Self and Other: The Scarlet Letter :: essays research papers

With his critical essay "Hawthornes Awakening in the Customhouse" loving gives the reader a psychoanalytical reading of The red-faced Letter. Loving pays close attention to Hawthornes unconscious motives and feelings in his interpretation of Hawthornes writing. He is particularly concerned about the radical change of direction that Hawthorne takes in altering the initial course of his story by adding an unexpected ending. The ending, as presented to the reader in the last three chapters, undermines the notion of emancipation Hawthorne had developed throughout the story. Loving argues that Hawthorne withheld in this way a significant piece of information which would have enlightened the reader about Hawthornes true self The authors last minute retreat from the primordial sense of himself in The Scarlet Letter may have preserved his sanity to some extent (...) but it also cost him (and us) the true ending of the novel. (Loving, p. 23) Loving considers the novel as a highly autobiographical account in which Hawthorne unconsciously attempts to kickoff and foremost resolve his descent with his mother. Central to the understanding of the nature of this relationship are the recurring themes of "guilt" and "crime". The "guilt" Hawthorne suffers from is derived from the "crime" of having broken the marry with his mother by secretly getting engaged to Sophia. In the process of writing The Scarlet Letter, he uncovered his unnaturally close and dependent relationship to his mother from which his sense of guilt pipelineally derived. Since he did not want this sense of guilt to be revealed to the reader, he added The Customhouse to shift the focus of the origin of his guilt onto his ancestors. According to Hawthorne, The Customhouse was written to increase the overall length of The Scarlet Letter. Loving however, claims The Customhouse to be a cover-up for Hawthornes deep individuality crisis " He desperately needed a beg inning (...) that would save him from the self he had revealed in the true text" (Loving, p.