SOURCE: Daniel, Janice B. “‘Apples of the Thoughts and Fancies’: Nature as Narrator in The Scarlet Letter.” ATQ: Nineteenth‐Century American Literature and Culture n.s. 7, no. 4 (December 1993): 307‐18.

In the following essay, Daniel examines Nathaniel Hawthorne's personification of nature in The Scarlet Letter as a rhetorical device.

Even the most casual reader of Nathaniel Hawthorne cannot fail to notice his conspicuous and consistent focus on nature. Through his description of natural surroundings as well as his use of figurative language, he works into his fiction a place of special importance for nature. As a Romanticist who gives abundant literary attention to nature, as an individual writer who attempts to remain true to the vision of his own art, and as a human being who treasures the importance of nature in his own life experiences, Hawthorne gives distinct attention in his works to the natural environment. One of the...