With both a New Critical and a Deconstructive analysis of The Scarlet Letter, it is evident that the guilt and shame of adultery is passed from the two main characters continuously throughout the novel causing both to damage themselves and each other. However, when reading from a Deconstructionist angle, Hester is the antagonist while in a New Critical reading she is the protagonist. The Scarlet Letter opens with a clerk in a customs house sifting through several old boxes when he stumbles across a mysterious red letter “A.” He proceeds to read the story of Hester Prynne: the Puritan adulteress mother. In her story, readers learn that the father of her daughter, Pearl, is actually the young Reverend Dimmsdale who cannot admit to being the girl’s
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Here it is written that, “the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER— the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne— imprinted in the flesh.” (Hawthorne 216) Dimmsdale was literally dying on the inside, and using the word, “unhappy,” to describe his crippling mental and physical pain is an understatement. The tone of the narrator has changed for this line by constructing the idea that he is undeserving of empathy from the reader. Doing this creates a distance between the speaker and the …show more content…
Hawthorne writes, “Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER— the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne— imprinted in the flesh.” (216) There is a certain level of intertextual duality with the word, “flesh,” as how it is used in the Bible and how it is used The Scarlet Letter. In the New Testament, Paul writes, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Rom. 13:14). This is only a minor allusion, but it should not be overlooked. The symbol of his sin is imprinted on his own physical flesh because he gave into the sinful nature of his sexual desires or in other words, his flesh. It is clear that throughout The Scarlet Letter, the overall plot changes when it is read from different perspectives; to fully understand The Scarlet Letter, one must read it using both a New Critical and a Deconstructive theory. Nathaniel Hawthorne received negative reviews, death threats, and his work was banned for an extensive amount of time. If the readers at that time had only given The Scarlet Letter a chance, and read it from these different perspectives, they might have been able to understand this great work of
Here it is written that, “the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER— the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne— imprinted in the flesh.” (Hawthorne 216) Dimmsdale was literally dying on the inside, and using the word, “unhappy,” to describe his crippling mental and physical pain is an understatement. The tone of the narrator has changed for this line by constructing the idea that he is undeserving of empathy from the reader. Doing this creates a distance between the speaker and the …show more content…
Hawthorne writes, “Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER— the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne— imprinted in the flesh.” (216) There is a certain level of intertextual duality with the word, “flesh,” as how it is used in the Bible and how it is used The Scarlet Letter. In the New Testament, Paul writes, “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Rom. 13:14). This is only a minor allusion, but it should not be overlooked. The symbol of his sin is imprinted on his own physical flesh because he gave into the sinful nature of his sexual desires or in other words, his flesh. It is clear that throughout The Scarlet Letter, the overall plot changes when it is read from different perspectives; to fully understand The Scarlet Letter, one must read it using both a New Critical and a Deconstructive theory. Nathaniel Hawthorne received negative reviews, death threats, and his work was banned for an extensive amount of time. If the readers at that time had only given The Scarlet Letter a chance, and read it from these different perspectives, they might have been able to understand this great work of