An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
This essay about The Scarlet Letter explores from a textual and cultural perspective the place of the artist in New England culture, both that of Puritan seventeenth-century Boston and of the nineteenth-century Salem satirized in « The Custom-House ». It shows how, in his typically ironic style, Haw...
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Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)
2014-07-01
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| Series: | E-REA |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/erea/3623 |
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| author | Michèle BONNET |
| author_facet | Michèle BONNET |
| author_sort | Michèle BONNET |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This essay about The Scarlet Letter explores from a textual and cultural perspective the place of the artist in New England culture, both that of Puritan seventeenth-century Boston and of the nineteenth-century Salem satirized in « The Custom-House ». It shows how, in his typically ironic style, Hawthorne covertly subverts New England’s critical view of the artist who, rather than being an alleged agent of social disruption, turns out to be the cement of the community, indeed a « necessary » element. The text first painstakingly disproves that storytelling and art in general might run counter to the Puritan work ethic. The artist, either male or female, is no « idler ». It shows in addition that he or she complies with another Puritan imperative that lived on into nineteenth-century New England culture : being serviceable to the community. Paradoxically enough, this, we also discover, is achieved through a quality held in deep suspicion by this same culture, imagination or fancy (the pointedly indifferent use of the terms serving a particular purpose here), which the text rehabilitates as the artist’s exemplary quality, also crediting the latter with a larger than ordinary faculty for sympathy, or love or, in the text’s coded language, « affection ». These are the twin qualities that make the artist, the man of letters in particular, superior to the history writer and better-equipped than him for federating the nation. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-3d27e755abd5411b8bbe6bd2110a60d9 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 1638-1718 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2014-07-01 |
| publisher | Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | E-REA |
| spelling | doaj-art-3d27e755abd5411b8bbe6bd2110a60d92025-01-09T12:54:10ZengLaboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)E-REA1638-17182014-07-0111210.4000/erea.3623An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet LetterMichèle BONNETThis essay about The Scarlet Letter explores from a textual and cultural perspective the place of the artist in New England culture, both that of Puritan seventeenth-century Boston and of the nineteenth-century Salem satirized in « The Custom-House ». It shows how, in his typically ironic style, Hawthorne covertly subverts New England’s critical view of the artist who, rather than being an alleged agent of social disruption, turns out to be the cement of the community, indeed a « necessary » element. The text first painstakingly disproves that storytelling and art in general might run counter to the Puritan work ethic. The artist, either male or female, is no « idler ». It shows in addition that he or she complies with another Puritan imperative that lived on into nineteenth-century New England culture : being serviceable to the community. Paradoxically enough, this, we also discover, is achieved through a quality held in deep suspicion by this same culture, imagination or fancy (the pointedly indifferent use of the terms serving a particular purpose here), which the text rehabilitates as the artist’s exemplary quality, also crediting the latter with a larger than ordinary faculty for sympathy, or love or, in the text’s coded language, « affection ». These are the twin qualities that make the artist, the man of letters in particular, superior to the history writer and better-equipped than him for federating the nation.https://journals.openedition.org/erea/3623historyliteraturenationalism19th centurygenderletters |
| spellingShingle | Michèle BONNET An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter E-REA history literature nationalism 19th century gender letters |
| title | An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter |
| title_full | An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter |
| title_fullStr | An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter |
| title_full_unstemmed | An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter |
| title_short | An Artist among the Puritans:Challenging a Cultural Image in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter |
| title_sort | artist among the puritans challenging a cultural image in hawthorne s the scarlet letter |
| topic | history literature nationalism 19th century gender letters |
| url | https://journals.openedition.org/erea/3623 |
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