Hawthorne goes on exploring the soul this young minister is unparallel in all literature for psychological interest, except in the work of Dostoevsky whom Hawthorne resembles.

The depiction of Dimmesdale’s self-agony, self torture, inner conflict to confess or not to confess his sin publicly, his Hamlet-like delay in confessing his acts, his remorse, his penance and penitence, his behaviour on the scaffold, his constant introspection make the novel a fine psychological study of human mind. In the first part of the novel he is coward, weak, infirm, indecisive, tormented, haunted, and hypocritical, but in the second part (if the novel is to be divided into two equal parts) he becomes self-conscious, retributive, determined, brave, bold, unpretentious, and truly penitent. This mental development is to be traced along the psychological borders, as Hawthorne has explained in the quoted passage.

The two chapters- “The Interior of a Heart” and “The Minister’s Vigil”. That is Chapters XI and XII - of the novel is indeed very pertinent psychological study of a character unknown in America of the days of Hawthorne.

Roger Chillingworth is the worst sinner in The Scarlet Letter. He is a hypocrite and a conceited fellow. He is a cunning man who has sold his soul to dogs. He is an unpardonable sinner of Hawthorne. He is full of revenge and is malicious. He himself is a psychologist. He confesses his sense of wrong to Hester in the prison. It was a mistake on his part to have induced a young girl to marry him in his old age. The analysis of his own self given by him is the best example of a psychological portraiture: “I, a man of thought, the book-worm of great libraries, a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge, what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own; misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a younger girl’s fantasy! Men call me wise. If sages were even wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all this.”

“The character of Chillingworth is made all the more sinister by making him dabble in black magic. He collects herbs and roots to give them a touch or spell. His fame as a doctor is partly accountable to his power of working wonders over his medicines and patients. On the whole, Chillingworth is a searching type of character, even though it means his own isolation and destruction.”

Even in the depiction of little Pearl, Hawthorne gives evidence of his deep grasp of human nature. He calls her “a born misfit of the infantile world.” All the factors should be what according to modern psychology is a problem child. Pearl is pictured as an abnormal girl. She is extra-ordinary sportive, brisk, witty, oracular and taxing. Even her mother feels irritated and nervous at her persistent questionings. She is not amenable to any discipline or rule. She is influenced by heredity, by her parents who are both sinners. She is a constant tormentor to her mother by reminding her of the flaney letter on her gown. She often tasks her about its meaning. She also wants to know if her mother had ever met the Black Man in the wood. She consciously tells nothing about her maker when Mr. Wilson examines her in Bellingham’s hall. In a nutshell, Hawthorne has shown remarkable subtlety in portraying Pearl and in studying the case of an abnormal child.

Thus we find that the entire edifice of the novel rests on sure foundations of human psychology. Even the introduction of symbols in the novel enhances its psychological effect, for it is based on the Puritan’s habit of interpreting every natural phenomenon as an expression of God’s will. About Hawthorne’s achievement in “The Scarlet Letter” David Levin Writes: “Hawthorne brought to the American novel an admirable talent for symbolism and a serious interest in historical fidelity, psychological truth, and social order. No English or American novelist before him had been able to represent so convincingly the feelings and thoughts of a passionate woman and scarcely any American novelist, had posed such forcefully critical question for prevailing 19th century beliefs. It is easy to understand therefore, why Herman Melville greeted Hawthorne’s work with a “shock of recognition.” Also in many other stories of his, like “The House of Seven Gables” and “The Minister’s Black Veil,” etc we see works (Twice-Told Tales. 1837, Mosses from an Old Manse’ 1846, The House of the Seven Gables 1851, The Marble Faun etc.) reveals the fact that Hawthorne’s great subject was the human soul. Occasionally his books deal with sensational material like poisoning, murder and adultery but the violence is always subdued or remote and the sensational note is always turned down. The psychological and moral tones remain dominant. This is best illustrated in “The Scarlet Letter” which though based on an act of carnal love, is singularly free from erotic or passionate elements. In this novel Hawthorne was particularly interested in exploring the result of sin, the effect on the human conscience of guilt, pride egotism and isolation. The effect of sin on four different persons is traced with great dexterity. An interpretation of the characters placed in such unfortunate circumstance would not be possible for Hawthorne if he did not have a sure grasp of the Puritan morality and the Puritan way of life. T.S. Eliot has said about Hawthorne: “Hawthorne had…….the firmness, the true coldness, the hard coldness of the genuine artist. In consequence, the observation of moral life in The Scarlet Letter, in the House of the Seven Gables, and even in some of the tales and sketches has solidify, has permanence of art. It will always be use. The work of Hawthorne is truly a criticism……..of the Puritan morality of the Transcendentalist morality and of the world which Hawthorne knew. It is a criticism as Henry James's work is a criticism of the America of his times and as the work of Turgeney and Flaubert is a criticism of the Russia and the France of theirs."