The New England Sources of The Scarlet Letter

1959 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Ryskamp
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter

scholarly journals Creative Agency in The Scarlet Letter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tia Byer
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Institutional Authority ◽  
Creative Agency ◽  
Creative Resistance

This article provides a critical analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s employment of artistic defiance in The Scarlet Letter. In reading Hester Prynne’s artistic ability and theological dissent as tools of creative resistance, the article claims that Hawthorne uses self-expression to critique Puritan values. When Hester redesigns the symbol of the scarlet letter A that she is forced to wear as a punishment for the sin of committing adultery, the act of sewing becomes a transgressive form of resistance. By examining the way in which she transforms her symbol of shame into an expression of autonomy, I trace the spiritual significance of Hester’s resistance and Hawthorne’s statement of individualism as reflecting the Transcendentalist rhetoric of early nineteenth-century New England. Hester’s ability to transcend institutional authority to create an independent identity, in turn, cultivates an independent relationship with God. Finally, I read Hawthorne’s own parallel creative struggle as author as a metaphor for national independent identity that can be contextualised within the American Renaissance.

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter: The Theory of the Romance and the Use of the New England Situation

PMLA ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 83 (5) ◽  
pp. 1439-1447 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Stubbs
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Prose Romance ◽  
Complex Characterization

AbstractTo write The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne drew on mid-nineteenthcentury theories of the prose romance and the central situation of New England romances. The romance was distinguished from the novel by the idea of artistic distance; romancers wanted to set human experience at a distance from their readers' world so that the meaning of the experience would be more clear. To get the distance exactly right, they balanced three sets of opposites: verisimilitude and ideality; the natural and the marvelous; and history and fiction. Hawthorne discussed each of the balances and used them as part of his conception of the form of The Scarlet Letter. The central situation of most contemporary romances about Puritanism provided him with the conflict of the “fair Puritan” and the “black Puritan.” Hester is his “fair Puritan” whose capacity for feeling is opposed to the reasoned but harsh justice of his “black Puritan,” Chillingworth. These two characters in their roles as types define the extreme sides of the moral argument Hawthorne synthesizes in the complex characterization of Dimmesdale.

scholarly journals Puritan Projections In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "The Scarlet Letter" And Stephen King’s "Carrie"

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Maria Anastasova
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
American Culture ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Gothic Literature ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
American Novels ◽  
The Witch

It is considered that the Puritans that populated New England in the 17th century left a distinctive mark on the American culture. The article explores some projections of Puritan legacy in two American novels of different periods – Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and Stephen King’s Carrie (1974). After establishing a connection between the Puritan writings and gothic literature, the two novels are analyzed in terms of some Puritan projections, among which are the problem of guilt and the acceptance of an individual in the society. Some references regarding the idea of the witch and the interpretations it bears, especially in terms of the female identity, are also identified. Despite the different approach of the authors in terms of building their characters, those references are mostly used in a negative way, as an instrument of criticism and exposing inconvenient truths.

The House of the Seven Gables

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
New Realism ◽  
The Scarlet Letter

In the final years of the seventeenth century in a small New England town, the venerable Colonel Pyncheon decides to erect a ponderously oak-framed and spacious family mansion. It occupies the spot where Matthew Maule, ‘an obscure man’, had lived in a log hut, until his execution for witchcraft. From the scaffold, Maule points his finger at the presiding Colonel and cries ‘God will give him blood to drink!’ The fate of Colonel Pyncheon exerts a heavy influence on his descendants in the crumbling mansion for the next century and a half. Hawthorne called his novel a ‘Romance’, drawing on the Gothic tradition which embraced and exploited the thrills of the supernatural. Unlike The Scarlet Letter, with its unrelentingly dark view of human nature and guilt, Hawthorne sought to write ‘a more natural and healthy product of my mind’, a story which would show guilt to be a trick of the imagination. The tension between fantasy and a new realism underpins the novel's descriptive virtuosity.

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