1. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804~1864)

2. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804~1864)
Dark side of American Romanticism with E. A. Poe - suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most inherent natural qualities of humanity
2) Puritan Heritage as a sense of guilt - the author's great-great-grandfather, John Hawthorne, was one of the judges who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials.
3) His theme and form - historical romance + symbolism with psychological themes, bordering on surrealism with his negative view of the Transcendentalism movement (later works)
4) Four major romances - The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun(1860).

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804~1864)
"The style of Hawthorne is purity itself. His tone is singularly effective—wild, plaintive, thoughtful, and in full accordance with his themes... We look upon him as one of the few men of indisputable genius to whom our country has as yet given birth.“ (E. A. Poe)
"The fine thing in Hawthorne is that he cared for the deeper psychology, and that, in his way, he tried to become familiar with it.” (H. James)
"Of the American writers destined to live, he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind” (Evert Augustus Duyckinck)

4. The Scarlet Letter (1850)
● Scene - the summer of 1642, near Boston, Massachusetts, in a Puritan village
● Major Characters - Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl
● Meaning of “A”
1) Adultery 2) Agony 3) Atonement ) Angel ) Ability
● Meaning of the Names in The Scarlet Letter
1) Hester (=Esther) Prynne(=Principal or Principle)
2) Arthur Dimmesdale (=dim dale)
3) Roger Chillingworth (=chilling worth)
4) Pearl (=beautiful fruit of agony and patience)

5. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804~1864)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
● Major themes
1) Sin : Hester and Dimmesdale vs. Adam and Eve.
Hester’s sin - "her passport into regions where other women dared not tread", leading her to "speculate" about her society and herself more "boldly" than anyone else in New England.
(Femme fatal vs. Passionate Eve vs. Resisting Angel)
D’s sin - "sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his chest vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.”
(fallen Hypocrite vs. Innocent but tempted Adam vs. noble Repenter)
Chillingworth’s unpardonable sin like that of Satan
(wicked Stan vs. betrayed Idealist vs. revenging, distorted Intelligence)
Pearl as a symbol of Hope and everlasting Atonement

6. The Scarlet Letter (1850) 2) Past and present
"the soul and spirit of New England hardihood,“ and
"dim and dusky”
“the stern morality and rigidity of the Puritans” but
an instinctual connection to them, the heritage of the past
3) Puritan Legalism & Hester’s resistance against it
Hester’s thought – She believes that a person's earthly sins don't necessarily condemn them. She even goes so far as to tell Dimmesdale that their sin has been paid for by their daily penance and that their sin won't keep them from getting to heaven, however, the Puritans believed that such a sin surely condemns. Her thinking is free from religious bounds and she has established her own, different moral standards and beliefs.

7. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804~1864)
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
● Criticism
“there could not be a more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter.” (D. H. Lawrence)
"It is beautiful, admirable, extraordinary; it has in the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of as the mark of Hawthorne's best things--an indefinable purity and lightness of conception…the inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art” (Henry James)
…represents the height of Hawthorne's literary genius