Transcript Kambriel: Rappaccini's Daughter Veil

America as a Cultural Prisonhouse
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
-
born in Salem, Massachusetts
- Hawthorne‘s father, a sea captain,
was a descendant of John Hathorne, a
judge at the Salem Witch Trials
-
-
began to write in the 1820s, first in
obscurity in his „owl‘s nest“, became
friends with Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, his classmate at Bowdoin
College – „Twice-Told Tales“ (1837)
-
joined the utopian transcendentalist
community at Brook Farm in 1841
was appointed surveyor of the Salem Custom House in
1846; became American Consul in Liverpool in 1853
-
Short stories: „Young Goodman Brown“
(1835), „Rappaccini‘s Daughter“ ´(1844)
- Four major romances: The Scarlet Letter
(1850), The House of the Seven Gables
(1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852),
and The Marble Faun (1860)
The Romance
Themes
Techniques
- the dreamlike
- allegorical abstraction
- the imaginary
- transcendence of the
material world
- the supernatural
- the American past
- operates in the intermediate
zone between fiction & reality
Hawthorne’s Negative Romanticism
“the power of blackness” (H. Melville)
“Young Goodman Brown”
“[I]t is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so
fixes and fascinates me.” (H. Melville)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Boston in the 1640s
-
Hester Prynne, with her illegitimate child,
Pearl, on her arms, steps from a prisonhouse, a
wild rose-bush blossoming next to the entrance
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale
„Roger Chillingworth“
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Hester Prynne
- „tall, with a figure of
perfect elegance, on a
large scale.“
- young woman
Pearl
- „She had dark and
abundant hair, so glossy
that it threw off the
sunshine with a gleam“.
- elf-like creature
- Commnity thinks she is
„demon offspring“.
Reverend Dimmesdale
- Hester‘s „godly pastor“
- fears public condemnation
- „She was lady-like, too,
after the manner of the
feminine gentility of
those days“
- independent and isolated woman: „What
we did had a conscration of ist own“
„Roger Chillingworth“
- Hester‘s thought-to-be-dead
husband seeking revenge
- epitomizes a perversion of the
human heart
Themes
- Adultery (vanishing of traditional beliefs & values)
-
Bigotry (morality vs. sin)
Church (America‘s Puritan past)
Key symbols
It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each limb
proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had been
intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how
it was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were
signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world
in these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested
me. […]
When thus perplexed -- and cogitating, among other hypotheses,
whether the letter might not have been one of those decorations which the
white men used to contrive in order to take the eyes of Indians -- I happened to
place it on my breast. It seemed to me -- the reader may smile, but must not
doubt my word -- it seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not
altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter were
not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon
the floor.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, „The Custom-House“, from
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Salem
This old town of Salem – my native place […] – possesses, or did
possess, a hold on my affections, the forced of which I have never realized during
my seasons of actual residence here. […] It is now nearly two centuries and a
quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his
appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement, which has since become a
city. […] He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had
all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor
[…].
Nathaniel Hawthorne, „The Custom-House“, from The Scarlet Letter
(1850), p. 1336-7.
Key phrases:
- „the greatest of all dreams“ (the American Dream)
- „New Jerusalem“ (analogy to the biblical exodus,
„God‘s chosen people“)
- „City Upon a Hill“ (John Winthrop, „A Model of
Christian Charity“, 1630
- „English and Indian, freemen and slaves, join
together“ (Melting Pot)
How does the novel end?
-
Hester goes to England, returns after some
years to end her life in isolation
-
Pearl becomes „the richest heiress of her day in
the New World“
-
Dimmesdale dies in Hester‘s arms, thanking
God for this „triumphant shame“
-
Chillingworth dies one year later, deprived of
his inner goal, the search for revenge
Film: Hester and Dimmesdale, the charismatic hero, end up
together, their love is fulfilled -> happy ending projected onto
the text
"People of New England!" cried he, with a voice that rose over
them, high, solemn, and majestic -- yet had always a tremor through it, and
sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and
woe -- "ye, that have loved me! -- ye, that have deemed me holy! -- behold
me here, the one sinner of the world! At last -- at last! -- I stand upon the
spot where, seven years since, I should have stood, here, with this woman,
whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept hitherward,
sustains me at this dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo,
the scarlet letter which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever
her walk hath been -- wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped
to find repose -- it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance
round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of
sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!"
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850), p. 1469
Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the
unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER – the very semblance of that worn by
Hester Prynne – imprinted in the flesh.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850), p. 1470
For the next session
“Democratic Vistas”:
Read and prepare
Walt Whitman
“Song of Myself”
from Leaves of Grass (185
plus bio sketch