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-On Tues we talked about what drives the SL. Is it an autobiography or a romance?

-Does the reader have a right to be told the truth or does the author have a right to keep certain things private?

-Does the real ever totally exist in autobiographies?

-Hawthorne thinks he can write autobiographically without violating author rights or reader rights.

-Blogs are contemporary autobiographies.

-We discussed the question of what is real and what is a reflection in the novel. Dimmesdale felt like he was a shadow and his life was false until he saw the A in the sky. The A felt like a representation of himself.

-We talked about the Id, Ego, and Superego and applied these to characters. Hester could be the ego, Dimmesdale the superego, and Chillingworth and Pearl the Id. (Pearl has not been affected bye the outside world while Chillingworth has. 

-Hawthorne is playing out himself through characters in his autobiography .

-A critic (Frederic Carpenter) said: Hester's passions are good and society is evil for condemning her. 

-We can look a the minor characters and see who Hawthorne is trying to be, but struggling.

-Another critic (Jonathan Arac) argued that the novel is neither puritanical or psychological, but rather political. It represented the 1850 political thoughts. The book was about slavery. He thinks people should do nothing about slavery and in the course of time providence will cause it to vanish.

-SL was read in a feminist and symbolic light in high school.  

Notes will be continued on the post titled part two.