Two main streams of thought shape the great American novels: one is the fervor of Christianity, the other is the skeptical Deism popularized in the 18th century. In English Romanticism that Deism becomes transformed into a confused doctrine of the poet as priest and prophet. Ralph Waldo Emerson transported this doctrine in a form wildly popular for Americans. Although Nathaniel Hawthorne found the idea congenial at first, he became a devastating critic of it in his portrait of Hester Prynne (America’s first anti-heroine). This novel is not a condemnation of Puritan intolerance, but rather of the destructive and bigoted God-playing of Hester and her countless American imitators.
Our readings in Emerson will provide a brief but clear introduction to the ideas behind Deism and Romanticism. Then Hawthorne’s novel will provide a tightly constructed, claustrophobic response that operates like a Greek tragedy illumined mainly by the comic ending of Pearl’s destiny.