i have no idea why i picked the book up. it's been on my shelf for well over a decade since i've read it. perhaps it was a feeling of identification with hester prynne, but after reading it i feel a lot more like roger chillingsworth.
egocentric reading seeps in, no matter how disinterested and almost scientific a reader attempts to be--it is an impossible task to divorce oneself from. a fact that would have been a much more difficult subject matter for hawthorne's readers in the mid-nineteenth century, when so many of them loved the first part of the book, the custom-house, and were made clearly uncomfortable by the part of the text dealing with the actual dealings with the scarlet letter.
this was intentional on the part of hawthorne, who delighted upon his wife wife reading the concluding chapter of the work when: "it broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache--which i look upon as a triumphant success."
with that as an albatross it might be difficult to interpret the intentions for this writing, namely that hawthrone did not set out to write a feminist book, but to kick around the punchline of his time, puritanism, and perhaps more to write a book about what it is like to be alone. it's only through an anachronistic reading, and even then it seems thin, that a reader is able to pull a feminist track out of this.
perhaps this is best placed into context in the quote from the first quarter of the book: "but there is a fatality a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariable compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tine that saddens it."
ms. prynne is a strong feminine character, one that held to her beliefs with both pride and convictions. and it could be argued she triumphed in this adversity. but these triumphs were less for the female, and more so for the the individual. yes, it is given that she was a female, that dimmsdale, the other half of the sin, experienced a completely different reaction from the same population over the seven year course of the novella, and that this burden was laid upon hester on the sole account that she was a female and carried first the physical presence of a child out of wedlock, then the scarlet letter personified in pearl.
however, based on the context of the overall work, it is far more accessible to place the entire context of the work into the meaning of what the meaning of being alone is about, and how the human experience grows and adapts to it. no matter who the individual is within the text they are always alone, and the actions that they carry are crosses to bear on their own.
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After running errands it’s 9:30 at night and I decide relax by taking the long way home. I turn onto Route 1A. Going in the other direction would lead me south into Salem, Massachusetts. With some erudite maneuvering through seventeenth century corridors I would find myself at Hawthorne’s custom-house on Derby Street. Instead I drive north toward Ipswich. But not to worry, we’ll get there.
Approaching the town of Ipswich there’s lightning in the distance. We desperately need the rain but by all indications the storm is far out in the ocean. A damp coolness begins to seep into the car. And then it pours. It’s been hovering around ninety degrees for weeks. Apparently in New England the proper attitude toward home air conditioning is to abstain with Puritanical zeal. The humid sea breeze is a welcome, if temporary, relief.
I think it’s interesting how cold, though perceptible, is not a measurable physicality (we could debate its relative measure, of course, if we were prone to metaphysical orientations). Rather, cold is not a thing in itself but rather a thing in absence. The thing, of course, is heat, which is itself very real regardless of orientation. To my mind the whole discussion could be meaningfully had about a great many things.
These ponderings have required the road between Ipswich and home. The lightning seems to flash on every side now. It’s everywhere but where I’m at.
I turn off 1A north of Salem and drive home. I have about 200 pages left of the Whale but will purchase The Scarlet Letter post-haste.
C
i took up doing crossword puzzles in order to quit smoking. as happens with most addicts, one addiction leads to another and now there is little finer in the world than sitting with an accoutrement, locked in fierce debate with will shortz as to the validity of some of his clues and the answers he has edited into place.
this conversation typically happens here at my back window, overlooking the only northwest running corridor of ogden avenue.
chicago's location to the second largest body of freshwater on the planet has offered no reprieve to the heat. despite the rain that happened this morning, it is still possible to see the pooled puddles and the humidity they are creating--the dripping sweat rings they in turn give to those foolish enough to walk in the heat outside.
heat, to your point, is a character here. it saps the will to eat filling the stomach with each bloated breath.
at this point of the year, and later when the bitterness of winter strikes it is difficult to ponder the reasoning our not to distant ancestors had for settling here. did they feel overcrowded in the east, were they too weary to carry themselves further to the west coast or were they simply folk looking for something to complain about?
around this time of year i find myself pulling the great gatsby off the shelf. this is an escape towards someone who suffered through the same heat and to catch the smell of fitzgerald's cigarette wafting up from the page.
it's thursday, the day that usually heralds my concession to the puzzle and one where letters and even whole words are left blank. gatsby usually takes me a day to read, then it is on to the cool waters of the atlantic, in search of a white whale.
an excellent idea, on your part to take the long way home. i was in minnesota over the weekend where flash flooding, lightning erupted. it is always humbling and beautiful to watch the awesome power that nature still holds.
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