Hawthorne's 'A': an Uneasy Hieroglyph for America?

Critic Declan Kiberd has defined his mission in the interpretation of Irish and British literature as a "concern to trace the links between high art and popular expression in the decades before and after (Irish national) independence, and to situate revered masterpieces in the wider social context out of which they came” (Inventing Ireland, 1995, p. 3).

In his lecture at Woodbury H.S. in October 2008, Dr. Kiberd shared a view that past colonial masters – Britain, Portugal, and Holland, for example – had served, in effect, as parents to their own colonies, even as each subject colony – e.g., America, Brazil, or South Africa – had functioned as a child, inheriting its parents’ traits and values, including language and literature.

Postcolonial literary critics occupy themselves with the “before and after” of colonial rule. Likely candidates for postcolonial study, therefore, are literary texts that portray colonial or postcolonial figures: characters who struggle to come to terms with their lives, even as a surrounding community struggles to break or defy the bonds of colonial obligation.

The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850), is set in America’s colonial heyday, the mid-1600s; yet critics persistently note that the retrospective novel may be viewed as a moral compass for post-colonial America, shedding light on certain successes and failures in the ensuing American experiment. Successes include the experience of the novel's steadfast heroine, Hester Prynne, whose heart “vibrates to the iron string” of self-reliance in the Emersonian sense of individuality and imagination (“Self-Reliance,” by R.W. Emerson, 1848). The strong-willed Hester outwits and outlasts the Crown-appointed masters of Puritan Boston in much the same way the Massachusetts Bay Colony subsequently defied and transcended the imposition of British rule.

American failures stated or implied in Hawthorne's catalogue include failures to suffer pangs of conscience regarding the treatment of slaves, Native Americans, and not least of all, women. Hester Prynne’s liberation is won at a high cost to her self-esteem. Her admonition to “be true” encourages women of all generations, including American women of the 1850s, to stand up for themselves when they have no voting rights, or when they have few rights with respect to property ownership, or, in many American states (including the freshly declared state of Minnesota), precious-few rights to maintain professional lives outside the home.

In all these respects, both positive and negative, it is interesting to read Hester’s ‘A’ as a letter that might stand for America. Postcolonial critics are alert to such readings; furthermore, as Dr. Kiberd plainly notes, it is natural for postcolonial critics to join their readings with those of the New Historicism. Kiberd’s first published volume, Men and Feminism in Modern Literature (MacMillan, 1985), also suggests - even as the present essay does - that an alliance between postcolonial and feminist theory might shed light on certain novels, poems and plays. ~ PRB

Questions Frequently Asked by postcolonial literary critics:

When does the action of this novel or play occur? Does this date coincide in any way with the colonial status of nations involved in the book's setting?

Do the lives of the characters in any way mirror a rupture or rite of passage that occurs between or among the nations involved?

Do the values of a dominant culture -- customs, laws, economy, or relgion -- affect the characters' decisions as they prosecute their lives in a subservient territory or culture?

Is there a "new world" in the book -- utopian, realistic, historical, or otherwise -- and in what ways is life in a new world characterized, especially in relation to the influences of older worlds or societies?

Noteworthy Postcolonial Literary Critics:

Edward Said; Gayatri Spivak; Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; Declan Kiberd; and many others.