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Darci Ford Mrs. Horton

Darci Ford     Mrs. Horton
    English III-AP
    Monday, January 18, 1999
The Scarlet Letter: Reference to Mirrors
    Nathaniel Hawthorne has a sufficient reason for repeatedly making reference to mirrors
throughout his refined novel, The Scarlet Letter. The use of mirrors in the story serve a beneficial
purpose of giving the reader a window to the character’s soul. The truth is always portrayed in
the author’s mirrors; thus, his introspective devices will continuously point out the flaws to whom
gazes in it. Hester’s “A” has now become the most noticeable part of not only her physical
features, but her spiritual being. The reflection of Pearl Prynne uncovers her hard shell and brings
out the loneliness, the innocent recklessness, and the wild beauty within her. Reverend
Dimesdale’s image only radiates the dark, gloomy truth of his impurities. The looking glass
Nathaniel Hawthorne places in front of his characters, therefore, focuses on the realms that each
beholder attempts to hide from the world around them.                
    In chapter two while Hester is standing on the scaffold, she tries to run from reality by
reminiscing of her youth. At that moment, “she saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty,
and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it.”
Sadly, the mirror will never again give Hester that immaculate reflection. Instead, the image will
always resemble that of the breastplate at the governor’s mansion in chapter seven, “owing to the
peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and
gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature to her appearance.”
Ironically, the two symbols of her sin and suffering, the scarlet letter and Pearl, are now the most
significant elements of her life. Hester is no longer looked at as a woman in society, and in the
mirror, “she seemed absolutely hidden behind it (the scarlet letter).” As for her child, “that look
of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of
effect, that it made Hester Prynne feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an
imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl’s shape.” Pearl’s mischievous looks are magnified
in the mirroring surface to remind Hester that her child is in fact a part of the punishment of her
sin. “Once this freakish, elvish cast came into the child’s eyes while Hester was looking at her
own image in t

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