"Kicking A-": The Scarlet Letter as Autobiography?

"Kicking A-":
The Scarlet Letter as Autobiography?

"Hunger," 2004

From "Exposing Scarlet:
A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter"

Is that the case?
Then what do we make of where we left off...
"we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or his own." (Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Custom House," Introductory to The Scarlet Letter)

"Hester Prynne"
From "Exposing Scarlet:
A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter"

Some prompts/passages to focus on--
the characters of Pearl, of Hester, of Dimmesdale, of Chillingworth--
and of the relations between them

"She knew her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be for good....The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being, whose elements were...all in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves....It was as if she had been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to...be a law unto herself. (Ch. 6, "Pearl," pp. 67-69; Ch. 10, "The Leech and his Patient, p. 99)

Hester was little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself....her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world....she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind....Hester Prynne...assumed a freedom of speculation...which our forefathers, had they known of it, would have deemed a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter...a tendency to speculation...makes her sad. She discerns...such a hopeless task before her....the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew....the very nature of the opposite sex...is to be essentially modified...finally...she herself shall...undergo...a still mightier change....Hester Pryne...wandered without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind....The scarlet letter had not done its office. (Ch. 13, "Another View of Hester," pp. 116, 119, 120)

IN CONTRAST....

Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest...with an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time....it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Not the less, however...did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect....It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study....But the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed, with comfort...the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale...was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth....the people looked...to see the minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with glory. (Ch. 9, "The Leech," pp. 91, 95)

...what was he?--a substance?--or the dimmest of all shadows?...a life so false as his...steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us....to the untrue man the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing...and he himself...becomes a shadow....The only truth, that continued to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth, was the anguish in his inmost soul....when an individual discovers a revelation, addressed to himself alone...it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state...extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate....the minister, looking upward to the zenith...beheld...the letter A (Ch. 11, "The Interior of a Heart," pp. 105, 107, 113)

...as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity seized the old man....He now dug into the poor clergy man's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave....He groped along as stealthily...as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep ... He became...a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. (Ch. 10, "The Leech and his Patient, pp. 95-96; Ch. 11, "The Interior of a Heart," p. 103)

• orthodox believers say Hester was truly sinful/ her passion fatal flaw that caused tragedy
• romantic enthusiasts say social determinism caused the disaster: Hester's passions are good, and society is evil for condemning her
• Carpenter offers the mediation of transcendent idealism: reading the novel with the help of the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau,
  he argues that there is a higher law beyond tradition or romance,
  that love is not romantically immoral nor blindly rebellious,
  but that Hester sinned in putting romantic love ahead of ideal truth:
  she sacrificed her own integrity by giving everything to her lover

traditional tragedy: result of individual imperfection
romantic tragedy: result of oppression of evil society
transcendental tragedy: result of conflict of values:
Dimmesdale's orthodox morality vs. Hester's dream of freedom

novel deeply confused:
Hawthorne allowed his imagination to create an idealist heroine,
but wouldn't allow his conscious mind to justify her ideals:
damned her for being romantic, immoral
the wilderness is the precondition of a new morality of freedom,
an authentic American dream of a new life,
but Hawthorne got afraid, placated his conscience, couldn't permit such freedom

"Vengenance,"
From "Exposing Scarlet:
A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter"

Jonathan Arac on "The Politics of the Scarlet Letter,"
Ideology and Classic American Literature (1986):

the key to understanding the novel is neither psychology or Puritanism,

but the politics of 1850's

two years after writing the novel, Hawthorne published The Life of Franklin Pierce, an unequivocal endorsement of the Democratic candidate for president as an ideal combination of future and stability, "motion and regulation"

the "organization of inaction" of TSL takes its structure
of conflicting values from the political impasse of the 1850s
it makes literature intransitive, useless, harmless

like UTC, TSL is propaganda-> but the instruction is NOT to change your life!
TSL gets hung up on the contradictions between passion and principle
it takes its keynote from Hawthorne's political position, esp. regarding slavery:

"Hawthorne did not favor slavery; he only urged that nothing be done about it....as one of those evils which Providence...will cause to vanish like a dream"...he saw the Civil War as a "horrible convulsion for that which might come by gradual and peaceful change"

action is intolerable; character takes its place
the point of the plot is to erase and undo all action

Dimmesdale's emotional wavering, like Pierce's political "trimming"-->
the politics of issueless patience

in Hawthorne's preface, the novel is an autobiography
in Carpenter's version, it is about the frustrated desire
for transcendental freedom/individual integrity
in Arac's, it's about political inaction...

What do you think??
What intrigues you most about the text?
Which generic category is most helpful to you,
in thinking about what it does and
how it operates?

" Amaryllis,"
From "Exposing Scarlet:
A Visual Response to The Scarlet Letter"