The Scarlet letter - Essay Example

appears here] appears here] appears here] appears here] The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' has several allusions to Biblical characters as well as stories, particularly the Book of Esther. There are numerous connections between the book's character Hester and the biblical character Esther. Since Hawthorne was a member of a society for which the Bible had a finest standing in literature, 'The Scarlet Letter' might reverberate his desire to build a story portraying new world Puritanism that would corroborate and exemplify the tremendous textualization of that culture. Why does Hawthorne grant Hester Prynne the name Hester The query appears an unavoidable one for an author like Hawthorne, who works as a minimum partly in a Spenserian tradition of allegory. Dimmesdale's first name, Arthur, as well as Hawthorne's daughter's name, Una, proposes some of the influence of Spenser on Hawthorne's acts of baptism. Hawthorne himself, as is famous, changed his family name from Hathorne, to distance himself from those Puritan ancestors whose accomplishments and excesses haunted his creative writing. The Scarlet Letter enlightens of Roger Prynne's reinvention of himself by an act of naming: when he discovers his wife Hester in ignominy in the new world he takes on the name Chillingworth. Hester names Pearl with indication to the gospel of Matthew. The romance's fundamental symbol, conversely, the scarlet letter A, resists the kind of hermeneutic inflexibility that naming involves. As an initial letter, or merely as an initial, the A disreputably clues at all sorts of names while asserting none. As an immense orchestrator of meanings, Hawthorne is aware that names are complete and even stuffed of meanings, and he could in no means be thought to arrive at his characters' names indifferently. It is astonishing, then, that critics of Hawthorne have not cautiously thought about the question of Hester's name. (D. H. Lawrence, 1961, pp. 83-99). In "The Custom-House" Hawthorne conscriptions "the figure of that first ancestor," the Puritan "who came so early, with his Bible and his sword" (1:9), and The Scarlet Letter contributes intensely in Puritan Biblicism. Chillingworth recognizes himself as "the Daniel who shall expound" (1:62) the puzzle of the individuality of Pearl's father; on one more biblical - or maybe to a certain extent Miltonic level he is a version of Satan. Dimmesdale, when in the concluding gibbet scene he proclaims himself "the one sinner of the world" (1:254), turns out to be a Christ figure. Hester, depictions to the eyes of the multitude, is compared to "the image of Divine Maternity" (1:56); in the "Conclusion" Hawthorne plays with the thought of Hester as a prophetess. D. H. Lawrence found in Hester's seduction of Dimmesdale the tale of Eve's attraction of Adam to eat the prohibited fruit. The wall-hanging of the chamber shared by Dimmesdale and Chillingworth portrays "the Scriptural story of David and Bathesheba, and Nathan the Prophet" (1:126). The array of biblical intertexts may reveal Hawthorne's wish to write a story of new world Puritanism that would recognize and, furthermore, integrate the tremendous textualization of that society. The Puritans could conceivably merely be brought back to life in creative writing if the fiction were as saturated in the Bible as the Puritans were themselves. Thus far one key biblical intertext, the Book of Esther, which serves as a kind of sunken foundation or secreted scaffolding for Hawthorne's story, has been absent from discussion of The Scarlet Letter. That Hester is named for the biblical Queen Esther has been momentarily noted in a handful of vital studies, while it has most likely been quietly taken for granted by lots of more readers. The great differences in styles of biblical elucidation between the 17th century New England Puritans and their 19th century American descendants may have a tendency to obscure an emotional stability, a largely unbroken conviction in the Bible's moral authority and eventual understanding. In spite of such fundamental movements as Transcendentalism, which held the Bible to be no more sacred than other great writings, the Bible remained a legitimating as well as stabilizing force, and in the period prior to the Civil War it was called upon in multifaceted ways by the greatest American writers to legal and stabilize their texts. Moby Dick comes perhaps most right away to mind. However as Lawrence Buell illustrates in his study of "literary scripturism" in antebellum New England, writers as ideologically varied as Thoreau, Whitman, also Stowe intended to make of their writings a sort of scripture. (Lawrence Buell, 1986, pp. 166-190). Even though Emerson thought that the poet's task was, in Buell's words, "to write the ultimate Bible that has never yet been written," (Lawrence Buell, 1986, pp. 182). Emerson's age found in canonical Judaeo-Christian scripture an example for its new scriptures. The idea of scripture, of the introductory ur-text that ascertains and anchors, is expected to appeal in an era of technological change, social flux, as well as political uncertainty. A canonical biblical text like the Book of Esther founds for the Jewish people a vital episode of their history, and assists anchor the Jews' sense of themselves as the selected people in a larger fortunate history. By leaning on the Book of Esther, by asking to be read through the scrim and delineate of the Book of Esther, The Scarlet Letter places itself as a sort of updated scripture that have to be considered in the context of the broader leaning Buell illustrates in antebellum writing. Thus far if The Scarlet Letter has quasi-scriptural affectations they are undercut by the scarlet letter itself, the letter Hester is made to wear. Since a hermeneutically destabilized text, Hester's A hints at the interpretive unsteadiness of any text. Hawthorne emerges to throw into query his own plea to the authority of scripture to the grounding ur-text of the Book of Esther, by building of the A a symbol of authority's incapability to control interpretation. Hawthorne's problematizing of the scriptural will be vulnerable to more nuanced analysis once the links between The Scarlet Letter and its hidden scriptural underpinnings in the Book of Esther have been more completely brought out. (Sacvan Bercovitch, 1975, pp. 176, 242). These associations are widespread and indefinable, at once obvious and veiled. Not merely are there numerous threads that connect Esther and Hester, however Arthur Dimmesdale discovers a matching part in Mordechai (a religious leader of the Jews whose secret and indistinct relationship to Esther is never set on), as does Roger Chillingworth in Haman (who wreck himself in the course of a profligate revenge against Mordechai). Major similarity includes a central plot episode that the two texts share, likeness between the main characters, and thematic congruencies. The connections do not always lessen to an exact calculus; it may assist to remember Hawthorne's explanation in "The Custom-House" of the use he makes of the document of Surveyor Jonathan Pue: "I have allowed myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much license as if the facts had been entirely of my own invention. What I contend for is the authenticity of the outline" (1:33). Reference: D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923; repr. New York: The Viking Press, 1961), pp. 83-99. Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 166-190. Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), p. 182. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; J. M. Dent & Sons, 1906 Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 176, 242. Read More