Nina Baym's The Scarlet Letter

The Role of the Scarlet Letter While many individuals in The Scarlet Letter could be called the main character, people often overlook the importance of the scarlet letter itself. In Nina Baym’s thoughtful analysis of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the most attention-grabbing articles is “The Scarlet Letter in The Scarlet Letter.” In this article, Baym shows that the physical “A”s seen on Hester, the night sky, and Reverend Dimmesdale play very important roles in the novel. The various articles Hester’s “A” can stand for are likely the most extensive. As Baym says, “The horrid possibility emerges that so many meanings are possible because the A itself has no meaning at all, because there is no “A itself”; all we have, as modern philosophers would say, is an empty signifier, pure form without content.” (Baym 87). I agree fully with this statement. In theory, the A has no concrete meaning at all one point. The definition of the A is left up for interpretation. If you …show more content…
Baym notes, “In the scene of the minister’s vigil on the scaffold (Chapter 12), the letter is replicated four times, once in each of the characters standing there, and once in the sky.” (Baym 84); before this sentence is written, the reader is unaware of what Reverend Dimmesdale sees in the sky. This fantastic example of foreshadowing causes the reader to really ponder what Dimmesdale could have seen. According to Hawthorne, the reverend “clasped his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes toward the zenith.” (Hawthorne 151). Dimmesdale is obviously in a state of great distress, as he is most days at this point; he seems shocked, and likely believes this to be a sign from God. This occurrence seems to help mold Dimmesdale into the character he is described as for the majority of the remainder of the novel; the letter on his chest holds all of his