Scarlet Letter and Short Stories Romanticism Synthesis

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Chelsea Widjaja Warren AP English 3 P 3 29 November 2012 Romanticism Synthesis Essay Romantic literature tends to emphasize a love of nature and a valuing of the common, "natural" man; Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays this theme throughout many of his romantic novels. Throughout his novel, The Scarlet Letter, and numerous of his romantic short stories, the presence of allegory is apparent as the author uses characters and events to symbolize his ideas and concepts. Through his use of allegory he was able to display a deeper meaning of his characters and symbols. Initially, a surfeit of allegory is used throughout The Scarlet Letter; through this, the author is able to establish the relationship between an image and an abstract meaning. One example of allegory in Hawthorne’s novel is when he presents Hester during the first scaffold scene, “… giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion …as the figure, the body, the reality of sin” (71-72). Hester, revealed as an allegory of sin, loses her “individuality,” and was left with only her sin to represent herself. Through Hawthorne’s use of allegory the reader is able to perceive a deeper meaning between Hester and this sin. This immorality had such a large impact on her being that essentially, she was professed as it. Another example of allegory from The Scarlet Letter is Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter. “In her was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide, - all written in this symbol, - all plainly manifest, - had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame! And Pearl was the oneness of their
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