From: "Nathan Goralnik" <rhizome85-AT-home.com>
Subject: Hawthorne
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 20:30:20 -0700


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English Types,
    I was reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"(1850ish)
the other day, and found it absolutely filled with sentences that
seemed like they could have been written by Foucault. For those of
you who have not read it, "The Scarlet Letter" is about a woman in
the Puritan village of Boston who commits adultery and gives birth to
a child. The book describes her moral journey after being publicly
humiliated (she is forced to wear the letter "A" on her dress from
then on), as well as her partner's moral journey, who doesn't reveal
his sin to the other Puritans until the end of the book. 
    Hawthorne covers many of the topics found in DP and HS,
discussing the way the Puritan morality constitutes part of a diagram
in which the prison plays a crucial role, and disusses the way
branding the woman as an adulterer produced her as a new type of
citizen and the discipline involved in the process. It goes so far as
to indict the institution of marriage in the way it creates the
disempowering identity "wife."
    If you don't want to exert the effort, just read the first two
chapters or go to www.sparknotes.com. Either one provides a
functional (although far from complete) knowledge of the book, at
least as it relates to Foucault's work.

    I'd be interested in having a discussion on this topic, if anyone
feels the same way.

            Nate

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