morality

Specific to Hawthorne’s sense of American Romanticism is the concern with morality and, in a broader political view, how it is important to America as a new country.

-Hester is a public figure of humanity because she does not pretend at Puritanism, as many in the town do, but displays CONTRARIES of martyrdom (or sainthood) and rebellious independance.
-in American Romanticism, it is not only Nature, poetry, or community with fellow man that instructs, but moral instruction is also vital: when Governor Bellingham threatens to take Pearl away from Hester for proper instruction of “the truths of heaven and earth,” Hester argues that she can impart wisdom she herself has learned from her “badge” of shame and punishment, which “daily teaches [her]” (76).
-In contrast, Dimmesdale lets Hester suffer the shame alone, and raise their child alone, while receiving the admiration and love of the entire town. This was not done out of cruelty, but cowardice, and Hawthorne shows the psychological effects of hidden crime in Dimmesdale’s character. He finally admits to Hester, “ ‘I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!”

Hawthorne is also asking the question of what one should do when the common moral system is not one they subscribe to, when the common moral system is against one’s nature.
-Significantly, Hester and Dimmesdale are deeply regretful, but they are not sorry for their earlier affair. Hester cries to Dimmesdale, “ ‘What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other!’” (134).
Hester and Dimmesdale’s relationship become more “sinful” or harmful to their psyches because it is forbidden by society, yet right to them. In doing what it true to them, they must take on the roles of lawless cultural rebels. They enter a dangerous type of psychological, emotional, spiritual and moral wilderness not because of their (desire for) relationship with each other, but because they are so separated from community and accountability. They are lacking the wisdom and objective voice of fellow man.

-“[Hester’s] intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods…The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread” (137).
-“Since that wretched epoch, [Dimmesdale] had watched, with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts, - for those it was easy to arrange, - but each breath of emotion, and his every thought” (137).
Hawthorne is expressing here his philosophy on morality: it is not just the outwardly observable actions that are the measure of morality. If the body, mind, soul and emotions are all interconnected, then immorality threatens every “breath of emotion, and…every thought” (137).

-“Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister’s miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence: - ‘Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!’” (177).
One of the prominent messages of the novel is that secrecy only magnifies that unhealthy thing which is being hidden. Hawthorne is also commenting on the danger of a society or system that produces fear in people to be open about aspects of themselves that are imperfect, or short of the set standard. He shows in the characters of Hester, Chillingworth and Dimmesdale the manifestations of suppressed self.