Duality In Richard Chase's 'The Scarlet Letter'

In Richard Chase’s “The Ambiguity of The Scarlet Letter,” he suggests that The Scarlet Letter is ambiguous and unclear, drawing upon the duality of Hawthorne's life and writing to defend this. He also argues that the novel bears both a feministic theme and an anti-feministic Puritan theme. Lastly, he states that the novel serves as an allegory to Puritan society and to the Mechanistic struggle, which is the fight for dominance between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil. Chase argues that The Scarlet Letter is like a picture, consisting of dramatic and unconnected scenes, which “seem frozen, muted, and remote” (Chase 146). He explains the novel is operatic, as its events consist of the same characters in seemingly insignificant locations, over a period of several years and with little transition between. Moreover, he states that The Scarlet Letter mirrors Hawthorne's own life, citing Malcolm Cowley, an American poet and literary critic, to make this connection: “Cowley traces it to Hawthorne's sense of 'doubleness,' the result of a certain strain of narcissism and the long seclusion of Hawthorne's youth and young manhood. Temperamentally, as Cowley says, Hawthorne was paradoxically 'cold and sensual, sluggish and active, radical and conservative’” (qtd. in “Ambiguity” 146). Here, Chase explains that The Scarlet Letter is ambiguous due to the dichotomy of Hawthorne’s life. For example, the scarlet letter A is originally thought to mean adultery, although the author does not explicitly mention this in the novel. As the story progresses, it inherits more interpretations, such as in “Another View of Hester” when the narrator states, “[M]any people refused to take the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant able, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength” (Hawthorne 177). Later, its meaning changes again to “angel” when the Bostonians see a meteor pass overhead and interpret it as a sign that their recently deceased governor has reached heaven. Chase again shows vagueness of The Scarlet Letter when explaining the novel’s feministic theme. …show more content…
He states that Hester’s thoughts and actions violate the Puritan principals that govern life for the Bostonians, saying that “Hester becomes a radical. She believes that sometime ‘a new truth’ will be revealed and that ‘the whole relation between man and woman’ will be established ‘on a surer ground of mutual happiness’” (147). He explains that Hester believes sexism will be removed from society in the future, supporting this assertion by showing that feministic traits are displayed in Hester’s thoughts. In contrast, the novel also displays anti-feministic beliefs. For instance, the narrator describes the women outside the prison: “Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre [sic] in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants … for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame” (Hawthorne 57). This contradicts the novel’s feministic theme, as Hawthorne compares the women of the novel to the women of the 1800s were “more delicate” than their ancestors. The opposing themes of feminism and anti-feminism further exemplify the ambiguity of The Scarlet Letter. In his essay, Chase cites the poet and critic, Yvon Winters, to support his argument of the novel’s ambiguity. Winters states that The Scarlet Letter is a