How The Scarlet Letter drew on The Pilgrim's Progress
A documented line of influence: Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrably engaged John Bunyan’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678
EnlightenmentThe influenced
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On The Scarlet Letter’s page
- Hawthorne points you straight here — Chillingworth's eyes are likened to "that ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful door-way in the hillside"
- The Pilgrim's Progress taught Hawthorne to make the soul visible: sin, guilt, and grace rendered as things you can see and name
- Read Bunyan first and the scarlet A reads as what it is — an allegory wearing a novel's clothes
On The Pilgrim's Progress’s page
- Hawthorne was a lifelong Bunyan reader — he named his childhood cats Beelzebub and Apollyon after the demons here
- The Scarlet Letter names The Pilgrim's Progress outright: Chillingworth's eyes flash with "that ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful door-way in the hillside"
- Bunyan's habit of making the inner spiritual life visible — sin and salvation as concrete objects — is the method Hawthorne turned into the great American symbol novel