book: The Scarlet Letter (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)

book: The Scarlet Letter (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) | Nathaniel Hawthorne ...

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	• The Scarlet Letter (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism) Nathaniel Hawthorne Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005 - 528 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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What Good Or Healthy Things Will You Sacrifice To Please Your Community?

I like the cover of this publication of the novel and related writings because it places the focus where the focus should be - on an abandoned mother and an innocent child. It does not focus on the community's over zealous, unwarranted, and destructive symbol of shame (as most other covers do). The Scarlet Letter raises universal questions. The questions Hester Prynne faced every day of her life were:

1) What good parts of yourself do the people close to you and the people in your community want you to silence or kill?

Her community forced her to wear the label of "A" for the rest of her life, to signal that she was second rate, shamed, and fallen. They wanted her to be dominantly defined by her one choice rather than by all the many good character choices she made before or after that choice. But she liked the parts of herself that loved her child and her lover. She did not wish to exclude either of them. Her community was constantly trying to persuade her that her internal reasoning and love for herself, her child, and her lover were flawed and sinful. Hester responded by embroidering her A to make it beautiful. She could not give up or kill those parts of herself.

2) What healthy relationships with others do your community pressure you to cut off or condemn?

Hester Prynne was repeatedly publicly vilified and tortured in attempts to get her to reveal the father of her baby. Her child was labeled as not legitimate, not a full human being deserving of full honor or recognition. The church threatened to take Hester's only child "Pearl" away (Pearl - a jewel created in response to a foreign embedded object) if she did not conform.

But Hester refused to join the community in shaming the child or the father. She continued to love both the father and the child. She stayed in communication with both as much as she could (without bringing shame to the father). She refused to cut off either of those relationships. And because she did not consider the father's acts to be sins deserving of the punishment the community would give, she hid the father's identity and chose to live a life where she was ridiculed and disdained by her whole community.

There are not many people, men or women, of Hester Prynne's individual strength of character in the real world. But there are good reasons why her adulterous story has resonated for so many years. Her response to adultery reminds me of another great teacher who was presented with an woman caught in the act of adultery. Having great knowledge and understanding of the complexities of love and human connections, his response at that moment was to neither condemn adultery or the adulteress, but rather to say, "Let him that is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her."

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This volume presents the authoritative Centenary Edition text of Hawthorne?s classic 1851 novel, along with critical essays that read The Scarlet Letter from contemporary reader-response, psychoanalytic, feminist, and new historicist perspectives. Three brief additional essays demonstrate how several critical perspectives can be combined. As in the first edition, the text and essays are complemented by biographical and critical introductions, bibliographies, and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms. Five of the seven essays are new to the second edition, as is a selection of cultural documents and illustrations.

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