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Not only does the forest hold a sense of freedom but it also inquires a sense of wondering and uneasiness of the unknown. In chapter four Hester says "Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, troubled at the expression of his eyes. “Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?” Not only does she not know who the black man is but worries for the purity of her soul among the entities in the forest. (Chapter 4, Pg. 70).

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Van Gogh is famous for his many paintings of which the landscape symbolizes many significant things relating to issues happening in Europe. The landscape that Van Gogh illustrates is said to respond to "dramatically changing events in Europe, Russia, and North America". The article touches on specific characteristics of nature in Van Gogh's artwork such as the sunshine, nightcaps, and the forest. Van Gogh uses his artwork to express his "concern for 'sentiment' and 'feeling'" as well as sharing his knowledge of the landscape. He has several versions of forest artwork that represent his feelings. This relates to the forest in The Scarlet Letter because it provides Hester a place to collect her thoughts and preserve her own feelings. Similarly, the forest landscape that Van Gogh illustrates represents his feelings and thoughts.

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Hester and Dimmesdale recommit their sin, and yet they are not punished as they would have been in the community. The forest represents a form of freedom and free practice from the church.Since nature is created by God, Hawthorne criticizes the Puritans by showing that they're the corrupt showing complete hypocrisy. This shows symbolism the Puritan's goal was to create a place that was pure in the eyes of God. Hawthorne thinks all that men were born to be free rather than corruptby their own society. While most of the Puritans would see this scene as a sin, Hawthorne suggests that it may not be in the eyes of God.
(Chapter 17, Page 134)

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The forest is a large part the the Scarlet Letter's story; specifically pertaining to how the setting represents Hester's emotional stability being a break from her village. This symbol is a part of the book because it provides a way to better understand where Hester stands with the world she lives in. The forest helps show that she is at peace with her sin, and has come to terms that her life will never be the same again. Another form of symbolism in which the forest shows is the sin of Pearl. Pearl has always been seen as an outcast towards the other children in her village. The forest can easily be seen as both a good and bad factor in pertaining to the life of Hester and Pearl in the community; for they even lived in the forest themselves. This brings greater meaning to the story in a way for it helps the readers get an idea for Hester and Pearl's way of coping with their emotional escape. For nature is often seen as a peaceful way to "get away from the world', but tragedies such as fires or tornadoes occur in nature too. This proves how the forest in the "Scarlet Letter" is both a form of peace and sin.

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Van Gogh to Kandinsky presents a rare and exciting opportunity to see some 60 paintings as examples of landscape symbolism from major international institutions and private collections. The exhibition extends beyond the usual north European definitions of this subject, with the coupling of the emotionally charged graphic-colourist van Gogh with the increasingly reductive and programmatic application of colour-to-form associated with late Kandinsky. It challenges, therefore, conventional categorisations of modern European art. Who would think, moreover, that Lord Leighton, Hammershøi, Monet and Mondrian could share a common thesis, let alone inhabit the same gallery rooms?

In lesser hands, such an ambitious project could have descended into chaos and visual incoherence. However, the exhibition is displayed in several categories--Arcadia, Moods of Nature, Dreams and Vision, Silent Cities, Rhythms of Nature, and Towards Abstraction--that serve as a good introduction to what is both a vast and complex subject. The catalogue makes clear that landscape symbolism was not a defined movement, but more a response to dramatically changing events in Europe, Russia and North America. These changes encompassed scientific thought, discoveries and inventions; Christian and spiritual thought (notably theosophy and its interest in the symbolismof colour); the exploration of the world and the human mind; and a yearning for individual expression, sometimes predicated on national identity.

In this exhibition we can find common visual threads: brilliant sunshine (Hodler, Albert Trachsel and Jens Ferdinand Willumsen); glorious sunsets (early Mondrian); brooding and ethereal city nightscapes (Fernand Khnopff, Henri Le Sidaner and Whistler); the spectacular (G.F. Watts and Léon Bakst) or phantasmagoric (for example, 'The Horses of Neptune', a large-scale painting by Walter Crane); the dreamlike (Eugène Carrière and Harald Sohlberg), the 'sense of mystery' (Odilon Redon) and the spiritual (Gauguin). The exhibition suggests that the legacy of such depth of experimentation was non-representational art and the beginnings of Modernism (hence the 1910 cut-off date), manifested in paintings by Kandinsky and Mondrian, as well as the symphonic ones by the Czech artist Kupka and the little-known Lithuanian composer and painter Ciurlionis.
The origins of symbolism can be traced back to art as an expression of individual experiences, associated with 19th-century northern Romanticism and British painters such as Constable, with his concern for 'sentiment' and 'feeling'. For these artists, an individual's sensory experiences were interpreted as valued sources of knowledge and inspiration, providing the key to the break with purely representational art. The elegantly written accompanying catalogue provides a wealth of information.

In Van Gogh to Kandinsky , Edvard Munch is represented by two stunning snowscapes, in which the narrative content and the human figure are absent. But both aspects can be explored in an exhibition devoted to his prints, which are on loan from the Gundersen Collection in Norway. On display are 60 prints (black and white, and colour lithographs, woodcuts, drypoints and etchings) in various states of completion, including some rare examples, such as 'Two Women on the Shore', 'The Sick Child' and self-portraits. Landscape symbolism features in the various versions of 'Towards the Forest', 1897, which are also good examples of Munch's innovative printmaking techniques.

The exhibition's concluding section explains how Munch was invited by the Scottish Society of Artists to give a solo show in 1931. This inspired artists such as William MacTaggart, but also the wrath of one letter writer who objected to Munch's 'extraordinary divergence from the simple art of nature'. Scotland has come a long way since then ...

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In the Scarlet Letter one of the may main point of the forest was based off the freedom of the forest and how nothing mattered in that time being. As Hester says on Page 192 "Such was 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!" The forest was a place without people and judgement. Hester was able to be away from everything to be secluded in her thought and not from everyone else views on her. (Chapter 18, Pg. 192)

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by Maggie Sanders, Maya Eros, Helena Gorzelic
"Freedom and Emotional Escape"

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The setting of the forest represents Hester's emotional escape from the town. Hester's secluded cottage allows her to be free of the town's harsh treatment. The cottage "...stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills toward the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that there was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed" (Pg. 78). This portrays that the forest's purpose is to protect Hester by providing her an emotional escape from the brutal treatment she receives from the townspeople.