The Scarlett letter

Degouey 25/02/2014 Audrey Lsa The Scarlet Letter Chapter 3 "The Recognition" The Scarlet Letter is an american romantic novel of fiction, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in the mid-nineteenth century. It is considered to be his best work. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer from the nineteen century. He is a dark romantic (anti-transcendentalist) which means that he explores the psychological effects of guilt and sin, madness, derangement in the human psyche. The Scarlett letter is marked by this exploration. The story sets in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649. It relates the tale of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter, Pearl, through an adulterous affair with the minister of her church, Arthur Dimmesdale and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. The plot lies in the fact that the Hesther's husband comes back and decides to find out who is the father of Pearl in order to make him pay for the sin which he is guilty for with Hester. He does not reveal his real identity, but Hester recognizes him. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes as legalism, sin, guilt, a kind of feminism, alienation... In the chapter three, called "The Recognition" (which encapsulate the plot of the story), a man is presented as a stranger. Hester Prynne quickly recognize this man. In fact, it's her husband. He beckoned to her to say nothing and try to understand from a resident why Hester is exposed as a punishment (she has to wear a scarlett letter, the A of adultery on the public place). He then learns that she came here alone waiting for her husband and she had a child with another man. She refuses to reveal the identity of the father of the child and, therefore, she is the only to suffer the punishment of the puritan society in which she lives. Hester's husband decided to find the father of Pearl. In this chapter we have a third person, heterodiegetic narrator which implies at the same time distance and proximity and an internal focalization. There are in this chapter several tensions: first, the story takes place during the Puritan era (XVII century) but it is published two centuries later (mid-nineteenth century), so we can see a temporal tension. Secondly, we can find the american's relation to space (spacial tension), to the wildness, to the religion. Thridly, the pattern of duplicity (internal tension of the characters). Fourthly, the way narration is organize implying the vision's power (romantic aspect), for example, we watch a man watching. To what extent this extract of the Scarlet letter , work of Hawthorne, founder text of American literature, reflects a new form of romanticism through an original literary strategy ? First of all, contruction of characters on the fringe of society, which makes them desirable Secondly, the puritan society as a society which has a misconception of humanity. Finaly, the poetic of the Scarlet letter. First and foremost, the characters from the Chapter 3 of the Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne and "the white man" are presented as the margin of society. This process makes them desirable. So, Hester Prynne and the white man as the desiring ones. Hester Prynne is an object of desire in a society that severely punished sin. In fact, on the one hand she appears as an impure woman by her adultery, which is illustrated by Pearl (living symbol of Hester's sin), her daughter. This is a grave sin in the puritan society but in the other hand we can find a kind of purity in her desire to protect the father of Pearl and assume alone the fault. Thanks the omniscient narrator, we know everything about her from the outside but nothing of her inside (we don't know what she's thinking for example) which makes her even more desirable. Moreover, in a first way, Hester Prynne is represented as an object: "from this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation", "the wearer ot the scarlet letter". This representation may refer to the idea of an object of desire or raise the woman as an object of scandal which is not fundamentally opposed. We can also see Hester Prynne as a reincarnation of Antigone. In fact, In Greek mythology, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Oedipus' mother. She is the subject of a popular story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, even though he is seen as a traitor to Thebes and the law forbids even mourning for him, punishable by death. So, Hester Prynne can be consider as a romantic Antigone because she doesn't obey to the social order (particularly to the rules of puritan society) by two ways. First, she has a relation with an other man implying adultery, secondly, she refuses to give the name of the father. This silence can be view as an alienation (Position of someone who is deprived of what constitutes its essential being, its raison d'être, to live). Hester Prynne can be view as a romantic Antigone because she looks strong in front of the power, she does not accept what the society expects of her. She doesn't want her secret to be found out. The only possibili...