Tom Tice

Eng. 571 – Hawthorne

Dr. Debbie Lawrence

13 December 2001

Secret, Fearful, or Melancholy: The Smile in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

            Nathaniel Hawthorne is an artist who claimed to be more concerned with emotional truths than actual truths.  He sought to show what was in the human heart, and therefore made sure to call himself a writer of “romances.”  Although Hawthorne is sometimes seen as both “a creative artist as well as a historian” (Stewart 169), he was clearly not as concerned with the reporting of historical fact as he was with the portrayal of the struggles of humanity and the truths that lied within. 

            In order to properly detail the emotional truths that he sought, Hawthorne was a devoted user of symbolism.  According to one critic, “romance is an enrichment of the actual by the imaginary” (Ziff 125), and therefore Hawthorne uses symbols to enrich the truth of his tales.  Every great or small detail in Hawthorne’s works seemingly has many levels of meaning.  Fairly obvious is the literal meaning of certain objects or actions, but most illuminating is the figurative meaning of these objects turned into symbols, which can be expostulated through a careful examination of Hawthorne’s texts.  Another critic claims that in portions of The Scarlet Letter, “there is hardly any literal meaning left” (Waggoner 161).  Like most authors, Hawthorne uses universal symbols as well as specific symbols.  Details such as sunlight or shadow can be interpreted easily, especially when one is dealing with human emotion.  Harder to decipher, however, are the specific symbols used repeatedly by Hawthorne in many of his tales and novels.

            One such specific symbol is the smile.  Hawthorne is very careful in his terminology, an impeccable craftsman who uses the perfect word in the perfect place.  His use of the word and action “smile” is sparing, yet extremely important.  Hawthorne’s smiles appear only when a character is certain in some knowledge – either good or bad – or when knowledge has led a character to reach a certain level of assured satisfaction.  As such, a smile then connotes more meaning than one could guess at in a strictly literal interpretation of the text.  Hawthorne was clearly not as interested in man’s external trappings, but as Canby proclaims, “it was the thing – character, human nature, the soul – that interested Hawthorne” (60).  He sought inner truth.

            As a romance writer, an illuminator of those truths that lie within the human heart, Hawthorne needed a tool besides a character’s dialogue or the narrator’s omniscient prerogative to shine a light on those thoughts only a character knows.  The smile is Hawthorne’s less obvious way of giving the reader a peek inside the recesses of the human heart.  R. W. B. Lewis states, “there is always more to the world in which Hawthorne’s characters move than any one of them can see at a glance” (77).  Similarly, Hawthorne gives the reader more than he or she can see at a glance.  While one critic bemoans Hawthorne’s “weakness for the abstract” (Van Doren 131), the smile is, in essence, a doorway that allows the reader passage from the physical actuality to the emotional truth.

            Hawthorne’s use of the smile as a symbol can be traced to the beginning of his career, in stories such as “Wakefield” and “The Minister’s Black Veil” from his first collection Twice-Told Tales.  The symbol also plays a prominent part in Hawthorne’s masterpiece The Scarlet Letter as a sign of both virtuous and evil knowledge.  By examining Hawthorne’s earlier use of the smile in the above named short stories, one can see how its use is refined and perfected in the classic novel that Mark Van Doren called “the last of Hawthorne’s tales, and of course their climax” (129), The Scarlet Letter.

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            “Wakefield” was first published in 1835 and appeared in Hawthorne’s Twice Told Tales (1837).  It tells the story of a London man who knowingly leaves his wife for twenty years, living right around the block.  Seemingly on a whim, he reappears one day, ready to resume his life.  Most curious about this story is the smile apparent upon his departure and his return.  When Wakefield initially leaves, ostensibly for a few days, he “smil[es] on her” as he closes the door (69).  This smile denotes Wakefield’s knowledge that he would be gone longer than he told her – that he was “resolved to perplex his good lady by a whole week’s absence” (69).  Because he and his wife are both aware of his “quiet selfishness” (68), Mrs. Wakefield attaches meaning to the smile over the years.

            “Long afterward,” Hawthorne writes, “that smile recurs, and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield’s visage” (69), as if her memory of him is clouded by the slyness denoted by the smile.  Indeed, “she surrounds the original smile with a multitude of fantasies,” including him smiling in Heaven.  However, when all others have given up hope, “she sometimes doubts whether she is a widow” (69).  The reason she can have these thoughts is that she knows her husband’s selfishness and she interprets the meaning of the smile to be that he was disappearing on purpose.  Cameron contends that “the smile replaces the man, as the man has replaced himself” (420).  The smile is the knowledge of wrongdoing, and it has remained.  For this reason, the reader imagines that she will not be surprised by his reappearance twenty years later.

            On what seems like as big a whim as the one that has kept him away for two decades, Wakefield decides to pop back into his home and resume his life.  Upon him crossing the threshold, the reader again sees Wakefield’s “crafty smile that was the precursor to the little joke” (75).  The smile again here denotes knowledge of wrongdoing, and an unwillingness to put his selfishness aside for the sake of his wife’s mental health.  He knows he can return to his home, and yet he does not realize that never returning would probably be easier on all involved.  Wakefield’s actions here are as sinful as Chillingworth’s in the later novel, because both of these men are basically torturing the innocent only because they get pleasure out of it, although Chillingworth’s sins are dramatically nastier.

            The story of Parson Hooper, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” was published late in 1835 and in Twice Told Tales.  In the story, young Parson Hooper decides to cover his face as a symbol of his sinful state.  Instead of drawing his congregation closer to him by showing his humanity, this gesture unfortunately alienates many churchgoers who would like a more specific reason for Hooper to be veiling himself.  One of those who would like more information or at least one last peek is Hooper’s own fiancée, Elizabeth.  Alas, Hooper is unyielding in keeping his secrets to himself, and as a result his relationship with the community and with Elizabeth remains strained.  Hooper knows that loneliness is the price he must pay for admitting to his sinful state in such a way, and this is why Hooper is often seen with a “sad” or “melancholy” smile (104, 107).  He understands that his congregation cannot wholly accept him while his sins remain a mystery, although he wishes that they could accept him.

            On Hooper’s deathbed, he is given a chance to remove his veil and let those who are gathered peer into his face and possibly into his soul.  He violently resists this offer, however, exclaiming that his sin is nothing compared to those who have sinned by turning away from him in fright.  After this exclamation, he dies, and a “faint, sad smile” is recorded on his lips (114).  Even at death’s door, Hooper is secure in the knowledge that his veil has been worthwhile – it has been his form of penance for the sins that remain secret.  He knew before he donned the veil that it would separate him from the community, but he also knew that showing his guilty state was one way for him to live a true life.

            Hooper’s veil is very similar to Hester’s Prynne’s scarlet letter, although Hester’s sin is obvious to those who see its badge.  Hooper’s badge is not translatable, although wearing it is a brave statement to make in front of the community.  Unfortunately for him, his congregation yearns to know the details of his sins and therefore the people are uneasy when they are around him.  The narrator in The Scarlet Letter gives the advice towards the end of the novel to “Be true!  Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!” (177).  Hooper does show a trait whereby the worst may be inferred, but him doing so has a worse effect than in Hester’s community because the voyeurism and ignorance of Hooper’s community prevents them from completely embracing Hooper.  The minister hoped that his veil would not provoke such a reaction, but his smile tells us that he knew his congregation’s reaction was probably inevitable.

            Cameron claims that this story shows a split between the body and soul “ma[de] material” by the veil itself (415).  If the veil then is the emblem of the split, Hooper’s smile is the passageway by which one can translate back and forth between the truths of the body and the truths of the spirit.  The smile is a physical way for characters and readers to see into the mind and heart of its possessor.  In Hooper’s case, the smile tells us that there is a reason for wearing the veil, and that he knows the price he will pay for wearing it – yet he must do so to expiate his guilt.  For Hawthorne, “the evil lay in the concealment” of sin (Leavis 50), yet even though Hooper tried to reveal his sinful state in his own way, it was not enough for his congregation, who wore their own metaphorical veils to hide themselves from him.

            The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, was Hawthorne’s first novel.  In it, he continues and expands many of the themes of sin and expiation that are present in the tales.  Like the tales, “The Scarlet Letter is almost all picture” (Chase 146).  In other words, Hawthorne relies on the symbolism inherent in the scenes that he paints.  Actions and interactions tell as much about the characters as any narrator can tell.  Because Hawthorne does not give the reader immediate answers or insights, Chase says “the author’s powerfully possessive imagination refuses to relinquish his characters to our immediate perusal” (146).  Instead, the reader must search and scrutinize the text for the meaning behind his characters’ actions.  A perusal of this novel also yields important usage of the smile image that was begun in the tales.

            In The Scarlet Letter, smiles are mentioned nearly twenty-five times.  Nearly half of these smiles belong to the sinister Roger Chillingworth, who has inherent knowledge of the sins of Hester and Dimmesdale and of his own desire to sin.  Mark Van Doren claims that in this novel, “Hawthorne has at last found individuals who can hold all of his thought” (131), and their thoughts leak out through their smiles, showing intelligence or knowledge, both of the holy and evil variety.

            Hester’s smiles are the first we see, upon her release from prison.  Hester realizes that neither Pearl nor the letter can be hidden, so in chapter 2 she emerges into the sunlight “with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile” (37).  Her knowledge that her shame cannot be hidden is a liberating intelligence, as it allows Hester to live a “truer” life than any of her counterparts.  The “haughtiness” may not be an indicator that Hester feels superior, but rather a defense mechanism for someone who is a true outsider in Boston (Sutherland).

The next mention of Hester and a smile is only hypothetical.  The narrator claims that if the crowd had laughed at her upon the scaffold, Hester “might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile” (40).  This smile would have been bitter and disdainful because it would have reflected Hester’s knowledge that many among the crowd were hypocritical sinners themselves, including the sainted Arthur Dimmesdale. 

            Years later, after the meeting at Governor Bellingham’s mansion during which Hester argues successfully to be able to keep Pearl, she is invited by Mistress Hibbins to meet the Devil in the forest.  Hester turns her down, “with a triumphant smile” (80).  Hester’s triumph here is not over the Devil but over the hierarchy in being able to keep Pearl, while her smile conveys the knowledge that but for this recent victory, she would be meeting the Devil in the forest.  Hester even exclaims, “Had they taken [Pearl] from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest!” (80).  Hester realizes her own weaknesses and also realizes that it is Pearl who gives her strength, or as the narrator says, “Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan’s snare” (80).

            Many more years later, in the forest, before Dimmesdale arrives on the scene, Hester “half-smiles” when Pearl draws an “absurd incongruity” between Hester’s letter and Dimmesdale’s habit of covering his heart with his hand.  Hester at first wants to admit no connection, but her smile betrays the knowledge deep within her heart – that Pearl is right about the minister’s guilty habit.  Moments later, Hester turns pale and tries to dissuade Pearl from her line of thinking, but both mother and child know that the reverend and the scarlet letter are intimately connected.

            Hester’s final smile is the “radiant and tender smile” that she shows Dimmesdale in the forest after she tears off the scarlet letter.  The smile is a reinforcement of Hester’s knowledge that Dimmesdale still loves her and Pearl, and it is also a reinforcement of her belief that the stigma is gone once the letter is gone.  Unfortunately for Hester, she is wrong in her belief that the stigma is gone, for as Pearl reminds her and as she herself soon realizes, the stigma will never be gone and the letter may as well stay on her chest forever.

            Interestingly, Hester does not smile again for the duration of the novel.  From the forest scene on, she is confused about her future plans and uncertain as to whether Dimmesdale will indeed escape with them to start a new life.  As the action closes, Hester has no reason to smile – not just because she is sad, but because she is unsure about her feelings, her beliefs, and her future.  If we could spy on Hester for a while after she returns to America with pride and dignity, I suspect that at some point her smile would arrive.  It would denote inner peace and assured knowledge – knowledge that she’s in the right place doing the right thing and that “the price of independence is loss” (Bell 158).  Although Van Doren claims that Hester “understands the tragedy” (132), I contend that she understands it more in the beginning and in the end than she does in the middle, when she is still holding onto the hope that she and Dimmesdale can make a family.

            Hester’s partner in love and sin, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, gives barely a smile for the entire novel until the forest scene.  In fact, the narrator even comments in chapter 11 that Arthur should smile (100).  The fact that he does not can certainly point to a state of unhappiness, but more than that, it points to a state of confusion and a lack of direction.  Smiles most often convey knowledge or certainty, and Dimmesdale is clearly uncertain of many things from the time the reader first sees him.  When he does smile in the forest, it is an indication that he realizes there is no way to hide from his sin.  After Hester asks whether it is possible to hide his heart from Chillingworth’s gaze, Arthur replies “with a sad smile . . . ‘Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves’” (135).  Clearly, hiding behind dead matter or other fallen sinners does not appeal to Dimmesdale.  While Dimmesdale often “wavers between good and evil” (Waggoner 163), this sad smile shows that the preacher knows he cannot hide from Chillingworth or the world; his only way to be free is to show his sin as freely as Hester has shown hers.

Even though Dimmesdale tells Hester that he’ll be leaving with her, his heart tells him (and the smile tells us) that his main order of business is to confess, even if it means death.  Stewart and Bethurum contend that “what has gone on in the minister’s mind . . . can be plausibly surmised” (171).  I surmise, with the help of the smile, that after 17 chapters, Dimmesdale’s confusion is at an end.

            Dimmesdale’s final smiles come in the book’s closing, when he ascends the scaffold with his lover and his child.  As he begins the preamble to his outright confession, “there [is] a feeble smile upon his lips” (173).  Finally, the reverend knows that he is doing the right thing, by standing where he should have stood seven years previous.  Many anxious minutes later, after the “ineffable relief” (Stewart 176) of his confession, the minister has “a sweet and gentle smile over his face” as he asks his daughter for a public kiss (175), which is a symbol of him “establish[ing] a true relation between himself and the two persons nearest him” (Stewart 177).  Dimmesdale is so sure that his public confession will expiate his guilt that the knowledge is bursting forth in a smile on his face.  Because “it is Dimmesdale whom secrecy tortures,” he is the one “who must confess and die” (Van Doren 130).  Although he realizes that death is imminent, he is so sure that he’s finally doing the right thing that he wears the symbol of his certainty on his face.  If Dimmesdale’s hand over his heart has been an incomplete symbol of his sin – similar to Hooper’s veil – his explicit confession leaves no doubt as to his penitence and his surety that a public confession is his only way to salvation.

            The product and symbol of Arthur and Hester’s adulterous sin is the elf-child, Pearl.  Pearl smiles rarely in the novel – only twice – and both times she is described as smiling with “intelligence” (66, 92).  Conversely, Pearl is shown to laugh several times.  If the laugh is a spontaneous burst of emotion, as opposed to the smile, which is a sign of intelligence, then it makes sense for Pearl to be most often identified with the laugh, which is emotional.  She is, after all, the product of an emotional sin, an emotional encounter between her parents.  She therefore represents “an intuitive, lawless, poetic view of the world” (Chase 151).  Certainly their adultery was a sin of emotion more than one of intellect; therefore Pearl’s actions in this regard perfectly suit her character.

            The villain of this novel, Roger Chillingworth, smiles more than ten times throughout the novel, and each smile highlights a further piece of knowledge gained or understood by this fearful man.  One critic notes, “Hawthorne liked nothing better than to discover a man with a hidden mind; especially a mind that hid monsters” (Van Doren 134).  If Van Doren is right, then Hawthorne had what he liked in Chillingworth, and he uses the man’s smiles to show both the hidden mind and the monsters.  Chillingworth’s initial smiles come when we first see him, as his inquiries lead to the knowledge that Hester’s husband is considered lost.  The two smiles here in chapter 3 (43) clue the reader in to the fact that Roger knows he can operate in anonymity as long as Hester keeps his identity a secret. 

In his interview with Hester, Roger flashes a “smile of dark and self-relying intelligence” after Hester claims that he will “never” know the identity of her lover (52).  I believe that at this point Roger already has a strong idea who the culprit is, based on the “keen and penetrative” (42) look with which Roger viewed the first scaffold scene, and the “apprehensive, startled, half-frightened look” (46) that Dimmesdale shows to the multitude.  It is important to remember that Roger knows Hester better than anyone in town, with the possible exception of Dimmesdale.  When he witnesses the baby “[holding] up its little arms, with a half pleased, half plaintive murmur” to her father, and when Roger sees Hester look “deep into the eyes of the younger clergyman” (47), the jilted husband might already have an idea of the person to blame.  Furthermore, to begin the interview, Roger says of Pearl, “[she will not] recognize my voice or aspect as a father’s” (49), but she had recognized Dimmesdale as such, if only one was watching the scene closely enough – which old Roger certainly was.  To complete the interview, Hester asks Roger, “Why dost thou smile at me?” (53).  The reason is clear: Roger is secure in the knowledge that Hester will keep his identity a secret, giving him free reign to do as he pleases in Boston.

Chillingworth’s smile in chapter 8 is evidence that Roger now has proof of what he suspected before -- that Arthur is Pearl’s father.  Upon conversing with Dimmesdale about Hester and Pearl, Roger remarks that Arthur speaks with a “strange earnestness” about their situation (79).  The smile that accompanies this comment must be seen as proof that Roger is secure in his knowledge that Dimmesdale is the person whom he seeks, because Chillingworth moves in with Dimmesdale almost immediately afterwards (Ch. 9).  The leech gets close to the minister in order to torture the young man both mentally and spiritually. 

In chapter 10, Chillingworth feels as though he is getting close to forcing a confession from Dimmesdale.  Both when he “smiles grimly down” at Pearl from the upstairs window (92), and when he exhibits a “grave smile” to the minister (94), he has the adulterer on the cusp of confession.  Even though Dimmesdale does not actually confess in either case, his words and body language come so close to doing so that Roger’s knowledge is strengthened and solidified – he knows he’s on the right track, as it were.  D. H. Lawrence points to these scenes as being nourishing for Chillingworth, in a way: “the dark Chillingworth listens outside the door and laughs, and prepares another medicine, so that the game can go on longer” (106).  Even Lawrence was tuned in to the importance of the laugh, dramatizing a scene himself that clues the reader in to Roger’s fearful knowledge.

Chillingworth next smiles during his encounter with Hester when she asks him to leave Dimmesdale alone (119).  After Hester reinforces Roger’s notion that the letter has avenged him, Roger smiles, certain that the badge of shame is retribution enough to Hester, while his continuing efforts towards Dimmesdale will serve as retribution in that regard.   It is when Hester attempts a plan by which her fledgling family can escape Chillingworth’s influence that his most dastardly and evil side comes out.  Hester books passage for three on a voyage out of Boston, but Chillingworth discovers her plan and books himself as the fourth member of their party.  Hester realizes his plan when she beholds him “smiling on her a smile which . . . conveyed secret and fearful meaning” (161).

The meaning of this most dastardly smile cannot be overstated.  Literally, Hester learns through it that Roger has discovered their plan to flee Boston and has in all likelihood booked similar passage himself.  Additionally, Hester realizes what Chillingworth already knows – that he will always be there to torture Dimmesdale, if not physically, then in spirit.  Once Hester understands that Chillingworth’s influence cannot be escaped, she comprehends the gravity of what Dimmesdale must do, for it is only in confession that he will escape the clutches of this spiritual leech.  Unfortunately for Hester, she also realizes that confession for Dimmesdale will most likely lead to death.  The meaning of Chillingworth’s smile is “secret and fearful” indeed, so horrible that she sees it as the symbol of their failed plans after the shipmaster informs her of Chillingworth’s modifications: “an inevitable doom . . . showed itself, with an unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path” (168).

This smile is, however, Chillingworth’s last.  Dimmesdale’s confession robs Chillingworth of being able to torture the minister any further.  The confession not only kills Dimmesdale, but also leaves the leech purposeless, most likely throwing his life into confusion.  Although Fiedler contends that all three major characters were “providentially tricked into Grace” (447), I am not so sure that Chillingworth is saved at the end.  Fiedler uses as evidence, I imagine, the fact that Pearl inherited his money when he died.  I don’t necessarily see this as evidence that Roger has repented or changed.  It could simply be that he’s giving to Hester – through Pearl – what is rightfully hers, since she won the battle of the souls, in a sense.  The narrator will only comment that old Chillingworth “may” have had his hate transformed to love (178).  Then again, he may not have.

            After this discussion of smiles, it is interesting to note that the narrator may also be smiling at us in a sense, with his “detached” and “mock intimate” (Van Doren 140) introductory chapter, “The Custom House.”  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s desire to lead a private life has been reported by various scholars, and the Hawthorne narrator here takes time to note that he also seeks to “keep the inmost me behind its veil” (2), like Mr. Hooper.  We can imagine that this chapter is the narrator’s attempt to keep a distance between the emotional truths found in the novel and the actual or historical truths found in an examination of the author’s life.

Strangely, the only way for us to learn about the “real” Hawthorne is to read his stories; so, in a way, this chapter is a smile that affords us the opportunity to look deeper into the emotional truths that Hawthorne is trying to convey.  As Feidelson points out, the narrator Hawthorne ponders the scarlet letter just as the reader will ponder the letter; he’s showing us the way to begin interpreting it.  Just as a smile is a physical passage from the actual into the emotional or intellectual truths inside, so is “The Custom House” a passage that allows us to connect the emotional truths in The Scarlet Letter with their creator, using the medium of the narrator character in the story.

            Some scholars contend that Hawthorne was finished with tales of sin and forbidden knowledge after The Scarlet Letter.  Winters says, “[Hawthorne] dealt with sin once and for all; there was nothing further to be said about it” (20), but I disagree.  In the House of the Seven Gables (1851), which Hawthorne preferred to the previous novel, he attempted to cover the same themes in a way that better bridged the gaps of time.  The smile image is considerably evident in Seven Gables, which of course it would be if the author was trying to convey similar themes and illustrate characters whose epiphanies are translatable through their facial expressions.  Interestingly, however, there is a scarcity of meaningful smile images in The Blithedale Romance (1852).  Maybe that novel signals a change in direction for Hawthorne; many scholars certainly think so, as he had little output in the dozen years that followed.  It could be that Hawthorne felt “his [themes]: intolerance, the hypocrisy that hides in common sin, and the greed that refuses to share joy” (Bradley 49) had been exhaustively discussed by 1852.

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Harold Bloom claims that “[Hawthorne’s] romance . . . depends on enchantment and imperfect knowledge” (471).  I am unclear as to whether Bloom means the reader or the characters have imperfect knowledge.  My guess is that he really means both – that because the characters have an “imperfect knowledge” of their own motivations and feelings, the reader also is unclear as to what exactly drives certain characters.  Hawthorne’s stories, then, are a process of discovery for the characters and the readers.  The smile as symbol is first a clue that the character has a certain amount of self-knowledge – there is a certainty deeper than what the narrator is choosing to tell us.  The smile helps show what Ziff claimed was Hawthorne’s maxim: “Man’s inner life can be more real than his outer life” (124).  Additionally, the smile lets the reader know that a deeper meaning lies within a given scene whenever a smile is present.

            Many critics would agree with Stewart’s simple statement that “Hawthorne’s mind worked symbolically” (Stewart 172).  Because of this accepted truth and because Hawthorne’s use of the word “smile” is so specific and explicit, I can only surmise he did not use it haphazardly.  The author uses it only to denote knowledge, not merely a state of happiness; for, as you have seen, the smile is more often used in times of strain or anger than in times of mirth.  Hawthorne himself was not fond of showing the public his inner feelings, except through his art.  In a similar way, the reader gets the true feelings of the characters somewhat through dialogue and narration, but more completely through interpreted actions, like the smile that Hawthorne puts on his characters.  In this way, Hawthorne has been said to “foreshadow impressionist techniques in the focus on inner states” (Ferguson 297).  In the same way that impressionist painters give a hazy sketch of a scene – an impression – so does Hawthorne give us characters who are hazy.  It is up to the reader to use clues like the smile to see the characters in focus and make them more understandable.

            Hawthorne was a private man, and he respected the privacy of his characters to a certain extent.  Both in his art and in his life, he was “divided between his two impulses, . . . secrecy [or] complete self-revelation, [and he] achieved a sort of compromise: he revealed himself, but usually under a veil of allegory and symbol” (Cowley 8).  For this reason, it becomes the discriminating reader’s job to take the symbols and delve further into what Hawthorne was saying about his world and about himself.