frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast, […] as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.

Hester's characterization is allegorical in its depiction of Salem society.  The way in which Hester is shown is allegorical with regards to how she must assume the role of the scapegoat, or target of others' gossip and judgment. Hester is a direct allegory in how Salem society operates on hypocrisy. Hawthorne uses Hester as an allegory to probe into "the reality of sin."  The very notion of the letter "A" is allegorical to what constitutes guilt or innocence. In Hester's depiction, Hawthorne creates an allegory about the nature of Salem society and what defines a just and moral social and political order.  In this regard, Hawthorne's work can be seen as an allegorical.

There seems to be some confusion here about allegory versus symbolism. A symbol is something that stands for some larger idea. It could be a color, object, place, person and so on. An allegory is when we can understand the entire story as a symbol. The two concepts are related but distinct.

If you are talking about taking the entire story as an allegory, then you could argue that Hawthorne is delving into issues of sin, guilt, hypocrisy, and women's rights. If you want to interpret the whole story as an allegory, you could look at how he uses the governor and the townspeople to point out the hypocrisy of people in power and how malleable public opinion is. You could also consider that The Scarlet Letter was written right around the Seneca Falls Convention and that Hawthorne knew several people who were active in the abolitionist and women's rights movements. You could make an argument that Hester's struggle is symbolic of the struggle of many women in the face of patriarchy.

If, however, you are talking more specifically about symbols within the story, you could also think about things such as the gloves that the governor and Dimmesdale wear, the rose in the first chapter that grows by the prison, or the house that the governor lives in. The governor and Dimmesdale both wear gloves, and just as gloves cover people's hands, these two characters cover up their own hypocrisies. The rose that grows by the prison is potentially a symbol of something vibrant and beautiful that comes from the whole dire situation. This idea of a beautiful thing that grows from terrible circumstances can easily be applied to Pearl or Hester. The house that the governor lives in looks beautiful and shines in the sun, but it is covered in crushed glass, possibly indicating the true nature of his character or the government.

One good example of allegory in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is Hester Prynne's daughter, Pearl.

A Pearl is a rare stone that can only be created under unique circumstances, is hard to find and, to some, represents bad luck. Similarly, a pearl is still a beautiful, white stone often used to represent purity and peace.

As we know, Pearl is a child of sin. She is the product of the affair between Reverend Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. She, therefore, is the eternal reminder of the cause of Hester's shame. Pear is a rather difficult child in that her intellect seems quite aware of her surroundings, and she is definitely quite perceptive of her mother's internal turmoil almost as if she could read Hester's mind. There is something rare, unique, and almost supernatural about Pearl that would deem her name allegorical. Her role in the lives of Dimmesdale and Hester is equally unique. She is the shiny jewel hidden in the middle of the two. Just like a Pearl, she remains hidden from the world, as part of the punishment of isolation that her mother receives.

Therefore, Pearl is a symbol of guilt, shame, sin, but also of the passion once felt by her parents in a moment of supreme indiscretion. Her existence is as rare as her name implies. She may have been considered a curse in Hester's life but, in reality, she is Hester's blessing. All these things make a good allegory for Pearl and her role in the story.

Allegory is also visible in the character and name of Hester's daughter, Pearl. Hester named her for the bible verse, Matthew 13:45-46, "Upon finding one pearl of great price, he went and sold all he had and bought it." Hester paid a great price for her daughter: her self-respect, her husband, her standing in the community, basically everything. However, Hester was willing to pay that price for Pearl and as a result, Pearl is Hester and Dimmesdale's catalyst for redemption. Pearl will not let her mother renounce the letter when they are standing by the brook with Dimmesdale and she will not come to Dimmesdale willingly until he has stood in public and admitted that hs is her father. Pearl's existence is a gem of great price, but a price the characters are willing to pay in the end.

The allegory of Hawthorne's tale is the letter A itself, which Hester must affix to her clothing so that it is visible at all times.

To be clear, an allegory is a narrative that has both literal and secondary meaning. Literally, the red "A" is a mark of shame; it publicly identifies Hester Prynne as an adulteress. But as the novel progresses, we are able to see that perhaps Hester is singled out because of her honesty and upstanding nature. The A, rather than being a symbol of shame, becomes a symbol of pride in a town full of hypocritical sinners.

I am not entirely sure that we can correctly describe this rich and complex tale as an allegory, as really allegories are much simpler tales where the writer makes one point by having each character and event correspond with something else outside of the literal meaning that fits his or her purpose. However, we can point towards the allegorical significance of this text by refering to the treatment of sin, knowledge and what it is to be human, which is of course a massive theme in this novel.

We can argue that the story of Hester and Dimmesdale can be compared to that of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden because of their sin and gained knowledge. Sin is shown to result in exile and pain, but also we can see that it results in knowledge about the meaning of human identity. What is interesting is the way that Hester and Dimmesdale seem to gain distinct advantages because of their sin and suffering. For example, Hester's exile and shunning gives her a "passport into regions where other women dared not tread" which allow her to think about Puritan society and herself more strongly than anybody else. For Dimmesdale, his guilt and sin give him a strong connection with other sinners, "sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, that his heart vibrates in unison with theirs." Hester and Dimmesdale are therefore shown to be better off in some ways than the Puritan elders with whom they are implicitly compared. They see sin as a threat to their way of life and try to suppress and eradicate it, as shown through the shunning of Hester. Yet Puritan society is shown to be absolutely stagnant and without life, whereas Hester and Dimmesdale show that sin can actually lead to maturity, empathy for others and a development of character.

One allegorical reading of this incredible novel could therefore relate to the state of mankind and his/her relationship with sin, which allows Hawthorne to directly comment on some of the shortcomings in Puritan society.