The Scarlet Letter - Embroidering Transcendentalism and Anti-Transcendentalism Thread for an Early American World
Riding the wave of heightened nationalism after the second independence war against Great Britain in 1812, Americans began to write their own school textbooks, celebrate the birth of American literature using American scenes and themes, and even establish their own American intellectual, philosophical, and social movements. One of these movements is the American transcendentalism that began in the mid-nineteenth century (1830-1860) in Boston and Concord of New England and was inspired by the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, “Nature” in 1836 and “Self-Reliance” in 1841. Stemming from the larger 19th-century European …show more content…
As such, authority or society-imposed formal institutions such as government and religion may prevent people from using their intuition and cause them to become corrupt. In contrast with transcendentalism, anti-transcendentalism (better known as dark romanticism) is based on the belief that evil and sin are inherent characteristics in human beings. Therefore, optimistic outlook on humanity is naïve because people must struggle to obtain goodness and avoid evil, which can exist even in a physical form in society. As an American novelist during this interesting time of contrasting intellectual and literary philosophies, Nathaniel Hawthorne weaves both transcendentalism and anti-transcendentalism into his immediately successful novel The Scarlet Letter to give readers a chance to evaluate different beliefs and different aspects of the early American life at the New England settlement in the seventeenth century. The story revolves around the life of a young and married Hester Prynne who is punished by her Puritan village to perpetually wear a scarlet letter “A” on her bosom for committing adultery in the absence of her husband, Chillingworth.
Riding the wave of heightened nationalism after the second independence war against Great Britain in 1812, Americans began to write their own school textbooks, celebrate the birth of American literature using American scenes and themes, and even establish their own American intellectual, philosophical, and social movements. One of these movements is the American transcendentalism that began in the mid-nineteenth century (1830-1860) in Boston and Concord of New England and was inspired by the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays, “Nature” in 1836 and “Self-Reliance” in 1841. Stemming from the larger 19th-century European …show more content…
As such, authority or society-imposed formal institutions such as government and religion may prevent people from using their intuition and cause them to become corrupt. In contrast with transcendentalism, anti-transcendentalism (better known as dark romanticism) is based on the belief that evil and sin are inherent characteristics in human beings. Therefore, optimistic outlook on humanity is naïve because people must struggle to obtain goodness and avoid evil, which can exist even in a physical form in society. As an American novelist during this interesting time of contrasting intellectual and literary philosophies, Nathaniel Hawthorne weaves both transcendentalism and anti-transcendentalism into his immediately successful novel The Scarlet Letter to give readers a chance to evaluate different beliefs and different aspects of the early American life at the New England settlement in the seventeenth century. The story revolves around the life of a young and married Hester Prynne who is punished by her Puritan village to perpetually wear a scarlet letter “A” on her bosom for committing adultery in the absence of her husband, Chillingworth.