Scarlet Letter (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother withdrew into a hermit’s existence, rarely leaving her bedroom, Nathaniel and his attractive, strong-willed, and literate sister, Elizabeth, or Ebe, became constant companions. Although no evidence exists to suggest that the two had incestuous relations, some critics have suggested that The Scarlet Letter depicts the author’s revulsion at his own incestuous yearnings, if not at his personal experience of incest.
    In only one instance, a pseudonymously published short story, does Hawthorne’s work overtly address incest. “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” which was likely Hawthorne’s first published fiction, tells the story of an orphaned brother and sister, Leonard and Alice Doane, who raise themselves in seclusion until a stranger develops a relationship with the sister. Leonard murders the stranger, whom he views as a rival, but later discovers that the victim was his twin brother. According to the thesis that makes of the Manning scandal and Hawthorne’s relationship to his sister, Ebe, a blot in Hawthorne’s lineage, the incestuous theme that is in plain view in “Alice Doane’s Appeal,” with the author’s identity hidden, lies also at the core of many of the shorter works for which Hawthorne is most famous, such as “Young Goodman Brown,” as well as The Scarlet Letter.
    If true, the thesis of Hawthorne’s felt ancestral guilt illuminates the gaping disproportion between the apparent crime of adultery and its catastrophic emotional, social, and penal consequences in The Scarlet Letter. The thesis also seems to explain Hawthorne’s reticence about speaking the name of adultery; by shrouding the crime in mystery, Hawthorne invites readers to speculate that some other law prescribing a primal taboo was violated. Were the reader to deduce that the scarlet A was a stand-in not for Adultery, but for Incest, the thesis would also help explain the continued effect of the novel on contemporary audiences. Incest remains one of the few transgressions that Americans reliably associate with shame, guilt, and horror. If the psychological damage depicted in The Scarlet Letter is understood as a response to incest, then Hester’s burdened self-abnegation and Dimmesdale’s guilt-mad undoing are consistent with widely held ideas about the consequences of incest even today. One problem with the thesis, among other problems, is that The Scarlet Letter has retained its power for more than a century and half, and readers have only in the past several decades had the benefit of an understanding that equates incest in Hawthorne’s family with Hawthorne’s putative obsession with incest, and even now only a small minority of readers are likely exposed to the “A is for incest” interpretation of the novel.
    Any effort to tie the multiple and extreme punishments that play out in The Scarlet Letter to a single crime whose elements are easily defined—such as adultery, defined as intercourse with a man who is not one’s husband or intercourse with a woman who is married to a different man, or incest, defined as sexual contact with a close blood relative—hides from the reader Hawthorne’s positing of multiple causes, as well as many the author may not have intended, but that nonetheless enrich our reading of The Scarlet Letter. All of the central characters have unusual psychological and mental traits that intensify their experiences of the crime. Dimmesdale’s sensitivity magnifies his crime, while his position and his preoccupation with status add the dimension of hypocrisy; acuity and obsessiveness compound Chillingworth’s suffering; Pearl’s contempt for the Puritan children and her social exile play off one another in a way that increases her isolation; intellect and a tendency toward morbid introspection heighten Hester’s shame and despair.
    In addition to these psychological factors, other explanations of the novel are latent in the text. The combined revulsion and titillation of the Puritan community, and