Relating to the Material

Relating to the Material

In This Chapter

• Learning what to look for in the writing

• What the author expects from you

• Subjectivity, objectivity, and emotional involvement

• What history teaches us as readers?

In this chapter, we delve a little deeper into what you need to be looking for in literature in terms of expectations, emotions, and mood. You will begin by getting a better understanding of an author's intentions and figuring out your own expectations so that you will develop confidence in your conclusions.

Then, using references to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, you will learn about the complexities of a good piece of fiction and historical context. You will learn about how historical writings reflect societal development and what that means for you, the reader today.

What Does the Writing Mean to You?

As you become a more experienced reader, you will discover that people read differently. Obviously, by now you know we don't mean how you hold the book or position your elbows on the arms of your chair. Because we are all different people, we interpret the reading differently. What you interpret as one meaning, someone else may interpret as something else entirely. This is another reason it's nice to have an outlet, such as a book group, to talk about what you've read.

What the writing means to you has everything to do with who you are. And choosing any book, to begin with, has a great deal to do with what the writing will mean to you. You've chosen the book for a specific reason. It called out to you in some way and you were drawn to it.

The Task at Hand

Let's return to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, a story about a woman accused of adultery in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. She is humiliated in front of her community by being forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her dress as punishment for her "crime."

What is interesting here is that because Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in the nineteenth century, you have two questions to ask yourself in this reading: What was life like in the nineteenth century when the story was written, and what was life like in the seventeenth century, the time that Hawthorne is writing about? Your task is to try to understand how a nineteenth century writer might imagine life two centuries prior to his own. So you are actually reading a historical perspective of another historic time.

What Do You Expect?

As with any book, your reading experience will begin with interest and curiosity. Your first step when approaching a novel such as The Scarlet Letter should be to examine your own expectations of the topic itself. Based on what you already know about the story and based on what you have read of nineteenth-century western culture, what do you think Hawthorne will have to say about his character's situation? What kind of statement, if any, is Hawthorne trying to make about the moral issues of that society versus his own and how does that differ from the issues in your own society?

As a twenty-first-century mind (that's you), it might be difficult to picture that there's any huge difference between the two societies; but try to imagine two centuries prior to the times in which you live.

While you read The Scarlet Letter, for example, here is a list of questions you might keep in mind about our society's moral expectations of its citizens (and in turn, about your own moral expectations):

• In what way does religion play into the morals of American society?

• How are women treated compared to men when accused of committing adultery?

• How much say does our society and government have in our private and personal lives?

• Where do the Puritans in The Scarlet Letter get their moral code from, and does that kind of code exist in any part of American (or even world) cultures today?

• Can you compare Hester Prynne and Rev. Chillingworth to any modern-day heroes or victims, either literary or factual?

Now try replacing the questions regarding your society with nineteenth-century society—the time during which Hawthorne was writing. See how different your answers are and try comparing all three centuries and cultures (the seventeenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first). Obviously, this is where the research comes in!

After you read The Scarlet Letter, you will acquire meanings from the book based on your focus and expectations of the author. The outcome of this particular reading experience for you will be whether the author fiilfilled your expectations. Is this what you were looking for? If not, how was it different? Maybe the author exceeded your expectations. When that happens, it's always an adventure—and an exciting one at that!

Reader Response and Author Intention

Hawthorne has something to say, and it's up to you to figure out what it is by examining the life of the author himself. We won't keep you in suspense, and we'll even help you a little with your research here.

Hawthorne carried the tainted heritage of a hanging-judge uncle who sentenced many innocent women to die for all sorts of reasons—and ultimately condemned them for witchcraft, based on paranoia, irrational suspicion, and the fertile imaginations of people eager and swift to judge others. This should make you wonder (without even getting an answer to the question): Was this piece of writing by Hawthorne intended to be an act of reparation for his shameful relative's behavior back in the seventeenth century? Was there a thriving Puritan heritage calling out to the author? Or, more simply, maybe he just wondered what it was like to be alive back then. What did people think and feel? And what did the Puritans do to those who did not live by a standard moral code? What was the standard moral code, for that matter?

Like most fiction writers, Hawthorne drew from his own life and his own questions about life to create an imagined world that strives to answer many of these questions. These may be questions Hawthorne asked himself, and by writing the novel, questions he is asking you to consider as well. However, whatever answers you come up with are your own. There may be no one answer to these life issues in the end, but there certainly are your answers.

Hawthorne evoked his questions about life, and maybe even about his own ancestry, by humanizing history. He gave names to faces, feelings to characters, and description to places. This is what makes fiction. This is what teaches us. And this is how we grow.

The Scarlet Letter is charged with emotional and intellectual issues, making it a very good example of how literature can push you to look very closely at your own responses. Reading The Scarlet Letter will inevitably force you to contemplate your own code of ethics, your sense of morality, and the religious and spiritual influences in your life. How do you see the novel? How does it reflect what you believe or do not believe? How does it compare to the modern-day view of "morality" or "honor," for that matter? What is your opinion on adultery? Do you think Hester has done anything wrong? Is she a hero or a victim—or both? What kind of person do you think Hester is? What do you think of the outcome?

On the other hand, and maybe more importantly, what was Hawthorne trying to say to the reader?

Emotion Versus Subjectivity

We all have likes and dislikes as well as things we're just not so sure about. We have emotional responses to difficult as well as happy situations, to the people around us, and about ourselves. We are human beings with biases and prejudices, and we all have things that trigger our reactions. But to get

stuck in those emotional places leaves us at dead ends. It would be hard to read anything subjectively or objectively if you're stuck in certain emotional places.

If you can understand that, it will be easier for you to grasp the difference between emotional and subjective responses.

The Emotional Reader

An emotional response is often a knee-jerk reaction. It comes from the gut—it can happen in an instant and always speaks to how we feel in the immediate. In many ways, it speaks to our biases and things with which we are familiar. Sometimes the feelings don't hit us in the here and now, but when they do, they can often be powerful and eye opening.

For example, if you are reading a story about a mean dog that is shot by a member of an unsympathetic community, you could have one of two reactions: Maybe you're relieved because that dog was a total menace to society—in this case your bias may be in favor of society. On the other hand, the dog had been treated cruelly, so you sympathize with him and feel sad when he dies—then perhaps your bias is with the dog and against a conceivably uncaring society. Both are emotional responses.

A Subjective Perspective

Subjective responses are grounded more in the kind of person you have become to this point as opposed to what you feel at any given moment. From a subjective perspective, you bring your inner reality to your reading, which will either be expanded or more limited depending on what it is you choose to read.

You bring values and points of view of your own; they are all hopefully going to be challenged by the reading. That is usually what the author intends to do: challenge the norm and shake up the status quo.

In the case of the dog in the previous example, maybe you were the owner of a dog who had been cruelly treated by a group of local hooligans and as a result you have had to muzzle the dog and have people look at you and the dog with trepidation. To you it's a loving, friendly animal, much like your own dog, while to the rest of the world it's a monster. You cannot see the dog as just good or bad, you know that it's more complex than that. It is your own life experience that affects this read.

Intellectually Speaking

Intellectual response is geared toward bringing your analytical skills to bear on your reading. Reading intellectually will allow you to see the writing more objectively. Look objectively at how the author shapes his or her characters, develops the plot, or uses descriptions. What is the point of view? Who is telling the story? Does the narrator have an opinion about the events or about the characters? And what about the author? Why did he or she write the book in the first place? What does he or she want you to get out of it?

Okay, let's go back to that dog for a moment. Try thinking about it this way: "Personally, it troubles me that this society did not understand the dog, but objectively, I understand that they needed to get rid of the dog or face the loss of more human lives within the community."

Looking at the story from the dog's perspective, the owner's perspective, the community's perspective, and the individuals within the community and their various perspectives allows you to look at a situation—in real life or in a book—from an intellectual standpoint so that you can draw objective rather than subjective conclusions.

While you will find answers from your own reading of the material, you will also gain perspective from outside sources such as book reviews and literary criticism, which will also examine and interpret literature.

Although this will help you formulate some of your own questions, it is important that you not stray too far from yourself and your initial responses when you read the thoughts of others.

What About Those Gray Areas?

A subjective response to The Scarlet Letter may allow you to see that Hawthorne reveals not so much the opposites of good and evil as the shadowy in-between areas— the subtle, nuanced complexities that make it difficult to see things in extremes the way the Puritan community in The Scarlet Letter does. Maybe, for reasons in your own life, you have come to realize that life is all about the gray areas—the middle zone. Not everyone can be categorized as angelic or evil the way law and society may try to make things seem sometimes. So in the end your focus might actually be philosophical, ethical, or even theological.

If you are looking for an objective read of The Scarlet Letter, you need to keep your own opinions at bay as best you can and look strictly at the story, the characters, the themes, the symbols, and the author. This may be harder to do if the topic charges you and makes you feel strongly about your own ideology and philosophy of life. But that's all the more reason to try to see the story objectively.

Walking a Fine Line

In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne provides insight into the battling forces of fear, ignorance, jealousy, revenge, suffering, redemption, and the transcendence of love by means of the characters in the book and the community in which they live. It's not like those attributes only apply to seventeenth- or nineteenth-century societies. Those are timeless topics that apply to human nature and society in general.

While you read The Scarlet Letter, do you feel sympathy for Hester? That's interesting if you were raised to believe that adultery is wrong, no matter what the circumstances. Let's say you hold firm to that belief. Does that mean everyone has to believe what you believe? Or does it mean people should be ostracized for not believing what you believe? Maybe you believe in the laws of society, no matter who the society is made up of, but somehow you feel that Hester wasn't wrong in breaking the laws of her own society. What does this say about you?

Now, you can see it—your world has turned upside down and sideways, and that's the whole point! That's what makes a good reader!

Putting Together the Pieces of the Puzzle

Your life and opinions aside, what does Hawthorne do to make his reader see the gray areas—the middle ground between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice? How does he show us that the power of love with a huge dose of strength of character can help transcend all adversity? By the use of symbolism and metaphor, the author gives us all the meanings, and like a puzzle it's up to you to put them together. Here are some examples of complex layers of symbolism and metaphor in The Scarlet Letter all relating to the letter A. One layer leads to a deeper layer not only within the story, but within the text, which helps us see what Hawthorne is trying to say:

• The letter A stands for adulteress, as the town sees Hester. Forcing Hester to embroider her own A, as though she is making her own prison uniform as punishment, actually allows her the freedom to make a statement.

• The letter A also stands for Arthur, the hidden first name of the father of the child—hidden because Hester keeps his identity a secret from the community to protect him.

• The letter A also comes to stand for angel, as Hester becomes a caretaker within her community, after she is let out of prison, bringing solace and help to those who need it.

• Angel also refers to the father of the child, Arthur (Dimmesdale), when Hawthorne tells us about him in the middle of the book: "... and thus kept himself simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel."

Hawthorne is focused on that scarlet letter from many perspectives, as you can see, and along with  symbolism and metaphor, Hawthorne throws in a healthy dose of irony. That ever-present letter A is supposed to be a daily source of humiliation for Hester Prynne—a scourge on her soul—as she is forced to wear it. But instead she wears her A as though it is a medal of honor—her own private symbol of pride and

integrity as one who bears the punishment of the community but will not give them what they want.

The community in The Scarlet Letter wants Hester to publicly reveal the name of the father of her child. She refuses because he is a respected member of the community— the minister. To identify him to the public would destroy his life, her life, and the life of her child, and equally important to her, it would be bending to a rigid and restrictive society.

It is no shrinking, humiliating A that she wears as her community would like to believe. Splendidly embroidered by her own hands, the A has layered emotional and spiritual meanings for Hester having to do with her character and integrity, her world of private meanings, and an inner beauty and richness. Despite public humiliation, she proudly wears the first initial of the father's name. The symbolism of the way she

has embroidered it refers to her undying resolve. In the elaborate embroidery, she shouts in the face of her community that she has done nothing wrong. We look at symbolism and metaphor in greater detail in later Pages.

Hearing the Author Loud and Clear

Hawthorne speaks to us in parables about our very human nature—about the beauty, character, and strength of spirit within each individual as represented in the character of Hester Prynne. He looks at the  vulnerability and weakness of individuals in the character of Arthur Dimmesdale, and tells us about corrupted human nature in the character of Roger Chillingworth (Hester's estranged husband from the Netherlands).

The thread that binds the whole story, and perhaps the reader to the writing, is the wondrous power of love woven throughout the novel.

Writing and Societal Identity

Keeping all of this in mind regarding The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne's own historical perspective on the society from which he and his family originated, it's important to understand where you have come from as well. As Americans, we all originally come from somewhere else. But American society as we know it today originates with the early colonists, and these are the times of which Hawthorne writes. To understand modern American society, you need to look at American history and culture and how it plays into your world and into your reading experiences.

Back to the Beginning

If you look at the United States, the process of shaping a national identity has been astonishing. The country started as a vast landscape of mountains, rivers, lakes, and trees, home to the Native Americans, who were storytellers but not writers. They had no printing presses to share their knowledge—it was all by word of mouth and works of art.

With the arrival of the Europeans in the seventeenth century, the society we have grown into today began. They changed the nation of the Native Americans into what was familiar to them—in terms of religion, law, and societal morality.

To understand the kind of society we are today, we should think back to the seventeenth century, specifically to Massachusetts Bay, where middle-class British subjects settled to build John Winthrop's "city upon a hill." In his famous emotional sermon to the colonists as they sailed to the new world, Winthrop, one of America's first Puritan settlers, told the weary travelers how they would be part of building a model Christian community. Based on education and good living far from the persecution of the Church of England against the Christian reformers, the Puritans would finally have the life of which they dreamed.

This sermon, which reflected Winthrop's principles and ideals, became the national metaphor that has inspired literary and political thought well into our times. Despite the desire for freedom from persecution, this was not a time of great liberal thinking. There were rules—lots of rules. In fact, the only writing that as allowed was letters, diaries, and pious sermons. But on the other hand, these were times of survival and hard work. Even storytelling was forbidden unless they were stories from the Bible.

History and Modern Thought

Who we are today stems from where we came from—who we were yesterday, so to speak. The only references we have for understanding this are the writings of the times. And as you can see, what happened in the seventeenth century was still affecting Nathaniel Hawthorne in the nineteenth century, and affects us today in the twenty-first century.

Historians say that to know your history is to learn from it, to be ignorant of it is at one's own peril. The same can be said of masterpieces of fiction. They don't only tell us who our cultural ancestors were, they tell us about who we are right now. So the thinking of one century to the next is witnessed mainly in the writings of the times.

By the twentieth century we had film and videotape to help us document our times so we now have a new way of looking at the past and the present, but there is no better keeper of history than the writings of its people.

The Least You Need to Know

• The author has something to communicate to the reader, and it's up to the reader to figure it out.

• There are different ways to look at a piece of writing, including objectively, subjectively, and emotionally.

• How you interpret literature has a great deal to do with who you are and what your life experiences have been.

• Authors use different techniques, including symbolism, metaphor, and irony, in an effort to reach the reader.

• The history of American society greatly influences who we are today as a nation and what we can expect and learn from our writers.