- Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Romanticism and Puritans
Introduction
"The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most important novels in American literature, and it is considered Hawthorne's masterpiece. Generations have read the book and in many ways it has shaped the consciousness and the view on the Puritan society as a strickly religious and intolerant. Today in 2009 the book still seems relevant because the themes in the novel such as faith, sin and society's rejection of different people are still present today. At the same time the books description of Massachusetts in the 1600s is used as a historical source as well.
This essay has a focus on how religion and the morals of the Puritans influenced the society. I have tried to examine the Puritans a little closer and find out whether "The Scarlet Letter" is historically accurate or if the Puritans were different from the description of them in the novel.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne is considered one of the most one of the most important authors in American literature. He was born and raised in the former colonial city Salem, which is famous for its witch trials in the late 17th century. His great-great grandfather was John Hathorne (without a "w"), who presided over the trials. When he was 4 years old Hawthorne’s own father died on a voyage at sea, and he was hereafter raised in poverty with his mother. This is a theme that is later covered in his works such as "The Scarlet Letter", where the girl Pearl is raised alone with her mother Hester Prynne. Between 1847 and 1849 Hawthorne worked at the Salem Custom House where he wrote the "Scarlet Letter". In chapter 1 "The Custom-House" the narrator is identified as a worker at the Custom House in Salem. This might very well be Hawthorne himself, but the case of Hester Prynne is not authentic.
Hawthorne wanted his literature to confront "the depths of our modern nature" (Kirszner & Mandell p. 302), and in "The Scarlet Letter" he confronts his own history and his hometown's dark past.
American Romanticism
Hawthorne became a part of the transcendentalism and the American romanticism in the 19th century, where the authors wrote about the relationship between philosophy, religion and nature. The idea that mankind is good but the civilization destroys it can be seen in “The Scarlet Letter”, where Hester Prynne is kept down by the surrounding society even though she is a good-hearted mother.
One characteristic feature in his work is the imagery of the forest contra the town, which is used to describe the evil and profane contra the good and the faith in God. In "The Scarlet Letter" the forest is where Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale meet secretly and where they can speak openly and express their feelings toward each other. This is also a feature in the romanticism where human kind goes back to nature for inspiration and wisdom in contrast to the unnatural constraints of society. This movement was inspired by the many changes in society made by the American Revolution and the French Revolution that ended the old conviction of the monarchy as God’s chosen rulers. Therefore Romanticism also tended to turn the world upside down, and make things more black and white than they actually were. In the case of Salem, the hysteria of witch trials lasted only in the year of 1692, and Hawthorne makes the distinction between good and bad very sharp. His short story “Young Goodman Brown” is a classic example of this distinction, where the main character refuses to see other than the good and the bad, and he has to choose between the two.
The Scarlet Letter
The setting of “The Scarlet Letter” is the small town of Salem in Massachusetts. It takes place in the 1600s when the puritans had arrived in New England.
Usually, a novel begins with an exposition, which gives the reader the basic information before the crisis and the climax occurs. "The Scarlet Letter" does provide some information in the introduction chapter, but the crisis and the dilemma in this novel comes very early when Hester Prynne, with her new-born child Pearl, comes out of the prison-door with a cloth around her bosom with the letter A. Her crime is adultery. She has born a child whose father she will not reveal. All the while she was married to another man, whom she apparently did not love. Now she has to raise Pearl alone and try to make a living outside of the respectable society. Her punishment is to carry the scarlet letter all the time. During the story we also follow the minister Arthur Dimmesdale's downfall. At first when he appears at the balcony and speaks to Hester Prynne and strongly encourage her to say the name of the father, he is young, healthy, well-spoken and very sure of himself. As time goes by he gets a nervous breakdown and becomes sick and very uncertain of himself. All because he has a burden and a secret that he is the father to Hester Prynne's child Pearl. His condition gets worse and worse because he gets mentally tortured by the physician Roger Chillingworth who appears to be Hester Prynne's husband. The point of no return is when Mr. Dimmesdale and Hester meets in the forest and decides that they need to escape Salem and go to the motherland England to start a new life together with Pearl as a family. Unfortunately their plans are not fulfilled. Chillingworth finds out about the plans and decides to go with them on the ship. Dimmesdale dies right after his final speak to the people of Salem, and after that Hester stays in the town. The final speak from Dimmesdale is essential to the story because he speaks of the merciful God who, by sending Chillingworth to the town, has punished him for his sins and brought him pain, so he could later be safed. When he dies Chillingworth's work is done, and he has nothing to live for. Before he passes away his last will is to give most of his property to Pearl, the duaghter of Hester and Dimmesdale. This might suggest that he realized that the love of Hester and Dimmesdale was not all evil and wrong, and that the result, Pearl, should not live in poverty because of her parents' sins.
"The Scarlet Letter" suggests that the Puritan society was inhuman and strictly religious. It punished the young woman for her sin and justified it in the name of God. Arthur Dimmesdale breaks down because he live in a world where the is no middle course - only white and black, good and evil. He believes that he has no place in the world because in society he belongs to the good side, but in reality he belongs to the evil side because of his unconfessed sin. Hester Prynne is on the outside noble and hardworking but she is still kept out of society because of her sin. In this environment the daughter Pearl is raised with this sharp distinction between good and evil. Hester and Dimmesdale represents this middle course because they are both warm hearted, good spirited and well behaved, but they cannot escape what they have done and their surroundings does not offer a place for them.
Many descriptions of this society might be true and accurate, but some things seems a bit exaggerated. This is Hawthorne's way of dealing with the dark past of his own hometown Salem, and his own family who was heavily involved with the witch trials in 1692.
The Puritans
The Puritans in "The Scarlet Letter" is described as very dark and religious people, who oppressed others and who saw the world as only good or evil. Hawthorne might be right in some of the aspects but later historians have revised this view and tried to look at the puritans in a different perspective.
Samuel Eliot Morison's essay "Puritanism and the Life of the Mind" suggests that the Puritan society was far more sympathetic, tolerant and full of life than the posterity look upon it. First Morison argues that the intellectual life was stimulated by a lot of arts like literature and paintings. Later he argues that the Puritans' attitude towards love was more relaxed and that they did not hold with asceticism and celibacy. The women were more equal with men compared to other societies at the time, and they had a right to expect something from their husbands when they got married. It was also much easier to get a divorce in the Puritan society compared to the old England they left behind. Morison notes that the Puritans outlawed certain forms of arts: Drama, religious music and erotic poetry, but they were still had a more developed cultural life than other places in the world. The grammar schools and the college made the pupils love the classic humanist literature like Homer, Cicero and Virgil.
Morison also uses facts like the establishment of Thanksgiving and the fact that alcohol was not illegal to support his overall argument: "There was much opportunity for love and laughter in colonial New England" (Hall 2, p. 24).
Conclusion
"The Scarlet Letter" is a very exciting and fascinating novel full of descriptions of the Puritan society. Nathaniel Hawthorne managed to capture some of the characteristics of society and the old manners and customs, and turn it into a sad and tragic love story. His goal was probably to expose the dark past from his homewtown and his own family in order for the soceity to learn and to move on.
Looking at the Puritan society one can easily see several signs of the massive religious influence. The reason why they immigrated in the first place was to escape the Church of England and to make the new world better than the old world. They tried to reach this goal by making a society that was very different. The architecture was kept simple and they refused for a long time to build churches. Instead they had the worshipping and the services held in the Meeting Houses. The clothes at the time suggest that the people kept themselves noble and tried not to stand out in the crowd. When reading about the witch trials and reading "The Scarlet Letter" in the 21st century one could easily conclude that the society was inhuman and highly intolerant. However, the essay examined in this scrapbook, Morison's "Puritanism and the Life of the Mind", finds that the society back then was actually much more sympathetic than people afterwards have claimed. A good guess would probably be somewhere in the middle. As long as you did not stand out and you did not make troubles like Anne Hutchinson did, the Puritan society was probably a allright place to be.
Bibliography
Literature:
Abrams, Ann Uhry: The Pilgrims and Pocahontas, Westview Press 1999
Chamberlain, Samuel: The New England Image, Hastings House Publishers Inc 1962
Fennelly, Catherine: Life in an Old New England Country Village, Old Sturbridge Inc., 1969
Garden, Allen: Puritan Christianity ion America, Baker Book House Company 1990
Hall, David (Editor): Puritanism in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts, Holt, Rinehart and Winston Inc., 1968
Hall, David (Editor): Puritans in the New World, Princeton University Press 2004
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter, Dover Publications Inc. 1994
Jones, Jacqueline, Peter H. Wood, Thomas Borstelmann, Elaine Tyler May, Vicki L. Ruiz: Created Equal, Pearson Education 2006
Kirszner, Laurie G., Stephen Mandell: Portable Literature, Thomsom Wadsworth, 6. Edition 2006
Wertenbakker, Thomas J.: The Puritan Oligarchy, Charles Scribner's Sons 1947
Wood, Joseph S.: The New England Village, The John Hopkins University Press 1997
Internet:
http://teachpol.tcnj.edu
http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/archives
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/ron/american_lit1
http://etext.virginia.edu
