La lettera scarlatta

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
Voto:	1.5 (2)
Download:	116
Data:	26.01.2001
Numero di pagine:	5
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

“… Let us pick one of its flowers and give it to the reader.
Hopefully, this sweet flower will serve to soften the dark tones
Of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.”
I thought it would be nice to quote these words which open the story, because they’re an anticipation of the themes of this novel and also because here we can see the feelings of the author when he thinks about this story. In my opinion he has not a Puritan mind, he feels a great pity on suffering people, especially if sorrow is the consequence of a beautiful feeling, such as love.

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The Author
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, from a puritan family. In 1825 he took degrees at the Bawdoin College . He had not a friendly character, and he was melancholic and introspective . He travelled, going to Boston, Liverpool and Italy. He is the first important novelist of American literature, even if his models are still English writers, like Spenser and Milton. But he had no luck with his first works: Fanshawe ,1828, Twice Told Tales ,1837, and Mosses from an old Manse ,1846. Even if the form of these works isn’t perfect, there are the themes which are fundamental in Hawthorne’s works: the contraposition between good and evil, the reason, the feelings, the instinct. The Scarlet Letter has been written in 1850 and it is Hawthorne’s masterpiece. Later he wrote The House of Seven Gables ,1851, tells about a family which lived under a curse. It’s not a strange theme for him, because his family also lived under the curse of a woman condemned to death in 1692. The writer was aware of this curse! In 1852 he wrote The Blithedale Romance and in 1860 he wrote The marble faun. When he came back to his country, in 1860, he wrote some essays about England: Our Old Home,1863, the Notebooks, published posthumous in three series: 1868, 1870, 1871. He wrote also books for children, like Famous Old People, 1841, and A wonder book , 1852. He died away from home, during a vacation with his friend, Franklin Pierce, on May 19th of 1864.
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The Scarlet Letter
The story of the publication
This novel was born when, as Hawthorne says, he found a package. When he opened it he found an old cloth and on the cloth there were traces of a letter A. He found also a lot of sheets where was written the story of the scarlet letter. In 1838 Hawthorne wrote some sketches on the characters and in 1850 the novel was published.
The plot
Hester Prynne, a woman who lived in Boston , has been condemned to wear, for her adultery, committed because she thought that her husband had been killed by indians, a scarlet letter on her breast. She didn’t want to reveal the name of her lover, the father of her child, who was Reverend Dimmesdale. But when her husband had been released by Indians and went to visit her, she made a promise: she would have hidden his real identity, so he could be free to change his name in Roger Chillingworth and could look for revenge, becoming the Reverend Dimmesdale’s assistant. In the meantime Hester and Pearl lived alone, excluded by society. After a long persecution, made by Roger Chillingworth, the reverend decided to pay for his sin, revealing Pearl’s father’s identity. But Mr Chillingworth had made a good work on Reverend’s body and spirit, so the Reverend died, leaving Hester, who died some years later, and the little Pearl. The Reverend and Hester had a common tombstone, where was written:
On a field, sable,
The letter A, gules.
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The characters
Nathaniel Hawtorne has created innovative characters and, it’s important, these characters represent something: they’re allegories.
Hester Prynne, is the greatest innovation of Hawthorne: she is a woman, but she is the protagonist of the story. She is strong, resolute and she is the author of her destiny. She becomes independent though the isolation caused by the sin. She came from England, from an old outlook, but she rebels to it: she represents the colonial mentality, the will to be free from the old mentality, from the old world.

Reverend Dimmesdale, Hester’s lover, is a slave of puritan rules, until he rebels against them, but when he rebels it’s too late: Hester and Pearl are margined by society and he is going to die. He represents the hypocrisy of the institutions and, in particular, the hypocrisy of religious institutions. In fact, for people, the reverend was a respectable person, but he was hiding a terrible secret
Pearl, the fruit of sin, is described in a strange way. He is a very intelligent girl, but she has something strange in her eyes, something mysterious which makes the reader think that the girl is a devilish creature. Maybe Pearl is the allegory of sin, in fact she is beautiful and intelligent and, apparently, normal, but she has something “wild and majestic”, or maybe she is the allegory of American future, she represents what Hester would have been: an American woman, free from the chains of the old world
Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, loses all human qualities, as the author wrote about him: “Chillingworth was a striking evidence of a man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil”
We have talked about the characters of the story, but we must remember that the real protagonist of this story is Sin, his causes and his consequences.
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The setting
Place: the story takes place in Boston, a settlement founded by Puritan people.
Time: the story develops between 1642 and 1649, the heart of American Puritanism.
Puritanism was a Protestant religious reform movement, which developed from English Church at the end of 16th century. Puritans wanted to make Church pure, refusing tha authority of Roman Pope and declaring the Bible the only source of truth. Puritanism is based on the theory of predestination, so success in life was seen as a sign of predestination of salvation; the people who committed sins were seen as predestined to damnation. At first Puritans where persecuted in England, so they desired some colonies in the New world. In 1629 they received a colony in new world and used it as a refuge for persecuted Puritans. During the years they founded a lot of colonies and persecuted their dissenters, punishing and banishing who committed a sin. Puritan culture is pervaded by superstitions, especially about witches. In this period a lot of women were condemned for witchcraft. This element is evidenced in the movie inspired by “ The scalet letter” more than in the book.
We must remember that if we know Hawthorne’s life, we can understand his choice of describing the Puritan world of Boston , in fact Hawthorne knows very well the Puritan outlook and he is able to give the reader a detailed description of the thoughts and the actions of the characters.
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The themes
In this novel the author talks about many universal themes, such as love, sex, sin, evil, punishment, rebellion, hypocrisy, revenge and hate. These themes are connected each other, as causes and consequences: love is the cause of sex, sex is the cause of sin, etc. In this way we arrive to hate, the opposite of love, caused by love itself. But love isn’t seen only as the cause of hate, love has a great power, it makes suffer Hester, but makes her strong. For love she doesn’t reveal Pearl’s father’s name and for the love that she has for her child she continues to work and suffer, isolated from society. Love has as a consequence sex, which is negative, in fact it’s the cause of Hester’s punishment, but it has also a positive side, it’s Pearl’s birth cause. Sin has different consequences for Hester and for the Reverend. Hester is punished for her sin, in fact she must wear a scarlet letter, her punishment isolates her and Pearl from the rest of society, but it makes her stronger. As concerning the Reverend, sin has punished him too, but his punishment is hidden, sin makes him hypocrite and victim of Chillingworth’s revenge. This situation brings to hate. Hate is not the conclusion of the novel, the conclusion is the tombstone of Hester and the Reverend, the contrast between death, hypocrisy, hate, which are represented by the black field, and love, which is represented by the scarlet letter.
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“…On a field, Sable,
The letter A, Gules.”

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