Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Scarlet letter (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)'

Cette étude vise à analyser la façon dont l’illusio puritaine, telle qu’illustrée par Nathaniel Hawthorne dans The Scarlet Letter, est rendue dans les onze traductions en français du roman. L’approche adoptée est celle de la théorie sociologique de Pierre Bourdieu adaptée à la traduction. Cette approche comporte l’avantage majeur de fournir un cadre théorique qui permet non seulement une analyse externe, mais une analyse interne des conditions dans lesquelles le texte source et les textes cibles ont été produits et d’ainsi réunir l’approche sourcière et l’approche cibliste. L’analyse externe repose sur l’étude des espaces littéraires source et cible et du champ littéraire cible, de l’habitus de l’auteur et des traducteurs, des pratiques des éditeurs ; une étude qui implique des recherches sur le terrain. Quant à l’analyse interne, elle est établie à partir d’une analyse contrastive de chacune des traductions qui vise à définir dans quelle mesure l’illusio puritaine est re-contextualisée et ré-historicisée dans les textes cibles. Cette analyse repose sur le relevé des « tendances déformantes » d’Antoine Berman qui ont été constatées dans les cinquante extraits sélectionnés et qui sont principalement étudiées à partir d’une analyse lexicale. L’analyse des textes est systémique puisqu’elle tient compte des liens entre les différents textes cibles et le texte source ainsi que de ceux qui existent entre les différents textes cibles. Les recherches effectuées dans les domaines de la traductologie et de l’histoire du livre et de l’édition ainsi que la critique littéraire hawthornienne viennent appuyer et compléter l’étude
This study aims to analyze the manner in which the puritan illusio, as illustrated by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, is conveyed in the eleven French translations of the novel. The adopted approach is Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theory adapted to translation. The approach offers the significant advantage of providing a theoretical framework that allows not only an external analysis, but also an internal analysis of the conditions in which the source text and the target texts were produced and therefore combine the source approach with the target approach. The external analysis lies on the study of the source and the target literary spaces as well as the target literary field, the author and the translators’ habitus, the publishers’ practices; a study that involves field work. As for the internal analysis, it is established from a contrastive analysis of each translation that aims to establish the extent to which the puritan illusio is re-contextualized and re-historicized in the target texts. This analysis is based on the list of Antoine Berman’s “deforming tendencies” that were observed in the fifty selected excerpts and that are mainly studied through a lexical analysis. The text analysis is systemic since it takes into account the links between the different target texts and the source text as well as those that exist between the various target texts. Researches carried out in the fields of translation studies and the history of book publishing as well as the critical discourse on Hawthorne support and complete this study

This study examines Hawthorne's use of symbols, particularly flowers, in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Romantic ideals stressed the full development of the self¬reliant individual, and romantic writers such as Hawthorne believed the individual would fully develop not only spiritually, but also intellectually by taking instruction from the natural world. Hawthorne's heroines reach their full potential as independent women in two steps: they first work together to defeat powerful patriarchies, and they then learn to read natural symbols to cultivate their artistic sensibilities which lead them to a full development of their intellect and spirituality. The focus of this study is Hawthorne's narrative strategy; how the author uses symbols as a language his heroines use to communicate from one generation to the next. In The Scarlet Letter, for instance, the symbol of a rose connects three generations of feminine reformers, Ann Hutchinson, Hester Prynne, and Pearl. By the end of the novel, Pearl interprets a rose as a symbol of her maternal line, which links her back to Ann Hutchinson. Similarly in The House of the Seven Gables Alice, Hepzibah, and Phoebe Pyncheon are part of a family line of women who work together to overthrow the Pyncheon patriarchy. The youngest heroine, Phoebe, comes to an understanding of her great, great aunt Alice's message from the posies her feminine ancestor plants in the Pyncheon garden. Through Phoebe's interpretation of the flowers, she deciphers how the cultivation of a sense of artistic appreciation is essential to the progress of American culture.

A travers ces deux textes litteraires du milieu du dix-neuvieme siecle, l'etude du langage des couleurs -notamment de la couleur rouge a demontre combien il se relie au probleme de l'identite americaine qui demeure ici inseparable du mythe de l'amerique percu comme un nouveau monde au sens d'une re-creation du monde, donc d'une nouvelle cosmogonie. Chez poe comme chez hawthome,la couleur rouge reste associee au langage. Dans "the masque of the red death", la couleur rouge constitue la couleur-pivot autour de laquelle tout s'articule. Elle ne peut etre separee de l'or, de la couleur noire, de l'alchimie, des elements. Ses relations des plus subtiles et des plus complexes qu'elle entretient avec les nombres, les lettres, les formes de lettres et la musique demontrent son lien avec l'ecriture. Un jeu de permutation de lettres opere sur la couleur rouge a amene a conclure que la mort rouge s'identifierait entre autres a dionysos -symbolisant a la fois la vie, la fecondite et le desordre. Il representerait une mort revelatrice et initiatique conduisant a une renaissance. L'intrigue se devant en ce cas etre comprise a l'inverse du texte en surface, la couleur rouge participerait de la symbolique de la vie mais non de la mort. Dans the scarlet letter, la couleur fonctionne comme un signe linguistique. Couleur et langage s'averent confondus. La lettre ecarlate se presente comme un signe sacre dote d'une couleur, plus precisement d'une langue inconnue ("a tongue unknown") quoique "scarlet" evoque la prostituee de babylone explicitement mentionnee dans le texte. Elle appartient a l'origine des temps et sa signification ressort de l'enigme. En tant qu'embleme, elle suggere l'hieroglyphe ou 'image sacree' difficile a dechiffrer. Le rouge present dans "scarlet" se relie au script c'est-a-dire au signe ou a la lettre et d'autre part au livre (volume) en tant que sphere mythique
The study of the language of colors - notably the color red in "the masque of the red death" and in the scarlet letter has shown how it is linked with the problem of american identity. It is also centered around the myth of america being as a new world, or even as a new cosmogony. In these two mid-nineteenth century literary texts, the color red is linked with language. In "the masque of the red death", the red color is the pivot around which everything revolves. It cannot be separated from gold, the color black, alchemy or the elements. The subtle and complicated relationship between color and number, letters, the form of those letters and music show the way color is linked with writing. The "masque" would conceal the primal identity of america or the language of origin which the color red represents. A game of permutation of letters carried out on the color red, brings us to conclude that the red death could be identified among others to dionysos - symbol of life and disorder. Therefore death could represent a doorway to knowledge and rebirth. The plot must be understood, therefore, as the reverse of the surface text. In the scarlet letter, color works as a linguistic sign. Color and language become interchangeable. The scarlet letter appears as a sacred sign, colored, more precisely as a sign of "a tongue unknown", even if "scarlet" evokes the "scarlet whore of babylon", explicitely mentioned in the text. It belongs to an abolished past, to the origin of time and its meaning comes from the enigma, from mystery itself. As an emblem, the letter suggests the hieroglyphic. The color red present in "scarlet" is linked to the script that is to say, to the sign or the letter and to the book (volume) as a mythic sphere

This study examines the crisis of identity the United States was experiencing in the nineteenth-century through two of the major literary works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun. Hawthorne, who lived through this crucial and important developmental period, was concerned as to what this identity would be, how the United States would shape and define itself, and what its future would be if this identity was malformed. In addition, this study will look at counter-monuments as argued by James E. Young in his essay “The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today” to expand on these issues of identity. If according to Young, the ideal goal of the counter-monument is “not to remain fixed but to change,” one can conclude that Hawthorne understood that national identity must be fluid; otherwise, the nation would crumble under the pressure and force of change.

Le discours médical, idéologique et bourgeois du XIXe siècle répand l'idée d'une féminité ancrée dans un destin biologique. La femme est présentée uniquement comme un instrument de reproduction. "Féminité" est synonyme d'inexistence, de silence, d'effacement et de nullité. Etudions l'antithèse, le contre-modèle, l'image de la femme maléfique. Elle bouleverse le schémas habituel imposé par les hommes, dérange et franchit les limites interdites. Fille de Satan, femme d'ombre, elle incarne le mal. Elle s'offre comme une créature impudique, un élément perturbateur, un être démoniaque : elle véhicule le mahleur universel. Instrument de damnation, vagin castrateur, gouffre infernal, elle terrifie l'homme. Elle engendre le désastre et la destruction. L'optique masculine témoigne. Dans cette société patriarcale, elle représente le mâle manqué ; atteinte du complexe de virilité, elle exagère son attitude virile; Elle se sent enchaînée ; elle conteste sa position, se révolte et revendique des droits nouveaux : naissance d'une femme nouvelle.

The recent publication of the bulk of Hawthorne's letters has precipitated this study, which deals with Hawthorne's creative and subversive narration and his synchronic appeal to a variety of readers possessing different tastes. The author initially investigates Hawthorne's religion and demonstrate how he disguised his personal religious convictions, ambiguously using the intellectual categories of Calvinism, Unitarianism, and spiritualism to promote his own humanistic "religion." Hawthorne's appropriation of the jeremiad further illustrates his emphasis on religion and narration. Although his religion remained humanistic, he readily used the old Puritan political sermon to describe and defend his own financial hardships. That jeremiad outlook has significant implications for his art.

America has adopted as its own the Eden myth, which has provided the mythology of the American dream. This New Garden of America, consequently, has been a masculine garden because of its dependence on the myth of the Fall. Implied in the American dream is the idea of a garden without Eve, or at least without Eve's sin, traditionally associated with sexuality. Our canonical literature has reflected these attitudes of devaluing feminine power or making it a negative force: The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury. To recreate the Garden myth, Americans have had to reimagine Eve as the idealized virgin, earth mother and life-giver, or as Adam's loyal helpmeet, the silent figurehead. But Eve resists her new roles: Hester Prynne embellishes her scarlet letter and does not leave Boston; the feminine forces in Moby-Dick defeat the monomaniacal masculinity of Ahab; Miss Watson, the Widow Douglas, and Aunt Sally's threat of civilization chase Huck off to the territory despite the beckoning of the feminine river; Daisy retreats unscathed into her "white palace" after Gatsby's death; and Caddy tours Europe on the arm of a Nazi officer long after Quentin's suicide, Benjy's betrayal, and Jason's condemnation. Each of these male writers--Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner--deals with the American dream differently; however, in each case the dream fails because Eve will not go away, refusing to be the Other, the scapegoat, or the muse to man's dreams. These works all deal in some way with the notion of the masculine American dream of perfection in the Garden at the expense of a fully realized feminine presence. This failure of the American dream accounts for the decidedly tragic tone of these culturally significant American novels.

Erik Butler’s predicates for vampirism apply in some degree to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s male protagonists who skulk in the margins of “The Birthmark,” The Scarlet Letter, and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” As metaphoric vampires who seek weak prey in order to manipulate power structures, these monomaniacal parasites assume paternalistic positions in order to control and manipulate their victims, and they disguise their exploitive and egotistic sides with idealistic and altruistic passions for science and religion. This thesis explores how Hawthorne’s protagonists’ corrupt and consuming spirits echo traditional vampiristic characteristics.

Various characteristics of Gothic fiction are evident in Hawthorne's tales and romances - the interest in man's primitive self, the concern with historical and psychological facts and with imaginative and intuitive experience,' the delineation of the human conflict between spiritual aspirations and sensual needs, the emphasis on the ambiguity of good and evil as moral concepts, and the enactment of horror and terror. For Hawthorne these elements relate to the human struggle between mind and heart, between faith and passion - a struggle which is consonant with his own conflict with his Puritan conscience and his poetic imagination. They focus on the complexity of human feeling, yet help towards a final realization of man's significance and promise. They enable Hawthorne to resolve the eternal conflict between soul and body. The thesis deals with Hawthorne's four romances - The Scarlet letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun. In the first three, Hawthorne is hampered by his Puritan conscience so that passion is often subjugated by faith. In The Scarlet letter the persecution of .Hester and the ardent life she represents is at least justified in that it mirrors a historical truth. Moreover, Hawthorne achieves a certain ambivalence which, instead of signalling his own uncertainty and feebleness, enhances the complexity and mysteriousness of man's nature and situation. In The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, however, Puritan religiosity predominates and expresses itself in a wholly sentimental and repressive attitude. It is only in The Marble Faun that Hawthorne sees beyond the dilemma of man's dual aspects to realize the mythic and religious significance inherent in his seemingly divided self. While, in doing so, he manifests the typical Gothic idea that primitive man has a certain magnificence, Hawthorne is more interested in the fact that feeling is uplifting and ennobling. Human passion has a spiritual aspect.

碩士
淡江大學
西洋語文研究所
89
Abstract: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter has undoubtedly been considered as his masterpiece for there exists some strangeness that is named as ambiguity or paradox, Hawthorne’s “headachy” technique, in it. The objective of this thesis is to examine the strangeness of Hawthorne’s writing strategies of The Scarlet Letter by associating with Derrida’s idea of différance. For Derrida, whenever writing begins, the meaning is endlessly relayed and never comes to a conceptual closure; the signifier is always in search of its signified through the mediation of other signifiers. The thesis is led to a post-structuralist approach, addressing Hawthorne’s incapability of fully controlling the language while writing the novel. To analyze such a complicated phenomenon, except Derrida’s theory, Roland Barthes’, Lacan’s and Julia Kristeva’s have applied to serve some possible explanations. The main body of this thesis is divided into three parts, separately discussing différance practiced on the arrangement of settings, characterization and the development of A-sign in The Scarlet Letter. After this analysis, we may find that Hawthorne, as a writer, has gradually lost his overwhelming power over the text; instead, the text becomes a playground where the free play of signs is made possible. Finally, as différance commences, the “ultimate truth”　of scarlet letter A is doomed to be un-searchable─the meaning is forever differed and deffered.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2005.
Thesis advisor: John A. Heitner. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-155). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This essay seeks to explore the various representations of fatherhood in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Although The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne’s most-studied text, very little critical attention has been paid to Hawthorne’s rendering of paternity in the story. This essay attempts to fill that void by examining the roles of the many father figures in the novel. I argue that Hawthorne’s anxiety about fatherhood, made manifest by his constant doubling and expunging of father figures, dominates the narratives of both The Scarlet Letter and “The Custom-House,” binding the texts together and providing the framework of the novel. The structure of The Scarlet Letter relies on Hawthorne’s continual introduction of potential fathers for Pearl, auditioning and discarding various paternal models – a process that carries implications both for Pearl, and for American fatherhood. I further contend that the figure of the absent father is a key thematic component of the American Renaissance as a whole, reflecting not only the authors’ personal fears, but also their anxieties about England’s paternal relationship to America – a concern that pervades the text of The Scarlet Letter.
text

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
英語學系
94
Abstract In The Scarlet Letter, it is clear that life in the Puritan theocracy is rigidly regulated. In Hawthorne’s Puritan world, the Governor, magistrates, ministers, and elders are the only decision-makers. The entire system of the Puritan law is signified by this small group of authoritative men. Their word is law. Untrammeled is their discretion in the sentencing of Hester Prynne. They are held to be accountable to none but to themselves and to their God. The townspeople may murmur, but they also have to obey. This thesis interprets the novel as Hawthorne’s criticism of the Puritan theocracy of this kind. Hawthorne first gives an impression that the Puritan theocracy is a conglomerate of religious, political, legislative, and judicial power as shown in Hester’s scaffold scene. The townspeople are prevented from any decisive role in handling crime. Hawthorne places the sin of adultery in the community and sees how the sin ferments the communal anger. It is through the community’s angry reaction that Hawthorne characterizes the two underlying aspects of the Puritan theocracy. One is that behavior represents faith. The other is that the course of the community’s religious and political development is determined by an interlocking patriarchal power relation. Hawthorne then criticizes the conception that behavior represents faith by Hester’s individuality that develops during her continued punishment. Although Hester is physically obedient in accepting her punishment designed to make her give up her individuality, she develops more thought of her own and still has passion for her paramour. As Hawthorne concludes, Hester’s punishment of wearing a shameful symbol has not done its original office. Hawthorne further criticizes the community’s patriarchal system. Such criticism is most conspicuous in two scenes. The first one is the forest scene where Dimmesdale and Hester embark upon a kind of role-reversal. The second one is Dimmesdale’s death scene where Hawthorne criticizes the community’s reality constructed by those authoritative patriarchs. Not only does Hawthorne aim to criticize the Puritan theocracy, but he also shows how the community can benefit from his criticism as a result. To highlight the total effect of his criticism, he allows several reconciliations to take place and sees the community develop in a more positive way. Keywords: Puritan; Hawthorne; Theocracy; Scaffold; Adultery; Behavior; Faith; Patriarchal; Punishment; Individuality; Role-reversal; Passion; Reconciliation

碩士
中國文化大學
英國語文學研究所
89
ABSTRACT This thesis is a Foucauldian discourse on The Scarlet Letter (1850), the letter A. As a sophisticated cultural artifact, the letter A is brilliantly woven with the same cultural cloth that by 1850 it had produced Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter: A Romance. We attempt to identify the ambiguity of the letter A, the significant plurality and the diverse meaning, with Foucaudian “author-function.” We associate the letter A with three kinds of “author-functions” in The Scarlet Letter: namely, “work on oneself,” “responding to one’s time,” and a vehicle of “his-story.” As a linking of society, the historical moment, and critical use of romance tradition, what the letter A denotes stands for the ambiguous author, the ironic archive, and the author’s confession in his autobiography as well. Hawthorne’s reinterpretation of the letter A in The Scarlet Letter can be taken as a challenge to his literary life. Firstly, the letter A is burdened with the necessity of discourse on the self. The task entails one’s work on himself with, in Foucault’s words, “a technology of representation.” The representation brings forth certain unity of writing in The Scarlet Letter─all differences in the text, “having to be resolved, at least in part, by the principles of evolution, maturation, or influence” (Foucault, WA 204). It is an authorial imperative through which characters─adulteress Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the leech Roger Chillingworth, and the elf-child Pearl─are all placed in proper positions in the community of the novel. The imperative yields “perfect certainty by perfectly ordering representations and signs to mirror the ordering of the world” (Dreyfus and Rabinow, MF 19). The letter A is a table for ordering, and the fictitious community in The Scarlet Letter is built firmly on this table. Secondly, the letter A is imbued with the necessity of responding to one’s time. The task entails one’s work on himself in a process of interpretation. The interpretation serves to “neutralize the contradictions” (Foucault, WA 204) that may emerge in the narrative of The Scarlet Letter. The letter A is the very center point in this process: around it, contradictions in the narrative revolve, and “incompatible elements” in the text are tied together, or, at last, “organized around a fundamental or originated contradiction” (Foucault, WA 204). It is an authorial directive to absorb his readers into the narrative of the novel, and thus setting them on a presupposed liminal position in a given society. That given society is the Jacksonian society. As the readers of The Scarlet Letter, we are at the edge of the Jacksonian society, but not go beyond. Then we come to acknowledge that, we are nothing but “our” history─American history─and that therefore, we will never get a total picture of who we are. We will never get a detached picture of our history. As the letter A moves from the mid-nineteenth-century customhouse back to its Puritan origin, it serves as the cultural genealogy. It functions to recall a major cultural shift in the Jacksonian society. Thirdly, the letter A functions as the vehicle of “his-story,” the vehicle of the author’s autobiographical impulse. Or in Foucault’s words, the letter A, as a linking of one’s discourse on himself and response to his time, is the task of one’s “producing himself” in his own text. Hawthorne chose to introduce The Scarlet Letter with an essay, “The Custom-House.” In this introductory essay, we meet both Hawthorne’s “story” and the history behind his story. We are informed both his personal story, his employment and dismissal in the Salem Custom House, and the history of political changes that brought about these happenings on him. The letter A as “his-story” would suggest paradoxes of The Scarlet Letter as a historical romance: “just as he [Hawthorne] injected fiction with history, so he injected history with fiction” (Murfin 330). When his fiction is as true as the history, we meet the empirical characteristics of the author. Hawthorne the author is taken as “a historical figure at the crossroads of a certain number of events” (Foucault, WA 204). The letter A is thus “the posthumous papers.” The Scarlet Letter is the author’s confession in his autobiography. When his fiction is as false as the history, we find that author’s persona is maintained in its transcendental anonymity. Hawthorne is taken as a “decapitated surveyor,” preserved in its own realm soundly. The letter A denotes the ambiguous author in an ironic archive. In conclusion, it is not by confining his autobiographical impulse that Hawthorne the author is justified to write a national romance. But rather, it is his unique combination of the autobiographical impulse with the biographer’s viewpoint that enables him to go beyond the romance tradition, and yet to take paradoxes of romance seriously. The modernity of Hawthorne lies not in his attempt to apply objective method to studying himself─his nature, his language, and his society─but rather, in his very ability to understand himself in his-story. The letter A is this long-standing technique of self-knowledge. With the letter A, we are ready to read ourselves in the process of ego-split. We are readers on the liminal position─fully inside and fully outside of our cultural field. On this liminal position, Hawthorne the author has transformed his autobiographical impulse into the double in the letter A. The letter A is first to be the power that wards off “the death of the author,” then to be the truth that brings forth “the birth of the reader.” The birth of the reader is not necessarily at the cost of the death of the author. The “author-reader” doublet makes possible our very ability to understand ourselves in our reading of The Scarlet Letter. For Sacvan Bercovitch, his historicist approach to the letter A is his very ability to understand himself in his own book. This book is The Office of The Scarlet Letter. Contemporary reading of the letter A is also set in particular historical situation. It is an ever-elusive background, against which the “author-reader” doublet in The Scarlet Letter─mute yet ready to speak─is perpetually summoned towards American self-knowledge.

碩士
國立彰化師範大學
英語學系
96
Abstract In terms of the concepts of disguise and Michel Foucault’s theory about power relations, this thesis aims to explore how Hester Prynne, the heroine in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, adopts disguises as her resistance strategy. The setting of the novel is the male-dominated Puritan society, but Hester reveals her discontentment with the male-female relationship in her days. At that time, Hester’s idea of gender equality would be viewed as immoral and violative to the Puritan law and might bring her a death penalty if the authority perceived it. Therefore, it is necessary for Hester to assume disguises as resistance strategy to hide her true self; by using the deceptive trait of disguises, she not only deceives the surveillance of the Puritan authority but also accomplishes her subversions. Finally, in her “counsel” to those local women suffering from their passion, she secretly spreads her belief in gender equality to them. Through the dissemination of her “immoral” thought, Hester’s influence will remain from one generation to another and always acts as a counteraction against the Puritan patriarchal thought. This counterforce makes power relations unstable and seeks one day to achieve its success. This thesis consists of five parts. Introduction contains literature reviews, the motivation, and the thesis structure of this thesis. In Chapter One, I illustrate the notions of disguise and Foucault’s concepts of power relations and discipline. In the discussion of the form of disguise, since there are various forms of disguise, I focus only on those relating to Hester’s. In the next chapter, I analyze the background, forms, and purposes of Hester’s disguises and then explore the subversive effect of Hester’s disguises in Chapter Three: I present Hester’s punishment firstly in order to examine how she subverts the punishment forced upon her to a form of resistance, and in this way, I expose Hester’s subversions and how her disguises destabilize power relations. In Conclusion, I recapitulate the main foci of the thesis and re-emphasize my wish to interpret The Scarlet Letter from a different perspective.

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Buffalo, 2008.
Title from PDF title page (viewed on Jan. 16, 2009) Available through UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Thesis adviser: Schmid, David Includes bibliographical references.

碩士
淡江大學
英文學系碩士班
93
This thesis, to draw upon Fredric Jameson’s idea of political unconscious, is an attempt to present a pluralistic interpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Given in this condition, I will first of all focus on Hawthorne’s will to romance as a stylistic expression that is suggestive of the multilayered subtexts, which subsume the conflicting fragmentations such as the idea of wilderness. Seen from this perspective, I will argue that romance helps articulate the locus of the Other and serves as the historical necessity which is hinged on the appropriated fourfold framework of interpretation. In the second chapter, I will present a Lacanian reading that sheds light on the formation of subjectivity with the dialectical relation of the scarlet letter as objet petit a. Also, it will touch upon the politics of citizenship or identity politics that is hinged on the surveillance of the scarlet letter. In the third part, I will address the relationship between the unconscious and woman from the perspective of Julia Kristeva’s “women’s time” and attempt to extract an eco-feminist reading that supplements the cultural paradigm of “ecriture feminine” that attempts a differential language as to the Universal language of identification. I will demonstrate to problematize the unproblematic relationship of the equation of woman and nature in Hawthorne’s sexed language on the one hand. On the other, I will focus on the silenced and repressed marginal subjects of witch, hysteric and thus bracket the male historiography. My conclusion will reassure that The Scarlet Letter is an open-ended text of multiple significances that are still “on the road” for further readings.