『주홍 글자』: 보수적인 화자와 급진적인 헤스터, 그리고 호손의 우울한 결론

The Scarlet Letter: The Conservative Narrator, Radical Hester, and Hawthorne's Gloomy Conclusion

This paper analyzes Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as a romance narrative in which the narrator ambitiously lays out a romantic vision of social integration for resolving conflicts, which flare up between a resistant individual and an oppressive society over the issues of class, gender, and generation. As the narrative progresses, however, the narrator's attempt to envision an integrative society is thwarted. First, in spite of the 7-year punishment of wearing the scarlet letter "A" on her bosom, Hester never repents for her adultery. Instead, she dreams of a complete overhaul of the gender system that undergirds Puritan patriarchy and the middle-class ideology of domesticity. Second, the romantic vision based on Dimmesdale' s feeble and selfish manhood-which is preferred by the conservative narrator-not only suppresses Hester but also reduces his own individuality to the "hollow abstractions" of the repressive social system. Consequently, Hawthorne's narrative sinks into deep gloom because his fictional world of romance proves as much oppressive and alienating as the 17-century and 19th-century cultural institutions whose predicaments he has tried to address.