Nature , Shame Conflict and Tragedy in The Scarlet Letter

Name: Solanki Pratiksha M.

Roll No: 21 

Enrolment No: 13101032

Sem : 3 (2014-2015)

Paper No: 10.The American Literature

Subject: Assignment

Title: Nature , Shame Conflict and Tragedy in The Scarlet Letter

Submitted to:

Smt. S.B.Gardi

Department of English

M.K.Bhavnagar University

pratikshasolanki068@gmail.com     

• Nature , Shame Conflict and Tragedy in The Scarlet Letter

>> Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. He was born in July 04, 1804 Salem, Massachusetts, The United States and Died on May 19, 1864. Much of Hawthorne's writing centres on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement..

“The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by succession of other novels.."

>> The Scarlet Letter..

The Scarlet Letter romantic work of fiction in a historical setting written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt..

Here in this novel, there are many themes like..

> Revenge

> Woman and Femininity

> Sin

> Compassion and Forgiveness

> Guilt

> Isolation

> Justice

> Shame..

  

>> Nature:

Hawthorne’s use of nature displays the underlying message of his consistent theme of community. Nature provides an additional perspective to understand the human dilemmas, helps to understand to human psyche.

“But.. on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rosebush, covered, in this month of June, with it delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he come forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of nature could pity and be kind of him.. “

-     Man and the Natural World...

Nature stands in its totality. The forest, wild, free atmosphere all parts of the nature also used here as a symbolical way and also shows the importance of the nature in our life... So in The Scarlet Letter, Nature used properly and symbolical ways...

>>Sh’A’me Conflicts and Tragedy in The Scarlet letter.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter has much to teach psychoanalysts. On The Scarlet Letter have assumed Hester Prynne’s pain to be shame – based and the Dimmesdale’s to be guilt-based...

“Be true..! Be true..! Be true..!

Show freely to the world,

If not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred “

-     Nathaniel Hawthorne.

About psychoanalytical look at shame with the Freud’s brief consideration of shame seems to be connected to his early attention to narcissism. The ego deals here were a structure created by the internalization, parental and representation. Freud suggested that the ego was invented with narcissism lost from the sense of original perfection from the ego and determines the subjective sense of self-respect. Freud explicitly related the ego to self-regard and to its dependence on narcissistic libido...

>> Hester Prynne’s and Dimmesdale’s Shame :

Hester who is trying to use her baby to shield herself from the gaze of the public. Here Hawthorne observes a quality fundamental to shame dynamics. As Hawthorne notes, in the embroidered “A” Hester has represented to other in a defiant manner, making her match and much to liveliest character in the book. When Chillingworth tells Hester that magistrates had discussed removing the “A” than Hester replies...

“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off his badge... Where I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport...”

Hester knows that shame has a nature of its own, and obeys neither magistrates nor the one shamed. She also realised her shame. Hester can use The Scarlet Letter as a mirror to ward off the evil gazes of those around her, to turn them back on those who wish her harm, and enclose herself protectively and from behind her Scarlet Letter she can look out bravely at the world.

>>Dimmesdale, Seems waiting to be caught by surprise. This is an important point in so far as shame dynamics are concerned, since shame often results from the intensity and overwhelming quality of emotions, rather than from any particular feelings. “Dimmesdale’s conflict with his superego.” For him shame is unalterable, inexpressible and silent. It squeezes the life out of him.. 

>>Hester.. She embroiders her “A” and has a hand in how people perceive her shame. She can use it with intention...

“Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the unhappy Minister, A Scarlet Letter,- the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne, imprinted in the flesh...”

>> Conclusion:

“The Scarlet Letter shows us the way to a variety of interrelated themes pertaining to shame conflicts, and the tragic situation..”

Thank you..