[ Silence ]
>> Alright.
Thanks, everybody, for coming.
It's hard for me to do this
in a-- to an empty room.
So let's--
[ Pause ]
>> If you wouldn't mind.
[ Pause ]
>> Alright.
So last time, we were talking
a little bit about allegory.
And I suggested to you that
Young Goodman Brown was a kind
of manipulation of the
allegorical mode by Hawthorne.
And you can see that
it's quite a bit earlier
than the Scarlet Letter.
But one of the things I
suggested was that in moving
from the Celestial Railroad
to Young Goodman Brown,
Hawthorne is making
less use for--
less use of allegorical
techniques.
Alright, I mean, in
the Celestial Railroad,
he really do-- does
want you to think
that Mr. Smooth-it-away
represents a kind of tendency
of intellectuals to
smooth away problems.
And here, we might think of
Emerson's perhaps undervaluing
or underestimating the
power of evil, which is one
of the critiques that have
often been launched at Emerson.
And in Young Goodman Brown,
it's almost as if
they're pulling back,
the allegorical dreamer
is now being observed,
and what we're looking at is
a group of people who seem
to see the world in allegorical
terms, mapping one thing
on to another and
therefore, following a logic
that we might think of as being
very much marked by either/or.
And so, the Young Goodman Brown
can believe one of two things:
Either his wife and his
neighbors are good virtuous
puritans or at the other end
of the scale, what the dark man
in the forests says, that
evil is the nature of mankind.
Alright, there's no in
between space there.
It's kind of either or.
And Goodman Brown, thinking as
an allegorist, has trained--
has been trained to think
of the worst, right?
Or you might say it's
this, is that the--
that this logic of either or
works in a particular way,
which is that once you've
thought of the thing
to which one level points-- so
you say outward behavior points
to the fact that what these
people are actually doing
in their real lives
is hanging out
and being the devil's disciples,
there's no going back.
And what we tend to
have is a kind of--
a coloration of the
entire system by the idea
that evil is the
nature of mankind.
So that, in some sense, is
the way that allegory works.
Once we realize that
Christian story
in Pilgrim's Progress is
really about the progress
of the Christian soul,
it's hard to go back
and simply enjoy
it for the plot.
That secondary level turns
out to be the primary
level and takes over.
That's what happens to
Young Goodman Brown.
But what I suggested to you is
that the story doesn't
really want us to come away,
I don't think, believing that
evil is the nature of mankind.
It's really a kind of
dramatization of what it's
like to be amongst a group
of people who are inclined
to believe that evil is the
nature of mankind, and who,
in some sense, when
push comes to shove,
find themselves unable
to be redeemed.
I mean, Young Goodman
Brown cannot redeem himself
from that kind of thinking.
So that even though outwardly,
he seems to have a full
and happy life, he's much for
love and he has many neighbors,
people come to his funeral,
he has a big family, his--
you know, his final
days were all gloom.
And that's the idea
that behind it--
that there's something wrong
with living in this way.
And I wanna suggest to you
that the Scarlet Letter is
actually a further exploration
of this idea, and it's a
text that is very interested
in what we might think of
as the idea of the liminal,
being in between one
state and another.
Liminal comes from
the Latin word "limin"
which means threshold.
And it's a novel
that's very interested
in what we might think
of as threshold states,
states where you're
about to crossover
from one state into another.
That almost seems like
a kind of possibility.
So I would say to
you that Hawthorne
in some respect is very much
interested in and in sympathy
with that portion of the
Emersonian project that is all
about crossing and power being--
ceasing in the instant of repose
and dark-- and being in
the-- darting to an aim,
the shooting of a golf.
He's interested in those in
between states, which are states
of potential, states
of possible becoming.
But I think he is
a little skeptical
about how possible it is for
us to break out of the kind
of retrospective thinking
that Emerson points out
and then suggest
that we move beyond.
There's a moment you
could probably remember
in The Scarlet Letter where
Hester urges Dimmesdale
to begin all a new,
let's start again.
But it doesn't turn
out to be that simple.
And I think Hawthorne
is interested in some
of the constraints that
are in place, right.
So there's a sense in which
having a logic of both end,
which I'm suggesting
is the logic
of Hawthorne's romance is a kind
of hybrid logic that means--
it gets us out of this
logic of either or
but it means we can't get
rid of either possibility.
It's therefore a
logic that's built
of certain kind of compromise.
And we might remember that this
book in being written in 1850
which is again the
same time of--
that The Compromise of
1850 is being passed.
So I think there is a
connection between the kind
of cultural energies that are
seeking to preserve the union
and seeking to find
forms of compromise
in the decade beginning in 1850
and Hawthorne's romance project.
I mean, in his own life
there are certain things
and certain ways in
which Hawthorne like--
the country decides to
defer certain issues.
For example, he writes
a campaign biography
for his friend Franklin Pierce,
who's running for president
and in it he talks
about slavery.
And he finally decides that
slavery is not something
that we can deal with now, that
it will be dealt with by God
in the fullness of time.
So, you might say like the
Founders he understands
that slavery is a problem
but unlike Stowe he
is not suggesting
that there is anything
that we can do about it
at the present moment.
There's a kind of logic of
deferral and compromise even
in Hawthorne's writing
that isn't about fiction.
And I guess, you know, scholars
have suggested that in fact
that they form part
of a web of discourse.
And that some of the
cultural energies
of compromise work their way
into Hawthorne's romances
and that Hawthorne's
romances enable us to see
that there is a kind of larger
cultural logic compromise
that people are attempting
to promote in this period,
it doesn't work as we know.
But that's one of the things
that seem to be going on.
In other words, if
Emerson is a force
for unbridled individualism it
is not possible in this novel
to be an unbridled
individualist,
attractive as that
may seem at times.
There's a name that
Hawthorne gives to that kind
of unbridled individualism.
It's antinomianism
which still has a kind
of cultural resonance.
And remember that
Emerson himself suggest
that we need be aware
of antinomianism, right.
He may be more in sympathy
with antinomian principles
than he would like to let on but
he wants to avoid that label.
Hawthorne understands
that there needs
to be a certain kind
of give and take.
So you might think that there
are certain ways in which--
what for Emerson are
almost intolerable bonds.
Society is just unnecessary
evil.
Hawthorne understands that some
ways the social constraints can
be enabling constraints
and that I think is part
of what he is dramatizing in
The Scarlet Letter, right.
Now, that's one thing to
bear in mind as the overall--
as one of the overall framing
ideas of The Scarlet Letter.
The other is something that
takes us back to Irving.
The idea that we are still
trying to create a form
of writing that we will think
of as distinct from those genres
of history and biography and
criticism and philosophy.
We're still looking
to create something
that now we call the literary
and Hawthorne is part of the--
what we know call
American romanticism.
He is part of a project that
we refer back in this course
to Irving at least and
perhaps even back to Brown.
But remember what
Irving is trying to do
in the history of New York.
He is writing something that
is gonna be a blend of history,
local knowledge which may be
wouldn't normally be dignified
by the name of history and out
the out imaginative thinking.
And he created in such a way
that it has this logic
of both end, right?
So that when you bring together
the imaginative materials
with the historical
materials you have the effect
of privileging the
imaginative material
because now you can't
tell what's real
and what's imaginative.
There's a kind of shift
of authority that's going
on within Irving's
text, away from facts
and historical objectivity
towards something else.
In Hawthorne's case it
would be called romance.
But you might remember that
gesture that Irving makes
at the end of book one of
the history when he talks
about the task of a historian
being not unlike the task
of the knight in shining armor
who has to defeat a number
of enemies in order to
proceed on with his history.
And remember he uses that
word threshold, right.
He's on the threshold
of his history.
But he has to take
care of those things.
>> So he is already
invoking the world,
in that case, of
chivalric romance.
Hawthorne is gonna take
the idea of romance
and push it even further to what
we now think of as the literary.
And he is doing this
very consciously.
As we said last time, knowing
that the novel has a
particular meaning in this time,
its linked do domestic
experience,
it's linked to writing of a kind
of sentimentality
that Stowe does.
He wants to move writing
away from that direction.
So he doesn't-- novel for
him is a debased term.
He promotes this term romance.
And you can see in
The Scarlet Letter
which is a much longer version
of that preface to The House
of the Seven Gables
that we looked at,
that some of the same things
are going on in this document.
The Scarlet Letter I
guess was intended really
to be only the story proper.
So in like-- in quotes rather
than italics, it was intended
to be simply one story
within a collection
and there's a reference to that,
the longest of the
tales included here
in this Custom House preface
which seems a little bit
anachronistic, and it is.
It's because that was set
before Hawthorne decided
to enlarge The Scarlet
Letter story
into something approaching
a novel itself
and he couldn't go back and
change the original text
so he was stuck with it.
But the-- and the other stories
weren't ended up being written.
So there's something about this.
It does a little bit
of the Stowe idea
of Hawthorne getting kind
of drawn into this story
and almost carried away with it.
Although you can see that unlike
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin the
Scarlet Letter is actually
fairly tightly structured.
And there are many ways in
which it's a quite economical
narrative, even though a lot of
its syntax seems to be expansive
in the way that it has a
habit of kind of laying
out a possibility,
considering the possibility,
perhaps withdrawing the
possibility and again
that syntax itself, we'll
look at some examples,
is an example of both end.
You know, is Hester Prynne
like the Virgin and Child?
Well, she might remind you of
that, but not really, right?
She's the opposite of
the Virgin and Child.
But just couching-in
in those terms means
that you can't get Virgin
and Child out of your head.
So a connection is made.
It isn't fully erased verbally.
Once he's done with saying, oh,
but it's the opposite, okay.
And that's Hawthorne's--
there's something paraleptic
about Hawthorne's
general technique
and I think it's something
that's worth bearing in mind.
So The Custom House preface has
some of that Irving like effect.
It's meant to create
a sense of authority.
It means it's linked
to Hawthorne's personal
life supposedly.
And it creates this idea that
what we are seeing is a story
that he has discovered
rather than invented.
Take a look on page 1353 at the
beginning of The Custom House
if you've got your anthology
with you and you will see
that he starts talking about
what he's doing here right away.
This is how its
self-consciousness about.
And one of the things
that we realized
when we enter the Scarlet
Letter through the doorway
that is The Custom
House is that we are
in the 19th Century
not in the 17th.
And one of the things that
you might say marks the volume
as a whole is a sense
of in betweenness.
We start off in the
19th Century.
We go to the 17th Century
but I think we have the sense
having read The Custom House
preface that in fact we
never really leave the 19th
century behind.
That there's a certain
way in which
for one thing the
whole thing is marked
by the 19th century context
in which Hawthorne is writing,
as students of literary
history would think this.
But even that-- that
there's maybe a sense
in which Hawthorne
is again inviting us
to allegory in one certain way.
He might well be asking us
to think of his long story
of the 17th century as
something like a kind
of allegory of the 19th.
Although I would suggest that's
it's more than that-- it's--
he's talking about it
both at the same time.
There's a critique of the 17th
century, there's a critique
of the 19th century
and finally they seem
to exist on similar terms.
Both provide certain
kinds of constraints
on the individual
and on the artist.
Some of those are gonna
be disabling and a few
of those are gonna
be enabling, right.
So again there's that
sense of in betweenness,
both contexts are being evoked
and that's part of the work
that The Custom House
preface does.
In the first full paragraph
on 1353 he talks a little bit
about what he's doing.
It will be seen likewise,
that this Custom-House sketch
has a certain propriety
of a kind always
recognized in literature,
as explaining how
a large portion
of the following pages
came into my possession
and is offering proofs
of the authenticity
of the narrative
therein contained, right.
Now think about that.
Always recognizing literature
and that will show
you a little bit
about the instability
of the term.
And we no longer think
that literature demands
these kinds of proofs.
But Hawthorne is arising out of
a novelistic context in which
in fact its something
that were gonna be thought
of as literature it had to
have a closer relation to truth
than you might say, we
customarily think it needs to.
So the frequently, in the
early republic, you know,
say even 50 years before
Hawthorne's writing,
novels are not only published
anonymously but they're often--
they include this sort of claims
about relationship to the truth,
you know, based on a true story.
We still see this periodically.
But then it was very important
to say this is based
on a true story.
Or it was based on
a series of facts
that had become widely known.
And so there's a way in
which Hawthorne is trying
to move outside of that
while still drawing on it.
So we have a little bit of
the sense of attestation
that was necessary for people
like Whitley and for Rowlandson
and even for Bradstreet
and we suggest well,
why is Hawthorne a
white guy after all,
needing to have this
kind of attestation?
Well, notice that he is
able to give it himself.
So he is posed in the position
of sort of you might say master
or authority figure
and outsider.
But it's precisely as-- in
so far as he is an artist
and a writer that he is figuring
himself as an outsider, right.
So similar things that we
have said were very true
about people like-- literary
true of the people like Whitley
and Rowlandson and Douglas,
right, that they are outsiders;
they need to be authorized
to speak.
Even you might say the people
that we now think
of as insiders.
All the canonized white male
writers still have this kind
of funny relationship
to literary culture
and to literary culture in its
relationship to business, right.
Irving worries, Hawthorne
worries about what kind
of work writing might
be said to be.
Can it be said to me manly and
masculine if you are a writer?
And in fact, Hawthorne's
first sort
of novelistic fiction
called Fanshawe
which he later wanted people
not to read which is about--
exactly about somebody
who is a kind
of neurosthenic is sickly person
protagonist whose masculinity is
very much of question.
So here is Hawthorne
working with a variety
of these different things here.
It will be seen likewise
that this Custom House sketch
has a certain propriety
of a kind always
recognized in literature
as explaining how
a large portion
of the following pages
came into my possession
and is offering proofs
of the authenticity
of a narrative therein
contained.
This, in fact, a desire to
put myself in my true position
as editor or very little more,
alright, so again that's--
I just want you to notice
this little hallmarks
of Hawthorne's writing.
As editor, he could
have stopped there
or very little more,
well how much more?
And what does it mean to be
slightly more than an editor?
Doesn't that open the door to, I
mean if we say editor objective,
anything that we add to
that category has the effect
of eroding the category
in much the same way
that adds something imaginative
to the history of New York
and are we still
doing history anymore.
That's the kind of thing
that Hawthorne is
kind of evoking here.
Or very little more of the
most prolix among the tales
that make up my volume.
This and no other
is my true reason
for assuming a personal
relation to the public.
In accomplishing
the main purpose,
it has appeared allowable,
by a few extra touches.
And again think about
what the sudden use
of the impersonal does.
It has appeared allowable.
What's the difference between
I have fought it, meet and fit,
or I have decided
that it's a good idea.
It has appeared allowable, has
the effect of creating a veneer
of authenticity and authority
but it also distances
Hawthorne a little bit, right.
There's this kind of
weird distancing game
that he's playing
between himself, his text,
and his text and his reader.
By a few extra touches, to give
a faint representation of a mode
of life not heretofore
described, together with some
of the characters
that move in it,
among whom the author
happened to make one, right.
So we want to see that one of
the things we are wondering
about is how much authority
really should we be attributing
to supposed fact?
And in some sense there's a
pleasant pun that's available
to Hawthorne in the title
of the Custom House.
I mean who works
in a Custom House?
But we might be wondering how
much authority should we give
simply to custom?
Is custom going to be a
good thing or something--
something that's enabling or
is it something that's going
to be constraining for the
characters in the novel
that we are about to read.
So he claims that this
thing is actually real.
Take a look on page 1369.
He talks about kind of
opening up this package.
[Pages Flipping] It's the
second full paragraph.
The object that most
drew my attention
in the mysterious package
was a certain affair
of fine red cloth,
much worn and faded.
>> There were traces about it of
gold embroidery, which, however,
was greatly frayed and defaced;
so that none, or very little,
of the glitter was left.
It had been wrought, as
was easy to perceive,
with wonderful skill
of needlework.
And the stitch, as I am
assured by ladies conversant
with such mysteries, gives
evidence of a now forgotten art,
not to be recovered
even by the process
of picking out the threads.
So immediately this is
a kind of art object.
It belongs to the past.
It's something that we need to--
that contains a certain
kind of mystery.
Point up to close the door.
[ Noise ]
>> And its part of that mystery
that Hawthorne is trying to get
to suggest is part of
the romancer's art here.
This rag of scarlet
cloth for time and wear,
and a sacrilegious moth, had
reduced it to little other
than a rag,-- on
careful examination,
assumed the shape of a letter.
It was the capital letter A.
By an accurate measurement,
each limb proved to be
precisely three inches
and a quarter in length, right.
So even in that little phrase
he is invoking the idea
of the empirical, right.
This is in the kind of
investigation, he's an editor.
He's got an artifact.
He's a historian.
He gotta measure the damn thing.
It had been intended,
there could be no doubt,
as an ornamental
article of dress.
But how it was to be worn, or
what rank, honor, and dignity,
in the past times were signified
by it, was a riddle which,
so evanescent are the
fashions of the world
in these particulars, I
saw little hope of solving.
And yet it's strangely
interested me.
My eyes fastened themselves
upon the old scarlet letter
and would not be turned aside.
Certainly, there was
some deep meaning in it,
most worthy of interpretation,
and which, as it were,
streams forth from
the mystic symbol,
subtly communicating
itself to my sensibilities,
but evading the analysis
of my mind.
Now again when I look at the
categories at stake there,
right, there is a sense
in which this is a symbol.
It has a certain kind of
archeological interest.
A historian would be
interested in this.
Somebody who is recovering the
past will be interested in this.
You would subject
it to measurement.
You would subject
it to analysis.
You wouldn't get it all.
The analytical mind can
only take you so far.
This should remind us a little
bit of Edgar Huntly, right.
I mean there's-- there's
some place that we need to go
and that's why you
need that little extra.
Why you can't simply
be an editor.
While thus perplexed,
and cogitating,
among other hypotheses, whether
the letter might not have been
one of those decorations which
the white men used to contrive
in order to take
the eyes of Indians,
I happened to place
it on my breast.
It seemed to me, the
reader may smile,
but must not doubt my word.
It seemed to me, then,
that I experienced a sensation
not altogether physical,
yet almost so, as
of burning heat.
And as if the letter were not
a red cloth, but red-hot iron.
I shuddered and involuntarily
let it fall upon the floor,
right?
So there's a kind this,
you know, obviously now
when you read The Scarlet
Letter and you go back
to this you kind of-- you
understand that it was kinda
of joke that his making--
he's kinda preparing
you for what's going.
But think about-- then again,
I want you to think about,
having said that,
what residences are
being taken, right.
If he puts it on his
own, unknowingly,
about its history, yes.
He puts it on his own breast.
He feels there's
a kind of mystery.
So the thing is calling to him.
To whom does the letter call
in the course of the novel?
Who feels the kind
of hot red iron
on his breast that's
like the aye?
And what does that mean
that those associations
between the writer or
editor are bing set up now.
A little bit further on 1370 he
says this, it had been her habit
from an almost immemorial
date to go about the country
as a kind of voluntary nurse,
and doing whatever
miscellaneous good she might.
Taking upon herself, likewise,
to give advice in all matters,
especially those of the heart.
By which means, as a person
of such propensities
inevitably must,
she gained from many people the
reverence due to an angel, but,
I should imagine, was
looked upon by others
as an intruder and a nuisance.
I mean, that almost again
is a kind of funny joke.
It's a proleptic
commentary on the light.
And one of the thing
we're gonna see is
when he give us his little
account, what we realize
by the end of a longer
narrative is how impoverished
that account seems to be.
We need something more.
Prying further into the
manuscript, I found the record
of other doings and sufferings
of this singular woman,
for most of which the
reader is referred
to the story entitled
"The Scarlet Letter".
And it should be borne carefully
in mind, that the main facts
of that story are
authorized and authenticated
by the document of
Mr. Surveyor Pue.
He sources yeah, you know,
you come over and look it up,
come over, come by
look at the stuff.
The original papers, together
with the scarlet letter itself,
a most curious relic, are
still in my possession.
And shall be freely
exhibited to whomsoever,
introduced by the great
interest of the narrative,
may desire a sight of them.
I mean it's a joke.
Everybody knows that he
is making this up, right?
But it sounds like [inaudible].
It's like you can look it
up, you could come over.
Come over and see
The Scarlet Letter.
And then the disclaimer,
I must not be understood
as affirming that, in the
dressing up of the tale,
and imagining the motives
and modes of passion
that influenced the
characters who figure in it,
I have invariably confined
myself within the limits
of the old Surveyor's half
a dozen sheets of foolscap.
Again, think about that whole
cooking and dish metaphor
and the later preface to
the House of Seven Gables.
Here we have the dressing
up metaphor, right.
There's a little bit
of a hint of, you know,
appropriating the space
of a domestic novel
to do something else.
On the contrary, 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.
So again authenticity here
has shifted its meaning.
What was supposed to attest to
the authenticity of this thing?
The presence of this manuscript,
the presence of this relic now,
there's a sense of authenticity.
It's the authenticity
of the outline.
But really the guarantor
of authenticity is going
to be something else,
what he calls
in the later preface the
truth of the human heart.
What makes this an authentic
document that we're going
to read is the fact
that it evokes things
that otherwise we lose and in
the course of history get lost.
We need the imaginative writer
to bring these things back.
Take a look at the
bottom of 1371, right.
So he talks a little
bit about in the--
the last full paragraph here, he
talks about wretched numbness.
It was not merely during
the three hours and a half
which Uncle Sam claimed as
his share of my daily life,
that this wretched numbness
held possession of me.
So the work is debilitating.
It creates a certain
kind of numbness.
But it's every where in
the 19th century it seems.
It went with me on my
sea-shore walks and rambles
into the country,
whenever, which was seldom
and reluctantly, I
bestirred myself to seek
that invigorating charm of
Nature, which used to give me
such freshness and
activity of thought,
the moment that I stepped across
the threshold of the Old Manse.
The same torpor, as
regarded the capacity
for intellectual effort,
accompanied me home,
and weighed upon
me in the chamber
which I most absurdly
termed my study.
Nor did it quit me
when, late at night,
I sat in the deserted
parlor, lighted only
by the glimmering
coal-fire and the moon,
striving to picture forth
imaginary scenes, which,
the next day, might flow
out on the brightening page
in many-hued description.
So this is how deadening
the 19th century is.
It seems actively hostile to
the production of the romance.
And then he talks about
the kind of grounds
where romance might
well be produced.
And again, I want you to see how
he is transforming what we might
think of as domestic imagery.
There's a sentence in which
domesticity here now figured
to be kind of daily life.
It creates this wretched
numbness
which is very hostile
to romance.
If the imaginative faculty
refused to act at such an hour,
it might well be
deemed a hopeless case.
Moonlight, in a familiar room,
falling so white
upon the carpet,
and showing all its figures so
distinctly, making every object
so minutely visible,
yet so unlike a morning
or noontide visibility, is
a medium the most suitable
for a romance-writer
to get acquainted
with his illusive guests.
There is the little domestic
scenery of the well-known ;
the chairs, with each its
separate individuality;
the centre-table, sustaining a
work-basket, a volume or two,
and an extinguished lamp;
the sofa; the book-case;
the picture on the
wall; all these details,
so completely seen,
are so spiritualized
by the unusual light,
that they seem
to lose their actual substance,
and become things of intellect.
So here he's making a--
you might say a divide
between the actual
and the intellectual
although we see what happens
to intellectual, itself as
a term as we move forward.
Nothing is too small or too
trifling to undergo this change,
and acquire dignity
thereby, right?
So all these things
about, yeah, I mean,
again they're mostly child's
things, their domestic items
but they-- so they
seem to lack dignity.
Turn on the moonlight and by
implication turn on a little
of the imagination and
everything acquires dignity.
A child's shoe; the doll, seated
in her little wicker carriage;
the hobby-horse; whatever,
in a word, has been used
or played with, during the day,
is now invested with a quality
of strangeness and
remoteness, though still almost
as vividly present
as by daylight.
Think about Jonathan Edwards,
the example that he give
in a divine and supernatural
life of trying
to understand the
meaning of grace.
>> It's as if you
saw only in darkness
and then you had light switch
on and you get enlightened,
you received grace and you
see in technicolor now.
Maybe technicolor is not
always-- it's cracked up to be.
There's something about
daylight, it's too bright.
And you start to miss
shades and shadows
and you miss something crucial.
Hawthorne once had not only
turned down the lights but bring
in a different kind of light.
Moonlight instead of daylight
transforms the subject
of domesticity into
something else.
Something that he
uses word has dignity.
Thus, therefore, the floor of
our familiar room and again,
see how this idea of liminality
or in betweenness
comes in to play here.
The floor of our familiar room
has become a neutral territory,
somewhere between the real world
and fairy-land, where the actual
and the imaginary may meet.
So see what's happened
to intellect
from earlier in the sentence.
Earlier-- I mean
earlier in the paragraph.
Earlier in the paragraph
is they seem
to lose their actual substance
and become things of intellect.
Here the divide is between
actual and imaginary,
even in that little syntactical
shift we see the work
that he is doing.
He is moving us away
from intellect
which is again gonna
be very associated
with the enlightenment,
with rationalism,
with empirical philosophy,
touch something else.
Reason is not gonna
be the highest faculty
for the romancer.
Imagination is.
The actual and the imaginary
may meet, and each imbues itself
with the nature of the other.
Ghosts might enter here,
without affrighting us.
It would be too much in
keeping with the scene
to excite surprise,
were we to look about us
and discover a form,
beloved, but gone hence,
now sitting quietly in a
streak of this magic moonshine,
with an aspect that would make
us doubt whether it had returned
from afar, or had
never once stirred
from our fireside, right?
So these are very good--
I think exemplary moment
for capturing what Hawthorne's
romance art is about,
this idea of the neutral
territory where the actual
and the imaginary
meet in moonlight.
The Custom House therefore is
evoking this in betweenness.
Its very existence in
this book creates a sense
of in betweenness.
We mediate between the 17th
century and the 19th century
and therefore you might say
it is one of the threshold
through which we might have
to pass in order to get
to the main tail of
the Scarlet Letter.
Now, I think I've told
you before, right,
that a novel tend-- some--
many novels tend to
set their ground rules
in their opening chapters.
Some of them like this
book or like Moby Dick
if you remember create a
set of almost antechambers
that you have to walkthrough
before you get to the main room,
which is the narrative.
This is one of these
antechambers.
It's kind of a big one.
It's decorated in a certain
way, call of the 19th century.
But then when it ends we
get to some place else.
A different kind of
opening, a second opening
and this is on page 1377.
It's the first chapter of
The Scarlet Letter, right.
And it's a short chapter
which again has this feeling
of being a kind of introduction
although we already had a kind
of introduction.
And it focuses also on an
object on the prison door.
A throng of bearded men, in
sad-colored garments and gray,
steeple-crowned hats, intermixed
with women, some wearing hoods,
others bareheaded, was assembled
in front of a wooden edifice,
the door of which was
heavily timbered with oak,
and studded with iron spikes.
And a concrete object to look
at and it's a doorway, right.
So again this-- the idea of the
threshold is being carried over.
The founders of a new colony,
whatever Utopia of human virtue
and happiness they might
originally project,
have invariably recognized it
among their earliest practical
necessities to allot a
portion of the virgin soil
as a cemetery, and another
portion as the site of a prison.
So you have Utopian hopes
but death is a fact of life
and so is criminality.
In accordance with this rule,
it may safely be assumed
that the forefathers of Boston
had built the first prison-house
somewhere in the vicinity of
Cornhill, almost as seasonably
as they marked out the
first burial-ground,
on Isaac Johnson's lot,
and round about his grave,
which subsequently
became the nucleus
of all the congregated
sepulchres
in the old church-yard
of King's Chapel.
Certain it is that, some
fifteen or twenty years
after the settlement
of the town,
the wooden jail was
already marked
with weather-stains
indications of age, which gave a
yet darker aspect to the
beetle-browed and gloomy front.
The rust on the ponderous
iron-work
of its oaken door looked more
antique than any thing else
in the new world, right.
So we're focusing on this object
and I think there's the
invitation for us to think
about it allegorically, right.
This door looks like
it's ageless.
It's become old and
weather beaten just
as much say this colony though
young has already taken on some
of that sense of being
old and weather beaten.
Like all that pertains
to crime, it seemed never
to have known a youthful era.
Before this ugly edifice, and
between it and the wheel-track
of the street, was a
grass plot, much overgrown
with burdock pig-weed,
apple peru,
and such unsightly vegetation,
which evidently found something
congenial in the soil that had
so early borne the black flower
of civilized society, a prison.
Okay. So again, look at the
allegorical gesture that's kind
of being setup for it.
We have this black flower,
these weeds amongst
these weeds we have what?
On one side of the portal and
rooted almost on the threshold,
almost on the threshold was
a wide rose bush covered
in this month of June
with its delicate gems
which might be imagined to offer
the fragrance and fragile beauty
to the prisoner as he went in
and to condemn criminals he
came forth to his doom and token
that the deep part of nature
could pity and be kind to him.
I just almost-- we've got
a lot of concrete details
but there's something a
little bit other worldly,
maybe almost allegorical
about this.
This rose bush and if that's not
enough, he's gonna connect it
to this business of--
in history, we have this
further affect a rendering
in allegorical.
This rose bush by a strange
chance had been kept alive
in history but whether
it had merely survived
after the stern old wilderness
so long after the fall
of the gigantic pines and oaks
that originally overshadowed it,
or whether as there
is fair authority
for believing it has sprung
up under the footsteps
of the sainted Ann Hutchinson,
as she entered the prison door,
we shall not take
upon us to determine.
Finding it so directly on the
threshold of our narrative,
which is now about to issue
from the inauspicious portal,
that inauspicious portal,
we could hardly do otherwise
than pluck one of its flowers,
and present it to the reader.
It may serve, let us hope,
to symbolize some
sweet moral blossom
that may be found
among the track,
or relieve the darkening
close of a tale
of human fragility and sorrow.
That's good sentence.
I think that one of it, so
what we have is gestures--
it's gonna be almost
allegorical, you think,
but there's a kind of direct
address to the reader, right?
So it's kind of hiding
and self-conscious.
We're aware that
this is a performance
that this narrator is giving.
And what we're about to see
is get another performance.
So this is a narrative that
is clearly marked by a sense
of drama and performance.
It's marked by thresholds.
And what is that-- I
mean that little gesture
that always is related
to Ann Hutchinson?
She goes into prison.
Something comes out?
What comes out?
Hester Prynne and her baby
but also the narrative
comes out of that.
He says that we're on the
threshold of a narrative.
The narrative is
about to come out.
What comes out is Hester.
So Hester is the narrative and,
you know, The Scarlet Letter,
you might say that she is
wearing is the narrative.
He setup this antechamber for us
and he set certain
terms of engagement.
There is a certain
kind of allegory and
yet we're being a little
bit self conscious about it.
We have a relation to the past.
Let's think now,
let's investigate what these
relations are gonna be.
We start again.
This is beginning number three,
Chapter II, The Market-Place.
The grass-plot before
the jail, in Prison Lane,
on a certain summer morning,
not less than two centuries ago,
was occupied by a
pretty large number
of the inhabitants of Boston.
So you see that it's
the same scene now, now,
we're gonna make it specific.
It's gonna be that
particular day.
Amongst any other population, or
at a later period in the history
of New England, the
grim rigidity
that petrified the
bearded physiognomies
of these good people would have
augured some awful business
in hand.
So look at the way
this is set up.
Why go this way?
Amongst any other population but
we're talking about this one,
or any later period in
the history of New England
but we're talking
about this one,
their grim rigidity would
have augured something else,
but why talk about something
else when we're taking
about what's going on now?
In the early severity of the
Puritan character, an inference
of this kind could not be
so indubitably drawn, right?
That it was gonna be a
death sentence basically.
It might be that a
sluggish bond-servant,
or an undutiful child,
whom his parents had given
over to the civil authority,
was to be corrected
by the whipping-post.
It might be, that an Antinomian,
so here's Hutchinson
being vogue for us.
A Quaker, or other heterodox
religionist, was to be scourged
out of the town, or an
idle and vagrant Indian,
whom the white man's
fire-water had made riotous
about the streets, was
to be driven with stripes
into the shadow of the forest.
It might be, too, that a witch,
like old Mistress Hibbins,
the bitter-tempered
widow of the magistrate,
was to die upon the gallows.
In either case, there was
very much the same solemnity
of demeanor on the
part of the spectators;
as befitted a people
amongst whom religion
and law were almost identical,
and whose characters both were
so thoroughly interfused,
that the mildest
and the severest acts of public
discipline were alike made
venerable and awful.
>> This is an evocation
of this culture, right.
I mean there's a sense
in which we get all
of these little details, we
get all of these possibilities,
all of these possibilities
laid out.
These are not what
are happening here.
So again, this is
typical of Hawthorne.
It's how the novel proceeds.
We lay many possibilities out.
We choose among the ones
that we lay out even later,
the other possibilities sort
of float there in your mind.
They are not fully erased
by all of this, right?
Take a look on page 1382
and you'll have the example
that I referred to a
little bit later on, right.
So she comes out and she
is holding her child.
And he says this at
the bottom of 1382
on the second to last paragraph.
Had there been a Papist
among the crowd of Puritans,
he might have seen in this
beautiful woman, so picturesque
in her attire and mien, and
with the infant at her bosom,
an object to remind him of
the image of Divine Maternity,
which so many illustrious
painters have vied
with one another to represent.
That's five lines
before the semi colon.
Something which, which
should remind him indeed,
but only by contrast
of that sacred image
of sinless motherhood,
whose infant was
to redeem the world,
that's shorter.
So, not that, but
the other thing.
So, look at what's
going on here, right?
We get virgin and child.
We erase it but it
doesn't fully get erased,
I'd suggest it was still there
as a kind of mental image
but why evoke a Papist here?
I mean, there's not
had been a Papist here.
'Cause that's a context from
outside that's being evoked
which is then linked to the
perspective of the narrator
and also linked to
Hester Prynne.
That's how Hawthorne's narrative
is kind of working here.
And what we realize
here is it's a culture
of spectatorship
and surveillance.
And what they have designed
is a kind of allegorical drama
in which Hester Prynne
and her child are supposed
to play a role.
That's what the A on the breast
is supposed to symbolize.
A, we label her.
She plays a role as if in an old
mystery play, the adulteress.
And perhaps, you know,
they thought of it
as a [inaudible] thing.
They think of it as
a stroke of genius,
as part of her own punishment,
the beginning of her penance
like Christ carrying the cross
across the stations
up to Golgotha.
She is gonna sow herself, this
A, and put it on her breast.
But as I suggest, that's
probably their first mistake.
1380 at the bottom,
we see again,
we've already been
prepared for this, right?
Hawthorne is just
looking at this thing--
this thing is in tatters.
Now, he is evoking
its formal splendor
when it was first created.
If your eye is drawn to it
then-- I don't really need it.
If his eye was drawn
to it then, then we--
imagine what's it's
gonna be like when--
if you are evoking it in
the day when it's born?
Let me see if I can
plug in-- pause.
So, we get this.
On the breast of her
gown, in fine red cloth,
surrounded with an
elaborate embroidery
and fantastic flourishes of gold
thread, appeared the letter A.
So here we have the
beginnings of the erosion
of the official meaning of
the A, from the very start.
She is supposed to be adulterous
artist is already starting to be
at least in the readers
minds here.
It was so artistically
done, with so much fertility
and gorgeous luxuriance
of fancy.
Again, that technical term in
the 90th century for imagination
that it had all the effect of
a last and fitting decoration
to the apparel which she wore;
and which was of a splendor
in accordance with
the taste of the age,
but greatly beyond
what was allowed
by the sumptuary
regulations of the colony.
She is using her needle work
to immediately, you know,
put her thumb in
the eye of the men
who have sentenced
her to play this role.
And this needle work
becomes very important.
I mean, there's a
certain limitation
of Hawthorne's imagination
or may be there's a certain,
you know, he knows
that women are writing
and publishing things, right?
That quote about the damn
scribbling woman indicates that.
But he makes suggestion
later on that in fact,
this is on page 1396 in the
chapter that's called Hester
and Her Needle that in
fact, there's something,
there's a particular relation
between women and needle work.
In the middle of--
about five lines
into the first full
paragraph on 1396.
Lonely as was Hester's
situation, without a friend
on earth who dared to show
himself, she, however,
incurred no risk of want.
She possessed an art that
sufficed, even in a land
that afforded comparatively
little scope for its exercise,
to supply food for her
thriving infant and herself.
It was the art, and
here's the limitation
of Hawthorne's feminism,
we might say, then as now,
almost the only one within a
woman's grasp of needle-work.
I suppose you could say that
could be taken as a critique
of the 19th century
which doesn't give
woman enough of a role.
But what one of the
things he's thinking of is
that she doesn't-- she has
limited means at her disposal.
She makes use of
the limited means
and needle work is one of them.
It enables her to transform
this but it also enables her
to earn a kind of living.
Again, we might think later on
of what Stowe would go through.
Stowe was trying to earn money
by writing but still ends
up creating something
else as a result of this.
So that's has one thing to
bear in mind about this letter,
it's transformed right away.
Other thing to bear in mind
about the letter,
where is it on her?
Where is it on her?
Right around her breast and it's
like Time Square on
her breast, right?
Boom, boom, boom, A,
look at my breasts!
[ Laughter ]
>> So how everyone sees
it, is it sexuality?
Is it maternality?
It's like look at my breast.
Well, that in some
sense, the novel--
you think I'm making a joke but
in fact the novel is playing
with this idea, right?
We've said this already before.
What's the first thing that Adam
and Eve know when they know?
And know they know that they're
naked and that there's two
of them and sexuality is all--
so for the Puritans, right,
knowledge and sexuality
especially women's sexuality
since it was Eve who was tempted
and who tempted Adam are
intricately interrelated
with one another.
The A works on this simple.
Right, it becomes, you
might say, it becomes a sign
of precisely the things that
the Puritans are worried about.
Sexuality isn't the only
thing that Hester commits.
The other, you might
say they are afraid of
but they don't fully
articulate it
but they create her
punishment in such a way
that the second sin
that she commits,
she commits while she is
theoretically doing her penance.
She is doing her penance but she
is never really fully penitent,
alright.
Take a look at the chapter
that's called Another View
of Hester.
It starts on page 1438.
This is a crucial
chapter in this book.
Hester and her needle is one.
Another view of chapter, it
gives her like check on Hester.
Okay, Hester and her
needle, a little bit
after the scaffolding scene.
Check on her again.
This is about seven years
later, 1439 you find
out a little bit
more about Hester.
This is about eight lines
from the top from the bottom
of the paragraph
that starts 1439.
Her breast, with its badge of
shame, was but the softer pillow
for the head that needed one.
She was self-ordained a Sister
of Mercy; or, we may rather say,
the world's heavy hand
had so ordained her,
when neither the world nor she
looked forward to this result.
The letter was the
symbol of her calling.
Look again how its
meaning has changed.
Now, it's not exactly the
artist, now it's-- this is--
there's an almost kind of
social component to it.
Her individuality seems to have
been tempered a little bit,
right?
The first that Hawthorne
uses that word individuality,
when he talks about the
letter it's one of the things
that the letter does
is enables her
to express her individuality
despite their attempts
to clamp it down, right?
They will try to make her
into a type adulteress.
She's-- embroiders the
letter in such a way
that she resists being typed.
But now you might say she types
herself in a different way.
And it becomes, quite
literally, enabling.
T he letter was a
symbol of her calling.
Such helpfulness was found
in her, so much power to do,
and power to sympathize,
that many people refused
to interpret The Scarlet Letter
by its original signification.
They said that it meant able;
so strong was Hester Prynne,
with a woman's strength.
Okay, so this is
changing, right?
Outwardly, even people
are beginning to see
that Hester behaves
in such a way
that adulteress may no longer
be the most accurate description
of what she was.
But all of the change
Hawthorne wants
to suggest is not
for the better.
Turn the page on 1440 and
we find at the beginning
of the first full paragraph
that the effect of the symbol
or rather, of the position
in respect to society
that was indicated by it on the
mind of Hester Prynne itself,
was powerful and peculiar.
All the light and
graceful foliage
of her character
had been withered
up by this red-hot brand,
now she feels the brand too,
and had long ago fallen
away, leaving a bare
and harsh outline, which
might have been repulsive,
had she possessed friends or
companions to be repelled by it.
>> Something has
happened to Hester.
As she transforms herself
into a Sister of Mercy,
she somehow becomes a little
bit less womanly perhaps.
A little bit further on,
it might be partly owing
to the studied austerity of her
dress, and partly to the lack
of demonstration in her manners.
It was a sad transformation,
too, that her rich
and luxuriant hair had
either been cut off,
or was so completely hidden by
a cap, that not a shining lock
of it ever once gushed
into the sunshine.
And you should ask
your self why it is
that the narrator does
not know which it is.
What perspective or point
of view is he taking up?
Bottom of the page--
bottom of the paragraph,
such as frequently-- or just
a little bit further on,
such is frequently the fate,
and such the stern development
of the feminine character
and person,
when the woman has
encountered, and lived through,
an experience of
peculiar severity.
If she be all tenderness,
she will die.
If she survived, the tenderness
will either be crushed
out of her, or and the
outward semblance is the same,
crushed so deeply into her heart
that it can never
show itself once more.
The latter is perhaps
the truest theory.
She who has once been
woman, and ceased to be so,
might at any moment
become a woman again,
if there were only
the magic touch
to effect the transfiguration.
We shall see whether Hester
Prynne was ever afterwards
so touched, and so transfigured.
Okay. So something is going on
with her and it's not all good
from the perspective
of the narrator.
And if they but knew it,
the Puritan fathers would also
realize that not all is good.
I mean this is the second sin
that Hawthorne is getting out.
Bottom of the page,
second to last time,
the world's law was
no law for her mind.
It was an age in which the human
intellect, newly emancipated,
again think about back to
Edwards, the beginnings
of the enlightenment, had taken
a more active and wider range
than for many centuries before.
Men of the sword had overthrown
nobles and kings, right.
So here, you see that this is
about English Civil
War being referred to.
Men bolder than these had
overthrown and rearrange,
not actually, but within
the sphere of theory,
which was their most real
abode, the whole system
of ancient prejudice,
wherewith was linked much
of ancient principle.
Hester Prynne imbibed
this spirit.
She assumed a freedom of
speculation, then common enough
on the other side
of the Atlantic,
but which our forefathers,
had they known of it,
would have held to be a deadlier
crime than that stigmatized
by The Scarlet Letter.
So sexuality, knowledge
are linked.
There's a funny way in which the
Puritan fathers may well have
produced the very
thing that they feared.
In punishing her for her
sexual sin, they have led her
to what they would have thought
of as even more serious
sin, an intellectual sin.
And so, on the next
page, we get a kind
of stunning one sentence
paragraph.
In a few months, in some
sense is the crocks of this,
the Scarlet Letter had
not done its office.
The rest of the novel, you might
say is a discussion of how it is
that the Scarlet Letter in
fact comes to do its office.
Now, we might think of the
novel as being structured
around the three
scaffolding scenes.
This is another way in which
that novel would [inaudible].
The first scaffold
scene when Hester
and her child are trotted out,
it meant to do performance,
right, and we get the sense that
she is supposed to play a role
in an allegorical
pageant, right.
In the middle there's
a night time,
so may be this is
the romancer's time.
There's a kind of night time
invocation of a scaffold
where Dimmesdale was up there
and Hester and Pearl come
and Hester-- and Pearl
is wondering, you know,
trying to force them to doing
what she wants them to do.
But Dimmesdale is private--
it's a private thing.
And Dimmesdale is not
ready to do anything.
That's-- there's another
invocation of the A there,
right up in the meteor,
if people think they
might have seen.
Okay, last scaffolding scene
when they're all up there again
and this time it's
transformed, alright.
And you know the ending,
Dimmesdale, you know,
Pearl has been urging and then
Dimmesdale finally admits it.
He preached his election sermon,
he admits what's happened.
It's almost like a magic
spell breaks from Pearl.
She becomes like a normal kid,
having to run around as kind
of like the most weirdly
allegorical figure in the novel.
The flattest, she's
dressed in red all the time.
She is quite literally, thought
by-- suggested by the narrative,
thought by Hester, thought
by everybody to be the kind
of Scarlet Letter embodied,
in a certain way she is.
Right, I mean, she is
the product of the sin.
So she is the Scarlet Letter.
It's like the skull is broken.
She is able to-- she becomes
a normal person again.
Dimmesdale does to
just or unjust reward.
He may or may not have a
Scarlet Letter on his breast,
nobody really knows for
sure, they don't remember.
They don't wanna say.
They think they've seen it.
Again a nice, you know
ambiguities there.
Boom! Pearl goes to Europe,
to hell with this place.
She goes to Europe.
What does Hester do?
Hester Prynne comes back.
Some years later,
Hester Prynne comes back.
Why does Hester Prynne
come back?
And one of the things I
think that we need to think
about is this idea of unbridled
individualism is something
that the novel is interested
in exploring, right?
And to understand some of
the problems here, you might,
well think about
three characters
who in some sense are
versions of Hester
as well, like Chillingworth.
Chillingworth is in
some sense an extension
of the system of justice.
He has an under but-- but there
is an interesting term that's
used for him especially
laid in the last chapter.
He's called the necromancer.
He is like the dark
side of romance, right.
He is Darth Vader
of romanticizing.
He, no-- but he really-- he
liked the romancer who appears
into the truth of
the human heart
but what he is interested
in is revenge.
One of the things that--
that the novel points out,
it's a kind of brilliant
psychological study of revenge,
is revenge is never
gonna be enough.
Revenge will never give you
back what it is you've lost
and the more he gets part
of the cycle of revenge,
this kind of weird
sadomasochistic thing
that he gets into with
Dimmesdale, the more he ends
up destroying himself, right.
So he is what we don't
want Hester to become.
We don't want her to become
so bitter that she gets caught
up in this cycle event.
So he is a bad possibility.
But Dimmesdale is no better.
You know, if Chillingworth
is a sadist,
Dimmesdale is the masochist.
They kind of deserve each other
and there's a funny
kind of thing.
If we say with Chillingworth,
the more he pursues revenge,
the less he can be satisfied by
what he gets, the more he ends
up destroying himself.
Think about Dimmesdale.
Okay, it's a kind of Puritan--
it's supposed to
be a Puritan trope.
Think about retailer.
I am this humble crumb of
dust, you know, I am unworthy,
I am unworthy [inaudible].
I am unworthy-- that's what
Puritans are supposed to do.
I have sinned.
Now, if you're the minister,
you get up there and you say,
I have sinned, I have sinned,
and the congregation is
like look, he has sinned.
What about the rest of us?
He's such a kind of an exemplar
for us but he hasn't really--
we all know he hasn't
really sinned.
He is a kind of typification
of the entire human condition
that saintly as he might be
he is still totally deprived.
But Dimmesdale kinda actually
is-- if not totally deprived,
he is certainly sinful,
and he has done things
that would have been thought
of as deprived by appearance.
So the more he says, I've sinned
without actually giving the
specifics, you might say,
the more he compounds his sin.
The more he compounds his sin,
the more worried he is about it.
The more worried he is about
it, the more effective he is
as a preacher and the more
effective he is as preacher,
the more he compounds his sin.
You can imagine every time
he preachers this kind
of thing goes on and on and
on until we finally gets
to this election of servant.
So here, also is a
version of the romancer.
Think of what happens
to him in the woods
when Hester gets to him.
They're out there in the woods.
The woods that we all know
liminal space can't stay there.
You think about Shakespeare.
Any Shakespeare play where
they go in the woods,
transformation happens.
Couples sort themselves out.
Fairies do this and
that but eventually,
you've got to leave
the woods, right.
Hester goes into the woods and
all of a sudden it's like woo!
Magical space!
She takes off her letter
and then, oh what the-- hey!
She takes off her
cap and it turns
out all the hair
is there and woo!
It's still nice looking
hair, right?
[ Laughter ]
>> All of a sudden there's
like sunshine and Dimmesdale is
like whoa, now I remember why.
[ Laughter ]
>> But-- and she-- what
is she urging him to?
She's not saying lets do it
right here on the floor, no,
something worst than that.
She's like chuck it all!
Leave it all behind.
Begin all anew.
She says please right,
let's leave.
We'll go! We start again.
But again, look at the
economy that way this is setup.
You know, it would have been
fine if she wanted another,
you know, to be reminded of
why they fell in love to begin
with or-- well, except
the kids there.
But still-- but even
worse is this idea
of leaving everything
behind, beginning again,
doing the Emersonian
thing, you can't do that.
Dimmesdale can't do
that and so he leaves.
Do you remember what
happens to him?
He's almost kinda
of like having one
of these Young Goodman Brown
moments, it's like every--
he is so inflamed by all this
that he sees people and he's
like he has to keep himself
from doing what was like Ismael,
knocking people's hats off
in the street or like cursing
at people or doing
kind of things
that are basically evidence
of his sinful nature, right?
So he goes and has
this kind of--
and then what did he
do right after that?
>> That's the context in which
he writes his final sermon
that he preaches.
Does that seem like it's the
kinda nice writerly grounds
for producing a prophetic
religious Puritan sermon?
I don't think so.
Something else is
going on, right.
And we get that because Hester,
you'll remember she's outside
of the church, she
starts to hear it.
And Hawthorne talks about
this kind of low expression
of anguish that she
detects just in the sound
of Dimmesdale preaching that
you can't quite understand.
She doesn't hear his words
but she understand the subtext
and she understands
what's going.
Dimmesdale of course
thinks he's been redeemed.
He uses that Puritan logic of
suffering saying, you know,
then will all suffer
therefore I'm surely going
to heaven except you're not--
if you're a preacher you're
not really supposed to predict
that you're elected and you're
not surely supposed to say it
in public and you are
certainly not supposed to,
you know, believe it yourself.
So there's a way in which
Dimmesdale is a another failed
version of the romancer.
He is not the kind
of romancer that we--
'cause it seems to be some
type of unbound, unbridled,
self-aggrandizing romance.
It doesn't end up really having
a kind of integrated function.
Which leaves us Pearl, now Pearl
I've already said is the Scarlet
Letter, right?
But think about what
happens in the woods.
So Dimmesdale has his moment
and he goes running off
and he writes his lecture and
sermon and we know what happens.
What happens when Pearl
sees her mother take off the
Scarlet Letter?
She says, put it back on.
Thank you.
Why would she say
put it back on?
Yeah?
>> Whom she doesn't
recognize it as her own.
>> Exactly, there's a
psychological reason.
This is a psych-- you know,
from the moment that Pearl has,
you know, is awakened
she sees her mother.
She's held right, sees
the Scarlet Letter.
Scarlet Letter equals mommy.
Scarlet Letter equals mommy.
That's what she understands.
Okay. But think of it in--
now, we think about it in
romance or symbolic terms.
Pearl is the force within
the novel that acts as--
she is the Scarlet
Letter embodied
which means she is
both the vengeance
of the community embodied
but also the text itself
that you were reading embodied.
And she agrees wit the text.
The Scarlet Letter hasn't
done its office yet.
Mommy, you have to put it back
on until the Scarlet
Letter has done its office.
Now we would think that by
the end of the novel it has.
You know, the family is reunited
so they're brought together.
Dimmesdale has confessed.
Pearl's bale of enchantment
is free.
She is off to go off and
have her life, fine and good.
Why can't her mother
accompany her?
And one of the things that we
would say about the scarlet,
the end of the Scarlet Letter is
that finally it's the forces--
the romance serves
as its force for kind
of compromise and integration.
But you might say the impulses
of the Puritan followers
were not entirely wrong.
It's just they go about
it in the wrong way.
There's a sense in which in
order to be complete Hester has
to internalize the meanings
of the Scarlet Letter.
The Scarlet Letter
finally becomes all
of those things at the end.
Adultress, and able, and artist,
she becomes this kind of figure
for the community-- looking
forward, thinking forward
to the day when women might,
you know, have be emancipated
in ways that she
couldn't possibly be.
But she comes back.
And we said there's a
psychological realism too.
I mean, it's where she knows,
it's where she is from.
She feels that's her home.
That's where she comes back
but you could say oh, well,
but maybe somebody who
had suffered so much
in a place would
wanna leave it behind.
She has internalized the values
and that's finally what--
the way in which the romance,
you might say, is integrative.
This is 1493, towards
the very end.
Earlier in life, Hester
had vainly imagined
that she herself might be
the destined prophetess,
but had long since
recognized the impossibility
that any mission of divine
and mysterious truth should
be confided to a woman stained
with sin, bowed down with
shame, or even burdened
with a life-long sorrow, right.
I mean, you have to
see that it's one
of the things she has done now
has started to internalize some
of the terms of engagement.
Begin all anew is not
a possibility she comes
to realize even for her.
The angel and apostle
of the coming revelation must
be a woman, indeed, but lofty,
pure, and beautiful;
and wise, moreover,
not through dusky grief, but
the ethereal medium of joy;
and showing how sacred
love should make us happy,
by the truest test of a life
successful to such an end.
You think that's
the narrator, no.
It's Hester.
It's what she has
come to believe.
So said Hester Prynne, and
glanced her sad eyes downward
at the Scarlet Letter
which she has put on again.
It's almost as if, like Pearl,
she doesn't recognize herself
that or she has come to
embrace all the things
that it has come to mean.
And after many, many years,
a new grave was delved,
near an old and sunken one,
in that burial-ground beside
which King's Chapel had
been laid since built.
It was near that old
and sunken grave,
but tellingly symbolically
right, yet with a space
between even in death she
and Dimmesdale are not gonna be
exactly together as if the dust
of the two sleepers
had no right to mingle.
Yet one tombstone
served for both.
This is a funny image
of both ends, right.
Think about what that's--
as an image of both ends
think what this one means.
All around, there were monuments
carved with armorial bearings;
and on this simple
slab of slate--
as the curious investigator
may still discern,
and perplex himself with the
purport there appeared the
semblance of an engraved
escutcheon.
It bore a device, a herald's
wording of which might serve
for a motto and brief
description
of our now concluded lesson.
We end with an image from
chivalric romance as it were
so somber is it and relieved
only by one ever-glowing point
of light gloomier than
the shadow on a field,
sable, the letter A, gules.
Okay, we'll leave it
there and I'll pick
up in a few minutes
with Moby Dick.
