Nathaniel Hawthorne "The Scarlet Letter" 1850

Nathaniel Hawthorne "The Scarlet Letter" 1850

1. An American Literature

   • form - novella/short story
     • character development of Hester makes the novella popular with female readers
       • suggests possibilities despite sins
       • relationship between Hester & Pearl
         • warm/motherly/unscathed/familial/sentimental/traditional
   • investigation in to how history has shaped American identity- tragic vision of the world
     • humanity cannot get any lower
   • Conservatism v. Democracy
     • Russell Kirk believed Hawthorne's Puritan portrayal was a way of impressing "the idea of sin upon a nation which would like to forget it"
       • Conservative achievment
     • Transcendentalists believed in focussing on the future as opposed to relying on the psat
       • Emerson
         • "Our age is retrospective" - Nature
         • "Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this."
           • - The American Scholar
       • Dimmesdale characterises democratic views
         • His decay comes from the search for spiritual perfection.
           • critique of transcendentalists
           • only saved by Pearl's kiss at the end of novel & when the truth is revealed
     • Narrator tells novella in past tense
   • Social Judgments
     • Transformation of Scarlet Letter from a symbol of shame to a symbol of power/reverence
       • Sin & shame allow Hester & DImmesdale to consider the human condition and other's situations
         • "sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrates in union with theirs"
       • "Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which
         • they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the
           • scarlet letter flaming on her breast"
         • Hester is no longer an individual - a symbol of "women's fragility and sinful passion"
       • "Heaven would show mercy," rejoined Hester, "hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it."
         • contradicts & challenges the Puritan views of pre-destination & innate depravity
           • changing the perception of her & her fate

2. Religion in C19th America

   • Pre-destination
     • the idea that your afterlife has already been planned
       • resulted in a very paranoid society of Puritans - no way of determining who was good/bad
       • thought that Earth and life were a horrible trial to test your soul
         • lead to over-reading/mis-reading of symbols in Puritan society eg. Scarlet Letter
   • innate depravity
     • Perceptiveness of Peal
       • "“the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. . . . It will not flee from me, for
         • I wear nothing on my bosom yet!"
       • links to the Puritan belief that since Adam's fall from Grace all children are born innately evil
         • also seen in Poe
       • understands things which she shouldn't
     • contrasts with Transcendentalist movement
       • children are the enablers and the innocence of America
         • A teacher does not teach but enables the child's mind to learn
       • God makes men innately good - it is society which corrupts them
         • Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government"/Emerson's "Nature"
   • Wilderness v. Civilisation
     • “was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?”...“We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”
       • Hester & Dimmesdale's metting in the woods allows the truth to avail & leads to momentary happiness
     • 2 different interpretations of wilderness in C19th America
       • Wilderness/Nature as close to God
       • Wilderness as dangerous/untamed/unsafe
     • lack of rules and judgments in wilderness
     • Hester's cottage is on the outskirts of town & woods - is between belonging somewhere - not in total freedom but not as confined by social rules