Civilization, Wilderness, and the Happy Medium

In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, when Edna Pontillier embraces her impulses and wild nature, she is rejected and despised by civilized society. Edna is not a manifestation of evil or sin; she is simply a woman clumsily liberating herself from a repressive society. Edna, like Pearl, is described as a bird, soaring over the sea, braving unknown territory. Edna, like Dimmesdale, is freed from an oppressive society by escaping into the ocean and thus begins a grueling crusade toward self-discovery and individuality. While Edna, Hester, and Pearl find solitude and public shame a consequence of this independence, they are only true to themselves when they diverge from civilization. Thus, to discover one's true, uninhibited identity, one must first outgrow civilization and embrace passion.

The Puritans feared the expansive, untamed, unknown, uncivilized wilderness that encircled their small communities. They believed that the forest, populated by "uncivilized heathens" and the cunning "Black Man", radiated evil. Mariners, inhabiting the turbulent sea, were likewise viewed as lawless beings. Symbolically, the forest and ocean represent the emotional, passionate, and impulsive elements of human nature which Puritans suppressed in an attempt to appear wholly pure and predestined for Heaven. The Puritan elders, "stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide" (Hawthorne 213). Thus, the elders upheld the strict customs, laws, and practices of the Puritans by repressing passion, ostracizing subversives, and crushing human creativity and individuality.

Freed from this repression and judgment, woodland wanderers could temporarily indulge themselves in an alternate identity without fear of punishment. Dimmesdale emerges from the woods an altogether different and more animated man scarcely able to suppress a multitude of wicked impulses. His uncharacteristically malevolent inclinations, freed by wilderness, are the culmination of years of pent up negativity, harmless pranks, and minor transgressions. Human nature is a composite,a balance between sin and purity, between passion and restraint, that varies minutely by individual. Humans cannot, through a conscious effort, simply expel half of their innate sentiments. Struggling to reconcile his exploding passions with his role as a Puritan minister, Dimmesdale flickers between the extremities of Satan's lively henchman or a saint on Earth, owning his sin and accepting Pearl or masking it and ignoring her. Returning to his study from in a wild, impassioned state, Dimmesdale's entire Election Sermon flowed effortlessly from his fickle mind to the parchment. On the Election Day, Dimmesdale maintains an unattainable, vacant, and unrecognizable demeanor, but throughout his impassioned sermon, Hester detects an anguished undercurrent:

"even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding,- when it gushed irrepressibly upward,- when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls and diffuse itself in the open air,- still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,- at every moment,- in each accent,- and never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power" (Hawthorne 217-218).

Dimmesdale channels his inner turmoil into his words, releasing so much powerful emotion that the walls of the rigid Puritan church cannot contain his energy. The minister is thus reinvigorated by the forest both physically and mentally, expanding beyond Puritan constraints on individuals' passion and emotion.

On Election Day, Hawthorne portrays Pearl as a restless, effervescent bird of the sea, the manifestation of wild passion and impulses, to display Hester's internal emotions. The Native Americans recognize that Pearl is wilder, and the mariners fancy her a brilliant token of the sea. Hester and Pearl's close proximity to the forest illustrates their divergence from Puritan civilization. Pearl is simultaneously a blessing, symbolizing Hester's passion and vitality, and a living manifestation of the scarlet letter, representing sin and shame. Living beyond the reach of the human regulations, the mariners have a permanent "animal ferocity" and "transgress, without fear or scruple, the rules of behavior that were binding on all others," yet could in an instant become reputable Puritans (Hawthorne 208). After half a lifetime of barbarity at sea, free from restraint and organization, a sailor could, like Dimmesdale, unleash an alternate personality in which he embraced Puritan structure. In contrast, Pearl is ruled by her wild impulses and innately contains a spirit of passion and emotion that is nearly irreconcilable with Puritan piety. Hester protects her wild daughter through the repression of her own defiant character, performing charitable duties, repenting her sin, and behaving and dressing as a devout Puritan would. At the procession for Election Day, Pearl, with her erratic movements and shrieks, manifests Hester's growing internal agitation and the passion bubbling beneath her mother's stony composure.

Thus, Hester is the bridge uniting the more extreme Dimmesdale and Pearl with her instinctive strength and self-confidence. Hawthorne builds suspense regarding a tortured and conforming Dimmesdale's capacity to assert his composite nature under public scrutiny. If Dimmesdale diverges from the well-worn path of civilization, he will simultaneously begin the turbulent process of self-discovery and plummet, in the eyes of his congregation, from the highest angel to an adulterous sinner. Only after outwardly owning his sin and escaping the gauntlet of public shame could Dimmesdale attempt to arbitrate a composite of his extreme identities as Hester had done. Ultimately, Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer haunted by his ancestor’s role in the Salem Witch Trials and therefore criticized Puritans' strict repression of human nature. He develops this cricism extensively in chapters twenty through twenty-two of The Scarlet Letter by intensifying Pearl, Hester, and Dimmesdale's struggle to balance civilization and wilderness and thus embrace human nature.