Nathaniel Hawthorne

1
Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter and the
American Gothic

• adapted from Brigham, Ann. "Toni Morrison's
  Beloved and the American Gothic." Newberry
• Teachers Consortium. Newberry Library, Chicago.
  25 Feb. 2010. Lecture.

2
History of the Word Gothic

• Original meaning
• to do with the Goths or barbarian northern
  tribes who played a part in the collapse of the
  Roman Empire (though 17th and 18th c. writers who
  used the term knew little about the Goths)
• Term came to be a synonym for Germanic,
  retaining its connotation of barbarity
• Punter, David. Literature of Terror a History of
  Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present
• Day. New York Longman, 1996. Print.

3
Early 18th Century

• shift from a geographical to a historical
  meaning, referring to things medieval/pre-17th c.
• used in opposition to classical classical
  well-ordered, simple and pure, Gothic was
  chaotic, ornate, and convoluted (mixings) the
  classics offered a set of cultural models to be
  followed, Gothic represented excess and
  exaggeration, the wild and uncivilized

4
Shift in 18th centuryThe term gothic takes on
positive values.

• Gothic
• Old-fashioned
• Barbaric
• Crude
• Old English Barons
• English and Provincial

• Opposite
• Modern
• Civilized
• Elegant
• Cosmopolitan Gentry
• European/French

5
Shifts in 18th Century

• As the archaic and pagan, gothic is prior to and
  opposes or resists the establishment of civilized
  values and a well-regulated society.
• Writers argue that barbarism possesses a fire,
  vigor and sense of grandeur sorely needed in
  English culture. Could breathe life into culture
  by re-establishing relations with a forgotten,
  Gothic past (cf. Romantic poetry).

6
Shifts in 18th Century

• Gothic architecture taste for medieval
  buildings wealthy build Gothic ruins ready-made
  Horace Walpole builds Strawberry Hill, a Gothic
  castle in miniature William Beckfords Fonthill
  collapses under the weight of its grandiosity.

7
Shifts in 18th Century

• Gothic Fiction 1760s-1820s first period of
  immense popularity. Novels set in the past,
  using castles, ruins, and convents as settings.
  Portrayed the wild and barbaric. Plots of terror
  put down by literary critics as crude,
  sensationalistic and sadistic, pandering to
  popular taste. Many, including Wordsworth, felt
  literature should be morally and spiritually
  uplifting, functioning to elevate the minds and
  morals of its audience.

8
Shifts in 18th Century

• Appearance of the supernatural, scandalous in
  supremely rational world of the 18th century

9
Classic English Gothic Novels

• Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1765) Ann
  Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
  Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1795) Jane Austen,
  Northanger Abbey (1818, posthumouslyparody)
  Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) Emily Bronte,
  Wuthering Heights (1847) Charlotte Bronte, Jane
  Eyre (1847) Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange
  Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) Bram
  Stoker, Dracula (1897) The Lair of the White
  Worm (1911) Daphne de Maurier, Rebecca (1938).

10
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Setting An ancestral or family house
  (mansion/castle or house with lots of floors,
  rooms, passageways, secret spaces), old abbey
  (with crypt and/or cemetery), or other ruin.
  To consider What settings appear as haunted in
  20th century American gothic? Whats significant
  about such places being represented as ruins?

11
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Source of terror Often haunting figures
  (supernatural or psychological or both) out of a
  buried past that bring back ideas/beliefs/
  features that others want to keep suppressed or
  repressed. Sometimes the figure is a
  doppelganger. To consider What figure from a
  buried past might haunt individuals, cultures,
  nations, our sense of the present? How can that
  figure say something about what is being
  repressed, either by an individual or a culture?

12
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Plot shape based on primal crime (acts that
  violate lineage, class, legitimized sex, family,
  inheritance/property claimsincest is one). A
  character or happening crosses a border
  (physical, cultural, psychological, sexual) or
  mixes things up in ways that are taboo. To
  consider What cultural or legal code is violated
  or transgresses in a text? That is, what
  forbidden desires, acts, or ideas are embraced?
  What institution or ideology does such a
  violation threaten?

13
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Frequent foci 1) the victimization of women,
  usually for economic gain or illusions of
  patriarchal power 2) alienation because communal
  systems of value have not only collapsed, but are
  revealed to be illegitimate or debased from their
  beginnings (e.g., the success story of the rise
  of the individual or the self-made man).

14
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Hero/heroine the hero is usually a young man who
  could potentially be evil and destructive, but
  who usually turns out to be goodand the heir of
  the property and fortune. But heroines are often
  the protagonists of gothic texts. To consider
  What happens to the characterization of the hero
  when a woman is in that role? Does she turn out
  to be good? The heir?

15
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Villain frequently a father-figure intent on
  upholding the property and standards of a family
  (and concealing the secrets of the house or his
  past)sometimes takes the form of a religious
  figure upholding or using antiquated religious
  power (early Gothic novels were anti-Catholic) or
  of a Satanic figure from an alien race (like
  Dracula or other vampires). To consider What
  other father-figures appear in American gothic?
  What kinds of institutions represent the father
  figure? And, what about those mothers?

16
Basic, Ongoing Features of the classic Gothic
Novel

• Style of narration and dialogue sometimes
  hyperbolic, overly dramatic. Gothic is about the
  difficulty of getting the story toldnarrative
  transgressions due to secret documents, missing
  links, or multiple narratives, like stories
  within stories or flashbacks (the eruption of the
  past into the presenta temporal border crossing
  where you cant keep the past in its place).

17
The Take-Away

• Gothic styles are a response to Classicisms
  order and classification
• The theme of social entropy, chaos and
  decomposition is useful to Hawthorne to show the
  internal decline of Puritanism.