Adaptation: How Scarlet Letter’s Puritans are different from book to silver screen

The characterization of a thing will usually differ from one work to another. Even for the same property, further adaptations of the source material might shine different lights to highlight a different part of the story or message. Such is the case for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and its 1995 Hollywood adaptation. How the Puritans are depicted in the novel will first be discussed, followed by in the film, and finally a brief analysis of the contrast and the possible explanation as to why the contrast exists will be given.

When it comes to the novel Puritans, a neutral description of them would be that they have a certain duality in their nature. Some might say hypocrisy, but the term duality would be more encompassing, thus allowing hypocrisy as one of, but not the only, the supporting points. This is most evident in the protagonist, Hester Prynne, her lover, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, her husband, Roger Chillingworth, and the general populace.

With Hester Prynne, according to Doster, during the second chapter, Hester puts on a façade of confidence, standing tall and embellishing the scarlet letter with flair on her attire, while having inner conflict. She may have put up this façade as either pride or rebellion, not giving her community the sense of superiority as they might have wanted. Another sign of the duality is noted by Sang which states that Hester is probably the most hypocritical person in the novel, giving many points of discussion such as her delight with her job as a seamstress yet rejecting it as sin, but still doing it as a means of subsistence for her and her child. A personal observation of her duality can be noted in her parenting method. Hester has a complicated relationship with her daughter, she seems to genuinely love Pearl, but on more than one occasion would be irrationally frustrated with a child that is a pariah by association to her mother and generally acting weird around other people. An example is when Hester just straight up questions her child, out loud, whether they are indeed related. Although it eventually ends up in playful tone, she did start it by being genuine.

Dimmesdale’s duality revolves around his main struggle of guilt and status. The biggest evidence of his duality is when he, multiple times, wanted to confess directly to his congregation during his sermon, but ends up humbling himself in front of them, thus idealizing himself further in their eyes, and in effect, increased his shame and guilt. The book states that he knows the power of his words. He knows that unless he explicitly confesses his sin, his congregation will misinterpret his sermon as him being humble, yet he continues on as so, never fully committing his confession and always ends up humbling himself. A minor duality of him is in regard to his relationship with Roger Chillingworth. Short of learning his true identity, Arthur was always suspicious and a bit uncomfortable around the doctor, yet he never separated himself. There never was a genuine effort to be done with him in their patient-doctor relationship. Finally, an obvious duality is his want to confess in general but remaining hidden. During the second chapter, while Hester was being publicly scorned, the reverend spoke to her in public, subtly hinting that he who is in a high position would be willing to go down there and bear the burden of punishment with her. She refuses, and there was no mention of their contact beforehand, but if he was serious about it, he shouldn’t have given her the chance to deny the name, he could’ve just blurt it out (an interesting point to make, the 1995 film portrays this with Hester telling everyone that Dimmesdale would just be trying to cover for her as he is her church leader)

The duality of Roger is a bit different one among the four points. His duality serves to his goal which is to discover the identity of and exact revenge upon Hester’s lover. He holds darkness in his heart, his words are poison, and he messes with the Dimmesdale’s mind, but he never outwardly explicitly does it. Up until a certain point, he always does things innocently. By Hester and Arthur’s account, his physique slowly morphed and disfigured, slowly matching to his inner desires of darkness, but this duality nonetheless is not one of accidental, but rather purposeful for his main goal.

Finally the general populace could be considered dual in nature, mainly due to their boastful conviction which often times are shown to be easily tempered like steel by outside influences. This point is seen in Hester’s community and Governor Bellingham. Both of them had hard opinions about something, the community hated her and the governor was steadfast in his belief that Pearl should be taken away to be raised in another household. However external influences, Hester’s good work for the community and Reverend Dimmesdale’s words to Governor Bellingham, could change their tune, with Hester taking a long time and Dimmesdale taking just one conversation. Now this duality is not something that is awful, albeit their previous judgment was often presented in a holier-than-thou attitude, but they are willing to change their mind when presented with another alternative to their view.

So that is how the Puritans are characterized in the book. Next the 1995 film version will be discussed.

A less than perfect match yet still apt word to describe the depiction of Puritans in this film is single-note. This is not to say the characters are fully flat, as some reviews of the film might suggest, but rather that they are more in line with a core trait that the director might have envisioned. The characters to be analyzed here are ones whose depiction could be argued as different if compared to the novel version.

First is Hester. Here, as Hamdan noted, she starts off more as a male figure. She freely talks back, is insistent on her independence and freedom to prepare for her husband’s coming, and eventually, is more openly defiant during her trial of adultery and possible witchcraft allegations. In fact, in the movie, Hester is so brazen to the point of suggesting a form of heresy for the Puritans, she somewhat rejects the Bible as divine but rather as a work of man. She has some wit about her, saying lines that silence the men around her, but this wit and previously mentioned brazenness is, in this version, a factor in her damnation against public opinion. Whether this would eventually hints more towards a more explicitly misogynistic Puritans community in this film would be discussed in another point

Second is Roger Chillingworth. In the novel he is one with ulterior motive and his actions are synchronous with his goal, and he took his time. Here however, he is much more cunning and active in the ruining of Hester and Arthur’s lives. He convinces the council of the governor, turning them more xenophobic against foreigners, witches, and the Native Americans, to start the witch hunt. He saves the knowledge of Pearl’s birthmark at first, using that knowledge to his advantage later on against the accused witch who was a friend of Hester. Also physically wise, he isn’t disfigured, misshapen, or something to the effect of body horror. The closest thing similar to the book counterpart is his aura. In the film, he somewhat turns mad during his captivity with the Native Americans and even they were disturbed by him.

Finally the element to be described here is the general populace. Now there are two parts to this analysis which is their strictness to the law and their possible misogynistic beliefs, tendencies, or practices. These two parts are heavily intertwined. The general populace seems more brazen in their conviction and they are more depicted as having that holier-than-thou attitude without the changing of their belief. The film seems to focalize more on the witchcraft elements, which obviously would tie to ladies of the community who are non-conformists. That is where the misogynistic elements are most visible; the community seems to not like women to have agency over their own lives: they objected at Hester’s desire to live alone and they do not want for any group of ladies to congregate by themselves to talk about anything.

So that was the Puritans’ depiction in the film. Now let’s discuss the differences and possible causes of it.

The easy way to describe the contrast lies in the two key terms: duality of nature in the novel, and single-note characterization in the film. The book allows complex characters without being explicit, whereas the film portrays them more in one way and just a bit on the nose. The book uses words implied or implicit understanding to depict Puritans and the movie uses visual language to home in on one specific element of characterization which revolves more around a woman’s agency. The simplest way to explain why there is this rift is to consider the context of which it was produced, which is the medium, producer, and target demographic for each. Hamdan talks about it, but this difference basically arises from the fact that the film is an adaptation, a loose one at that, based on the text at the beginning which has the words “…freely adapted…” . The film is based in Hollywood in 1995; a simplistic pseudo-feminist-like approach to the filmmaking of the message would be suitable for the time and possible demographic. After all, the film is marketed as historical romance; it could be argued that the target market didn’t include just single dudes. So Hollywood would remove any ambiguity in the text and insert their own vision of the story.

In conclusion, there is a rift between the ways that the Puritans are depicted in the novel when compared to the film. The novel affords the reader some level of ambiguity, showing two sides to every aspect of the characters. The film however, being a loose adaptation, uses this fact to change some of the details and depiction of Puritans to put in their vision which would help them sell the film.

63718025 — Andy Jefferson Sabur
Program Studi Sastra Inggris
Fakultas Sastra
Universitas Komputer Indonesia

Bibliography

Doster, J. (2018). Hester Prynne’s Hypocrisy in “The Scarlet Letter”. Western Michigan University.
Hamdan, R. (2015). Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in Fiction.
Hawthorne, N. (1850). The Scarlet Letter. Ticknor, Reed &Fields.
Sang, Y. (2010). An Analysis of Hester’s Hypocrisy in The Scarlet. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 447–450.