NTC: The Scarlet Letter: Gender, History, and American Culture

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” is one of the principal texts through which American students come to know the Puritans. Yet “The Scarlet Letter” was published in 1850, long after the last Puritan had died. What does this narrative of seventeenth-century sin, punishment, love, and redemption tell us about nineteenth-century New England culture? How does the novel open up both of these historical moments? This seminar will approach Hawthorne’s novel as an opportunity to explore gender and sexual norms among both the Puritans and nineteenth-century Americans. We will consider the evolution of understandings of public and private spheres, romantic love and sexual desire, and the relationships between laws and norms.