{"id":49,"date":"2019-05-08T10:47:26","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T10:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp05.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=49"},"modified":"2019-05-09T10:36:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T10:36:20","slug":"nathaniel-hawthorne-the-scarlet-letter","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp05\/chapter\/nathaniel-hawthorne-the-scarlet-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter"},"content":{"raw":"
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The Author: a few biographical details<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) belonged to a family that descended from the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Born as Nathaniel Hathorne, he later added a w<\/em>. As\u00a0Sarah Bird Wright informs in <\/span>Critical Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work <\/em>(2007), his ancestors \u2018emigrated to Massachusetts in the early 17th century, settling first in Dorchester, and then moving to Salem. The earliest Hathornes took part in the persecution of Quakers and those thought to be witches.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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A voracious reader, he read as a boy the works of Shakespeare, Milton, John Bunyan and James Thomson. And, Wright informs that \u2018[t]he first book he bought as a boy with his own money was Spenser\u2019s The Faerie Queen<\/em>.\u2019 Wright also tells us that \u2018[a]ccording to a library records, he borrowed at least 1,200 works of nonfiction from the Salem Athenaeum.\u2019 In his Bowdoin College days, he made friendship with people like H. W. Longfellow (who would become a poet and Harvard professor), Franklin Pierce (who would become the 14th President of the United States) and Horatio Bridge (who would help Hawthorne in publishing his first collection of short stories). Later, in 1839, Hawthorne also became acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, he got work as a customs surveyor (like the narrator of The Scarlet Letter<\/em>) for the port of Salem. When the Whigs won in the 1848 election, he lost his job. In 1849, he made acquaintance with Herman Melville who would dedicate his Moby Dick <\/em>(1851) to him. Hawthorne himself began to write The Scarlet Letter <\/em>in September 1849 and finished it in February 1850.<\/p>\r\n

Plot overview<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The Scarlet Letter <\/em>begins with an introductory chapter which reveals how the book came to be written. The narrator used to work in the custom house in Salem, Massachusetts, as the surveyor. In that custom house, he discovered some documents including a manuscript wrapped in a scarlet, gold-embroidered piece of cloth in the shape of \u2018A\u2019. The manuscript, the work of a Jonathan Pue, a past surveyor of the custom house, records events that occurred\u00a0about two hundred years ago. Having lost his job, he decides to write a fictional account of the recorded events.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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The story is set in the seventeenth century Puritan Boston. Hester Prynne, a young woman charged with adultery, moves from the prison to the scaffold, wearing the letter A that is meant to stand for Adultery. She has a little daughter. Asked to name the father of the child, she refuses. In the crowd, there is an elderly onlooker whom Hester recognizes as her\u00a0 missing husband. From another man in the crowd, her husband gets to know what has happened. He hides his identity by choosing to call himself Roger Chillingworth.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

John Wilson and the minister of the church, Arthur Dimmesdale, ask Hester to divulge the name of her partner in adultery. She refuses. In the prison, Chillingworth meets her as a physician. Both of them think that they were themselves wrong. However, as Chillingworth asks for the name of her partner, she still refuses. He says that he is going to find it out. He also asks her not to divulge his own identity.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

After her release from the prison, Hester settles in the periphery of the town and earns some money with her needlework. She lives a secluded life with her daughter, Pearl, who is also growing up. Hester is slightly frightened of her daughter\u2019s unusual behaviour. Church also suggests that Pearl be taken away from her mother.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Hester goes to Bellingham\u2019s house, where, in accordance with Hester\u2019s appeal, Dimmesdale persuades Governor to let Pearl remain with her mother.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

With the deteriorating health of Dimmesdale, Chillingworth arrives for his treatment. Chillingworth begins to suspect that Dimmesdale is suffering from some repressed guilt. Therefore, as Chillingworth suspects that Dimmesdale might be Hester\u2019s partner in adultery, he begins to put him under mental pressure.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Tormented by his conscience, Dimmesdale confesses his guilt to Hester and Pearl in that same scaffold where Hester had to stand several years ago. However, he lacks the courage to go for a public confession. Later, Hester informs Dimmesdale of her husband when they meet in the forest.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

On the Election Day, Dimmesdale delivers his best sermon. But, after that, he confesses his sin on the scaffold and dies in Hester\u2019s arms. Chillingworth also dies, thereafter, leaving\u00a0 Pearl an inheritance. Hester and Pearl leave Boston. But, several years later, Hester returns to her old cottage. After her death, she is buried near Dimmesdale\u2019s grave.<\/p>\r\n

Historical novel or (psychological) romance?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Wright writes about Hawthorne in general: \u2018He focused on the nation\u2019s past, especially the Puritan era. He was also much concerned with the social and psychological aspects of human behavior and undertook the mission of exploring the darker side of humanity.\u2019 The Scarlet Letter <\/em>is the best example that validates Wright\u2019s point. So, here, we have two issues: the question of novel <\/em>and romance<\/em>, together with the question of fact and fiction; and Hawthorne\u2019s characterization. For now, let us focus on the first point.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In his preface to The House of the Seven Gables <\/em>(1851), Hawthorne distinguishes between novel and romance: \u2018When a writer calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man\u2019s experience. The former\u2014 while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve\u00a0aside from the truth of the human heart\u2014has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer\u2019s own choosing or creation [\u2026] He will be wise, no doubt, to make very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public.\u2019 This passage clearly reveals in what sense Hawthorne subtitled <\/span>The scarlet Letter <\/em>as \u2018A Romance\u2019. As a <\/span>romance<\/em>, this text maintains a balance between the natural and the marvellous, the history and fiction.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In a paper entitled \u2018The New England Sources of <\/em>The Scarlet Letter\u2019, Charles Ryskamp points out the extent of Hawthorne\u2019s \u2018fidelity\u2019 to the historical accounts in Caleb H. Snow\u2019s History of Boston<\/em>, as well as his points of deviations from it. Ryskamp points out that \u2018[a] clear instance of Hawthorne\u2019s borrowing a fact from Snow is in the naming of \u201cMaster Brackett, the jailer\u201d [\u2026] Few colonial historians mention a jailer in Boston at this time, and if they do, they give his name as Parker. But Snow, alone it would seem, gives this information about Brackett\u2019. Indeed, at one point of time in his book, Snow mentions \u2018Richard Parker or Brackett, whose name we find on the colony records as prison keeper so early as 1638.\u2019 Ryskamp further points out that \u2018[a]nother example of Hawthorne\u2019s use of Snow is shown in the description of Governor Bellingham\u2019s house.\u2019 Snow, on one occasion, describes an \u2018Ancient building\u2019 in the following manner: \u2018This [\u2026] is perhaps the only wooden building now standing in the city to show what was considered elegance of architecture here, a century and a half ago [\u2026] The outside is covered with plastering [\u2026] But instead of pebbles, which are generally used at the present day to make a hard surface on the mortar, broken glass was used [\u2026] This surface was also variegated with ornamental squares, diamonds and flowers- de-luce.\u2019 And, now, let us just take a look at Hawthorne\u2019s description of Bellingham\u2019s house: \u2018This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns [\u2026] the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which\u00a0fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed [\u2026] it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it [\u2026] It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams\u2019. No one can miss the striking similarities between the two descriptions. Ryskamp still points out that \u2018Snow is also the only historian who tells the story of Mrs. Sherman\u2019s pig in order to bring out its effect upon the early Massachusetts government. Hawthorne, with his characteristic interest in the unusual fact from the past, refers to this strange incident\u2019: \u2018a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.\u2019 There is also striking similarities between Snow\u2019s account of Mrs. Ann Hibbins and Hawthorne\u2019s characterization of Mrs. Hibbins. Snow writes: \u2018The most remarkable occurrence in the colony in the year 1655 was the trial and condemnation of Mrs. Ann Hibbins of Boston for witchcraft. Her husband [\u2026] was an agent for the colony in England, several years one of the assistants, and a merchant of note in the town; but losses in the latter part of his life [\u2026] increased the natural crabbedness of his wife\u2019s temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome [..] [so] as to cause some of them to accuse her of witchcraft [\u2026] and the miserable old lady was condemned and executed in June 1656.\u2019 And, in <\/span>The Scarlet Letter<\/em>, Hawthorne refers to Mrs. Hibbins as \u2018Governor Bellingham\u2019s bitter-tempered sister [\u2026] the same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch\u2019. Now, Ryskamp tells us, \u2018[t]here seems to be only one source for Hawthorne\u2019s reference to Mrs. Hibbins as Bellingham\u2019s sister. That is in a footnote by James Savage in the 1825 edition of John Winthrop\u2019s <\/span>History of New England<\/em>, and it was this edition that Hawthorne borrowed from the Salem Athenaeum.\u2019 Hawthorne\u2019s characterization of John Wilson as \u2018a man of kind and genial spirit\u2019 is also historically accurate. Snow also mentions his \u2018compassion for the distressed and [\u2026] affection for all\u2019. Ryskamp argues that \u2018Hawthorne, to gain dramatic opposition to Dimmesdale, makes the preacher seem older than\u00a0<\/span>he really was.\u2019 Hawthorne refers to him as the \u2018good old minister\u2019 and pictures him in a \u2018beard, white as a snow-drift\u2019. Now, it is also possible to show in a similar way that in many ways Hawthorne also seems to have borrowed from Cotton Mather\u2019s <\/span>Magnalia Christi Americana<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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So far we have seen the extent to which Hawthorne has remained faithful to the historical accounts. But, he also deviates from history at some points. However, Ryskamp argues that these changes were \u2018not made because of lack of knowledge of the facts, nor merely by whim, but according to definite purposes\u2019. We have already seen that regarding John Wilson\u2019s age. In chapter xii, \u2018The Minister\u2019s Vigil\u2019, we have the death of Governor Winthrop in \u2018an obscure night of early May\u2019. But Ryskamp notes that historically Winthrop died on March 26, 1649. Ryskamp suggests as a possible reason for this historical inaccuracy that \u2018[i]t would be difficult to have a night-long vigil in the cold, blustery month of March without serious plot complications.\u2019 He further argues: \u2018Hawthorne realized that for a powerful climax, not more than a week, or two weeks at the most, should elapse between the night of Winthrop\u2019s death, when Dimmesdale stood on the scaffold, and the public announcement of his sin to the crowd on Election Day. The Election Day [\u2026] and the Election Sermons [\u2026] were well-known and traditionally established in the early colony in the months of May or June. (The election of 1649, at which John Endicott became governor, was held on May 2.) Consequently Hawthorne was forced to choose between two historical events, more than a month apart. He wisely selected May, rather than March, 1649, for the time of the action of the last half of the book (Chapters XII-XXIII).\u2019 Hawthorne deviates from history at another point as well. We know that there was a gap of exactly seven years between the first scaffold scene and the second scaffold scene. Therefore, Ryskamp notes, \u2018the first four chapters of The Scarlet Letter <\/em>may be placed in June, 1642 [\u2026] Hawthorne says that at this time Bellingham was governor [\u2026] Again one does not find perfect historical accuracy; if it were\u00a0so, then Winthrop would have been governor, for Bellingham had finished his term of office just one month before.\u2019 Here, Hawthorne plays with historical accuracy, most probably, to make use of Mrs. Hibbins as Bellingham\u2019s sister.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Hawthorne\u2019s work not only is a mixture of historical accuracy and inaccuracy, but also maintains a balance between the natural and the supernatural. While he establishes his story in a real historical setting, he also scatters in it a few mysterious elements like glowing red eyes, the A in the sky, Mrs. Hibbins and the Black Man in the woods, and Pearl. All of them seem to border on the supernatural but are never quite it. Thus, as quoted earlier, Hawthorne \u2018make[s] very moderate use of [\u2026] the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor\u2019 to prepare, as he says in \u2018The Custom House\u2019 Chapter, \u2018a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairyland, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.\u2019 However, according to John C. Stubbs\u2019 argument in a paper entitled \u2018Hawthorne\u2019s The Scarlet Letter<\/em>: The Theory of the Romance and the Use of the New England Situation\u2019, Hawthorne\u2019s use of the supernatural in The Scarlet Letter <\/em>does more than that in effect as it ends up serving the history in an interesting way: \u2018For Hawthorne, the balance of the marvelous and the natural was inherent in the New England superstitions.\u2019 Keeping this in mind, we can also take into account\u00a0 Ryskamp\u2019s claim: \u2018Even the portent in the sky, the great red letter A, which was seen on the night of the revered John Winthrop\u2019s death (and Dimmesdale\u2019s vigil), would not have seemed too strange to Puritan historians. To them it would certainly not have been merely an indication of Hawthorne\u2019s gothic interests.\u2019 Indeed, snow had written that during John Cotton\u2019s death in 1652, \u2018strange and alarming signs appeared in the heavens\u2019. Stubbs also points out about Chillingworth that \u2018Hawthorne stresses the superstitious wonder directed at this man of medical skill by the Puritans.\u2019 He further adds that \u2018in similar fashion, Hawthorne envelops\u00a0Pearl and the scarlet letter with the aura of the marvelous, usually working through the minds of superstitious onlookers.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Feminist Reading of The Scarlet Letter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\r\n

In an essay called \u2018Hawthorne\u2019s Feminine Voices: Reading The Scarlet Letter <\/em>as a Woman\u2019, Suzan Last writes: \u2018The narrator's \"equivocal\" style has inspired much critical speculation as to the novel's \"underlying ideology,\" including debate over whether the novel is a seminal work of proto-feminism or just the opposite.\u2019 It seems that it is almost impossible to solve this ambiguity about the author\u2019s intention.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

If we simply consider the story, it is the woman who alone bears the whole punishment: she is made to stand on the scaffold, wear the mark of shame, and live on the periphery of the society. But the man responsible for her adultery escapes the punishment and lives freely at the heart of the society with full dignity. It reminds us of a little line in Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s The second sex <\/em>(translated by Borde and Malovany-Chevallier): \u2018he commits the fault, but unloads it unto her\u2019. Besides, the fact that Hester\u2019s partner belongs to the very body of the male authority which punishes her reminds us again of another line from The Second Sex<\/em>: \u2018he pushes her to abortion, adultery, misdeeds, betrayal, and lies he [himself] officially condemns\u2019. Thus, at a basic level, Hawthorne\u2019s plot itself seems to invite feminist attack. However, a closer look at the text problematizes this simple reading. From the Christian perspective, while Hester makes her purgatorial journey from damnation to salvation, Hester\u2019s silence makes Dimmesdale suffer within inferno, since, as Dante says, hell is a state, not a place. Therefore, Dimmesdale earnestly asks Hester to divulge the name.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Now, we have the same ambiguity about the characterization of Hester Prynne: Hester certainly exerts a subversive force towards the beginning of the novel, but, on the other hand,\u00a0she seems to bear no feminist consciousness as such. Charged with the shameful crime of adultery, Hester appears at the prison door, the narrator tells us, \u2018with natural dignity and force of character, and [\u2026] [stands] as if by her own free will.\u2019 And then, as she reveals the letter \u2018A\u2019 \u2018surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread,\u2019 she seems to celebrate what is supposed to be the mark of her shame. A female spectator says, \u2018what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?\u2019 It promises a bold\u00a0 female personality who defies the Puritan (patriarchal) morality. As she stands at the prison door \u2018in fine red cloth\u2019, with \u2018dark and abundant hair [\u2026] and deep black eyes\u2019, her tremendous youthful beauty seems to make her the sole partner of the \u2018wild rosebush\u2019 which stands, in direct contrast, before the \u2018gloomy front\u2019 of \u2018this ugly edifice\u2019\u2014the Puritanical prison which is \u2018the black flower of civilized society\u2019\u2014and has \u2018merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it\u2019. These images seem to suggest a contrast between \u2018the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law\u2019 and the liveliness of what is natural. Thus, in the first scaffold scene, Hester is presented by Hawthorne as a powerful character through whom he seems to make a critique of Puritan severity. But then, Hester fails to sustain this promise as, later, she herself conforms to the Puritan moral codes and thinks that she has, indeed, committed a grave sin.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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We know that the punishment for adultery in the seventeenth century was whipping and even death. Then, by suppressing the historical facticity of whipping, critics argue, Hawthorne seemed to be suggesting that the Puritan authority was not as harsh as it is taken to be. Suzan Last also draws our attention to the \u2018narrator's attempt to resurrect the \"better deeds\" and more noble traits of the Puritans\u2019. Even, in the first scaffold scene, we see that it is the\u00a0 women in the crowd who want a more severe punishment for Hester: one woman thinks that \u2018[t]he magistrates are [\u2026] merciful overmuch\u2019 and says that \u2018[a]t the very least, they should\u00a0have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne\u2019s forehead.\u2019 Another woman goes so far as to say that \u2018[t]his woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die.\u2019 Thus, it has been argued, Hawthorne has distorted historical truth to show that contemporary women could be harsher and crueler than the kind Puritan authority. However, Monika Elbert argues in \u2018Hester\u2019s Maternity: Stigma or Weapon?\u2019 that \u2018[t]hese antagonistic women see Hester's sexuality in the way men conventionally have viewed it, as a threat\u2019, and have dealt with that threat by \u2018becoming more male, more hard, than the toughest patriarch\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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If the last argument has allied Hawthorne with patriarchy, we can again go back to the point of Hester\u2019s needlework to look at it from a different perspective which shows Hawthorne as a remarkably modern feminist writer. The fact that Hester has been compelled to put on the letter \u2018A\u2019\u2014signifying Adultery\u2014 indicates man\u2019s writing (or representation) of the woman. It can be connected with the \u2018male gaze\u2019 that Hester is subjected to in this scaffold scene. Laura Mulvey argues in her famous essay called \u2018Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\u2019 (1975) that \u2018[t]he determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly.\u2019 What is it if not man\u2019s writing of the woman in terms of his fantasy?\u00a0 And man\u2019s fantasy comprehends the woman in binary opposites as either whore or goddess. If the letter \u2018A\u2019 was to mark her as an Adulteress, a man from the crowd sees in Hester \u2018the image of Divine Maternity.\u2019 Interestingly, Hester\u2019s needlework deconstructs this patriarchal language\u2014the letter \u2018A\u2019\u2014 by appropriating this same language to rewrite herself: in Chapter XIII, we see that \u2018many people refused to interpret the scarlet \u201cA\u201d by its original signification. They said that it meant \u201cAble\u201d; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman\u2019s strength.\u2019 But then, the ambiguity remains as there is not a single indication in the text about Hester\u2019s consciousness behind her subversive needlework.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe American aspects<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Hawthorne\u2019s The Scarlet Letter <\/em>might be placed in a tradition beginning from the first American novels like The Power of Sympathy <\/em>(1789) by William Hill Brown (1765-1793), Charlotte Temple <\/em>(1794) by Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762-1824), and The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton <\/em>(1797) by Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840). The Power of Sympathy <\/em>is a romance that deals with a contemporary scandal of incest and suicide in the Morton family. Its didactic purpose is clearly visible in the preface: \u2018To Expose the dangerous Consequences of Seduction\u2019 and to reveal \u2018the Advantages of Female Education.\u2019 Richard Gray writes in A History of American Literature<\/em>: \u2018Hardly distinguished in itself, the book nevertheless establishes a currency common to all three of these early American novels: a clear basis in fact, actuality (so anticipating and meeting any possible objections to fiction, imaginative self-indulgence, or daydreaming), an even clearer moral purpose (so anticipating and meeting any possible objections from puritans or utilitarians), and a narrative that flirts with sensation and indulges in sentiment (so encouraging the reader to read on). Even more specifically, The Power of Sympathy <\/em>shares the same currency as the books by Rowson and Webster in the sense that it places a young woman and her fate at the center of the narrative, and addresses other young women as the intended recipients of its message.\u2019 Hawthorne\u2019s work, certainly, falls into this tradition in all respects. In the preface to Charlotte Temple<\/em>, the first American bestseller, Rowson writes that her novel is \u2018not merely the effusion of Fancy, but [\u2026] a reality\u2019 as the basic facts were related to her by \u2018an old lady who had personally known Charlotte.\u2019 And, throughout The Scarlet Letter<\/em>, we see that Hawthorne maintains a balance between fact and fiction. As Ryskamp notes, \u2018[t]he characters named in The Scarlet Letter<\/em>\u2014other than Hester, Pearl, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale, for whom we can find no real historical bases\u2014were actual figures in history.\u2019 Rowson also says, \u2018I have thrown over the whole a slight veil of fiction\u2019. And Hawthorne, as he says in \u2018The Custom House\u2019<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Chapter, tries to tinge the history with a \u2018magic moonshine\u2019 so that the history is \u2018invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as visibly present as by daylight.\u2019 Rowson also insists on the moral purpose of her writing: \u2018For the perusal of the young and thoughtless of the fair sex, this Tale of Truth is designed\u2019. And such a moralizing tone might be discerned in Hawthorne\u2019s work as well. What follows Rowson\u2019s preface is a tale of seduction of a young girl and her suffering. And we know what we have in Hawthorne\u2019s work.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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The Author: a few biographical details<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) belonged to a family that descended from the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Born as Nathaniel Hathorne, he later added a w<\/em>. As\u00a0Sarah Bird Wright informs in <\/span>Critical Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work <\/em>(2007), his ancestors \u2018emigrated to Massachusetts in the early 17th century, settling first in Dorchester, and then moving to Salem. The earliest Hathornes took part in the persecution of Quakers and those thought to be witches.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A voracious reader, he read as a boy the works of Shakespeare, Milton, John Bunyan and James Thomson. And, Wright informs that \u2018[t]he first book he bought as a boy with his own money was Spenser\u2019s The Faerie Queen<\/em>.\u2019 Wright also tells us that \u2018[a]ccording to a library records, he borrowed at least 1,200 works of nonfiction from the Salem Athenaeum.\u2019 In his Bowdoin College days, he made friendship with people like H. W. Longfellow (who would become a poet and Harvard professor), Franklin Pierce (who would become the 14th President of the United States) and Horatio Bridge (who would help Hawthorne in publishing his first collection of short stories). Later, in 1839, Hawthorne also became acquainted with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, he got work as a customs surveyor (like the narrator of The Scarlet Letter<\/em>) for the port of Salem. When the Whigs won in the 1848 election, he lost his job. In 1849, he made acquaintance with Herman Melville who would dedicate his Moby Dick <\/em>(1851) to him. Hawthorne himself began to write The Scarlet Letter <\/em>in September 1849 and finished it in February 1850.<\/p>\n

Plot overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Scarlet Letter <\/em>begins with an introductory chapter which reveals how the book came to be written. The narrator used to work in the custom house in Salem, Massachusetts, as the surveyor. In that custom house, he discovered some documents including a manuscript wrapped in a scarlet, gold-embroidered piece of cloth in the shape of \u2018A\u2019. The manuscript, the work of a Jonathan Pue, a past surveyor of the custom house, records events that occurred\u00a0about two hundred years ago. Having lost his job, he decides to write a fictional account of the recorded events.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The story is set in the seventeenth century Puritan Boston. Hester Prynne, a young woman charged with adultery, moves from the prison to the scaffold, wearing the letter A that is meant to stand for Adultery. She has a little daughter. Asked to name the father of the child, she refuses. In the crowd, there is an elderly onlooker whom Hester recognizes as her\u00a0 missing husband. From another man in the crowd, her husband gets to know what has happened. He hides his identity by choosing to call himself Roger Chillingworth.<\/p>\n

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John Wilson and the minister of the church, Arthur Dimmesdale, ask Hester to divulge the name of her partner in adultery. She refuses. In the prison, Chillingworth meets her as a physician. Both of them think that they were themselves wrong. However, as Chillingworth asks for the name of her partner, she still refuses. He says that he is going to find it out. He also asks her not to divulge his own identity.<\/p>\n

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After her release from the prison, Hester settles in the periphery of the town and earns some money with her needlework. She lives a secluded life with her daughter, Pearl, who is also growing up. Hester is slightly frightened of her daughter\u2019s unusual behaviour. Church also suggests that Pearl be taken away from her mother.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hester goes to Bellingham\u2019s house, where, in accordance with Hester\u2019s appeal, Dimmesdale persuades Governor to let Pearl remain with her mother.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With the deteriorating health of Dimmesdale, Chillingworth arrives for his treatment. Chillingworth begins to suspect that Dimmesdale is suffering from some repressed guilt. Therefore, as Chillingworth suspects that Dimmesdale might be Hester\u2019s partner in adultery, he begins to put him under mental pressure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Tormented by his conscience, Dimmesdale confesses his guilt to Hester and Pearl in that same scaffold where Hester had to stand several years ago. However, he lacks the courage to go for a public confession. Later, Hester informs Dimmesdale of her husband when they meet in the forest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the Election Day, Dimmesdale delivers his best sermon. But, after that, he confesses his sin on the scaffold and dies in Hester\u2019s arms. Chillingworth also dies, thereafter, leaving\u00a0 Pearl an inheritance. Hester and Pearl leave Boston. But, several years later, Hester returns to her old cottage. After her death, she is buried near Dimmesdale\u2019s grave.<\/p>\n

Historical novel or (psychological) romance?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wright writes about Hawthorne in general: \u2018He focused on the nation\u2019s past, especially the Puritan era. He was also much concerned with the social and psychological aspects of human behavior and undertook the mission of exploring the darker side of humanity.\u2019 The Scarlet Letter <\/em>is the best example that validates Wright\u2019s point. So, here, we have two issues: the question of novel <\/em>and romance<\/em>, together with the question of fact and fiction; and Hawthorne\u2019s characterization. For now, let us focus on the first point.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In his preface to The House of the Seven Gables <\/em>(1851), Hawthorne distinguishes between novel and romance: \u2018When a writer calls his work a romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man\u2019s experience. The former\u2014 while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve\u00a0aside from the truth of the human heart\u2014has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer\u2019s own choosing or creation [\u2026] He will be wise, no doubt, to make very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public.\u2019 This passage clearly reveals in what sense Hawthorne subtitled <\/span>The scarlet Letter <\/em>as \u2018A Romance\u2019. As a <\/span>romance<\/em>, this text maintains a balance between the natural and the marvellous, the history and fiction.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

In a paper entitled \u2018The New England Sources of <\/em>The Scarlet Letter\u2019, Charles Ryskamp points out the extent of Hawthorne\u2019s \u2018fidelity\u2019 to the historical accounts in Caleb H. Snow\u2019s History of Boston<\/em>, as well as his points of deviations from it. Ryskamp points out that \u2018[a] clear instance of Hawthorne\u2019s borrowing a fact from Snow is in the naming of \u201cMaster Brackett, the jailer\u201d [\u2026] Few colonial historians mention a jailer in Boston at this time, and if they do, they give his name as Parker. But Snow, alone it would seem, gives this information about Brackett\u2019. Indeed, at one point of time in his book, Snow mentions \u2018Richard Parker or Brackett, whose name we find on the colony records as prison keeper so early as 1638.\u2019 Ryskamp further points out that \u2018[a]nother example of Hawthorne\u2019s use of Snow is shown in the description of Governor Bellingham\u2019s house.\u2019 Snow, on one occasion, describes an \u2018Ancient building\u2019 in the following manner: \u2018This [\u2026] is perhaps the only wooden building now standing in the city to show what was considered elegance of architecture here, a century and a half ago [\u2026] The outside is covered with plastering [\u2026] But instead of pebbles, which are generally used at the present day to make a hard surface on the mortar, broken glass was used [\u2026] This surface was also variegated with ornamental squares, diamonds and flowers- de-luce.\u2019 And, now, let us just take a look at Hawthorne\u2019s description of Bellingham\u2019s house: \u2018This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns [\u2026] the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which\u00a0fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed [\u2026] it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it [\u2026] It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams\u2019. No one can miss the striking similarities between the two descriptions. Ryskamp still points out that \u2018Snow is also the only historian who tells the story of Mrs. Sherman\u2019s pig in order to bring out its effect upon the early Massachusetts government. Hawthorne, with his characteristic interest in the unusual fact from the past, refers to this strange incident\u2019: \u2018a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.\u2019 There is also striking similarities between Snow\u2019s account of Mrs. Ann Hibbins and Hawthorne\u2019s characterization of Mrs. Hibbins. Snow writes: \u2018The most remarkable occurrence in the colony in the year 1655 was the trial and condemnation of Mrs. Ann Hibbins of Boston for witchcraft. Her husband [\u2026] was an agent for the colony in England, several years one of the assistants, and a merchant of note in the town; but losses in the latter part of his life [\u2026] increased the natural crabbedness of his wife\u2019s temper, which made her turbulent and quarrelsome [..] [so] as to cause some of them to accuse her of witchcraft [\u2026] and the miserable old lady was condemned and executed in June 1656.\u2019 And, in <\/span>The Scarlet Letter<\/em>, Hawthorne refers to Mrs. Hibbins as \u2018Governor Bellingham\u2019s bitter-tempered sister [\u2026] the same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch\u2019. Now, Ryskamp tells us, \u2018[t]here seems to be only one source for Hawthorne\u2019s reference to Mrs. Hibbins as Bellingham\u2019s sister. That is in a footnote by James Savage in the 1825 edition of John Winthrop\u2019s <\/span>History of New England<\/em>, and it was this edition that Hawthorne borrowed from the Salem Athenaeum.\u2019 Hawthorne\u2019s characterization of John Wilson as \u2018a man of kind and genial spirit\u2019 is also historically accurate. Snow also mentions his \u2018compassion for the distressed and [\u2026] affection for all\u2019. Ryskamp argues that \u2018Hawthorne, to gain dramatic opposition to Dimmesdale, makes the preacher seem older than\u00a0<\/span>he really was.\u2019 Hawthorne refers to him as the \u2018good old minister\u2019 and pictures him in a \u2018beard, white as a snow-drift\u2019. Now, it is also possible to show in a similar way that in many ways Hawthorne also seems to have borrowed from Cotton Mather\u2019s <\/span>Magnalia Christi Americana<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

So far we have seen the extent to which Hawthorne has remained faithful to the historical accounts. But, he also deviates from history at some points. However, Ryskamp argues that these changes were \u2018not made because of lack of knowledge of the facts, nor merely by whim, but according to definite purposes\u2019. We have already seen that regarding John Wilson\u2019s age. In chapter xii, \u2018The Minister\u2019s Vigil\u2019, we have the death of Governor Winthrop in \u2018an obscure night of early May\u2019. But Ryskamp notes that historically Winthrop died on March 26, 1649. Ryskamp suggests as a possible reason for this historical inaccuracy that \u2018[i]t would be difficult to have a night-long vigil in the cold, blustery month of March without serious plot complications.\u2019 He further argues: \u2018Hawthorne realized that for a powerful climax, not more than a week, or two weeks at the most, should elapse between the night of Winthrop\u2019s death, when Dimmesdale stood on the scaffold, and the public announcement of his sin to the crowd on Election Day. The Election Day [\u2026] and the Election Sermons [\u2026] were well-known and traditionally established in the early colony in the months of May or June. (The election of 1649, at which John Endicott became governor, was held on May 2.) Consequently Hawthorne was forced to choose between two historical events, more than a month apart. He wisely selected May, rather than March, 1649, for the time of the action of the last half of the book (Chapters XII-XXIII).\u2019 Hawthorne deviates from history at another point as well. We know that there was a gap of exactly seven years between the first scaffold scene and the second scaffold scene. Therefore, Ryskamp notes, \u2018the first four chapters of The Scarlet Letter <\/em>may be placed in June, 1642 [\u2026] Hawthorne says that at this time Bellingham was governor [\u2026] Again one does not find perfect historical accuracy; if it were\u00a0so, then Winthrop would have been governor, for Bellingham had finished his term of office just one month before.\u2019 Here, Hawthorne plays with historical accuracy, most probably, to make use of Mrs. Hibbins as Bellingham\u2019s sister.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Hawthorne\u2019s work not only is a mixture of historical accuracy and inaccuracy, but also maintains a balance between the natural and the supernatural. While he establishes his story in a real historical setting, he also scatters in it a few mysterious elements like glowing red eyes, the A in the sky, Mrs. Hibbins and the Black Man in the woods, and Pearl. All of them seem to border on the supernatural but are never quite it. Thus, as quoted earlier, Hawthorne \u2018make[s] very moderate use of [\u2026] the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor\u2019 to prepare, as he says in \u2018The Custom House\u2019 Chapter, \u2018a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairyland, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.\u2019 However, according to John C. Stubbs\u2019 argument in a paper entitled \u2018Hawthorne\u2019s The Scarlet Letter<\/em>: The Theory of the Romance and the Use of the New England Situation\u2019, Hawthorne\u2019s use of the supernatural in The Scarlet Letter <\/em>does more than that in effect as it ends up serving the history in an interesting way: \u2018For Hawthorne, the balance of the marvelous and the natural was inherent in the New England superstitions.\u2019 Keeping this in mind, we can also take into account\u00a0 Ryskamp\u2019s claim: \u2018Even the portent in the sky, the great red letter A, which was seen on the night of the revered John Winthrop\u2019s death (and Dimmesdale\u2019s vigil), would not have seemed too strange to Puritan historians. To them it would certainly not have been merely an indication of Hawthorne\u2019s gothic interests.\u2019 Indeed, snow had written that during John Cotton\u2019s death in 1652, \u2018strange and alarming signs appeared in the heavens\u2019. Stubbs also points out about Chillingworth that \u2018Hawthorne stresses the superstitious wonder directed at this man of medical skill by the Puritans.\u2019 He further adds that \u2018in similar fashion, Hawthorne envelops\u00a0Pearl and the scarlet letter with the aura of the marvelous, usually working through the minds of superstitious onlookers.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Feminist Reading of The Scarlet Letter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In an essay called \u2018Hawthorne\u2019s Feminine Voices: Reading The Scarlet Letter <\/em>as a Woman\u2019, Suzan Last writes: \u2018The narrator’s “equivocal” style has inspired much critical speculation as to the novel’s “underlying ideology,” including debate over whether the novel is a seminal work of proto-feminism or just the opposite.\u2019 It seems that it is almost impossible to solve this ambiguity about the author\u2019s intention.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If we simply consider the story, it is the woman who alone bears the whole punishment: she is made to stand on the scaffold, wear the mark of shame, and live on the periphery of the society. But the man responsible for her adultery escapes the punishment and lives freely at the heart of the society with full dignity. It reminds us of a little line in Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s The second sex <\/em>(translated by Borde and Malovany-Chevallier): \u2018he commits the fault, but unloads it unto her\u2019. Besides, the fact that Hester\u2019s partner belongs to the very body of the male authority which punishes her reminds us again of another line from The Second Sex<\/em>: \u2018he pushes her to abortion, adultery, misdeeds, betrayal, and lies he [himself] officially condemns\u2019. Thus, at a basic level, Hawthorne\u2019s plot itself seems to invite feminist attack. However, a closer look at the text problematizes this simple reading. From the Christian perspective, while Hester makes her purgatorial journey from damnation to salvation, Hester\u2019s silence makes Dimmesdale suffer within inferno, since, as Dante says, hell is a state, not a place. Therefore, Dimmesdale earnestly asks Hester to divulge the name.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now, we have the same ambiguity about the characterization of Hester Prynne: Hester certainly exerts a subversive force towards the beginning of the novel, but, on the other hand,\u00a0she seems to bear no feminist consciousness as such. Charged with the shameful crime of adultery, Hester appears at the prison door, the narrator tells us, \u2018with natural dignity and force of character, and [\u2026] [stands] as if by her own free will.\u2019 And then, as she reveals the letter \u2018A\u2019 \u2018surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread,\u2019 she seems to celebrate what is supposed to be the mark of her shame. A female spectator says, \u2018what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?\u2019 It promises a bold\u00a0 female personality who defies the Puritan (patriarchal) morality. As she stands at the prison door \u2018in fine red cloth\u2019, with \u2018dark and abundant hair [\u2026] and deep black eyes\u2019, her tremendous youthful beauty seems to make her the sole partner of the \u2018wild rosebush\u2019 which stands, in direct contrast, before the \u2018gloomy front\u2019 of \u2018this ugly edifice\u2019\u2014the Puritanical prison which is \u2018the black flower of civilized society\u2019\u2014and has \u2018merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it\u2019. These images seem to suggest a contrast between \u2018the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law\u2019 and the liveliness of what is natural. Thus, in the first scaffold scene, Hester is presented by Hawthorne as a powerful character through whom he seems to make a critique of Puritan severity. But then, Hester fails to sustain this promise as, later, she herself conforms to the Puritan moral codes and thinks that she has, indeed, committed a grave sin.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

We know that the punishment for adultery in the seventeenth century was whipping and even death. Then, by suppressing the historical facticity of whipping, critics argue, Hawthorne seemed to be suggesting that the Puritan authority was not as harsh as it is taken to be. Suzan Last also draws our attention to the \u2018narrator’s attempt to resurrect the “better deeds” and more noble traits of the Puritans\u2019. Even, in the first scaffold scene, we see that it is the\u00a0 women in the crowd who want a more severe punishment for Hester: one woman thinks that \u2018[t]he magistrates are [\u2026] merciful overmuch\u2019 and says that \u2018[a]t the very least, they should\u00a0have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne\u2019s forehead.\u2019 Another woman goes so far as to say that \u2018[t]his woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die.\u2019 Thus, it has been argued, Hawthorne has distorted historical truth to show that contemporary women could be harsher and crueler than the kind Puritan authority. However, Monika Elbert argues in \u2018Hester\u2019s Maternity: Stigma or Weapon?\u2019 that \u2018[t]hese antagonistic women see Hester’s sexuality in the way men conventionally have viewed it, as a threat\u2019, and have dealt with that threat by \u2018becoming more male, more hard, than the toughest patriarch\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

If the last argument has allied Hawthorne with patriarchy, we can again go back to the point of Hester\u2019s needlework to look at it from a different perspective which shows Hawthorne as a remarkably modern feminist writer. The fact that Hester has been compelled to put on the letter \u2018A\u2019\u2014signifying Adultery\u2014 indicates man\u2019s writing (or representation) of the woman. It can be connected with the \u2018male gaze\u2019 that Hester is subjected to in this scaffold scene. Laura Mulvey argues in her famous essay called \u2018Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\u2019 (1975) that \u2018[t]he determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is styled accordingly.\u2019 What is it if not man\u2019s writing of the woman in terms of his fantasy?\u00a0 And man\u2019s fantasy comprehends the woman in binary opposites as either whore or goddess. If the letter \u2018A\u2019 was to mark her as an Adulteress, a man from the crowd sees in Hester \u2018the image of Divine Maternity.\u2019 Interestingly, Hester\u2019s needlework deconstructs this patriarchal language\u2014the letter \u2018A\u2019\u2014 by appropriating this same language to rewrite herself: in Chapter XIII, we see that \u2018many people refused to interpret the scarlet \u201cA\u201d by its original signification. They said that it meant \u201cAble\u201d; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman\u2019s strength.\u2019 But then, the ambiguity remains as there is not a single indication in the text about Hester\u2019s consciousness behind her subversive needlework.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The American aspects<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hawthorne\u2019s The Scarlet Letter <\/em>might be placed in a tradition beginning from the first American novels like The Power of Sympathy <\/em>(1789) by William Hill Brown (1765-1793), Charlotte Temple <\/em>(1794) by Susanna Haswell Rowson (1762-1824), and The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton <\/em>(1797) by Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840). The Power of Sympathy <\/em>is a romance that deals with a contemporary scandal of incest and suicide in the Morton family. Its didactic purpose is clearly visible in the preface: \u2018To Expose the dangerous Consequences of Seduction\u2019 and to reveal \u2018the Advantages of Female Education.\u2019 Richard Gray writes in A History of American Literature<\/em>: \u2018Hardly distinguished in itself, the book nevertheless establishes a currency common to all three of these early American novels: a clear basis in fact, actuality (so anticipating and meeting any possible objections to fiction, imaginative self-indulgence, or daydreaming), an even clearer moral purpose (so anticipating and meeting any possible objections from puritans or utilitarians), and a narrative that flirts with sensation and indulges in sentiment (so encouraging the reader to read on). Even more specifically, The Power of Sympathy <\/em>shares the same currency as the books by Rowson and Webster in the sense that it places a young woman and her fate at the center of the narrative, and addresses other young women as the intended recipients of its message.\u2019 Hawthorne\u2019s work, certainly, falls into this tradition in all respects. In the preface to Charlotte Temple<\/em>, the first American bestseller, Rowson writes that her novel is \u2018not merely the effusion of Fancy, but [\u2026] a reality\u2019 as the basic facts were related to her by \u2018an old lady who had personally known Charlotte.\u2019 And, throughout The Scarlet Letter<\/em>, we see that Hawthorne maintains a balance between fact and fiction. As Ryskamp notes, \u2018[t]he characters named in The Scarlet Letter<\/em>\u2014other than Hester, Pearl, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale, for whom we can find no real historical bases\u2014were actual figures in history.\u2019 Rowson also says, \u2018I have thrown over the whole a slight veil of fiction\u2019. And Hawthorne, as he says in \u2018The Custom House\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Chapter, tries to tinge the history with a \u2018magic moonshine\u2019 so that the history is \u2018invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as visibly present as by daylight.\u2019 Rowson also insists on the moral purpose of her writing: \u2018For the perusal of the young and thoughtless of the fair sex, this Tale of Truth is designed\u2019. And such a moralizing tone might be discerned in Hawthorne\u2019s work as well. What follows Rowson\u2019s preface is a tale of seduction of a young girl and her suffering. And we know what we have in Hawthorne\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
you can view video on Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter<\/strong><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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