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AML 4503: American Romanticism
Prof. Bruce Harvey

HAWTHORNE'S ROMANTIC INDIVIDUALISM
VS. HIS VICTORIAN CONSERVATIVISM

--"heart" secrets should be inviolable (example 169)
--not exposed before law/authority (or prying eye of Chillingworth)  
--but Hawthorne also worries about isolation/social disconnectedness (Hester "wandered without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind" 145; Pearl's asociality/ waywardness)  
--solution #1: "heart" metaphor (examples 122/220 of individual bonded to social sphere/ people's "great heart")  
--solution #2: initially Hester's "will" not integrated into social sphere (49: emerging from jail); in the end, she consents of her own "free will" (227) to wear the "A" and be part of the community--she is no longer coerced  
 --solution #3: Hester's program for radical reform between the sexes is cast into an indefinite future (227)  
 --solution #4: Pearl, the symbol of impulsiveness/isolation/libidinal energy, becomes humanized through grief (sympathy passage 222)  
 --in sum: Hawthorne is concerned about social repression/coercion, but also wants his rebel to become socialized

 METHOD OF ROMANTICISM/ HAWTHORNIAN ROMANCE:
PSYCHOLOGICAL/MORAL PROJECTED INTO ENVIRONMENT AND MADE PALPABLE

 Examples:

--suit of armor that distorts "A" (Scarlet Woman)
--rose bush (wild nature/passion)
--Pearl (waywardness)
--where Hester lives (b/w society/wilderness)
--Chillingworth's appearance (obsession)
--Dimmesdale's bosom (guilt manifests itself)
--Chillingworth's dark flabby leaves (sin/guilt) 
--Chillingworth as "conscience" appears same day Hester first on pillory

--on the one hand above = a symbolic proliferation of "meaning"  (the "A" gets replicated everywhere, including as fetishized radiant/ transgressive object in the "Custom House" sketch)

--on the other = almost an obsessional economy of meaning                       

--scaffold scene repeated 3 times: a psychosocial drama of guilt/shame that compulsively must be returned to

--characters somewhat reduced to their symbolic/moral meaning (Chillingworth's motivation literally difficult to explain--but easy to explain as symbol of prying intellect/ goading of conscience)

 --Romantic writers typically fascinated by tension between seeing language:

            --reflecting/describing the external world (writer = mirror, as it were, walking down the road) 
            --imposed upon or creating the world (writer = visionary creator) 
            --consequence: role of artist less passive/more noble
            --but writer also may become self-conscious about language as artifice ("Disney" description of Pearl in the woods) 
            --Poe and Melville are especially self-conscious about "meaning" in language

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