Hester’s Private Religion of the Heart: Theocracy and Secularism in The Scarlet Letter (1851)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2024-46.1.03

Abstract

The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne’s highly political magnum opus, is concerned with the struggle of its heroine against the overarching Puritan patriarchy, and relates her resistance, denial and finally her reconciliation with the society that had outcast and defamed her. This paper examines the religious transformation in The Scarlet Letter, particularly in its protagonist, Hester Prynne according to the dialectic of subversion and containment. While the Puritan society condemns her acts, Hester subverts aspects of this religious theocracy and contains them in a new light. These points of subversion and containment are the critical focus of this study, as espoused by new historicist Stephen Greenblatt and cultural materialist Jonathan Dollimore. Hester’s subversions include her resilience against the presumption that she has committed a sin, the consecration of her own actions, criticism of predestination and doctrine of grace. Alternatively, her containments present the reader with an alternative political vision that embraces freedom of conscience and individual religion of the heart. Ultimately, this essay argues that Hester, by the end of the tale, displaces the Puritan theocracy and envisions a secular society in which a privatized sphere of activity is granted to individuals to exercise their political and religious liberties.

Author Biographies

Ali Hassanpour Darbandi, York University
Ali Hassanpour Darbandi is currently a PhD student in English at York University, Toronto. He has done some works on nineteenth-century American literature, particularly the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. His research has been published in Neophilologus, Anglia: Journal of English Philology, and others. He often focuses on secularization narratives in US literature, how religious and secular are intertwined, and privatization of religion in the context of nineteenth-century America.
Maryam Soltan Beyad, University of Tehran
Maryam Bayad is an associate professor of English at the University of Tehran. She often focuses on Renaissance literature and Shakespearean Studies. Her works have been published by national and international journals.

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Published
2024-06-28
Issue
Vol. 46 No. 1 (2024)
Section
Articles

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