"The Scarlet Letter"

Analytical Essay # 64577

English > Analysis
Literature > American

A critical analysis of a passage within Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter".

1,389 words () | 5 sources | APA | 2005 United Kingdom

Paper Summary:

This paper examines a particular passage found in Chapter 13 of "The Scarlet Letter", specifically looking at language and narrative voice, themes and images and critical background. It attempts to highlight how, within this small passage, we can identify many of the themes which run throughout the book and which have a direct correlation to notions of Americanism and the American voice during seventeenth century New England such as self-reliance and individualism, patriarchal values and the sin of women and the social interaction within Puritanical law.

From the Paper:

"One of the key themes in The Scarlet Letter - and indeed to the notion of Americanism at the time within which the book is set, seventeenth century Puritan New England, America - is the idea of self, the individual and independence. However, Hawthorne sets this notion up against womanhood through Hester's character and creates an opposition. Hester has indeed become a self-reliant American "Standing alone in the world - alone, as to any dependence on society" (139), but this leads her to question her existence as a woman "the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them?" (140)."