Category: Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

“I think love breaks all taboos. Don’t you?” (67)

Lolita as a Foucauldian Case Study Reading the introduction to Lolita invoked a strong sense of déjà vu, which I realized came from the uncanny similarities between it and “The Custom House”.  Both introductions serve to set up the stories as “true” (or in terms of The Scarlet Letter, based on a true story). More […]

In Nancy F. Cott’s “Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790-1850” she talks about how between 1777 and 1794, a study of nine New England magazines indicates that in nonfiction and fiction stories, regarding illicit sex, men were punished, while women were given sympathy.  This is interesting for two reasons: the first being that, […]

The Never-Ending Confession The Scarlet Letter, a novel so imbued with the themes of sin, guilt, and confession, has an interesting confessional: the scaffold.  Hester is taken to the scaffold early in the narrative and a confession is demanded of her, but she refuses that with silence.  Her silence is in itself a powerful act, […]

Womanhood as Duty (though not to be written about as such or otherwise by women, but only by Hawthorne). ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne is notorious for complaining in a letter to one of his publishers that a “damn’d mob of scribbling women” was stealing his audience. Elsewhere, he referred to women authors as “ink-stained Amazons” who were […]

Intellectual or Moral (But Never Both) William Alcott’s suggestions for young women to avoid ­­­­­nymphomania seemed to emphasize cooling – not surprising, since both sexual desire or passion and the Devil are associated with heat and fire. But he also quoted a writer who said “the reading of lascivious and impassioned works, viewing voluptuous painting, […]

Men and Women Both Think the Other is Evil, Society has Double Standards about Sex…. News at 11 Cott’s essay on Victorian sexual ideologies clarified some of the themes and terms presented by The Scarlet Letter.  As we discussed in last week’s class, adultery was only committed if the woman involved in the sexual activity […]

“Double Standard of Sexual Morality.” In Cott’s essay, I was particularly intrigued by the Puritan “double standard of sexual morality” (133), in which women, being of the weaker sex, were more prone to succumb to temptation, even though it was not permitted for them to initiate sexual acts. This lead to greater blame for women […]

THE ANTI-HARLEQUIN CLUB Harlequin is a Canadian publishing company know best for its romance novels and “women’s fiction.” The books have a reputation for being almost anti-feminist, since the plots generally revolve around a (straight) woman who becomes fulfilled when she finally has “her man” at her side, often for good (i.e., through marriage). However, […]

Power in The Scarlett Letter Godbeer’s essay, “Sodomy in Colonial New England” posed an interesting history about the definition of sodomy and the power relations within that definition.  Previous coursework of mine (more specifically, American Legal Systems) established that sodomy was non-reproductive sex.  This definition was present in the Godbeer essay as part of the […]