1.17.08 | Hawthorne (day 4)

1
1.17.08 Hawthorne (day 4)

• Business
• Signs, symbols, the letter A.
• HW
• Read through Child at the Brookside chapter for
  Tues. Finish for Wed.
• Upcoming schedule
• Melville, thurs.
• Poe, Mon.
• Auster, Tues. Tues.
• First paper due 2/8

2
Chillingworth Dimmesdale

• We talked about this book as addressing the sign
  as it is applied in real life with real stakes.
  We talked about the Custom House asking the
  question of signification straight out, what is
  the mystic meaning of the A?
• Chillingworth Dimmesdales relationship
  revolves around questions of inside/outside,
  public/private, sign/meaning.
• My contention is that their relation even further
  draws the issue of signification out of allegory
  and into lived experience.

3
Sign, Signified, Signifier

• Some people regard language, when reduced to its
  elements, as a naming-process only_a list of
  words, each corresponding to the thing that it
  names. For example
• This conception is open to criticism at several
  points.
• It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before
  words
• it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or
  psychological in nature (arbor, for instance, can
  be considered from either viewpoint)
• finally, it lets us assume that the linking of a
  name and a thing is a very simple operationan
  assumption that is anything but true.
• But this rather naive approach can bring us
  near the truth by showing us that the linguistic
  unit is a double entity, one formed by the
  associating of two terms.

• Pg. 5

4
Saussures Sign

• Arbitrary
• Consensus
• Chained Contextual
• Multiple
• Difference, differentiation

5
Chillingworth Dimmesdale

• Sickness as symptom
• symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part
  122
• Confession
• Doctor / Confessor / Diagnosis / Identity
• wherefore not since all the powers of nature
  call so earnestly for the confession of sin
  118
• The mark
• A rare case! he muttered. I must needs look
  deeper into it. A strange sympathy betwixt soul
  and body! Were it only for the arts sake, I must
  search this matter to the bottom! 124
• Discovers the mark But with what a wild look of
  wonder, joy, and horror! 124

6
Dimmesdale Prynne

• Chillingworth asks for comparison
• Is Hester Prynne the less miserable, think you,
  for that scarlet letter on her breast? 121
• So, how DO they compare?
• They are both adulterers and suffering because of
  it, etc. But I suggest that theyre suffering
  from a cultural desire for transparency, a window
  to the soul, for a one-to-one naming system.
• Reading Finding the one-to-one sign, the naming
  system that leads on from body to soul,
  appearances to reality, nature to God, that is
  the very foundation of the Boston world and part
  of the project of this novel is putting this
  system of naming to the test.

7
Lets hit the letter A again. What does it mean?

• On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth,
  surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and
  fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the
  letter A. It was so artistically done, and with
  so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of
  fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and
  fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore
  and which was of a splendor in accordance with
  the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was
  allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the
  colony" 47
• my footnote says "sumptuary regulations" were
  rules of decorum intended to enforce class
  distinction.

8
A

• sun shines on it 70
• Changes Hs identity
• giving up her individuality, she would become the
  general symbol at which the preacher and moralist
  might point, and in which they might vivify and
  embody their images of women's frailty and sinful
  passion... as the figure, the body, the reality
  of sin -  71
• 'emerging into another state of being'
• 'her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she
  had struck into the soil
• Brings her back to reality
• Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came
  back the rude market-place of the Puritan
  settlement, with all the townspeople assembled
  and levelling their stern regards at Hester
  Prynne, -- yes, at herself, -- who stood on the
  scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm,
  and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically
  embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom! 
  Could it all be true? She clutched the child so
  fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry
  she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet
  letter, and evne touched it with her fing, to
  assure herself that the infant and the shame were
  real. Yes! -- these were her realities, -- all
  else had vanished! 53

9
On the pillory

• Discerning the impracticable state of the poor
  culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had
  carefully prepared himself for the occasion,
  addresed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in
  all its branches, but with continual reference to
  the ignominious letter. So forcibly did he dwell
  upon this symbol, for the hour or more during
  which his periods were rolling over the people's
  heads, that it assumed new terrors in their
  imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue
  from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester
  Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the
  pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air
  of weary indifference...With the same hard
  demeanour, she was led back to prison, and
  vanished form the public gaze within its
  iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those
  who peered after here, that the scarlet letter
  threw a lurid gleam along the dark passsage-way
  of the interior. 62

10
A

• Stranger's eyes burn it fresh into her skin - 77
• except for the bond-servant of the Governor who
  thinks it is a mark of distinction 94
• Children playing in the garden who see the A run
  in fear. 73
• Hester thinks it gives her sympathetic knowledge
  of hidden sins in others 77.
• That unsunned snow in the matron's boom, and the
  burning shame on Hester Prynne's - what had the
  two in common?
• O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol,
  wouldst though leave nothing, wheather in youth
  or age, for this poor sinner to revere? -- Such
  loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results
  of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was
  not corrupt in this poor vitcim of her own
  frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester PRynne
  struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was
  guilty like herself.

11
A Skill Imagination

• She bore on her breast, in the curiously
  embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate
  and imaginative skill, of which the dames of the
  court might gladly have availed themselves...
• turns her ignominy into a profitable business.
  Fitting she was castigated in the market-place.
• But she was never called on to make wedding
  garments. "The exception indicated the ever
  relentless vigor with which society frowned on
  her sin. 74
• To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of
  expressing, and therefore, soothing, the passion
  of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it
  as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with
  an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be
  feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but
  something doubtful, something that might be
  deeply wrong, beneath. 75

12
A

• It is both a punishment for adultery and a
  prideful sexy adornment, it makes imagination
  feel sinful, crashing it on the rock of the real,
  yet inspires imagination to contemplate sin,
  unites Hester with all sinners and ostracizes
  her.
• What does the symbol A mean?

13
The Ministers Vigil

• Regarding the structure of the book, you know
  this has to be an important chapter.
• Second of three pillory scenes.
• comes in almost the exact middle of the book.
• Set the scene.
• What have we just learned about Dimmesdale?
• What is his state of mind?
• Walking in the shadow of a dream 133
• What happens at the pillory?

14

• "Nothing was more common, in those days, than to
  interpret all meteoric appearances, and other
  natural phenomena, that occurred with less
  regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon,
  as so many revelations from a supernatural
  source."
• "Often its credibility rested on the faith of
  some lonely witness, who beheld the wonder
  through the colored, magnifying, and distorting
  medium of his imagination, and shaped it more
  distinctly in his afterthought.
• We impute, therefore, solely to the disease in
  his own eye and heart 140
• Good Governor Winthrop 143

15
Other As

• the pillory itself, which is in the Marketplace -
  50
• that instrument of disciplined, so fashioned as
  to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and
  thus hold it up to the public gaze.
• The arched form of the Governor's house 93
• Governors breastplate - 95
• Pearl's dress
• "But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb,
  and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that
  it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the
  beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was
  doomed to war upon her bosom. It was the scarlet
  letter in another form the scarlet letter
  endowed with life!" 92
• Others?

16
Pearl

• "But, in truth, Pearl was the one, as well as th
  other her object of affection and the emblem of
  her guilt and torture and only in consequence
  of that identity had Hester contrived so
  perfectly to represent the scarlet letter in her
  appearence."
• First object she showed awareness of is the
  letter. 86
• Throws flowers at the letter 87
• Rings the letter with thistles.
• So what is the relationship between Pearl and the
  letter?
• What is Pearl like?
• We will start there on Tues.