Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the American Gothic *

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 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. Gothic Old-fashioned Barbaric Crude Old English Barons English and Provincial Opposite Modern Civilized Elegant Cosmopolitan Gentry European/French Shift in 18th century:The term “gothic” takes on positive values.

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 Beckford’s 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, posthumously—parody); 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? What’s 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 claims—incest 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 good—and 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 told—narrative transgressions due to secret documents, missing links, or multiple narratives, like stories within stories or flashbacks (the eruption of the past into the present—a temporal border crossing where you can’t keep the past in its place).

17. The Take-Away • Gothic styles are a response to Classicism’s order and classification • The theme of social entropy, chaos and decomposition is useful to Hawthorne to show the internal decline of Puritanism.