In Chapter XVIII of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Scarlet Letter, Hester and the Reverend Dimmesdale meet in the forest.
There, in the Romantic style, Nature sympathizes with the feelings of Hester and Arthur
Dimmesdale. For instance, in the beginning of the chapter, as Dimmesdale looks into the
face of Hester, "hope and joy shone out." As Dimmedale makes the decision to leave the
colony, Dimmesdale tells Hester,
I seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained,
and sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest-leaves,
and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to
florify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did we not
find it sooner?
Then, when
Hester removes her cap, and takes down her hair, Nature is again in sympathy with
her:
There
played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that
seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood....And, as if the gloom of the earth and
sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their
sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven,
forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very
flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, tranmuting the yellow fallen
ones to gold, and gleaming adown the grey trunks of the solemn
trees.
That
which was in the dark now comes out of the shadow into brightness. The little brook
takes a course of "merry gleam" into the wood's "heart of mystery, a mystery of joy."
Hawthorne further writes,
Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild,
heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher
truth--with the bliss of these two
spirits!
Standing in the
sunshine, little Pearl is called "a bright-apparelled vision in a sunbeam." Likewise,
Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale emerge as hopeful and alive in the forest where Nature
sympathizes and sunshine chases away the shadows from their hearts and unburdens the
grey lives of the two
lovers.
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