The Swelling Waves: Visuality, Metaphor, and Bodily Reality in The Scarlet Letter

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

THE SWELLING WAVES: VISUALITY, METAPHOR, AND BODILY REALITY IN THE SCARLETLETTER David B. Downing* Quite early in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, in the paragraph immediately following Dimmesdale's brief speech in which he exhorts Hesterto confess the name ofher adulterous companion, the narrator offers a significant qualification ofthat speech: "The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts. . . .'M The "broken" quality of Dimmesdale's voice suggests the painful break or gap between "the direct purport of the words" and the feelings which he compresses into the conventional meanings ofthosewords. Indeed, the ultimate tragedy of The ScarletLetterarises from the troubling division between the religious meanings of Dimmesdale 's words and the powerful feelings he expresses through them.2 This initial scaffold scene sustains a visual image of Dimmesdale standing on the meeting house balcony above the scaffold, addressing Hester as she stands with her babe in arms. The text focuses on Dimmesdale's voice because the physical sounds emitted by the vocal organ express the invisible but highly charged emotions in Dimmesdale's body: There is both pleasure and pain. The text of his speech is ostensibly directed at the "evil within" Hester, but the sweetness and richness ofhis voice suggest the pleasurable feelings which may be directly related to his positive sexual feelings for her. Dimmesdale enacts the culturally based fear of the body when he subscribes to the visible framework ofhis religion, his voice "breaks" when he makes his painful reversal, labelling as evil the pleasurable energies ofhis own body. Hawthorne's text allows for an experience ofthe non-visual consequences of those visibly dramatic acts. Hawthorne's fictional task has been to engage his text with both visual and non-visual dimensions.3 On the surface, this may seem a commonplace observation since the problem ofvisuality concerns any novelistto the extent that he must descriptively visualize character and setting. But the problem raises issues of considerable significance for Hawthorne, who is fundamentally concerned with the "head/heart," or more properly, the mind-body relationship, and thus with the non-visible, bodily response of such vital importance to the impact of the story.4 "Oavid B. Downing is an Associate Professor ofEnglish at Eastern Illinois University. He has published widely on American literature and is currently an NEH Fellow working on a book entitled "Literature, Culture, and the Ideology of Experience." 14David B. Downing Besides the traditional elements of dramatic suspense and the visible passions ofthe characters, it is one oftheprimary functions ofmetaphor to join visual and non-visual realms. In The Scarlet Letter, there is a central metaphor the narrator employs to convey an impression of Dimmesdale's power of speech: the minister had acquired "the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples, at Pentecost, in tongues of flame . . ." (p. 136). The "Tongue of Flame" provides a visual image of the non-visual energy that charges his language. According to the text, Dimmesdale gains the vocal power of the "Tongue of Flame" insofar as he could "express the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images" (p. 136). As Robert Rogers points out, there is never a literal transcription of Dimmesdale's speeches; rather, the text provides only the "familiar words and images" of Hawthorne's narrator. s Moreover, even in the case of Dimmesdale, the minister acquires this power not because of his professional and scholarly competence but because he has been "suffering under bodily disease" andthe bodilypain has found a suppressed outlet in his professional duties. The subtlety ofthereligious logicmay be accessible only to a select few. Bodily conditions, however, are potentially shared by all human beings. According to the narrator's interpretation, the Pentecostal flaming tongue represents "not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that ofaddressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language" (p. 136). Rather than just another romantic convention, "the heart's native language" suggests the whole range of bodily emotions inherently possible in human nature. The "Tongue of Flame" thus becomes a metaphor for...