Self and Other: The Scarlet Letter :: essays research papers

With his critical essay "Hawthornes Awakening in the Customhouse" loving gives the proofreader a psychoanalytical reading of The red Letter. sweet pays close guardianship to Hawthornes unconscious motives and feelings in his interpretation of Hawthornes writing. He is particularly concerned nigh the radical change of direction that Hawthorne takes in altering the initial style of his story by adding an unexpected ending. The ending, as presented to the reader in the furthermost three chapters, undermines the notion of emancipation Hawthorne had developed throughout the story. Loving argues that Hawthorne withheld in this way a significant piece of information which would have tyro the reader about Hawthornes true self The authors last minute retreat from the primordial sense of himself in The Scarlet Letter may have preserved his sanity to some issue (...) but it also cost him (and us) the true ending of the novel. (Loving, p. 23) Loving considers the novel as a hi ghly autobiographical account in which Hawthorne unconsciously attempts to first and foremost resolve his relationship with his mother. Central to the fellow feeling of the nature of this relationship are the recurring themes of " iniquityy conscience" and "crime". The "guilt" Hawthorne suffers from is derived from the "crime" of having broken the bond with his mother by secretly acquiring engaged to Sophia. In the process of writing The Scarlet Letter, he uncover his unnaturally close and dependent relationship to his mother from which his sense of guilt originally derived. Since he did not want this sense of guilt to be revealed to the reader, he added The Customhouse to shift the focus of the origin of his guilt onto his ancestors. agree to Hawthorne, The Customhouse was written to increase the overall length of The Scarlet Letter. Loving however, claims The Customhouse to be a cover-up for Hawthornes deep identity crisis " He desperately n eeded a beginning (...) that would save him from the self he had revealed in the true text" (Loving, p.