The Scarlet Letter

br The Scarlet Letter : A Twice-Told Tale , by S . Bercovitch , 1996 br

Next Prev /Search ?Help [From Nathaniel Hawthorne Review , vol 22 no 2 , pp 1-20 Fall 1996 , ISSN 0980-4197 , sponsored by The Nathaniel Hawthorne Society , editor Frederick Newberry , Department of English , Duquesne University , 600 Forbes Avenue , Pittsburgh , PA 15282 . Subscriptions : Leland S . Person , College of Liberal Arts , Southern Illinois University , Carbondale , IL 62901 This talk was delivered at the Hawthorne Hotel , Salem Massachusetts , June 29 , 1996 . The present text corrects some misplaced references in the printed text .] p

br The Scarlet Letter :A Twice-Told Tale By Sacvan Bercovitch br YOU 'VE heard a great deal about Mosses from an Old Manse . [1] Now , moving from Concord to Salem , let me tell you about Hawthorne 's next great work . The Scarlet Letter opens in an Algonquin village , where the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and his close companion , Running Moose , have come on a peace mission . Arthur is at home among the indigenes , but he is special in this regard "You 're the only [white man] who comes [to us] with open heart says the tribal chieftain , Metacomet , who then proceeds to list the settlers injustices . Metacomet 's remarks sound an ominous note . It turns out that Arthur and Running Moose have a "great experiment " in view , involving racial harmony and social diversity , but their dream is not to be . Not yet . The time is the sixteen-seventies , when , historically , a series of attacks by the federated local tribes devastated the English settlements . As the story ends the assault is underway . And yet the conclusion is hardly tragic . For one thing , it 's clear that the settlers have brought their troubles upon themselves . More important , a romance has flowered between Arthur and the beautiful Hester Prynne , a romance that actually occupies most of our attention , and whose harvest is a little Pearl . Finally , as things unfold we learn that the Puritans are not all bad . Potentially they are indeed a diverse community , comprising not only dogmatists and invaders , but ecumenicals free-thinkers , Quakers , antinomians , and former members of the Merry-Mount colony . So the mood is hopeful as the story draws to a close . The community survives , and with it , presumably , the prospects for the great experiment Prospectively , too , the experiment moves outward across the continent , where the Dimmesdale family , riding off together into the sunset , goes in search of a new life The movie of The Scarlet Letter did not sell many copies of the book . That may be because the movie flopped , or , better , because the book did not need selling , or , best of all because the American public did not buy the adaptation . For as you can tell from my precis , and as the screen credits make plain the movie , starring Demi Moore and Gary Oldman , with Robert Duvall as Chillingworth , is "freely adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne " Joyce Carol Oates called it a feminist adaptation , but I think that 's too limiting . The movie is a contemporary reader 's fantasy about everything he or she wanted...