NARRATIVE CODE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S NOVEL THE SCARLET LETTER

This research paper investigates the influence of myths in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne, the protagonist, whose life is forced and shaped by the society where she lives. The society is a puritan society which gives important to the moral and religious values. The people in the society live obeying what Bible say and shape their lives based on the Biblical myths. Utilizing psychoanalytical theory, the paper delves into the society’s force on Hester Prynne, emphasizing how the biblical stories kept as the standards for the people to live. The novel has no explicit mention of myths but they are understood through the characters’ actions and words. The novel has the custom-House (introductory to “The Scarlet Letter”), twenty three chapters and conclusion. It is set in a pre-independent America. It tells the story of a young mother and her illegitimate child. Hester Prynne, the protagonist, is trapped first into a loveless marriage and then into adultery. Brought out of the prison with the scarlet letter ‘A’ fixed on her bosom, she is publicly disgraced. She refuses to disclose the identity of her daughter’s father. Hyster Prynne becomes the first real heroine of American fiction. It is easy to say she is the real heroine but it is very difficult to live each day bearing the letter ‘A’ and the shame. The society where she lives only brought such a shame on her life. This is because the society’s norms are based on the Bible and its stories, which we call Biblical myths. The myths only shaped the lives of men in that society. They want everyone to be puritan and to be true Christian and so not to commit any sin. Because to obey them Hester Prynne keeps herself quiet not revealing the name of the man who made her to bear the letter ‘A’. If she has revealed him, there won’t be such shame in her life. The analysis thus highlights the ramifications of myths in the society and the individuals.

A is for Aria

ABSTRACT: In almost all areas of social life, people seem to be constrained by something, due to their class, gender, group, ethnicity, education etc. Although it is not easy as an individual to fight against the restrictive mechanisms regulated by some official or social bodies, the very existence of human is a force that tends to resist any kind of oppression. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the female protagonist, Hester Prynne, is depicted both as the object of oppression and subject of resistance in the Puritan society. In the novel, the reader is exposed to themes related to power relations among the members of the society through the extensive use of symbols. The excessive use of symbols seems to create a bridge between the fanaticism exerted in the Puritan society and the reader led to question the gender roles violently and strictly stipulated by the same members of the society, both females and males. In this study, the signs, symbols and motifs that can be associated with the oppressive authority in The Scarlet Letter, shedding light upon the psychology and intellect of Hester Prynne are examined.

The Scarlet Letter is generally considered to be Nathaniel Hawthorne's best work and one of the indubitable masterpieces of American literature.The heroine of the novel-Hester Prynne, though on a binary position as a woman in Puritan society, defies power and puts up a tenacious fight against the colonial rule combined by church and state.From her rebellious actions, we can see Hester's feminist consciousness.With this noble character, she becomes totally different from the traditional women who are always obedient to the unfair rules enacted by men.It can be sensed that a new female image is born.This paper tries to analyze Hester's feminist consciousness at the respect of her rebellious spirit, self-reliance and strong mind, in this way to evaluate Hester Prynne as a representative of the new female image.Through this kind of analysis, we can better dig in the figure of Hester, and regarding her as a new woman also has a positive social meaning in encouraging women today to strive after the lofty ideal-an equal status between men and women.

“Emblem and Product of Sin”: The Poisoned Child in The Scarlet Letter and Domestic Advice Literature Franny Nudelman (bio) When Hester Prynne is paraded before a solemn and censorious crowd of spectators with both emblems of her crime—the scarlet letter and her infant daughter—on display, she does not reveal the torment she experiences. While she “felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once,” she successfully conceals her suffering from the crowd. 1 She cannot, however, hide her feelings from her daughter. After spending the day with Hester on the scaffold, the infant Pearl becomes ill. Hawthorne explains that the child, having drawn “its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish, and despair, which pervaded the mother’s system” (64). The suffering that Hester suppresses in public is communicated directly to her child. As a result, the infant’s body, “writh[ing] in convulsions of pain,” becomes “a forcible type . . . of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day” (64). Poisoned by her mother’s feelings, Pearl expresses, indeed typifies, Hester’s moral state. Although Hawthorne tells us that Hester’s artistic embellishment of the relation between Pearl and the letter, intended to “create an analogy between the object of her affection, and the emblem of her guilt and torture,” is merely an elaboration of a prior, organic relation in which “Pearl was the one, as well as the other” (90–1), critics have accepted Hester’s mischievous elaboration of Pearl’s resemblance to the scarlet letter as Hawthorne’s own. Focusing their attentions on the letter itself, and regarding Pearl as its less articulate double, critics have overlooked Hawthorne’s consideration of the difference between the two. Pearl, described by Hawthorne as the “effluence of her mother’s lawless passion” (146), is the “living emblem” of Hester’s guilt not so much because she resembles the scarlet letter, but rather because she embodies what the letter can only represent—the very passions which motivate Hester’s transgression, and the sufferings that accompany her punishment. An important strain in critical writing on The Scarlet Letter has focused on the letter itself and, by extension, “the nature of symbolic perception.” 2 According to these accounts, the “A” anatomizes the properties of the symbol: it [End Page 193] is interesting because it means many things at once and no one thing reliably. An emphasis on the scarlet letter as a form of representation—one that fosters a degree of referential uncertainty—entails an emphasis on the problem of interpretation; critics celebrate the letter’s ability to elicit varied responses and thus create diverse readings. According to Charles Feidelson, the novel elaborates the ways the symbol acquires meanings by reenacting the Custom House narrator’s original encounter with the letter from a series of vantage points. More recently Sacvan Bercovitch has argued that the novel uses the letter to school its readers in the interpretive procedures by which liberal culture transforms difference, or dissent, into consensus. 3 Whether considered from a formal or a cultural vantage point, the letter’s power lies in its referential latitude which allows it to accumulate and sustain a variety of readings under the rubric of its own simplicity. Its indeterminacy is indistinguishable from its inclusiveness, and both determine its critical stature. 4 This emphasis on the problematics of interpretation, implicit in the fluid and inclusive nature of the symbol, has allowed critics to underestimate Hawthorne’s critique of the letter as an agent of discipline. The complex, indeterminate relationship between sign and referent which has generated such critical delight in the letter “A” is, in the context of crime and reformation, an enormous problem, one which Hawthorne addresses with a degree of care and deliberation. Bercovitch can describe the Puritan community as the novel’s “interpretive hero” because, taking a lesson in the hermeneutics of liberalism, it keeps finding and embracing new meanings for the letter (Office, 47). The community makes a mistake, however, by believing that the...

As Larry J. Reynolds states in his preface to the essay collection that follows, Hawthorne has maintained “a constant presence” in treatments of American literature since the original publication of his Romances (ix). Whether that is due to a timeless or objective quality of his writing, or because, as Gordon Hutner has argued elsewhere, “his writing has always elicited a critical reaction that fairly well encapsulates the prevailing social tendencies and critical preoccupations embedded in our rhetorics of interpretation and appreciation,” his place in literary scholarship and on undergraduate curricula seems about as secure as any writer's (Hutner, “Whose Hawthorne?” The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Richard H. Millington, Cambridge UP, 2004, p. 252).However, while Hawthorne hangs onto a certain “cultural and pedagogical centrality” (xiii), even as the canon evolves and student interest in literature waxes and wanes, the reasons for continuing to read and teach Hawthorne are perhaps not so obvious as they once were. Christopher Diller and Samuel Coale have compiled in Nathaniel Hawthorne in the College Curriculum a rich and suggestive collection of essays that will prompt and inspire instructors to situate Hawthorne in a variety of contexts where he might continue to play a constructive role for students of literature. Perceiving a gap in the pedagogical scholarship, Diller and Coale guide instructors in their attempts to integrate Hawthorne into updated college courses in dialogue with such diverse fields as disability studies, film and adaptation studies, material culture studies, digital humanities, and transnational studies. By presenting a wide variety of essays across these different contexts, they encourage classroom practitioners to reflect upon Hawthorne's “centrality” in a way that responds to the critical trends of the last forty years and the changing nature of American postsecondary education.The book is divided into four roughly equal parts. The first two, “The Romances” and “The Short Stories,” present approaches that either focus on a particular text or draw thematic connections across several texts. The latter two parts, “Institutional and International Contexts” and “Performative and Visual Contexts,” highlight the audiences or situations of particular moments of teaching practice. While it can be difficult to organize such a wide-ranging group of essays, this division skillfully places the individual pieces in dialogue with one another within and across the four parts.Part 1 provides a series of approaches to teaching Hawthorne's book-length fiction. Patricia D. Valenti's and Richard Kopley's respective essays each provide historical context for The Scarlet Letter beyond what one would find in standard background materials. Valenti suggests a productive way to leverage students' inherent curiosity about authors' biographies through comparing the courtship of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne to the presentation of gender in the romance. Kopley, in contrast, discusses his use in the classroom of The Salem Belle as an intertextual means of explaining the role of the Antinomian Controversy in The Scarlet Letter. Each of these essays is exemplary in describing the use of unexpected outside texts, such as Sophia's Cuba Journal, the letters, and The Salem Belle. The pieces by Robert T. Talley Jr. and Sarah Wadsworth fruitfully turn to readings of the formal qualities of the romances. Talley uses The House of the Seven Gables as a means of understanding realism and the nature of “Romance” itself in Hawthorne's writing while Wadsworth applies a “History of the Book approach” to The Blithedale Romance, an approach that revises students' close reading techniques through attention to the material conditions of that reading. Each of these essays is concerned with the nature of the reading experience itself, a foremost concern of any teacher as students begin to grapple with Hawthorne in the college classroom. The final two essays of part 1 focus on thematic approaches to Hawthorne's books, Zachary Lamm's on the treatment of sexuality in The Scarlet Letter and Monika Elbert's on Hawthorne's revisions and “Americanization” of the transnational Gothic mode across each of the four finished romances. Both provide useful perspectives on Hawthorne's works in any context, but particularly in approaching literature through these comparative or genre-based lenses.Part 2 presents a similar combination of formal and thematic readings of Hawthorne's most commonly taught short fiction. Rosemary Fisk and Nancy Bunge both provide accounts of using Hawthorne in interdisciplinary settings, emphasizing how this makes Hawthorne less intimidating and more accessible for many students. Fisk reads “The Minister's Black Veil” in a core curriculum course to show how it resonates in contemporary debates surrounding the veil and other elements of Islam in multicultural societies while Bunge notes how Hawthorne's short stories are transformed when read alongside philosophical texts, thereby motivating students to feel “pleasure and freedom” in engaging literature's “complexity and depth” (124). Gabriela Serrano also reads “The Minister's Black Veil,” alongside “Rappaccini's Daughter,” to introduce the concept of framing techniques as a means of helping students become more active readers in survey courses. Jonathan Murphy and Jennifer Schell each turn to the consistently popular “Young Goodman Brown.” Murphy uses the short story as a means of relating history to questions of ethics and religious practice while Schell, reading the story alongside “Roger Malvin's Burial,” outlines what she describes as the “ecoGothic,” Hawthorne's rewriting of Gothic tropes and the connection of the Gothic tradition to nature. The final two essays of the section, one by Scott Ellis and one by Aaron D. Cobb and Eric Sterling, both turn to the treatment of science and technology in Hawthorne's short fiction, thus allowing students to consider not only the impact of science on their own lives but also Hawthorne's investigation of what Ellis terms the potential “moral transformation” caused by technology (133).Part 3 moves away from presentations of readings or activities around distinct texts and focuses on those contexts in which students might encounter Hawthorne. The first two essays present questions of audience: Jason Courtmanche's describes partnerships with high school programs and Chikako D. Kumamoto's discusses teaching Hawthorne to community college students. Courtmanche explains how he has created exchanges linking undergraduate education majors with high-school students as discussion partners and linking college professors as partners with high-school instructors. Both forms of partnership leverage the advantages of each population with the “shared responsibility” of improving students' literacy practices (161). Kumamoto explains how she has combined The Scarlet Letter with readings of Max Weber's Protestant Ethic as a way to establish the classroom as a “contact zone” for the diverse academic goals of a community college population (174). The remaining four essays of the section outline different research-oriented approaches toward student encounters with Hawthorne's texts. T. Gregory Garvey describes how Hawthornean skepticism and his relations to reformist movements of his time present “carefully contextualized research problems for historical and theoretical analysis” (194). Similarly, Donald Ross's elaboration of a senior seminar on Hawthorne and the Brontë sisters offers a series of thematic connections to foster classroom dialogue and student projects. The remaining essays of the section, those of Ivonne M. García and Sandra Hughes, are two of the strongest of the collection for their combination of theoretical framing and unique classroom activities. García describes her senior seminar on Hawthorne, which uses a “post-nationalist approach” to read an impressive array of Hawthorne's writing and related texts; her approach allows both readings of works rarely attempted in the classroom and the application of important historicist and cultural studies modes of analysis to Hawthorne's works. Hughes describes her incorporation of The Marble Faun into a study-abroad experience, where visits to specific sites and readings of Roman works of art and history add a remarkable depth of context and understanding to Hawthorne's book, particularly with his complex presentation of Hilda and Miriam.While part 3 focuses primarily on literature courses, the final section of the book reaches toward other contexts; it presents Hawthorne's works in interaction with the arts and other disciplinary settings. Sari Altschuler and Michael Demson provide theoretical frameworks with which any number of Hawthorne texts might be investigated with students. Altschuler sketches a very useful guide to the ways in which the interdisciplinary field of disability studies can open up new readings of The Scarlet Letter and renew our approach to how language and signification work in the romance. Demson reads “puppets, automata, and machinery” in Hawthorne as part of the “central concerns of international Romanticism, including self-consciousness, self-individuation, and self-management” (247). For him, these mechanical figures can serve not only to connect Hawthorne with wider artistic trends but also to relate Hawthorne to European philosophical currents and contemporary theoretical lenses. The remaining four essays of the section deal with elements of cinema's relation to Hawthorne's works. Alberto Gabriele discusses the importance of what he characterizes as “pre-cinematic spectacles” in The House of the Seven Gables (259). While there is a good deal of scholarship on portraiture and daguerreotypy in the romance, for him the effects of industrial changes to visual and performative entertainments, including mesmerism, are a key interpretive guide to the text. Walter Squire compellingly compares Hawthorne's presentation of “scientific anxiety” with the history of film while the essays of Nassim Winnie Balestrini and of Danuta Fjellestad and Elisabeth Herion Sarafidis both focus on the various film adaptations of The Scarlet Letter. Squire's essay provides a way to connect Hawthorne's concerns with science, in dialogue with the several other essays in the collection that speak to this interest, with those presented across the history of film. Balestrini takes up the 2010 film Easy A and Miranda July's 2007 short story “Birthmark” as recent works inspired by Hawthorne through the use of Hawthorne as a foundation with which to explore presentations of gender and the revision of historical record through art. Fjellestad and Sarafidis's essay also explores gender in Hawthorne and our reading of it, specifically through the lens of the 1934 and 1995 film adaptations of The Scarlet Letter. A close reading of these two films' versions of Hester Prynne reveal “how our own cultural preconceptions inevitably are brought to bear on the novel” (311).A book-length collection dedicated to the teaching of Hawthorne is a welcome addition, as this subject “has been surprisingly neglected” despite the continuing popularity of Hawthorne in the classroom and in American literary scholarship (xvii). According to Diller and Coale, this is the first such collection to be published, which seems difficult to believe. As such, and given that the central audience of the book seems to be instructors of undergraduate students, it is logical that a majority of essays that focus on the four finished romances, particularly The Scarlet Letter, and a few of the most canonical short stories, such as “The Birth-Mark,” “The Minister's Black Veil,” “Rappaccini's Daughter,” and “Young Goodman Brown.” However, as the editors explain, the diversity of Hawthorne's authorial productions has gained greater notice in scholarship in recent decades: “[U]ndergraduate study of Hawthorne now includes a wide bandwidth of both his well-known and lesser known works, including all his published romances, many tales, and even his sketches, writings for children, and political essays” (xviii). It is somewhat disappointing, then, that the essays that follow include few discussions of these more infrequently taught texts, though it is noteworthy how often the notebooks and letters appear across the essays. Perhaps the depth and variety of this collection will inspire others to continue to pave this pedagogical path for these texts of which many students and scholars remain unaware.While the essays of the collection are consistent in their quality, the presentation of the text includes a number of unfortunate oversights. Formatting errors appear throughout the book, particularly errors relating to presenting footnotes, formatting titles, and indicating quotations. While these generally do not interfere with one's understanding of any given essay, at times they create a certain amount of confusion in the reading experience. Many of the typographical mistakes should have been caught for this, the second edition. While Edward Everett Root Publishers has done a great service in putting this text back into print following the closure of AMS Press, which published the first edition in 2017, the book would have benefitted from a closer revision. Further, while each individual essay provides helpful footnotes, a bibliographical apparatus would have been a great advantage to all readers. Much of the previous scholarship on pedagogical approaches to Hawthorne is scattered across journals and collections, and few, if any, of the essays here engage with that previous scholarship or any more general elaborations of theories or techniques with regards to teaching literature. A full index would have been helpful, as well as an annotated bibliography of in-print editions and anthologies that instructors in the volume have used in the classroom.As Diller and Coale stated in their introduction, such a collection of essays is long overdue. The texts gathered here provide a sense of the diversity of the pedagogical approaches to which Hawthorne's writings lend themselves. While several of the essays are focused on theoretical concerns that inform a particular approach, most take care to describe the particular classroom situation of the author and suggest means of application for other instructors. Several writers, such as Kopley and Courtmanche, provide admirable detail in explaining particular class sessions or the steps with which they have designed particular exercises. The essays of Wadsworth and Ellis are noteworthy in their incorporation of digital humanities methods and exercises in their described courses, and there are inspiring and creative assignments and activities provided throughout, such as the productive against-the-grain use of SparkNotes that Altschuler describes in her course. For experienced educators and those considering teaching Hawthorne for the first time alike, Nathaniel Hawthorne in the College Classroom should provide a number of provocations for classroom practice.

The extent to which the four main characters of The Scarlet Letter are capable of enduring hardships in the face of the rigid structure of the Puritan society is studied in this research paper. Endurance being a far-fetched meaning of sustainability; if said differently, this paper is a study of their sustainability. These characters are namely, Hester Prynne, her legal husband Roger Chillingworth, the pastor Arthur Dimmesdale, all of them caught up in a love triangle and Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter, born out of wedlock. Using a qualitative research approach, a narrative analysis is conducted where initially the reader is given an insight into the story line of The Scarlet Letter. Ensuing, is a brief description of the Puritan period and its society, the significance of symbolism in the novel, and an examination of the transformation of the four characters throughout the duration of the novel. Hester Prynne, the bearer of the scarlet letter, faces extremely challenging times due to her behavior. A detailed observation of how she gradually and positively integrates into this environment of an unforgiving Bostonian Puritanical society through her fortitude to face up to it, is done in this paper. Finally, the power of endurance of the characters being evaluated, Hester Prynne turns out to be the victor. Thereby, proving that despite great adversity, a female is yet able to endure hardships and show her tenacity in male dominated societies.

Bringing <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> into <i>The Scarlet Professor</i>: A Composer's Reflections

The Scarlet Letter (1850), written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, examines Hester Prynne's intense internal and social conflict as she tries to start over after being publicly shamed for her infidelity. In a strict Puritan society, Hester, who has been marked with the scarlet letter "A," sets out on a path of self-redefinition and salvation. Her attempts to live honorably in spite of being shunned highlight the difficulties associated with guilt, social criticism, and individual fortitude. Hester challenges the moral absolutism of the community and shows how moral growth and perseverance can lead to redemption by transforming the symbol of her humiliation into one of quiet strength through deeds of kindness, humility, and redemption. In American literature, The Scarlet Letter is an imposing monument because of its profound engagement with the themes of sin, shame, repentance, and personal redemption within a strict admonishing society, in addition to its aesthetic elegance and psychological depth. The story, which is set in the 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, explores the intricacies of social reprimand and human feelings. This paper proposes to examine how Hawthorne's characters, particularly Hester Prynne, strive to live a genuine life in the face of internal pain and moral condemnation. The study begins by offering a compendious overview of the broader thematic concerns of this paper, positioning The Scarlet Letter within its historical, cultural, and literary contexts. Hawthorne’s depiction of psychological conflict and the symbolism attached to objects like the scarlet letter itself are essential to represent Hester’s story that harmonically exposes how social hierarchy and moral absolutism can encumber genuine personal fulfilment. Puritanism is not just a background in The Scarlet Letter; it is a defining influence that shapes character development, social interactions, and philosophical perspective. Hawthorne, a descendant of Puritans himself, critically examines this legacy, challenging its effectiveness and justice in addressing human weakness.

Human tragedy is characterized by its continuity over and over in human history. Many writers elaborate different tragedies, each according his\her own experience and understanding of world tragedies. The present study shows a comparison of such tragedies between two novels; one by Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and the other by Edith Wharton's Ethan From. The study sheds light on the way each novelist presents different sorts of human agony, the points they meet and the points they differ.&#x0D; Both Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1804-64) Scarlet Letter (1850) and Edith Wharton's (1862–1937) Ethan Frome (1911) are compelling classics of American literature with characters trapped in tragic circumstances they seem unable to escape. Remarkably, the two novels represent turning points in the lives of their authors. Whereas his previous work suffered from popular indifference, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter gained him the attention he had formerly lacked, no small part of it negative. Actually a conservative in many regards, with the publication of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne became viewed as a radical and a subversive by conservative reviewers. (Bloom, Bloom’s Classic Critical Views, p. 1) At the same time, Wharton's Ethan Forme has long held a canonical place as the most artistically perfect and formally accomplished of her fictions. (Lawson, 154) Moreover, both novels are based on real incidents. In his introduction to The Scarlet Letter "The Custom House", Hawthorne reports how he discovered by accident a decayed, embroidered "A" and some documents telling of its history and the story of one Hester Prynne:&#x0D; [T]he object that most drew my attention to the mysterious package was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded, There were traces about it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly frayed and defaced, so that none, or very little, of the glitter was left.&#x0D; (SL, "The Custom House", p. 20).

My Life with Hawthorne

AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 7–11, 2021The following panels are planned:Hawthorne and FatherhoodOrganized by the Nathaniel Hawthorne SocietyChair: Charles Baraw, Southern Connecticut State University “Divided Paternity: The Scarlet Letter's Unstable American Father,” Muhammad Imran, University of Sahiwal“The Sacred Father De-gendered: Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter,’” Eitetsu Sasaki, Momoyama Gakuin University [Virtual Presentation]“‘The Death of the Father and the Death of Romance in Hawthorne,” Ariel Silver, Columbus Ohio Institute of ReligionHawthorne and AestheticsOrganized by the Nathaniel Hawthorne SocietyChair: Ariel Silver, Columbus Ohio Institute of Religion “Come Home, Dear Child—Poor Wanderer”: Hawthorne's Struggles with Theological Aesthetics,” Amy Oatis, University of the Ozarks [Virtual Presentation]“‘Playing (with) Fantasy: Hawthorne's Aesthetics of Reading in The House of the Seven Gables,” Yuta Ito, University of Utah“Hawthorne's Notebooks and The Marble Faun: The Aesthetics of Revolution,’” Sharon Worley, Houston Community CollegeKLAUS P. STITCH COMMENTS ON HESTER PRYNNE IN BERLIN AND THE SCARLET LETTER AS SUBTEXTKLAUS P. STICH, A FORMER MEMBER OF THE NHR EDITORIAL BOARD, HAS SUBMITTED THE FOLLOWING THREE PARAGRAPHS ABOUT A RECENTLY PUBLISHED BOOK, JENNIFER CHIAVERINI’S RESISTANCE WOMEN (2019), THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST TO HAWTHORNE SCHOLARS:“There is no remoteness of life and thought,” declares Hawthorne's Peaceable Man, “no hermetically sealed seclusion, …., into which the disturbing influences of this war do not penetrate.” His 1862 comments on the American Civil War are no less fitting as a response to Hitler's war against humanity. Today's readers of Hawthorne do not often chance upon connections to his work in contemporary American fiction, especially not in a historical novel about Hitler's social, cultural, and military wars. In Jennifer Chiaverini's Resistance Women (New York: William Morrow, 2019), The Scarlet Letter becomes a subtext in her delineation of the marriage in 1926 of Mildred Fish, a U. of Wisconsin graduate student, to Arvid Harnack, a visiting German scholar, their move to Berlin in 1930, and their pivotal role in the underground resistance during Hitler's rise to Power. The Harnacks and several others in the novel such as the U.S. Ambassador William Dodd and his daughter Martha are historical characters who became active in the resistance movement against Hitler.Mildred's well-received lectures at the U. of Berlin on American literature, especially her talk on “Romantic and Married Love in the Works of Hawthorne,” turn Hester Prynne into a quasi-icon of sexual and political rebellion. Her scarlet letter “A” implicitly comes to stand for Anti-authoritarianism: rejecting Hitler's ideal of “Kinder, Kirche, Kűche [Children, Church, Cuisine]” for women's social role and rebelling against his virulent totalitarianism. Moreover, the unexpected power of Hester's boldly embroidered “A” makes one of the Jewish women of the resistance toy briefly with the idea of transforming her yellow cloth star, a Star of David to be worn by Jews in public, into “a gorgeous [one] … of golden satin embellished with beads and elaborately embroidered with ebony silk thread.” Yet, what created mere outrage in the Puritans’ Boston would surely have meant death in Hitler's Berlin.Inevitably, death by execution is the fate of the Harnacks and most others in the resistance movement, except for a very few only gazing as quasi-Hawthornean bystanders at the margin of social upheaval. Side-stepping, I am thinking here of, for instance, Robin Molineux witnessing the “inflammation of the popular mind” and “trumpets vomit[ing] a horrid breath,” as well as Faith Brown's husband who, to borrow from Emily Dickinson, lacked a microscope in his emergencies. And I am certainly thinking of more than a few for whom Hester's letter “A” started Chiaverini's narrative of their resistance.

The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne’s highly political magnum opus, is concerned with the struggle of its heroine against the overarching Puritan patriarchy, and relates her resistance, denial and finally her reconciliation with the society that had outcast and defamed her. This paper examines the religious transformation in The Scarlet Letter, particularly in its protagonist, Hester Prynne according to the dialectic of subversion and containment. While the Puritan society condemns her acts, Hester subverts aspects of this religious theocracy and contains them in a new light. These points of subversion and containment are the critical focus of this study, as espoused by new historicist Stephen Greenblatt and cultural materialist Jonathan Dollimore. Hester’s subversions include her resilience against the presumption that she has committed a sin, the consecration of her own actions, criticism of predestination and doctrine of grace. Alternatively, her containments present the reader with an alternative political vision that embraces freedom of conscience and individual religion of the heart. Ultimately, this essay argues that Hester, by the end of the tale, displaces the Puritan theocracy and envisions a secular society in which a privatized sphere of activity is granted to individuals to exercise their political and religious liberties.

Public shaming has a long history in the United States, and the image of the “scarlet letter” is an integral part of that history. This essay examines how American media accounts in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic invoked the image of the scarlet letter to describe the shame of infection at an individual, institutional, and national level. The first section discusses the colonial sources that Hawthorne used in creating the image as well as the ways in which his romance associates it with social shame and stigma. The second section focuses on media accounts that equate wearing a mask, or declining to wear a mask, with wearing a scarlet letter like Hester Prynne. The final section considers how the scarlet letter has been used in accounts of communal infection rates and forced closures. In their invocations of the scarlet letter, reporters, essayists, and bloggers have repeated the central conflicts between individual freedom and social responsibility, moral good and legal constraint, mobility and isolation, and selfishness and empathy that have long dominated scholarly interpretations of The Scarlet Letter. In doing so, they demonstrate the continuing potency of the cultural work of Hawthorne's classic novel.

The Scarlet Professor and Me: An Operatic Journey