Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Greven, David

Titel

Hester is Burning: Desire and Gendered Grief in The Scarlet Letter

Ist Teil von

• Gender Protest and Same-Sex Desire in Antebellum American Literature, 2014, p.197-224

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter argues the importance of desire to a work such as The Scarlet Letter demands a treatment that focuses on affectional dynamics, a domain that psychoanalytic theory-despite its frustrations and limitations-remains adept at illuminating. It emphasis on recuperating Freud than in demonstrating, even as his work reveals the sexist biases that undergird patriarchy, it also be useful as a means of interpreting biases. In making use of Freudian paradigms as a whole is to sift through the evidence for what remains valuable. The chapter also argues that Hawthorne's feminism expresses itself in his depiction not only of Hester but also of Pearl, through own dissatisfactions with the masculinist status quo, amply registered in "The Custom-House" essay that precedes the novel proper, find vent. It conducts desires between women and between men as well as between men and women. At the same time, there is community here, the community of the fallen that revolves around the burning letter.