He
habitually thought in images, and he brooded so long over his
conceptions that his descriptions are almost as definite in
outline and as vivid in colour as things actually seen. His
pictures do not waver or fade elusively as the mind seeks to
realise them. The prison door, studded with pikes, before which
Hester Prynne first stands with the letter on her breast, the
pillory where Dimmesdale keeps vigil at midnight, the
forest-trees with pale, fitful gleams of sunshine glinting
through their leaves, are so distinct that we almost put out our
hands to touch them. Hawthorne's dream-imagery has the same
convincing reality. The phantasmagoric visions which float
through Hester's consciousness--the mirrored reflection of her
own face in girlhood, her husband's thin, scholar-like visage,
the grey houses of the cathedral city where she had spent her
early years--are more real to her and to us than the blurred
faces of the Puritans who throng the marketplace to gaze on her
ignominy. Although the moral tone of the book is one of almost
unrelieved gloom, the actual scenes are full of colour and light.
Pearl's scarlet frock with its fantastic embroideries, the
magnificent velvet gown and white ruff of the old dame who rides
off by night to the witch-revels in the forest, the group of Red
Indians in their deer-skin robes and wampum belts of red and
yellow ochre, the bronzed faces and gaudy attire of the Spanish
pirates, all stand out in bold relief among the sober greys and
browns of the Puritans.
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