Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter: A Color with Different Perceptions

The Scarlet Letter tells the tale of people who loved, sinned, changed, survived, and died. In America’s Puritan society of the 17th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the life of Hester Prynne who is condemned to wear the scarlet letter, the letter “A” which stands for the first letter of adultery, and a circle of related individuals. All of the characters are somehow related to this figure, whether it is their happiness, sadness, shame, rage moments of epiphany, or development. As we go on through the novel, the scarlet letter goes beyond a simple figure and becomes a character itself. Like other characters, it changes over and over and finds a multilayered nature and concept. Everything about the figure has been chosen wisely by Hawthorne, but what is significant is the very color. Comparatively, and by examining some classic paintings, I could find the same colors with the same meaning that stand as a significant emphasis on the inter-textual nature of both textual and visual arts. I chose some classic paintings, which have the same colors each of which presents different notions while having the concepts that the scarlet letter has within. This comparative study investigates the significant analogy between the scarlet figure of the book and the classic paintings: “Coronation of the Virgin” by Enguerrand Charonton, “The Bolt” and “Young Girl Reading” by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche. Keywords: color symbolism, color, puritan, Nathaniel Hawthorne, painting