DOCSLIB.ORG

The Scarlet Letter

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Scarlet Letter THE SCARLET LETTER Nathaniel Hawthorne WHO WAS NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE? 1804-1864 Born in Salem, Massachusetts only child father died in 1804, while at sea he and his mother moved in with wealthy uncles leg injury kept Nathaniel down for several months, during this time he read as much as possible and decided to become a writer 1821-1825 – attended Bowdoin College met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Franklin Pierce (14th President) not a great student WHO WAS NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE? Early ancestor, William Hathorne, first came to America in 1630, settled in Salem, Massachusetts, was a judge known for harsh judgements William’s son John, Hathorne was one of the three judges during the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s Nathaniel added a “w” to his last name to distance himself from that side of the family WHO WAS NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE? Met Sophia Peabody a painter illustrator transcendentalist Spent time at Brook Farm community met Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau Married Sophia on July 9, 1842 Settled in Concord, Massachusetts 3 Children SETTING Books are like boats on a river… We must look at two parts of the river when learning about the setting of the book. Where the author lives or lived on the river. Where the book takes place along the river. SETTING Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that was developing by the late 1820s and '30s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest against the general state of intellectualism and spirituality. The doctrine of the Unitarian church as taught at Harvard Divinity School was of particular concern. SETTING Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. "Self-reliant" differs from the traditional usage of the word, however, and refers mainly to a fierce intellectual independence that believed itself capable of generating completely original insights with as little deference paid to past masters as possible.” SETTING Good books challenge us. Good books make us take what we think we know, and force us to think about it in a new way. A really good book will change us, for the better. The Scarlett Letter is such a book. It will look at guilt, grace, the meaning of the Puritan past on the American present, love and hate, the meaning of suffering, the struggle between freedom and authority, the ironies of love, and holy devotion. SETTING Written in 1850. The Civil War - 1861-1865. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglas (1845) (slavery) Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) (slavery) Representative Men, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850) (moral reform and personal perfection) Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1854) (moral reform and personal perfection) Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman (1855) (epic poem) Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851) (redefined novel) READING HOMEWORK The Scarlet Letter Supplemental Reading Forward Words of Delight none Preface Introduction Chapters 1-8 ENGRADE HOMEWORK none WRITTEN HOMEWORK List ten pieces of information about the setting that The Scarlet Letter is placed in. Write one to two sentences about each piece of information. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Hawthorne's Use of Mirror Symbolism in His Writings
    The Woman's College of The University of North Carolina LIBRARY CQ COLLEGE COLLECTION Gift of Jane './nicker lie lie tt KSLLSTT, JANS WHICKER. Hawthorne's Use of Mirror Symbolism in His Writings. (1968) Directed by Dr. Robert 0. Steohens. pp. 60 Ihroughout the course of Nathaniel Hawthorne's writin* one notes an extensive use of mirrors and other reflecting objects—brooks, lakes, fountains, pools, suits of armor, soao bubbles, the Duoils of oeople's eyes, and others. Surprisingly enough, few scholars and critics have had much to say about this slgnigiCRnt mirror symbolism; perhaps Hawthorne succeeded so well In concealing; these images that they exoress meaning without directing attention to their Dresence. Nevertheless, they are very much in evidence and for a very definite purpose. Hawthorne, whose works cover the problem of moral growth in man, was attempting to show mankind that only through an intense self-lntrosoectlon and self-examination of the interior of his Innermost bein°:—his heart—would he be able to live in an external world which often apoeared unintelligible to him; and through the utiliza- tion of mirror images., Hawthorne could often reveal truths hidden from the outer eyes of man. Hawthorne's Interest in mirrors is manifest from his earliest attempts in writing; indeed, he spoke of his imaerination as a mirror—it could reflect the fantasies from his haunted mind or the creations from his own heart. More Importantly, the mirror came to be for Hawthorne a kind of "magic" looking glass in which he could deoict settings, portray character, emphasize iraoortant moments, lend an air of the mysterious and the suoernatural, and disclose the meaning beneath the surface.
    [Show full text]
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown”: a Psychoanalytic
    Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”: A Psychoanalytic Reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” describes the maturation of its protagonist, Goodman Brown. Through a dream vision, Brown confronts his forefathers, his wife, and authoritative members of his town, and by the end of the story he has established his place in the community as an adult. The events of the dream vision are Brown’s “errand” to a witches’ Sabbath in “the heart of the dark wilderness” and his refusal to take communion from the devil. The psychological significance of the dream vision is less obvious: Through his journey, Brown becomes an adult in his community; though uninitiated at the Sabbath, he is fully initiated socially. This initiation results in a frozen emotional state as the “young” Goodman Brown becomes, overnight, an old and gloomy Goodman Brown, without hope through the end of his days. Ultimately “Young Goodman Brown” can be seen as Hawthorne reaching his own critical understanding of his Puritan ancestors. The conflict that Brown suffers during his journey in the woods is shown to be internal through the number of details that are projections of his unconscious. The devil’s arguments “seemed rather to spring from up in the bosom of his auditor”—that is, Brown himself. When “the echoes of the forest mocked him,” Brown is projecting his emotional state onto the forest. The further Brown sinks into despair, the clearer it becomes that what he sees and hears is to a large extent the product of his fancy. “Once [Brown] fancied that he could distinguish the accents of townspeople of his own,” but “the next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught” until “then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones.” Ultimately Brown himself is the “chief horror of the scene” created by his own mind in conflict.
    [Show full text]
  • The Scarlet Letter Summer Reading Questions
    THE SCARLET LETTER SUMMER READING QUESTIONS Complete the following questions in order as you read. Questions should not be rewritten. Answers do not have to be in complete sentences. Answers will be due on the first day of class. The purpose of these questions is to help keep you focused on your reading and to prepare you for the test over this text. Answers will be graded. The Scarlet Letter “The Custom-House” This introductory section describes the conditions that led the narrator to write The Scarlet Letter. The narrator, a young man, works in the Boston custom-house, a building that housed government officials in charge of documenting the import and export of goods into and out of the country and taxing those goods. The narrator’s co-workers are mostly old men with whom he has very little in common. One day, the narrator finds a red letter “A” and a manuscript by Jonathan Pue, a former employee of the custom- house, in a stack of old papers. The manuscript is the history of Hester Prynne, and the narrator believes that Pue’s ghost is speaking to him through the ages, exhorting him to write Hester’s story. While working at the custom-house, the narrator finds it difficult to write. However, after losing his job when a new president is elected, the narrator is able to settle down and write his tale. Chapters 1 & 2: “The Prison-Door” and “The Market-Place” 1. What are two of the first things that are built in a new colony? 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond the American Landscape: Tourism and the Significance of Hawthorne’S Travel Sketches
    The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 27 (2016) Copyright © 2016 Toshikazu Masunaga. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author. Beyond the American Landscape: Tourism and the Significance of Hawthorne’s Travel Sketches Toshikazu MASUNAGA* INTRODUCTION: 1832 After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1825, Nathaniel Hawthorne went back to his hometown, Salem, Massachusetts, where he concentrated on writing in order to become a professional writer. His early masterpieces such as “Young Goodman Brown” and “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” were written during the so-called solitary years from 1825 to 1837, and he viewed those Salem years of his literary apprenticeship as “a form of limbo, a long and weary imprisonment” (Mellow 36). But biographers of Hawthorne point out that this self-portrait of a solitary genius was partly invented by his “self-dramatizations” (E. H. Miller 87) to romanticize his younger days. In fact, he maintained social engagements, and his sister Elizabeth testified that “he was always social” (Stewart 38). He was more active and outgoing than his own fabricated self-image, and he even made several trips with his uncle Samuel Manning as well as by himself.1 While strenuously writing tales, he undertook an American grand tour alone, traveling around New England and upstate New York in 1832. He was one of those tourists who rushed to major tourist destinations of the day such as the Hudson Valley, Niagara Falls, and the White Mountains in order *Professor, Kwansei Gakuin University 1 2 TOSHIKAZU MASUNAGA to spend leisure time and to find cultural significance in the scenic beauty of the American natural landscape.
    [Show full text]
  • Chelliah.Pdf
    Merit Research Journal of Agricultural Science and Soil Sciences (ISSN: 2350 -2274) Vol. 5(11) pp. 116 -121, November, 2017 Available online http://meritresearchjournals.org/asss/index.htm Copyright © 2017 Merit Research Journals Review The Fictional Forte and L iterary Achievement of Nathaniel Hawthorne with a Focus on Spiritual Development through Sin and Suffering as Pictured in His Marble Faun: A Brief Analysis Dr. S. Chelliah, M. A., Ph.D Abstract Professor, Head and Chairperson, This paper is an attempt to examine the fictional art and forte of Natheniel School of English and Foreign Hawthorne with a special focus on his literary achievement and also languages and School of Indian spiritu al development attained through experience of sin, guilt and Languages, Department of English sufferings, by projecting him not only as an American novelist and short – and Comparative Literature, Madurai story writer but also a new England Puritan disapproving severe and harsh Kamaraj University MADURAI-21(TN)- India codes of the Puritan morality and a psychologi st delving deep into the study of human nature. It studies and reveals how Hawthorne used fiction as a E-mail: [email protected] me dium for pursuing poetic truth; that is the truth of human heart and used Mob: 9442621106/ 7339129324 his novel especially as a tale of human frailty and sorrow by pouring all the passion of his sensitive and lonely heart into his fictional composition. It finally attests to the fact that the outraged suffering humanity must learn to live with the blackness that lies everywhere beneath us. Key words: Fictional forte, curious coinci dence, spiritual development, sin, guilt, human suffering, Puritan morality, poetic truth, sensitive heart.
    [Show full text]
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Meiosis of Americanism in the Marble Faun
    Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism Volume 7 Issue 1 Article 15 2014 Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Meiosis of Americanism in The Marble Faun Rasoul Aliakbari Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Aliakbari, Rasoul (2014) "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Meiosis of Americanism in The Marble Faun," Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 15. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/criterion/vol7/iss1/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Meiosis of Americanism in The Marble Faun Rasoul Aliakbari Such genres as popular movies and video games often contain images of American superiority but this imagery, it should be noted, has not developed overnight; rather, it has its roots in the history of literary representation. To throw some light on this background, this paper emphasizes political reading of literary texts. In particular, I aim to provide a political response to a poetic dilemma that The Marble Faun (1860) features. In the preface to The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) professes his intention to set his new novel in Italy, which he views as the proper land for Romance, “as a sort of poetic or faery precinct” (viii). The American novelist downplays his native land as inappropriate for his narrative, as it possesses “no shadow, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity” (viii).
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching American Literature: a Journal of Theory and Practice Fall 2017 (9:2)
    Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice Fall 2017 (9:2) Ascending the Scaffold: Knowing and Judging in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter David Rampton, University of Ottawa, Canada Abstract: Reminding students that Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter begins with an exercise in public shaming helps them relate to the novel. It is set in the mid-17th century, a long time ago, yet the continuities persist. Hester Prynne is forced to mount the scaffold and expose herself and her child to the citizens of Boston, who want to see her degraded and to learn the name of her partner in moral crime. Today convicted criminals in the American justice system are routinely required to make a similar sort of public display. The desire to know how the battle between good and evil is going in Puritan Boston, Hawthorne says, is something that binds the community together and threatens to tear it apart. Knowing can mean sympathy and compassion, but it can also involve a pernicious desire to trespass in the interior of another's heart. Our exercises in close reading reveal that the desire to "know" someone, as the novel's slow motion "whodunit" clearly shows, can lead to deeper intimacy, or a denial of their quintessential humanity. Analyzing the shaming scenes that organize the narrative means helping students to see more clearly the structure of the novel, the issues at stake in it, and the ambiguities of guilt and innocence that dominate in our meditations on our own lives. Teaching The Scarlet Letter is one of the great experiences in the career of any teacher, for reasons that are not far to seek: it is arguably the most widely read 19th-century American novel; its subject, adultery, still has a magnetic attractiveness for us; and the story it narrates is firmly inscribed in the history of America and its culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Romantic Ameran Literature: Sources for Criticism. a Research Guide
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 329 984 CS 212 734 AUTHOR Van Noate, Judith, Comp. TITLE Romantic Ameran Literature: Sources for Criticism. A Research Guide. INSTITUTION North Carolina Univ., Charlotte. J. Murrey Atkins Library. PUB DATE 90 NOTE 23p.; For other guides in this series, see CS 212 732-739. Small print on some pages may affect legibility. PUB TYPE Guides - Non-Classroom Use (055)-- Reference Materials - Bibliographies (131) -- Reference Materials - Directories/Catalogs (132) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Authors; English Literature; Higher Education; Library Guides; *Library Materials; Library Skills; *Literary Criticism; *Nineteenth Century Literature; *Reference Materials; *Romanticism; *United States Literature IDENTIFIERS University of North Carolina Charlotte ABSTRACT This handcut is a guide to library resources in the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University ofNorth Carolina-Charlotte for the criticism of Romantic (19th century) American literature. The guide explains important referencesources in the Atkins library reference collection and howto find biographical and critical information in books andperiodicals. The guide's sections cover three sources of criticism: (1)general reference works (biographical and critical information);(2) books on individual authors and their work; and (3) indexesto criticism in periodicals. (SR) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the bestthat can be made from the original document. ***************************************************%***A***************
    [Show full text]
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Biography http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/henry_wadsworth_longfel... HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, whom Griswold describes as the greatest American poet, was born at Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807, and he died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 24, 1882. His father was of Puritan stock, and a lawyer by profession. He possessed the necessary wealth to give his children school opportunities. At the age of fourteen young Longfellow was sent to Bowdoin College, where he graduated at eighteen. He was a close student, as shown by the testimony of his classmate, the talented Nathaniel Hawthorne, also by the recollections of Mr. Packard, one of his teachers. These glimpses that we catch of the boy reveal a modest, refined, manly youth, devoted to study, of great personal charm, and gentle manners. It is the boy that the older man suggested. To look back upon him is to trace the broad and clear and beautiful river far up the green meadows to the limpid rill. His poetic taste and faculty were already Enlarge Picture apparent, and it is related that a version of an ode of Horace which he wrote in his Sophomore year so impressed one of the members of the examining board that when afterward a chair of modern languages was established in the college, he proposed as its incumbent the young Sophomore whose fluent verse he remembered. Before his name was suggested for the position of professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, he had studied law for a short time in his father's office. The position was gladly accepted, for the young poet seemed more at home in letters than in law.
    [Show full text]
  • The Scarlet Letter: Embroidering Transcendentalism and Anti-Transcendentalism Thread for an Early American World
    ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 474-479, May 2018 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0903.04 The Scarlet Letter: Embroidering Transcendentalism and Anti-transcendentalism Thread for an Early American World Ramtin Noor-Tehrani (Noor) Mahini Acalanes High School, Lafayette, California, USA Erin Barth Acalanes High School, Lafayette, California, USA Abstract—Published in 1850 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the dark romantic story of The Scarlet Letter was immediately met with success, and Hawthorne was recognized as the first fictional writer to truly represent American perspective and experience. At the time when most novelists focused on portraying the outside world, Hawthorne dwelled deeply in the innermost, hidden emotional and mental psyches of his characters. Despite being acquainted to both famed transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and married to the transcendentalist painter Sophia Peabody, Hawthorne was often referred to as anti- transcendentalist or dark romantic writer in The Scarlet Letter. Is he also influenced by the transcendentalist movement in his famed novel? Evidence shows that he is more transcendentalist than anti-transcendentalist in The Scarlet Letter. Index Terms—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl, transcendentalism, dark romanticism, anti-transcendentalism I. INTRODUCTION Riding the wave of heightened nationalism after the second independence war against Great Britain in 1812, Americans began to write their own school textbooks, celebrate the birth of American literature using American scenes and themes, and even establish their own American intellectual, philosophical, and social movements. One of these movements is the American transcendentalism that began in the mid-nineteenth century (1830-1860) in Boston and Concord of New England.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Troubled Joy' : the Paradox of the Female Figure in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Fiction
    'TROUBLED JOY' : THE PARADOX OF THE FEMALE FIGURE IN NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S FICTION by Sciretk ROSEMARY GABY B.A. Hons. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA NOVEMBER 1984 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Prefatory Note i Abstract .. ii Introduction .. 1 Background: The Figure of Woman in Nineteenth Century America 5 II Woman's Fatal Flaw: The Tales 25 III Hester Prynne 57 IV Zenobia and Priscilla 77 V Miriam and Hilda .. 96 Conclusion • • 115 Bibliography . 121 PREFATORY NOTE This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other higher degree or graduate diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except when due reference is made in the text of the thesis. (k9)9Acs-\ The style of presentation is primarily in accordance with the MLA Handbook (New York: Modern Language Association, 1977), but some features of style, notably the use of single quotation marks for quotations of words, phrases or short prose passages, have been determined by the Style Sheet of the Depart- ment of English, University of Tasmania. ABSTRACT The figure of woman is of central importance to the whole pre- sentation of meaning in Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction. In comparison to other writers of the nineteenth century, and especially his male compatriots, Hawthorne grants the female figure a remarkable degree of prominence and significance in his works. His presentation of woman is noteworthy not only for the depth and subtlety with which his female characters are portrayed but also for the unique way in which he mani- pulates the standard female stereotypes to explore through symbolic suggestion the whole purpose of woman's existence and the foundations of her relations with man.
    [Show full text]
  • Teacher's Guide to the Scarlet Letter
    A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO THE SIGNET CLASSIC EDITION OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S THE SCARLET LETTER By ELIZABETH POE, Ph.D. SERIES EDITORS: W. GEIGER ELLIS, ED.D., UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, EMERITUS and ARTHEA J. S. REED, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, RETIRED A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter 2 INTRODUCTION Although written almost 150 years ago, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter contains concepts and insights relevant to contemporary readers. The themes of alienation and breaking society’s rules are ones to which many teenagers can readily relate. Viewed in this light, the novel can be approached as the story of a woman who let her heart rule her head and suffered the consequences. Hester Prynne’s plight can arouse sympathy, Arthur Dimmesdale’s hypocrisy can provoke anger, and Roger Chillingworth’s evil revenge can elicit disgust among today’s high school readers. This teacher’s guide presents a teaching approach to The Scarlet Letter that encourages student involvement. Rather than treating The Scarlet Letter as an artifact we must study as a cultural obligation, this approach emphasizes the significance this classic literary work holds for the lives of its readers. Many of the activities suggested in this teacher’s guide are inductive. They frequently focus primarily upon the individual reader’s experience while reading the work and the sharing of these experiences with other readers. The approach incorporates reading, writing, speaking, listening, and creative thinking as they relate to the literary work. This guide is divided into three sections.
    [Show full text]