The Scarlet Letter Blog-

Gaston Mclemore


Dr. Tatia Jacobson Jordan

AML 3041-02

September 4, 2009

Real Romantics

Romanticism is a movement in the latter half of the 18th century that emphasized strong emotions and reaction against reason and logic. It was apart of the rebellion towards people during the elitist or aristocratic social and political norms during the Age of Enlightenment. It stressed symbolism, supernatural components as well as feelings of awe, horror and love. It particularly challenged the sublimity of nature and romantic sensibility or aesthetics. It elevated the thought of idealistic perspective as opposed to realistic, and valuing the plot over character. This form of the literary canon appears frequently in the Scarlet Letter.

Immediately in chapter one there’s metaphorical terminology used in correlation with untamed nature. It states “But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rosebush, covered, in the month of June, with its delicate gems, which might imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of nature could pity and be kind to him (Nathaniel Hawthorne pg 117-118.) The one impropriety in this scene is the rose bush that sprouts next to the prison. The surveyor or narrator is inferring that the rose bush offers a reminder of nature’s forgiveness or kindness to the scolded ones. He points out and exclaims that it will either “provide a sweet moral blossom” or ease in the stadium of suffering and obscurity. Symbolism also takes place in chapter two in the market place where the crowd watches Hester Prynne as she proceeded from prison with the embroidered letter “ A” sewed in gold and scarlet on her chest. I can assume from the criticism by women in the crowd as well as the misbegotten child embraced by Hester, that the letter “A” is personifying her as an adulterer. This was the narrator evoking her as a symbol of disgrace, discredit, humiliation and evil. Her crime is even compared to that of a “witch” in the text who was executed for witchcraft in 1656. The text says “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 (Nathaniel Hawthorne pg. 119).

Additionally, strong representation of the Puritan doctrine screams profoundly (in a subliminal sense) through this language of the narrator. In opposition of the romanticism era came “realism” which was the literary movement of the nineteenth-century. This canon took an approached that attempted to describe everyday life without idealization or subjectivity. It was introduced to America by William Dean Howells. Now considering the Scarlet Letter took place during the eighteenth century, one could argue there was a literal snap shot of realism here and there. If you blinked, while reading then you probably missed it, but let’s remember that this a time of strong religion particularly puritan doctrine.

Early on it’s pointed out the type of society that we’re dealing with. As it states “As befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful (Nathaniel Hawthorne).” Now I agree the reading itself, the category of the literature movement that its falls under is romanticism. Although if one hypothetically speaking put him/her self in the timeline and mindset of a character it could be as normal to wear “A” on your chest then as it is to wear a tattoo on your chest today. I could be speaking hypotheticals or philosophizing but just think about it.