***Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- Nathaniel Hawthorne 's "The Scarlet Letter"
Book Review
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vintage Books, New York, 1952
I started off a review of the more famous of 19th American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories by noting that the old social democratic literary critic and editor of “Dissent”, Irving Howe, once noted that Mark Twain, and his post-Civil War works represented a dramatic break from the Euro-centric ante bellum American literary establishment. And on this question I agree with him. As I do on his choice of Nathaniel Hawthorne as an exemplar of that tradition. Certainly his most famous work, “The Scarlet Letter”, reflects that European influence, and is justly place in the pantheon of that handful of important works that emerged in the early days of the American Republic.
One of the of clearest links between the ante bellum American literary establishment and the European tradition, especially from the English tradition was the need to pose and resolve some high moral question. And of course what is simpler to do that go back to the stark and isolated foundations of the white American tradition, the Puritan tradition. I know that if I were a writer and I wanted to dramatically portray the effects that physically isolated (and isolating) religiously-driven communities have on the individual, and on individual choice, those Puritan settlements from Cape Cod to Salem on the coast of Massachusetts in the 1600s would, at least get my serious consideration. (As they did as well for a serious sociologist like Max Weber whose appendices to his The Protestant Ethic And The Rise Of Capitalism contained a tresure of such material.)
So that, in part is what drives the action (if one can use that term usefully here) of a woman (naturally) banished (maybe shunned is better)from the tight-knit community (or so they claimed) by running off and having an affair with Mr. X. Now today that would create in the reader nothing but a big yawn, and maybe some spicy gossip, but hardly banishment, and hardly the necessity to wear a badge of courage sewn on your dress. Except maybe today one would advertise that status and place a video on “YouTube”. And that is my moral point.
Hester Prynne did not deserve the social opprobrium of the religious fundamentalists of her day. But old Hawthorne did a great service by creating a masterpiece to point out that moral ambiguity and dilemma back in the days.
Book Review
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Vintage Books, New York, 1952
I started off a review of the more famous of 19th American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories by noting that the old social democratic literary critic and editor of “Dissent”, Irving Howe, once noted that Mark Twain, and his post-Civil War works represented a dramatic break from the Euro-centric ante bellum American literary establishment. And on this question I agree with him. As I do on his choice of Nathaniel Hawthorne as an exemplar of that tradition. Certainly his most famous work, “The Scarlet Letter”, reflects that European influence, and is justly place in the pantheon of that handful of important works that emerged in the early days of the American Republic.
One of the of clearest links between the ante bellum American literary establishment and the European tradition, especially from the English tradition was the need to pose and resolve some high moral question. And of course what is simpler to do that go back to the stark and isolated foundations of the white American tradition, the Puritan tradition. I know that if I were a writer and I wanted to dramatically portray the effects that physically isolated (and isolating) religiously-driven communities have on the individual, and on individual choice, those Puritan settlements from Cape Cod to Salem on the coast of Massachusetts in the 1600s would, at least get my serious consideration. (As they did as well for a serious sociologist like Max Weber whose appendices to his The Protestant Ethic And The Rise Of Capitalism contained a tresure of such material.)
So that, in part is what drives the action (if one can use that term usefully here) of a woman (naturally) banished (maybe shunned is better)from the tight-knit community (or so they claimed) by running off and having an affair with Mr. X. Now today that would create in the reader nothing but a big yawn, and maybe some spicy gossip, but hardly banishment, and hardly the necessity to wear a badge of courage sewn on your dress. Except maybe today one would advertise that status and place a video on “YouTube”. And that is my moral point.
Hester Prynne did not deserve the social opprobrium of the religious fundamentalists of her day. But old Hawthorne did a great service by creating a masterpiece to point out that moral ambiguity and dilemma back in the days.
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