Hawthorne sees love as a compensation for man's life of sorrow. Even the forbidden love of Hester and Dimmesdale has "a consecration of its own" (179). Hawthorne's "legend. sombre [as] it is, . [is] relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: -- On a field, sable, the letter A, gules" (240). Thus, the love the couple shares, symbolized by the letter A, is lighter and more pure than the ominous darkness and corruption of the world surrounding it. The natural purity of their love is addressed earlier as the two share and intimate conversation in the woods and the sun breaks through the clouds. "Such [is] the sympathy of Nature -- that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth -- with the bliss of these two spirits! Love . must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world" (186). Extending this metaphor of the radiance of !.
love, Hawthorne often refers to Hester's scarlet letter as glowing and thus figuratively lighting up the dark and cruel world around it. When Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold, connected to Hester by Pearl, another symbol of their love, "there [comes] what [seems] a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart and hurrying through all his veins" (140). Thus, love, life-giving and sustaining amidst the pain and cruelty of the world, is comparable to the rosebush growing in the plot of weeds.
Hawthorne does not condone sin; however, he finds unexpected ways that a sinful act may have propitious consequences. Pearl, the product of Hester's adulterous relationship with Dimmesdale, embodies this theme. The child of sin becomes "her mother's only treasure. Man had marked [Hester's] sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself.