Kate Mabe
Mrs. Achenbach
AP English 11
20 January 2004
The year 1790 marked the beginning
of the Second Great Awakening in America. Christians began turning their eyes
toward their Puritan roots, with God, sin, and redemption becoming the focus of
a new kind of Christianity: evangelism. In the 1820’s and 30’s, religious sects
began to separate into their own “sinless” communities, or Utopias, where they
felt they would be pure in the eyes of God. Abolitionism, Feminism, and Perfectionism
marked the era as an “Age of Reform,” and a time of social and religious
revolution. In the late 1840’s and early 1850’s, the Awakening and its
revolutionary spirit died down, and in 1849 Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his novel
The Scarlet Letter. The novel is set
in the time toward which Americans were looking for religious inspiration—the time
of Puritanism. Unlike his
contemporaries, who believed that revelation could
heal even the worst of sinners, Hawthorne offers a view of sin without
redemption, but rather with acceptance. A combination of the revolution
occurring around him and the revitalization of Puritanism may have prompted
Hawthorne to write a novel which delves into Puritan history with harsh and
revolutionary criticism. The novel was both revered and condemned, but
altogether widely read—a product of its times, and an influential work arriving
just at the moment in which America was propelling itself forward and out of
the Age of Reform.
Conveniently enough, Hawthorne chose
to set his novel in the midst of the world that he wished to criticize (Kaul
10). Puritanism had the attention of the nation during the Second Great
Awakening—the religious fervor of that era was what many Americans were hoping
to revitalize. So, Hawthorne’s novel would undoubtedly be widely read, as it
dealt with issues that were currently important to society. However, he uses
this setting not to approve of the Puritan way of life, but rather to display
its shortcomings, and offer a different view of human sin. As observed by A. N.
Kaul, Hawthorne’s attitude toward Puritanism in the novel “involves an irony
which often assumes the innocent guise of approval” (9). Consider the rose bush
by the prison door in the opening scene. The symbolism of the rose bush offers
a light of hope, which at first appears to be hope for redemption. Thus,
Hawthorne seems to be agreeing with the evangelists of the time in saying that
all sinners can possibly be cleansed and redeemed of their sin. But at the end
of the novel, the evangelists become disappointed, for Hester has not become
cleansed of sin, but rather has accepted it. The rose bush becomes no longer a
symbol of Christian redemption, but one of human sin in its most shockingly
beautiful form. This same irony is evident also in the character of Hester
herself. When Hester begins to become accepted slowly back into the community,
there seems to be hope for her redemption. But soon we realize that Hester is
satisfied not by being cleansed of sin but by having embraced it. Hawthorne had
taken a period of time and a state of mind which was currently being closely
examined by Americans and shed a rather revolutionary light on it.
Such a new and critical way of
looking at what was a revered time in American history sparked varied
reactions. The Christian moralists of the Great Awakening found plenty to
condemn. An article in The Christian
Register, dated April 13, 1850, stated that “as a Christian narrative,
detailing the experience of a Christian man and woman, falling away from their
purity, and struggling to get back again, it is utterly and entirely a failure”
(58). Orestes Brownson condemned the book in October of the same year for
dealing with dangerous subjects and seeming to condone sinful behavior:
“There is an unsound state of public morals
when the novelist is permitted,
without a scorching rebuke, to select such crimes, and invest them with
all the
fascinations of genius, and all the charms of a highly polished style.
In a moral
community
such crimes are spoken of as rarely as possible, and when spoken of
at all,
it is always in terms which render them loathsome, and repel the
imagination.” (Brownson 529).
Judging by this
reaction and others of its kind, Hawthorne’s novel was indeed quite
revolutionary for its time period. In the midst of a surge of repentance and
redemption, Hawthorne spoke of the unspeakable, and suggested that sin could
possibly be embraced and accepted as an inevitability. More often than
condemned, however, Hawthorne’s novel was praised. It was very widely read, and
often seen as a work of genius. Contemporary criticism praised his characters,
lessons, and symbols. The mixed reactions to this book capture its
revolutionary essence. It was written during a time when the country was
hovering between the past and the future. Even though some held back, The Scarlet Letter helped push the
nation forward.
The
Scarlet Letter can be seen most clearly as a backlash against the Great
Awakening and the Age of Reform in its claim that “perfectionism,” a quality
which Americans of the time strained to achieve, is in fact impossible.
Parallels are drawn between the Puritan society of the novel and the Utopias
that were springing up around the country in hopes of achieving perfection.
This comparison is first drawn in the opening chapter: “The founders of a new
colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally
project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical
necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery… ” Here,
Hawthorne has set up an analogy in which the Puritan community is comparable to
the Utopian community, and in his novel he depicts the Puritan community as
failing. The book was written during a time when Utopian communities throughout
the country were being set up and then failing relatively soon. Hawthorne
realized what Americans coming out of the Age of Reform were soon to discover
as well—that “the effort to achieve a well-integrated community life in such a
world must lead to tragedy” (Kaul 20). His novel appears to have been written
in order to shake the reformists awake from an impossible dream.
Hawthorne’s novel, while it dealt
directly with a time long past, dealt indirectly with the age in which it was
written. The Great Awakening and the Age of Reform attempted to resurrect a
time which Hawthorne saw as full of flaws. The novel came along at the end of
this period, and its criticism and revolutionary ideas might well have helped
push the nation out of it. Larry J. Reynolds wrote in 1985 that “when Hawthorne
wrote The Scarlet Letter…the fact and
idea of revolution were much on his mind” (67). Indeed, Hawthorne’s novel is
truly the product of a time of revolution, during which Americans reverted back
to their Puritan roots with more intensity then ever, only to reject these
views, tear themselves away from the past, and turn towards a future which
would not see another Great Awakening.
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