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Introduction to The Scarlet Letter
Biography
Born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts
Ancestors include Major William Hathorne, a “bitter persecutor of Quakers”, and Justice John Hathorne, the chief interrogator of accused witches during the Salem Witch Trials
Nathaniel added the “w” to his surname to distance himself from his Puritan predecessors
Biography
Attended Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825; befriended classmates Franklin Pierce and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Fell madly in love with Sophia Peabody; engaged in secret in 1838; married in 1842
1839: became Measurer at the Boston Custom House
1840/41: left his post to join with transcendentalists at Brook Farm…
Brook Farm
Utopian community, founded by idealists who hoped to combine manual labor with art and philosophy
Emerson and Thoreau visited, but never totally bought into the commune
Biography
Hawthorne wasn’t a huge fan of work. (Throughout his life, he would complain that menial labor stultified his imagination.)
1844, became Surveyor of Boston Custom House
1849, ousted from the Custom House; mother dies; pens The Scarlet Letter
1850, TSL published and is an instant success
Biography
1852, appointed Consul to Liverpool, England; post was a reward for Hawthorne’s authorship of President Pierce’s campaign biography
1857-59, lived in Rome and Florence
May 19, 1864: died at Plymouth, New Hampshire. In his last years, Hawthorne was distraught by the threat and the actuality of the Civil War.
Works1828: Fanshawe. Published anonymously and at his own expense. He later burned as many copies as he could find.
1830 -37: publishes the stories that would be collected in Twice Told Tales, including “The Minister’s Black Veil”
1846: publishes a second collection of stories, Mosses from an Old Manse; includes “Young Goodman Brown” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
1850: publishes TSL
1851: a prolific year; publishes The House of the Seven Gables and a bunch of other stuff I’m not going to waste slide space on
Buddies!Hawthorne rubbed elbows with some of the most brilliant thinkers and writers of his age, including Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
More Buddies!…like Louisa May Alcott and Franklin Pierce.
Herman Melvillewas especially taken with Hawthorne. He admired the “power of blackness” he discovered in Hawthorne’s writings. He even dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne.
A sign o’ the timesWhile Hawthorne’s own era was fraught with instability and crisis, he often looked to an earlier, equally fragile time in American history for his material. It is worth our time to take a look at some of the anxieties facing Puritans, as these anxieties inform TSL.
Colonial MA timeline
1620: Mayflower lands at Cape Cod; Mayflower Compact is signed
1621: peace treaty signed between Plymouth Pilgrims and Wampanoag Tribe
1629: King Charles I dissolves Parliament in England, creating an influx of immigrants to America
1630: Boston is established; John Winthrop becomes the first governor of Massachusetts
Colonial MA timeline
1634-38: Pequot War
1636: Roger Williams founds Rhode Island after he is banished from Massachusetts for calling for, among other things, separation of church and state. Providence soon becomes a refuge for those fleeing religious intolerance. (Oh how I loves the irony!)
1636: Harvard College founded.
1638: Anne Hutchinson banished for nonconformist religious views (more on her later).
Colonial MA timeline
1646: Massachusetts passes a law that makes religious heresy punishable by death
1656: Ann Hibbins is tried as a witch and executed. She was reputed to be the sister of governor Richard Bellingham.
1675-76: King Philip’s War. (I’m sure Metacomet really appreciated his nickname.)
1692: Mass hysteria grips Salem; 20 are executed for witchcraft
Antinomian CrisisAnne Hutchinson was a major player in the theological crisis which questioned the Calvinist belief that God’s grace alone could lead to salvation. She argued that an individual could take a more active role in his/her spiritual destiny. She was accused of sedition and banished with her family.
The DevilIt was believed that the devil was real and walked among the living, preying on the souls of the faithful.
Reading HawthorneThemes, motifs, anxieties, and whatnot…
Hawthorne doesn’t address a wide range of themes. However, he explores his strong, interrelated themes with complexity and insight.
Hawthorne’s favorite themes
Individual’s complex life and antagonistic relationship with society
Dangers of simplistic moral judgments
Eruptions of what is suppressed
Guilt
Men’s anxieties about women’s sexuality
Interpenetration of past and present
Hawthorne’s favorite themes
The dangers of isolation and exile
The importance of self-knowledge
Impossibility of earthly perfection
Perverse secrecy
Cold intellectuality
“The fortunate fall”: lost innocence as the price of mature awareness
“The moral and psychological issues that [Hawthorne] examines through the conflicts his characters experience are often intricate and mysterious. Readers are frequently made to feel that in exploring Hawthorne’s characters they are also encountering some part of themselves.”
Hawthorne’s favorite motifs
Light and dark
Masks and veils
Shadows and mirrors
The labyrinthine path
The moonlight of imagination
The fire of passion
The cave of the heart
Hawthorne toys with the Old World Gothic romance by replacing the castle on the moors with the American wilderness and the wilderness of the mind.
Interpretations of Hawthorne’s imagery remain deliberately unstable: the scarlet A is a badge of shame transformed into an emblem of triumph.The “structured irresolutions” require readers to become collaborators who examine character and behavior.
Commentary on Hawthorne
“His first novel [TSL], his masterpiece, is an indictment of Puritan America, but also of his own society.”
“He wrote about his own society and its antecedents, but it turns out that he also wrote about ours.”
“Hawthorne was a shrewd and large-minded writer who read widely and pondered deeply about the human condition and American identity from Puritan times to his own.”
Critics on Hawthorne
Henry James: great imaginative writing, limited by shallow American culture and too much allegory
Early 20th c. critics: a dreamer of dreamlike fiction, an heir of Puritan gloom
Mid-century “new critics”: concentrated on the symbolism and organic unity of his fiction; analyzed recurring character types and themes
Semioticians: examine signifiers such as the scarlet letter
Writing in two worldsHawthorne is considered both a “romancer” (probing inner mysteries) and a “realist” (assessing American character and experience).
Romanticism
Celebrated individualism
Revered the natural world
Focused on passion and emotion
Incorporated mystical elements
Stood in opposition to order and rationality in favor of freedom and revolution
Experienced its height in the early to mid-18th c.
Realism
More of a technique as opposed to a literary movement
Employs verisimilitude
Reaction against romanticism; instead of trying “transcend” human experience, it attempts to explore it in actuality
Governed by laws, inspired by the scientific method
Emerged from the onset of the civil war
The End!Hootie says hi.
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