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Hawthorne, Pearl, and the Primal Sin of Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2005

EMILY MILLER BUDICK
Affiliation:
Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Extract

In his long critical essay entitled simply “Hawthorne” (published in 1879), Henry James narrates the story of his own coming to know Hawthorne's most famous work of fiction, The Scarlet Letter. Speaking in an impersonal third person, James, “who was a child at the time,” explains that he

remembers dimly the sensation that book produced, and the little shudder with which people alluded to it, as if a peculiar horror were mixed in its attractions. He was too young to read it himself, but its title, upon which he fixed his eyes as the book lay upon the table, had a mysterious charm. … Of course it was difficult to explain to a child the significance of poor Hester Prynne's blood-coloured A. But the mystery was at last partly dispelled by his being taken to see a collection of pictures (the annual exhibition of the National Academy), where he encountered a representation of a pale, handsome woman, in a quaint black dress and white coif, holding between her knees an elfish-looking little girl, fantastically dressed and crowned with flowers. Embroidered on the woman's breast was a great crimson A, over which the child's fingers, as she glanced strangely out of the picture, were maliciously playing. I was told that this was Hester Prynne and little Pearl, and that when I grew older I might read their interesting history.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This essay was presented as one of the keynote lectures at the 2003 meeting of the British Association of American Studies: my thanks to the BAAS for providing me with the opportunity to present this material to so many wonderful respondents.