In describing the various inhabitants of an early
New-England town, as far as they were representative, he touches
incidentally on a "young woman, with no mean share of beauty, whose
doom it was to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown, in the eyes
of all the world and her own children. And even her own children knew
what that initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and
desperate creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth,
with golden thread and the nicest art of needle-work; so that the
capital A might have been thought to mean Admirable, or anything,
rather than Adulteress." Here is the germ of the whole pathos and
terror of "The Scarlet Letter"; but it is hardly noted in the throng of
symbols, equally pertinent, in the few pages of the little sketch from
which we have quoted.
Two characteristics of Hawthorne's genius stand plainly out, in the
conduct and characterization of the romance of "The Scarlet Letter,"
which were less obviously prominent in his previous works. The first
relates to his subordination of external incidents to inward events.
Mr. James's "solitary horseman" does more in one chapter than
Hawthorne's hero in twenty chapters; but then James deals with the arms
of men, while Hawthorne deals with their souls.
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