2. HISTORICAL CONTEXT
SUBDIVISION OF ROMANTICISM: GOTHIC LITERATURE, the “dark romantics”( )
-use of supernatural
-motif of double (both good and evil in
characters; sin and evil does exist)
-depression, dark forests
-Poe, Hawthorne, Melville
-emphasis on symbolism (which we will discuss later)

3. Allowed Hawthorne to deviate from reality in favor of imagination.
Thus The Scarlet Letter is not an historical novel about Puritan Boston, but a romance set 200 years before Hawthorne’s time in which he tells a tale that may have occurred, given some historical facts and many insights into human nature.

4. HISTORICAL CONTEXT 1800-1850: American Renaissance
Transcendentalism was a part of this…
His wife was a Transcendentalist and had some effect on his literature, and he also became friends with Transcendentalists in Concord, Emerson and Thoreau.
He also ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALIST/ GOTHIC, as exhibited in the novel.

5. Topics (later we will turn them into thematic statements).
ALIENATION
APPEARANCE VERSUS REALITY
BREAKING SOCIETY’S RULES
GUILT AND REVENGE

6. Puritan New England-1700s-time and place

7. City of Boston vs The Forest

8. Hawthorne cloaks The Scarlet Letter in a mood of somberness and foreboding.

9. Symbols

10. Although the “A” is the most prominent symbol in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne uses many other symbols throughout:
the novel.
the color black
the color red (scarlet)
the forest
the brook
the roses
Hester’s clothing, particularly her formal cap
Pearl’s clothing
Pearl’s name
golden embroidery on the “A”

11. Like all good pieces of literature, The Scarlet Letter contains irony
Like all good pieces of literature, The Scarlet Letter contains irony. Be on the lookout for it.