scarlet letter analysis
RESEARCH QUESTION
1. How does the society, in the setting of the story affect Hester's
fate in The Scarlet Letter?
2. Mother daughter relationships psychology in scarlet letter?
3. How might we use an understanding of repression, ego and the
superego?
METHODS
Psychoanalytic criticism
adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists
to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the
secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is
a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a
particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all
such characters are projections of the author's psyche.
One interesting facet of this approach is that it validates the
importance of literature, as it is built on a literary key for the decoding.
Freud himself wrote, "The dream-thoughts which we first come across as we
proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in which they are
expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by our
thoughts, but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes
and metaphors, in images resembling those of poetic speech" (26).
Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of
unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so
forth within what may well be a disunified literary work. The author's own
childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be
traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But
psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as
in dreams) through principles such as "symbolism" (the repressed
object represented in disguise), "condensation" (several thoughts or
persons represented in a single image), and "displacement" (anxiety
located onto another image by means of association).
Despite the importance of the author here, psychoanalytic criticism is
similar to New Criticism in not concerning itself with "what the author
intended." But what the author never intended (that is,
repressed) is sought. The unconscious material has been distorted by the
censoring conscious mind. (https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/psycho.crit.html)
Concept of Psychoanalytic Criticism
There are several key concepts in the psychoanalytic theory; Freud view
of human nature being deterministic is one of them. The term deterministic or
determinism in short means to be born with it, Corey (2009) stated that
“according to Freud, our behavior is determined by irrational forces,
unconscious motivations, and biological and instinctual drives” (p.58). So
Sigmund Freud notion that there is no such thing as human accident and that
future event are a result of previous action. These actions are a result of our
exposure to our environment, such as parents, friends, society, etc.
ANALYSIS
Novel Identity
Title ; The
Scarlet Letter
Author ; Nathaniel
Hawthorne
Country ; United States
Language : English
Genre ; Romantic,
Historical
Synopsis
The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan
settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her
infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A
man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for
adultery. Hester’s husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to
America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost
at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as
she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity,
however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her
punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town
scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify
her child’s father.
The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now practicing
medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent
on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has
sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a
seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the
community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community
officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur
Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to
stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from
mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress.
Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in
with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care.
Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the
minister’s torments and Hester’s secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to
see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth
discovers a mark on the man’s breast (the details of which are kept from the
reader), which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.
Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures
for himself. In the meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and quiet humility have
earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is
about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to a
deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to
punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link
hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the
next day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. Hester can see
that the minister’s condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She
goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale’s self-torment.
Chillingworth refuses.
Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she
is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans to reveal his
identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they
can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in
four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter
and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother
without the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather
for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile,
Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked
passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees
Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the
scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a
scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl
kisses him.
Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and
Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years
later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her
old cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters
from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of
her own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a
single tombstone, which bears a scarlet “
(https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/scarlet/summary/)
1. Determinism suggests that one's faith is determined by the society
(politic, economy, social, culture, defense, security, place, time), instead of
God. The setting of this story affects what happens to Hester crucially,
which proves the elements of determinism in this novel. Because the puritan
community of Hawthorne’s. The Scarlet Letter label Hester as an adultress and
places her outside the circle of the other members, Hester’s nature is
certainly altered as witnessed by her dulled appearance. The effect of wearing
the mark of a sinner causes Hester to undergo changes to her physical
appearance partly because of the “studied austerity of her dress” but also
because there is no longer anything in Hester’s face for love to dwell upon, no
passion, no affection. The tenderness in Hester’s appearance has been removed
by the strict punishment she suffers.
2. Hester Prynne then is permissive
in her handling of Pearl in the Scarlet Letter. She allows the child a freedom
of physical activity and an almost full expression of her feelings that
sometimes suggests over permissiveness. Hester never uses physical punishment
but rather, responds to the child's difficult behavior with demonstrations of
love. Such child rearing principles, from accounts by Hawthorne and his
children, were similar to Hawthorne's own practice and were based on ideas he
and his wife endorsed.
3. Ego
“The Ego is both conscious and unconscious: in that fact lays the
explanation for the conflict between instinctual pleasure and reality which
takes place within it” (Hoffman, 1957:25). While trying to satisfy such
desires, one encounters reality or in other words: “ego”. The ego is located in
our unconscious and depends on the reality, it is one of the most crucial parts
of human personality, because ego decides what is suitable for the individual,
which impulses or desires offered by the id can be satisfied and to what degree
they can be satisfied. According to Freud; “(The ego) is not only the ally of
the id; it is also a submissive slave who courts the love of his master”
(Freud, 1949:83). Therefore, it is just like ladder between the needs of id and
the realities offered by ego
Superego
It is certainly
about the moral values of society in which we live or what we have been taught
by our parents. Jackson describes the superego by saying:
A third major
component – corresponding roughly to conscience – is the superego. This
consists of social, and in particular parental, standards introjected into the
mind. The superego is partly unconscious: it issues blind commands, just as the
id issues blind desires, and produces feelings of guilt when its commands are
disobeyed (Jackson, 2000:49).
The main function
of super ego is to decide whether an action is true or not according to the
ethical or moral values of the community in which individuals live. Super ego
retains and struggles for perfection or satisfaction. Freud states: “The
super-ego is always in close touch with the id and can act as its
representative in relation to the ego” (Freud, 1949:70). The superego deals
with both because individual deeds do not always fit into the moral codes that
superego represents. The superego is developed according to the moral and
ethical values which were taught us by our families when we were young. It is
the pitiful part of the personality since superego directs ego to base the
behavior on how actions can affect the whole community.
As superego is what
the society says, historical background must be introduced so that a better
understanding of the mental struggle of Dimmesdale can be achieved. Puritans
came to New England to practice their religion, which is their chief incentive
when they came to the new world. In this new world, they established a small
civilized community out of the wilderness. At the beginning, they had to fight
against nature; here the nature refers to the environment that had not been
intruded by human being, in order to live. But later, they combated human
nature—suppressing natural joys and pleasure, negating all passion, which they
considered as wilderness. Puritans pretended that their own civilization had
not and should not have any of the elements of the wilderness in it. They are,
in fact, the enemies of nature and pretend to embody everything that is the
opposite of the wilderness and nature. They focus on society and civilization
extremely. All that they embrace is part of civilization: the church, religious
education, intellect rather than emotion; rigid forms and rules rather than
freedom. Because Puritans believe that God will punish the whole community
if only one member of the community did bad behavior. So that is why Puritans
are so aggressive in punishing moral infraction.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that, the scarlet letter A on the bosom of Hester
Prynne may stands for adultery, which is his sexual desire; anguish, his strong
passion; and also ambition, his desire to success. Thus the scarlet letter A is
the id of Hester Prynne, which is also his basic nature. But the society in
which he lives fight against all these human nature, Hester Prynne on one hand
wants to satisfy all his desire; on the other hand, he is aware of social rules
and moral ethics and cares about what the society says. Consequently, Hester
Prynne is in a dilemma.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Corey,
Gerald (2009). Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy, p.58.
https://archive.org/stream/JASSS-WINTER-III/31-%C3%96%C4%9Fr.%20G%C3%B6r.%20Hande%20%C4%B0SAO%C4%9ELU_djvu.txt
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