Taking on Religion in the “Novel”: Moby-Dick and The Scarlett Letter

Religion and the American novels of the nineteenth century had an interesting relationship with each other, each influencing upon each other the issues and culture of that time. In the decades before the Civil War and especially around the mid-century, America saw an equal surge in preaching, as well as resistance to the Novel from those who felt they cultivated the nation’s moral well being. Two well-known novels of the nineteenth century that provide good examples of religion and the construction of the novel coming together are The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. In Hawthorne’s story of a Puritan town in the seventeenth century, Karen Kilcup discusses in her essay how stories were used to teach moral lessons: “Child does not excuse, though she attempts to explain, the sanguinary attitudes of the Puritans, whose outdated and improper ideas include ‘the vain belief of there being a chosen people’, and, like the Israelites, authorized by God to destroy or drive out the heathens, as they styled the Indians.” The novels Moby-Dick and The Scarlet Letter provide evidence of the influence of real-life religious figures, preaching in the American novel, references and connections to the Bible, and the unique concept of religious pilgrimage.

Novels often enough are based in some way from the world in which they were written and its culture. Also, in connection with preaching, both Moby-Dick and The Scarlet Letter have a character or overall story based off of a real-life preacher. For Moby-Dick, “Unlikely as it sounds, a minister may have sparked Melville’s desire to write a book as wild and ambitious as Moby-Dick.” This would explain the sermonic tone that Melville tends to take in many instances throughout the novel. Orville Dewey was the name of this preacher, and his unusual stance on the conceptualized novel in that time went against the norm for clergy. He acknowledges in a lecture, “as few ministers were willing to in 1850, that novels could refine the sentiments and even ‘minister’ to the truest and deepest wisdom of life.” Dewey’s view really stuck with Melville and is likely a major influence for starting to write an equally unique novel.

Hawthorne’s influence by a preacher directly influences the creation of the character Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne had a more negative relationship with preachers in his adult life as opposed to his fascination with religion as a child. The evidence suggests that Dimmesdale was a character directly based on a real-life preacher because: “Dimmesdale was Hawthorne’s subversive reimagining of Abbot, a beloved minister whose ordination heralded the dawn of liberalism in Salem and who became an icon of liberal faith after dying at the age of twenty-six. There are two main similarities between Abbot and Dimmesdale. They were beloved by the people and they both died at a young age. As we can see both The Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick have a foundation built on connections to religion, but these influences continue into deeper detail within the novels.

Melville makes an interesting use out of hieroglyphics and is also a subtle allusion to religion. Both Queequeg and The White Whale have hieroglyphics on their skin. The stem “hiero” means sacred. In The Scarlet Letter, there is also a symbol that eludes to religion but also to its text. Hester Prynne’s “A” both pertains to the Christian religion in the civilized world, but also to the text of the bible. Her sin is regarded as a sin because of religion and the rule of her community, so the “A” is a symbol of the constructs of their society. The “A” is also connected with the bible because the bible is the sacred text of the religion and how adultery is laid out as a sin within it. Thus, “The Scarlet Letter refers thus to the world, the sign, and the book.”

Another allusion to the bible in The Scarlet Letter is made with the character of Roger Chillingsworth. In her article, Viola Sachs pairs Chillingsworth with Satan. This is supported in The Scarlet Letter in chapter “The Leech and His Patient”, when his motivation is examined, “But as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done its bidding.” It seems almost like Chillingworth was doing the bidding of Satan as a sort of punishment. Moby-Dick has a more overall connection to religion. Like she connected Chillingsworth to Satan, Sachs describes Moby-Dick as the gospel of the Leviathan. Throughout this “gospel” the whale is described in such a way that closely resembles preaching.

To see the influence that religion had on the American novel in the nineteenth century, all one has to do is read a book written at that time. Dawn Coleman talks about this phenomenon in her book Preaching and the Rise of the American Novel, where she says, “Start reading virtually any novel written at this time, and you will hit a sermon or something that sounds like one.” One does not have to look hard for a sermon-like prose in Moby-Dick, in which Ishmael on multiple occasions preaches to the reader on a number of topics concerning whales or whaling. Keeping with the preaching and sermonic voice within Moby-Dick, the novel is much more concerned with meaning than it is with the plot. It is a novel about a whaling voyage on a ship, but there is so much more than its face value. During the voyage, another sailor makes a comment about Queequeg’s religion and Ishmael, “Defends Queequeg as a member of ‘the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole worshipping world’.” All whalers are the congregation and Ishmael, who is narrating the story, is preaching to the reader.

Also one step closer to the real world, Melville and Hawthorne were well acquainted with each other and each other’s work. Coleman describes their writer relationship and how it influenced the writing of their major works, “It may be because Melville was influenced by, and also trying to one-up, Hawthorne’s representation of Dimmesdale’s Election Sermon.” The Election Sermon is one of the pinnacle moments in the novel. At the last minute, Dimmesdale changes his entire speech because of his revelation from the guilt of his sin and Hester’s. His changed mindset affects his sermon and fully transforms it into something unique. Dimmesdale’s sermon centered around the connection God had with its people, but “although this topic was common enough for a puritan election sermon, there was little distinctively Puritan about the discourse: no introductory text, no biblical proof texts, no mentions of Christ…no topical references to colonial politics.” Hawthorne had an interesting relationship with religion in his adult life and this change in Dimmesdale reflects that. Some may even say that Hawthorne used his novel and writing in general as a substitute for Protestantism. While Hawthorne used his prose as a replacement to practicing active Protestantism, Melville used Moby-Dick as a means for a metaphorical and spiritual journey.

One interpretation of Moby-Dick is that the entire novel is Ishmael’s spiritual pilgrimage. Evidence to support this comes with at the first line of the book. Viola Sachs points out “the famous opening sentence of the narration, ‘Call me Ishmael,’ shows that the narrator has assumed a name, which does not really translate his identity.” If we take this interpretation and take it one step further we can see more evidence in the novel being a pilgrimage for Ishmael. Whatever his actual name was, the name he chooses is a biblical name. From the start, he changes his name to match the purpose of his departure from land. Ishmael even admits, “At the very beginning of his pilgrimage, Ishmael admits that he was driven forward to seek the whale.” The White whale is Ishmael’s call to go on a pilgrimage. He completely changes his life and becomes a seaman and discovers all the wonders and beauty of life at sea. Ahab is an important influential figure for Ishmael, as he fully believes in the pilgrimage to find the White Whale. It can also be said that Ahab is on his own pilgrimage. After he shows himself on deck, “Ahab unifies his crew’s overt purpose in a quest for the holy ‘shrine’ of the White Whale.” The use of the phrase “holy shrine” is interesting here and adds into the pilgrimage of Ishmael and Ahab. This holy shrine of the White Whale is the end point of their pilgrimage and provides motivation for moving forward in their search of a vast open sea.

Melville sends his characters on a spiritual pilgrimage, while Hawthorne has his characters interact with the redemption. In her article, Olivia Gatti Taylor states “Hawthorne draws between the act of penance and the attitude of penitence even as he questions whether confessions should be made to the community.” Dimmesdale struggles with his penance throughout the novel and it creates great distress inside his heart and soul. Hester on the other hand completely separates herself from any penance because she is unwilling to separate herself from the sin she is guilty of by recognizing in her community it is a sin. It would take another essay to fully analyze Hester Prynne’s relationship with penitence, but it is clear that even at the end of the novel after she returns to Salem, she has still yet to seek penance. In the concluding pages of The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne writes, “Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence.” Hawthorne may be using a Puritan community in the past to comment on his own anxieties with religion in the nineteenth century.

Melville and Hawthorne both use religion to build compelling narratives, but they also leave readers with ambiguity at the end. In Moby-Dick, The White Whale gets away after destroying and sinking The Pequod, and Ishmael is the only one to survive. He may have got to the White Whale, but Melville leaves it open as to what happens next. It raises questions about whether or not Ishmael reached the end of his pilgrimage or not. Hawthorne however, makes it clear in his novel that Hester did not achieve penance. Both authors’ use of religions contexts reflects the cultural world that they were written in. Religion and the American novel go hand and hand together. In conclusion, novels were the perfect avenues for writers to discuss religion within a fictional backdrop.

Works Cited

Coleman, Dawn. Preaching and the Rise of the American Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Print.

Gatti Taylor, Olivia. “Cultural Confessions: Penance and Penitence in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 58.2 (2005) 135-52.

Gentile, John. “The Pilgrim Soul: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick as Pilgrimage.” Text & Performance Quarterly. 29.4 (2009) 403-414.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Dover Publication, Inc., 2014. Print.

Kilcup, Karen. “ ‘Frightful Stories’: Captivity, Conquest, and Justice in Lydia Marie Child’s Native Narratives.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 39.3 (2014) 316-340.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Sachs, Viola. “The Gnosis of Hawthorne and Melville: An Interpretation of the Scarlet Letter and Moby-Dick.” American Quarterly 32.2 (1980) 123-143.