In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, what is significant about the rosebush outside the prison door?

In chapter one of The Scarlet Letter,
Hawthorne offers a brief description of the prison in which Hester Prynne has been
incarcerated. He does not mention Prynne yet; in fact, he does not allude to the
subsequent narrative at all. His purpose in this brief chapter (about a page long) is to
set the tone of the story for the reader.

After noting that
the prison was one of the first necessities that Boston’s forefathers’ had built, he
describes the door of the prison. This door, on which “the rust of the ponderous
ironwork looked more antique than anything else in the new world” represents the idea
that punishment is a never-ending aspect of life in a civil society. This reflects on
the inability of man to behave appropriately—prisons will always be necessary, even in a
proposed religious “utopia” like Puritan Boston.

Then
Hawthorne mentions the rose bush.

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But on one side of the portal . . . was a wild
rosebush.

To Hawthorne, this
rosebush is more than just an object of natural beauty to relieve the dreariness of the
prison, it is also a potential comfort to the
prisoner.

Its
delicate gems [roses] . . . might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile
beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to
his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to
him.

Note that Hawthorne has
suggested that, while man cannot create a functioning society without the need to
imprison others, nature has a more forgiving attitude to those who transgress man’s
law.

Finally, Hawthorne alludes to his main character,
Hester Prynne, without naming her. Look at how the following quote associates the main
character with the beauty and goodness of the rose.

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It [the rosebush] may serve, let us hope, to
symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the
darkening close of a tale of human frailty and
sorrow.

It is unusual that
Hawthorne actually uses the word “symbolize” in his narrative. He is simply coming right
out and telling the reader that the rosebush is a symbol. Writers usually aren’t as
obvious as that about their symbols.