I recently read The Scarlet Letter for the first time. (Shocking, I know! How did they let me into the English department?) Walking into my room after one particularly enlivening lecture on the book and its symbolism, I was ready to spew out thoughts at my helpless roommate. But as soon as I whipped out the book, she nodded knowingly and said, “Oh yeah, The Scarlet Letter. I remember that from high school. The A means adultery.”
I instantly halted in my train of thought. Something about her half-joking comment struck a chord. Was symbolism in literature really that straightforward? Was it supposed to be so simple? Like a logical syllogism – if the author uses this symbol, then they must mean for us to learn this aspect of their worldview or political agenda.
There seem to be several prevalent views of symbolism in literature, and none fully satisfy me in explaining what symbolism in literature is for. Some view literature as a code to crack, with each turn of phrase and recurring image a red flag marking some philosophical insight or political critique by the author. In this situation, literature can only contain as much meaning as the author intentionally endowed it with. Writers are then creators of brain-teasers, trying to convey monumental thoughts by vaguely disguising them in a story. But this seems to leave no room for unique, personal experiences with a work, since it is only the author’s intentions that should be considered. It also places a heavy, even paralyzing, weight of responsibility on the writer to embed meaning into their writing – and many authors who have made culturally formative works of literature flatly deny this intention. Ernest Hemingway expressed frustration with insinuations that he had imbedded his symbols with calculated meanings in an interview with The Paris Review in 1958: “I suppose that everything I’ve ever written has been charged with some sort of calculated meaning, but that’s not what I meant to do. You just write a story and let the readers take from it what they need.”
Unfortunately, the second half of Hemingway’s quotation could too easily be pulled out of shape and used as evidence that symbolism is entirely subjective. In that case, no particular reading of a symbol is more right than another, and any symbol could have an infinite number of meanings attributed to it by the myriads of readers who will approach the story with different life experiences and, as Hemingway said, “needs” to draw from the work. My discomfort with this view comes from several corners. When literature is read as a moldable lump of clay, conformable to whatever translations the reader wishes to impose, it loses any ability to inspire change in the life of a reader (an experience, however, that many readers have laid claim to). Texts are often imposed with modern sensibilities – every book written by a woman becomes, to some extent, a battle cry for feminism or a call for the dissolution of the patriarchy. While claiming to make reading an expansive, limitless experience, relativism when approaching symbolism in literature often seems to narrow the reader’s experience – the book only contains the meanings I create for it based on my own experience, and hence there is little to be gained from reading – except, perhaps, to validate my feelings. It also discredits the life experience of the author – Charlotte Bronte’s personal life story as a governess for wealthy families no longer has any bearing in our reading of Jane Eyre, since it is only our experience that should be considered. In fact, much of literary theory and criticism loses its purpose when literature is read in this attitude.
Of course, there is a better way to read symbolism in literature. I think my roommate is more correct than I initially wanted to believe – yes, the “A” does stand for adultery. That is the literal meaning that the characters within the text ascribed to the letter at the start of the novel, and it is the interpretation that readers must understand to accurately follow the initial chain of events. The scarlet “A” is a self-defined symbol, but it grows to take a much larger role by the end of the novel. After our walk alongside Hester through the two hundred or so pages of the novel, we have come to find within her much more depth than any one symbol could contain. Hawthorne, like any good writer, has given us characters that cannot be defined by one word, and we begin to see how unfair it is that many onlookers continue to only see the scarlet letter on Hester’s chest rather than the woman standing behind it. Hawthorne has led us to this deduction, not by elaborate mind games, but by showing us a true-to-life scene, and as responsible readers, we can see the undercurrent of truth in the story that already existed within the world that we know before the author brought it to light for us.
This shade of nuance between good and bad message-reading is best highlighted by considering the inherent difference between a fable and a parable. I once had a friend explain the difference like this: fables are nothing but symbols, explicitly explained so that there is no doubt what each object is meant to represent. Parables, on the other hand, may subvert our expectations, and many times the Gospel writers tell us that no one understood Jesus’ parables (Mark 4:13). Truth in all shapes can be seen and made evident in the context of a story but can only be fully understood with “wisdom from above,” as James describes. If the stories by the Word made flesh weren’t always understood, is it surprising that stories written by His image bearers will be misunderstood and warped from a sense of vanity or self-projection? Especially when those stories – like The Scarlet Letter – are written by unbelievers. But this challenge does not invalidate the shreds of truth, beauty and goodness that we can still see through the imagery and symbolism of literature – it allows us to make sense of the ambiguity we may sometimes confront in literature without having to accept a wholesale relativism.
Symbolism, at the end of the day, shouldn’t be isolated from the rest of the text. It should be one aspect by which we can approach the truths of the text, neither separable from the author’s intentions or our own lived experiences, but also not reliant on either of those in order to have meaning and demonstrate truth. Our God has ingrained truth into the fabric of the universe, and the stories we share will unavoidably capture snapshots of that truth through the images and motifs the authors depict.
Excellent analysis & reflection!