English 241

American Literature to 1860

Spring 2003

Welcome back from Spring Break!

For the coming week we shall be holding an online class, discussing Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. This is a magnificent American novel, one whose reception is too often conditioned upon – too often entirely spoiled -- by its familiarity. It is a dense, allusive novel that richly rewards second, third and succeeding readings. Many in class have read this novel previously, and will have an opportunity to re-discover it this coming week.

There will be a set of daily questions posted at this Web Board site, beginning today and continuing through Thursday. Each day will have a separate conference folder. Please respond to each question with 200-250 words. The course instructors will be roaming through the posts, asking further questions in response to your posts, to which you should respond further. Please check this website daily for the coming week in order to respond to instructor questions based on your responses, and to read how others are responding. For purposes of this online discussion, it will be equally fair to respond at length (200-250 words minimum) to the posts of other students rather than respond directly to the prompt question.

One useful resource you may wish to use for responding is the Hawthorne in Salem website at http://hawthorneinsalem.org/. In particular, visit the portion of the site concerning the Salem Custom House: http://hawthorneinsalem.org/Architecture/CustomHouse/Introduction.html

The ‘Custom House’ section that opens the novel is one of the most debated portions of the text. There are many editions that treat it as an irrelevancy, and simply begin with ‘The Prison-Door’ chapter (1). And yet, recent criticism near-unanimously has come to view the ‘Custom-House’ segment as central to reading this novel. It not only serves as a doorway from America of the 1840s into early Puritan life of the seventeenth century, but it links the two periods. What cultural and political linkages might Hawthorne attempt to establish by adapting the ‘Custom House’ section as a preface to his story of an older Salem? In beginning this novel, what are Hawthorne’s views on the state of the nation as embodied in the Custom House? How does the ‘Surveyor of Customs’ ruminate on his discovery of Hester Prynne’s story, forgotten in the attic?