Introduction to The Scarlet Letter

1. Introduction to The Scarlet Letter

2. 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

3. 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…

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. Works • 1828: 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

8. Buddies! Hawthorne rubbed elbows with some of the most brilliant thinkers and writers of his age, including Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

9. More Buddies! …like Louisa May Alcott and Franklin Pierce.

10. Herman Melville was especially taken with Hawthorne. He admired the “power of blackness” he discovered in Hawthorne’s writings. He even dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne.

11. A sign o’ the times While 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.

12. 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

13. 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).

14. 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

15. Antinomian Crisis Anne 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.

16. The Devil It was believed that the devil was real and walked among the living, preying on the souls of the faithful.

17. Reading Hawthorne Themes, motifs, anxieties, and whatnot…

18. Hawthorne doesn’t address a wide range of themes. However, he explores his strong, interrelated themes with complexity and insight.

19. 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

20. 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

21. “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.”

22. 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

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. 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.”

26. 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

27. Writing in two worlds Hawthorne is considered both a “romancer” (probing inner mysteries) and a “realist” (assessing American character and experience).

28. Romanticism 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 • 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.

29. The End! Hootie says hi.