Citizen Hester The Scarlet Letter

Citizen Hester: "The Scarlet Letter" as Civic Myth Author(s): Brook Thomas Source: American Literary History, Vol.
13, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 181-211 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3054601 . Accessed: 04/10/2013 03:09
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Citizen
Letter
Hester: as Civic
The Myth
Scarlet
Brook Thomas
Earlyin The ScarletLetter (1850), as HesterPrynnefaces public discipline,the narratorhalts to comment, "In fact, this scaffoldconstituteda portion of a penal machine,which now, for two or threegenerations past, has been merelyhistoricaland traditionaryamong us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectualan agent in the promotionof good citizenship,as ever was the guillotine among the terroristsof France"(55). In a subtlereadingof this passageLarryReynoldsnotes the anachronistic use of "scaffold"-the normalinstruments of punishment in the MassachusettsBay Colony were the whippingpost, the stocks,and the pillory-to arguethatNathanielHawthorne selfconsciously alludes to public beheadings,especially the regicidal revolutionsin seventeenth-century Englandand eighteenthcenturyFrance.But none of Hawthorne's manycriticshas noted the anachronistic use of good citizenship, a phrasethat suggests the rich historical layeringof Hawthorne's nineteenth-century romanceabout seventeenth-century New EnglandPuritans. Of course,citizenexistedin Englishin the seventeenth century, but it was used primarilyto designatean inhabitantof a does whenhe mentions"anagedhandicraftscity,as Hawthorne man ... who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir ThomasOverbury's now some thirtyyearsagone"(127). murder, The officialpolitical status of residentsof Boston in June 1642 was not that of citizens, but subjectsof the King, a status suggestedwhenHesterleavesthe prisonand the Beadlecries,"Make way,good people, makeway,in the King'sname"(54). Historically resonantitself, this cry remindsus that it was preciselyin June 1642that civil war brokeout in England(Ryskamp, NewIn berry). fact, the book'saction unfoldsover the sevenyearsin whichthe relationbetweenthe people and theirsovereign was in as the time when "the doubt, the years generallyacknowledged Englishmancould develop a civic consciousness,an awareness of himselfas a political actor in a public realm"(Pocock 335);
? 2001 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY
as CivicMyth Letter 182 TheScarlet
that is, as a citizenas those in the nineteenth centurywouldhave understoodthe term.1Even so, it was not until afterthe French came into comand AmericanRevolutionsthat good citizenship mon use. termgood insertsthe nineteenth-century WhenHawthorne citizenship into a seventeenth-century setting he subtly participates in a persistentnationalmyth that sees US citizenshipas of citizenshipdevelopedin colonialNew England. an outgrowth in this myth is importantto note beHawthorne's participation cause much of his labor is devotedto challengingits standard version,conditionsfor demversion.Accordingto the standard ocratic citizenshipflourishedthe moment colonists made the journey to the "New World."If the people in the 13 colonies wereofficiallysubjectsof the king, the seeds of good citizenship were carriedacross the Atlantic, especially by freedom-loving Pilgrims,who found a more fertile soil for civic participation than in England.A recent exampleof this version of the story comes in theworkof the notedhistorianEdmundS. Morgan.Dein 1630when scribing"thefirst constitutionof Massachusetts" the assistantsof the Massachusetts Bay Companywere "transbody," Morgan formedfroman executivecouncilto a legislative was transformed from a designation writes,"the term 'freeman' of a commercial for members exercising legislative and company, into a desigjudicialcontroloverthat companyand its property, nationfor the citizensof a state,with the rightto vote and hold theadmission to freemanship of a office.... Thischangepresaged of settlers, menwho couldcontribute to thejoint largeproportion stock nothing but godlinessand good citizenship(PuritanDilemma91)."2 WhenMorgandesignatesfreemencitizens,he proNew England his awareness of politicalchanges jectsonto Puritan still to comejust as most studiesof colonialAmericanliterature and presentpoliticalboundariesbackward projectthe country's treatonly the 13 colonies that eventuallybecamethe US. This tendencyto read the Puritanpast teleologicallyis a period. For instance,in his multivolproductof the antebellum
ume History of the UnitedStates, which found its way into nearly
a thirdof New Englandhomes (Nye, George102),GeorgeBancroft attributed the "politicaleducation" of people in Connecticut "to the happy organization of towns, which here, as indeed throughoutall New England,constitutedeach separatesettlement as a little democracyin itself.It was the naturalreproduction of the system, which the instinct of humanityhad imperfectly revealedto our Anglo-Saxon ancestors. In the ancient privilege.In Conrepublics,citizenshiphad been an hereditary was lost by renecticut,citizenshipwas acquiredby inhabitancy,
History 183 Literary American
and all inhabiwas a little legislature, moval.Eachtown-meeting tants, the affluentand the more needy,the wise and the foolish, Quoting this passage,an were memberswith equal franchises."
anonymous reviewer for the American Jurist and Law Magazine
"institutions enthusiastically addsthatin colonialNew England's from othour government lies the germof all that distinguishes (230). freedom" ers,whicharemoreor less foundedin individual Purilaws of Bancroft's Clearly,the "mild"and "humane" (229). Indeed,much of Hawtans are not those of Hawthorne's thorne'snotorious irony is directedagainst the idealizationof New Englandancestorsby Bancroftand others.3For instance, if BancroftcelebratesNew Englandas the breedinggroundof citizenshipbecauseof the people'scivicparticipation democratic image of the in town hall meetings and the like, Hawthorne's scaffoldremindsus that good citizenshiprequiresobedience.If Bancroftstressesthe freedomentailedin good citizenship,Hawthorne remindsus of the repressionsrequiredto producegood ironyreachesa peak late in the book when citizens.Hawthorne's "citizen" the book'svillain,a "reputable" he calls Chillingworth, from it cannot be distinguished (233).Trulygood citizens, seems, those who simplyappearrespectable. In differentways some of Hawthorne'sbest historically mindedcriticshave noted his challengeto the standardversion of the Puritanoriginsof US citizenship.But for all of theirbriluse of the anachronistic liance, none have noted Hawthorne's term citizen. On the contrary,like Hawthorne,some of these Boston as same critics referto Puritansin seventeenth-century of the term sense (Berlant;Colacurcio, citizens in the political "Woman's Own Choice";and Pease),just as does the allegedly ahistorical FrederickCrews (149). In doing so they unconin the verymyththey thinkthey aredemystisciouslyparticipate that makesit impossiblefor themto recoga fying, participation to it.4 nize Hawthorne's importantcontribution We can start to identify that contributionby noting that Hawthorneemployslittle or no ironyat the end of his romance whenHesterreturnsto Bostonand devotesherselfto servingthe not living"inanymeasure unfortunate. Having"no selfishends," for her own profitand enjoyment," counselingthose bringingto her "theirsorrowsand perplexities" (263), Hesterin her unselfearned has by most measures to hercommunity ish commitment the label good citizen. By most, but not by all. For instance, of US JudithShklaridentifiesthe two most importantattributes citizenshipas the right to vote and the right to earn a living. Although Hester earlierearned her keep with her needlework, is not a definingaspect of her citizeneconomic self-sufficiency
184 The ScarletLetteras CivicMyth
ship. Nor is the right to vote. Indeed, as a woman, Hester in the seventeenth (even in the early nineteenth) century could not fit definitions of good citizenshipin either the economic or the political spheres. Even so, rather than abandon the concept of good citizenship, Hawthorne through Hester expands our notion of what it can entail by stressing the importance of actions within what political scientists call civil society, "a sphere of social interaction between economy and the state, composed of the intimate sphere (especially the family), the sphere of associations (especially voluntary associations), social movements, and forms of public communication" (Cohen and Arato ix).5Acutely awarethat the stress on civic participation could obscure important interior matters of the heart and spirit, Hawthorne does not, as many critics argue he does, retreat from public to private concerns, but instead tells the tale of how a "fallen woman" finds redemption by helping to generate within a repressive Puritan community the beginnings of an independent civil society. In telling that tale Hawthorne provides more than a civics lesson. He participates in and helps to shape the contours of a powerful civic myth.6
1. Working onlwith Myth But what is a civic myth? The term comes from Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in US History (1997), Rogers Smith's exhaustive study of how the law both reflects and helps to produce attitudes toward citizenship in the US. In Smith's complex account, US citizenship has been determined not only by liberal civic ideals, but also by civic myths, which he defines as "compelling stories" that explain "why persons form a people, usually indicating how a political community originated, who is eligible for membership, who is not and why, and what the community's values and aims are" (33). Literature'spotential to generate civic myths was the topic of an 1834 speech called "The Importance of Illustrating New England History by a Series of Romances Like the Waverley Novels," which was given in Hawthorne's home town of Salem by the Whig lawyer Rufus Choate. Alluding to the Scottish nationalist Andrew Fletcher's often-quoted statement that "I know
a very wise man ... [who] believed if a man were permitted to
make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of the nation" (108), Choate argues that a proper literary treatment of the past would mold and fix "that final, grand, complex result- the national character." In doing so it would make the
American Literary History
185
country forget its "recentand overrateddiversitiesof interest" and "reassemble, as it were, the people of Americain one vast congregation." "Reminded of our fathers," he argues,"weshould remember that we are brethren" (1: 344). Choate understandshow works of literaturecan serve as civic myths, but he also revealswhy Smith worries about the effectsof civic mythsand their "fictionalembroidery" (33). The storiesChoate advocateswould not, he admits,be a full disclosure of the past. A literaryartistshouldremember that "it is an heroicage to whose contemplation he would turn us back;and as no man is a hero to his servant,so no age is heroicof which the whole truthis recorded.He tells the truth,to be sure,but he does not tell the whole truth, for that would be sometimesmisplaced and discordant"(1: 340).8 Aware that "much of what
history relates . . . chills, shames and disgusts us,"producing "dis-
cordantandcontradictory emotions," Choate,therefore, counsels writersto leaveout accountsof the "persecution of the Quakers, the controversieswith Roger Williamsand Mrs. Hutchinson" as civic myth would seem to allow authors (1: 339). Literature to avoid altogetherthose embarrassing nationaleventsthat historians should not ignore, even if there is, as HermanMelville puts it, "a considerate way of historicallytreatingthem"(55). But the Hawthornethat Melville so admiredpresents a more complicatedcase.9He had, for instance, alreadywritten about preciselythe topics that Choate says should be avoided, evidenceof a criticalattitudetowardthe past that has causedso many criticsto focus on his ironic demystifications. But, as we have seen, Hawthorne does more than demystify prevailing "best myths. As George Dekker shrewdlyputs it, Hawthorne's hope for both short-and long-termsuccesswas to makethe great
American myths his own" (148). Hawthorne is neither solely a
nor a criticaldemystifier. mythmaker Instead,to use Hans Blu- withthemythof the menberg's phrase,he "workson/withmyth."Effectively working nation's relation to its on/withthe myth of the nation'srelationto its Puritanpast, The Puritan past, The Scarlet Scarlet Letter as civic myth does not advocateobedienceto the Letter as civicmythdoes
state or even primary loyalty to the nation. 10Instead, it illustrates
on! Effectively working
how important it is for liberal democracies to maintain the space
of an independentcivil society in which alternative obediences and loyaltiesare alloweda chanceto flourish.It shouldcome as no surprisethen that the novel'spowercomes more throughits love story than through its politics, or perhapsbetter put, its politics remindsus of the importancelove storieshave for most
citizens'
lives.
not advocate obedience to thestate or even primary loyaltyto thenation. Instead,it illustrates how important it isfor liberal democracies to maintain thespaceof an independent civilsociety
obediences and loyalties
in which alternative
Of course,most readersof The Scarlet Letter do not need areallowed a chanceto to be remindedthat its mythopoeticpowerlies in its love story. flourish.
186 TheScarlet Letter as CivicMyth
that recentpoliticalreadings All the morenoteworthy, therefore, of the novel have tended to divert our attentionfrom the love story or downplayits significance." Whatthose readingsfail to is that the love plot is a vital part of Hawthorne's acknowledge civic vision because it is in the love plot that he exploresthe of life in civil society.He does so by workingon/with possibilities the greatexceptionalist myth that Americaoffersthe hope for a radicalbreakwith the past and the promiseof a new start. 2. BeginAll Anew Hawthorne's romanceis an extended account of various effortsto begin anew.It startswith reflectionson the Puritans' a freshstartin the New Worldandthe narraattemptto establish tor'swhimsicalcommentthat "[t]hefoundersof a new colony, whatever Utopia of humanvirtueand happiness theymightoriginallyproject,have invariably recognizedit among theirearliest practicalnecessitiesto allot a portionof the virginsoil as a cemetery,and anotherportion as the site of a prison"(47). It then opens the second half with "Another View of Hester"and Hester'srealizationthat the radicalreformsshe imagineswould require"thewhole systemof societyto be torn down,and builtup anew"(165). Hester'sradicalspeculationsare in turn linkedto the book's emotional climax in the forest scene when Hester pleadsto Dimmesdale,"Leavethis wreckand ruinherewhereit hath happened! Meddleno morewith it! Beginall anew!"(198). Eventhougheach of theseeffortsis frustrated, muchof the story'semotionaltension has to do with readers'hopes-secret or not-that one or the other-or all-will succeed.Of all the thatof Hesterand Dimmesdale attempts, however, has awakened most readers'hopes. Confrontedwith a book of memorable scenes, readerspast and presenthave found the forest meeting betweenDimmesdaleand Hesterthe most memorable.12 It is so powerfulthat, as anyonewho has taught the book knows, students haveto be carefullyguidedto those passagesin whichthe in fact condemnsthe lovers'sentiments. narrator To understand The Scarlet Letter as civic myth, we need to understandwhy, aftermarshaling all of his rhetorical forceto makeus sympathize withhis lovers,Hawthorne does not allowthema new beginning. Puritanauthoritiesmight have answeredthat questionby relyingon JohnWinthrop's distinctionbetweennaturaland civil liberty."Thefirstis commonto man with beastsand othercreatures.By this, man, as he standsin relationto man simply,hath libertyto do whathe lists;it is a libertyto evil as well as to good."
American Literary History 187
In contrast,civil libertyhas to do with the "covenantbetween God and man, in the moral law,and the politic covenantsand constitutions, amongstmen themselves. This libertyis the proper end and objectof authority, and cannot subsistwithoutit; and it is a libertyto that only whichis good,just, and honest"(83-84). Significantfor a novel about adultery,Winthrop's analogy for politicalcovenantsis marriage. Assumingthe commonlaw doctrineof coverture in whichhusbandand wife becomeone corporate body with the husbandgrantedsole legal authority,Winthrop comparesa woman'swilling subjectionin marriageto an individual's subjectionto the magistrates who governthe political covenant to which he consents. "The woman'sown choice makes such a man her husband;yet being so chosen, he is her lord, and she is to be subjectto him, yet in a way of liberty,not of bondage;and a true wife accountsher subjectionher honor and her freedom.... Even so brethren,it will be betweenyou and your magistrates" (238-39). In turn, both marriage and political covenantsare analogous to "the covenantbetweenGod and man, in the morallaw"in whicha Christian can achievetrue to Christ.Forthe Puritans, libertyonly throughtotal submission the politicalinstitutionsof civil societyand the civil ceremonyof are governed marriage by the morallaw becausethey haveGod's sanction. A political covenantis not simply a contractamong men; like the marriagecontractbetweena man and woman, it needs God'switness. To applythis doctrineof covenanttheologyto TheScarlet Letteris to see that for the PuritansHester'sgreatestsin would whosevisibleevidencethey see in the not havebeenher adultery, birth of Pearl, but a remarkthat Dimmesdalealone hears her make:her defiantcry that whatthe two loversdid "hada consecrationof its own"(195). Resonatingwith so manyreaders,this is in fact sinfulbecauseit impliesthat Hester's and proclamation in Dimmesdale'slove is a self-containedact, not one need of God's sanction.As such theirlove existsin the realmof natural, not civil, libertyand must be contained. The nineteenth-century version of Winthrop'sdistinction betweennaturaland civil libertyis the distinctionoften made in political oratorybetweenlicense and liberty The ScarletLetter is a civic myth about the importanceof civil society,not about the glories of naturalman or woman, because Hawthorne,despite the sympathythat he createsfor his lovers,recognizeswith the dangersof naturalliberty. But if Hawthorne shares Winthrop he does not sharethe Puridistrustof naturalliberty, Winthrop's tan'sbeliefthat the only way for politicalsubjectsto achievecivil libertyis throughabsolutesubmissionto civil authority.
Because Winthrop speaks of a political subject's participation in a covenant rather than of his relation to a monarch and because of Hawthorne's own reference to good citizenship,critics who evoke Winthrop while writing on The Scarlet Letter have assumed that he is describing the situation of citizens, not subjects."3But he is not. Winthrop's subjects are still subjects, and citizens for him remain residents of a city, as is the case for John Cotton, who in 1645 declared that the best way to unite or combine people together into "one visible body" was a "mutual covenant" between "husband and wife in the family, Magistrates and subjects in the Commonwealth, fellow Citizens in the same citie" (qtd. in Norton 13). This distinction between subjects and citizens is not just a quibble over terms. As a political category, not simply a resident of a city, citizen implies the capacity to rule as well as be ruled. The relative independence of citizens would, therefore, undercut Winthrop's analogy between the wife in a marriage under coverture and the subjects of a commonwealth. For instance, as Linda Kerber has shown, covenant theology's strict analogy between marriage and political covenants broke down in the Revolutionary era. On the one hand, independence generated an ideological disjunction. Founded on the principle that the terms of political obligation of British subjects could be renegotiated to create US citizens, the nation was ruled, nonetheless, by men who for the most part wanted to retain a family structure in which a wife owed her husband eternal obedience (13). On the other hand, the rhetoric of citizenship generated a new republican model of marriage that challenged the doctrine of coverture. As Merril Smith puts it, "Tyranny was not to be considered in public or private life, and marriage was now to be considered a republican contract between wives and husbands, a contract based on mutual affection" (51). Hawthorne's challenge to Winthrop's belief in the absolute authority of magistrates is thus as important a part of The Scarlet Letter'sfunction as civic myth as is their shared distrust of the potential dangers of natural liberty Winthrop claims absolute authority because he lives in a theocracy in which, as Hawthorne puts it, "forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions" (64). Distrustful of granting civil authority divine sanction, Hawthorne questions the capacity of the Puritan magistrates to judge Hester. Their problem is not that they are evil men. "They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage" (64). Their problem is that "out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good
189
and evil" (64). Assuming the moral position of God, the magistrates lack what Hester develops over the course of the book: the "power to sympathize" (161).14 That power causes a political dilemma. If on the one hand Hawthorne appeals to sympathy to temper the rigid and authoritarian rule of a system in which "religion and law were almost identical" (50), on the other he warns of the dangers of having that sympathy lapse into a sentimental embrace of natural liberty with all of its potential dangers. That dilemma is, of course, precisely the dilemma Hawthorne's readers confront when they sympathize with his two lovers in the forest. Hawthorne's answer to it is not, as critics too often assume, to advocate absolute submission to the existing civil authority. It is instead to imagine alternativepossibilities for human relations within the civil order by drawing on the power to sympathize. Both that capacity of the imagination and the power to sympathize flourish best in Hawthorne's world in the space of civil society not directly under state supervision, a space prohibited in the Puritan theocracy at the beginning of Hawthorne's novel. Hester will help generate that space, but she first has to acknowledge the importance of civil society by recognizing her sin. For Hawthorne that sin is not so much-as it would have been for Winthrop-a sin against God's law as it is a sin against the intersubjective agreements that human beings make with one another. Indeed, her adultery is another example of a premature effort to begin anew. After all, Hester's adultery with Dimmesdale takes place with her assuming, before the fact, that her husband is dead. When Chillingworth appears, therefore, he appears not only as a vengeful, cuckolded husband but also as a figure from a not-yet-buried past prepared to block Hester and Dimmesdale from achieving her dream of starting anew. To expand our understanding of why Hawthorne does not allow that new beginning, we need to look again at that "reputable" "citizen" (233), Hester's husband.
3. Another View of Mr. Prynne Hawthorne may elicit our sympathyfor Hester and Dimmesdale while condemning their adultery, but he generates little sympathy for Hester's husband. From Chaucer's January to various figures in Shakespeare to Charles Bovary to Leopold Bloom, the cuckolded husband has been treated with varying amounts of humor, pathos, sympathy, and contempt. Few, however, are as villainous as Roger Chillingworth. Hawthorne's treatment of him
starklycontrasts with the sympathetictreatmentsome courts gave to cuckoldedhusbandsin the 1840s,when various states beganapplyingthe so-calledunwrittenlaw by whicha husband who killed his wife'slover in the act of adulterywas acquitted. for those acquittalsportrayed Arguments avenginghusbandsas "involuntary agentsof God."In contrast,loverswerecondemned of Satan,""serpents," and "noxiousreptiles"with as "children supernatural power allowing them to invade the "paradiseof blissfulmarriages" (Ireland,"Libertine" 32).15 In The Scarlet Letter this imagery is reversed.It is the avenginghusbandwho stalks his wife'sloverwith "othersenses than [thoseministersand magistrates] possess"and who is associatedwith "Satanhimself,or Satan's emissary" (75, 128).In the meantime,we imagineArthur,Hester,and Pearl as a possible so writesoff Chillingworth as family(Herbert 201). The narrator Hester'slegal husbandthat he refersto him as her "former husband"(167), causingMichaelT. Gilmoreto follow suit (93) and D. H. Lawrenceto designateMr. Prynne Hester's"first"husband. A legal scholarwritingon adulterygoes so far as to call Hesteran "unwedmother"(Weinstein 225). By reversingthe sympathythat courts gave to cuckolded husbandstakingrevenge into theirown hands,Hawthorne draws attentionto the importance of seeking justicewithinthe confines of the writtenlaw. Feministhistorianshave, for good reasons, stressedthe ideologicalfunctionof lawscondemning adulteryas a wayto guarantee the legitimacy of patriarchal lineage.As accurate as this account is, in the nineteenthcenturyan alternative the law'spositivefunction,was available.16 account,stressing Oliver WendellHolmes, Jr., summarized much nineteenth-century functionwhen he wrote:"The writingon law'santhropological earlyformsof legal procedure weregroundedin vengeance" (2). Adulteryis a case in point. Priorto the sixthcentury, revengefor adulteryin Englandwas carriedout by the wrongedhusband and his kinshipgroup.This relianceon vendetta resultedin longstandingblood feuds. To stop the social disruptioncaused by cycles of revenge,Aethelberhtcreatedhis Code of Dooms that for punishingadulteryand other crimes to gave responsibility
the state. In his famous Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas (1861),
publisheda decade after The ScarletLetter,Sir Henry Maine drewon similarevidencefromRomanlaw to arguethat criminal law servedthe social orderby takingfrom individuals responsiThe result was a state bilityfor punishing wrongdoers. hoped-for monopolyon violence,for if the state alone could resortto vio-
191
cycles of violent relence to mete out justice, sociallydisruptive vengecould be avoided(Weinstein). Dramatizingthe dangers of achievingjustice outside the potentialfor evil as illustrates naturalliberty's law,Chillingworth well as for good. On the one hand,it promptsHesterto question the law in the name of a more equitablesocial order.On the to take the law into his own other, it can allow Chillingworth handsfor personalrevenge.If Hester'sdesireto createthe world "anew"suggests utopian possibilities;Chillingworth's revenge, drivenby "new interests"and "a new purpose"(119), suggests the potential for a reign of terror.Hawthornelinks these two seeming opposites throughthe secret pact that Hester and her husbandforgeon his return.Hester'sdreamsof a new social order result from her having "imbibed... a freedomof speculation" growingout of a new way of thinkingthat challenges"the whole systemof ancientprejudice" (164), but duringher prison interviewwith her husbandshe imbibesa draughthe has concocted out of the "manynew secrets"he has learnedin the wil"newsecrets"might dernessfrom Indians(72). Chillingworth's vision of an realmthat Hester's be associatedwith a "primitive" enlightenedfuture hopes to overcome,but the "promiseof secrecy"that once again binds husbandand wife suggestsa possibleconnectionbetweenthe two (170).Theirsecretbond in turn parallelsthe secretbond of naturalloversthat Hesterand Dimmesdale contemplatein their meeting in the forest. The two Forinstance, similarities. bonds evenhavestructural just as Hester'snew bond with herhusbandcan be maintained only because he has takenon a new name,so Hestercounselsher lover,"Give up this nameof ArthurDimmesdale,and makethyselfanother" the secrecyin which both bonds are (198). More importantly, As made isolateseveryoneinvolvedfromthe humancommunity. the civil to the created in stark contrast bond both are by such, ceremonyof marriagewhose public witness links husbandand wife to the community. violationof her adulterous Muchhas beenmadeof Hester's has been paid to Not vows. much however, attention, marriage her husband'sviolation of his vows, even though the narrator commentson it. For instance,in prisonHesterasks her husband why he will "not announce thyself openly, and cast me off at once?"His reply:"Itmaybe . .. becauseI will not encounterthe dishonorthat besmirchesthe husbandof a faithlesswoman. It may be for other reasons.Enough, it is to my purpose to live fear of and die unknown"(76). In legal terms, Chillingworth's dishonor makes no sense inasmuch as he has committed no
192 The ScarletLetteras Civic Myth
crime. But if some antebellum courts displayed great sympathy to cuckolded husbands through the unwritten law, there was a long tradition-still powerful in the seventeenth century-of popular and bawdy rituals mocking cuckolded husbands (Ramsey 202-07). No matter what other motives Chillingworth might have, the narrator makes clear that the man "whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all" resolves "not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame" (118). That resolve explains "why-since the choice was with himself-" he does not "come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable" (1 18). According to coverture, that undesirable inheritance was not only Hester, but also her child. Fully aware of his husbandly rights, Chillingworth tells his wife, "Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me" (76). Nonetheless, he refuses to acknowledge his inheritance, telling Hester in the same scene, "The child is yours,-she is none of mine,-neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father" (72). The doctrine of coverture was clearly a patriarchal institution; nonetheless, it was not solely to the advantage of the husband. It was also a means to hold him responsible for the well-being of his wife and children. Chillingworth might not be Pearl's biological father, but he was her father in the eyes of the law. That legal status adds another dimension to the recognition scene that occurs when Chillingworth walks out of the forest and finds his wife on public display for having committed adultery. "Speak, woman!" he "coldly and sternly" cries from the crowd. "Speak; and give your child a father!"(68). Commanding his wife to reveal the name of her lover, the wronged husband also inadvertently reminds us that at any moment Hester could have given Pearl a legal father by identifying him. Even more important, Chillingworth could have identified himself. But the same man who knows his legal rights of possession as a husband refuses to take on his legal responsibilities as a father. Pearl, in other words, has not one but two fathers who refuse to accept their responsibilities. Having lost his own father as a young boy and doubting his ability financially to support his children on losing his job at the Custom House, Hawthorne was acutely aware of the need for fathers to live up to their name. In fact, by the end of the novel he ensures Pearl'sfuture by having her two fathers finally accept their responsibilities. At his death Dimmesdale publicly acknowledges his paternity, eliciting from Pearl a "pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow,nor for ever do battle with the world" (256). At his death Chillingworth bequeaths to his once-rejected inheritance "a con-
193
siderable amount of property, both here and in England" (261). Even so, the book's emphasis on failed fathers raises the possibility that Hester will earn her claim to good citizenship through her role as a mother.
4. A Mother's Rights The Scarlet Letter, according to Tony Tanner, is a major exception to the "curiously little interest" the novel of adultery pays to the child of an illicit liaison, "even on the part of the mother (or especially on part of the mother)" (98). Indeed, Hester's relation to Pearl is a major part of Hawthorne's story Accompanying her mother in almost every scene in which Hester appears, Pearl embodies a major paradox: although there is perhaps no better symbol of the hope for a new beginning than the birth of a child, Hester's daughter continually reminds her mother of her sinful past. Like the scarlet letter to which she is frequently compared, Pearl serves therefore as an agent of her mother's socialization. Part of Hester's socialization is in turn to socialize her daughter. Worried that Pearl is of demon origin or that her mother is not doing a proper job of raising her, some of the "leading inhabitants" are rumored to be campaigning to transfer Pearl "to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's" (100-01). In response Hester concocts an excuse to go to the governor's hall, only to find Governor Bellingham and ReverendWilson convinced of their plan when Pearl impiously responds to their interrogations. Desperately turning to Dimmesdale, Hester implores: "I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,-for thou hast sympathies which these men lack!-Thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights" (113). As much an anachronism as Hawthorne's evocation of the concept of good citizenship, Hester's appeal to a mother's rights helps to locate Hawthorne's attitude toward motherhood. In the seventeenth century no mother threatened with losing custody of her child could have successfully evoked the idea of a mother's rights. On the contrary, as we have seen, under the doctrine of coverture the child belonged legally to the father. In fact, in custody disputes between husband and wife a common law court did not grant custody to the mother until 1774. Even in this landmark case Chief Justice Lord Mansfield acknowledged the "father's natural right" while ruling that "the public right to superintend the education of its citizens" had more weight (qtd. in Grossberg 52). Mansfield's seemingly revolutionary ruling, in
otherwords,wouldhaveconfirmed the Puritanelders'sensethat for her own good and that of the commonwealth Pearl,who had no fatherwillingto claim her, could be taken from her mother. It was not until the courtswereconvincedthat the educationof childrenas citizenswas best accomplished by theirmothersthat the idea of a mother'srightto her child could gain force. That processbegan in a few highlypublicizedcases in the US just before Hawthornebegan writing The Scarlet Letter. These cases in which a motherwon custodyfrom a fathercoincided with a challengeto coverture posed by the rise of republican rhetoric that opposedcoverture's as a corimageof marriage porate body presidedover by the husband with the image of as a contractual marriage relation,with husbandand wife bringif not identical,dutiesand obliing to the unioncomplementary, gations.Not yet willingto grantwomenan activerole in the political sphereof the new republic,this rhetoricstill gavethem an importantrole to play,that of raisingchildrenas citizensin service of the nation.Emphasizing the nurturing roleof the mother, this cult of republicanmotherhood bolstered a wife's claim to gain custody of her child, especiallyone of "tender"years. Indeed,in the D'Hauteville case, one of the most publicizedcustody battles,the wife'slawyerscontrastedthe increasingly progressiverepublicannature of marriagein the US to the outmoded feudal concept of coverturemaintainedby her Swiss husband(Grossberg). In her plea for,a mother'srightsHesterechoes the antebellum rhetoricof republican motherhood,which,like Hester'sappeal to Dimmesdale,emphasizedthe capacity for sympathy. A productof "paternal" and "maternal" qualities, a properrepublican citizen was not simplythe obedientsubjectproducedunder the paternalregimeof both covertureand seventeenth-century Puritanism. Instead,a good citizen should also have the moral quality of sympathynurturedthrough a mother'slove. Hawthornedramatizes of thesetwo qualitiesin the final the marriage scaffold scene when Dimmesdale,the biological father,elicit's Pearl'spledge of obedience,a pledge that comes in the form of tearsproducedbecausethe scene has "developed all her sympathies" (256).
It would, nonetheless,be a mistaketo assumethat Hester becomesa modelcitizenby the end of TheScarletLetterthrough her role as a mother.If republicanmotherswere supposedto raisecitizens for the nation, Pearldoes not become a "citizen" of Boston.Whereas,in typicalHawthornian fashion,we are not completelycertainwherePearlends up, circumstantial evidence indicatesthat she has successfully marriedand lives somewhere
195
in Europe,most likely on the continent, not even in England. Measuredby the most importantstandardof success for a reHesterfails.Ratherthanraisea child publicanmother,therefore, to serve the nation/commonwealth, values in proper inculcated Hesterraisesa childwho finds"a home and comfort"in an "unends "TheCustomknownregion"(166, 262),just as Hawthorne else"(44). House"imagininghimselfa "citizenof somewhere To the patrioticallyminded, Hester'sfailureto producea bound by loyaltyto the naof the new generation representative her as a modelcitizen.In fact that tion wouldseemto disqualify failure helps to suggest how Hawthorneexpands our sense of motherhooddemongood citizenship.As the cult of republican forms of govchallengeto authoritarian strates,the republican ernmentinvolvedmore than exchangingthe political status of rule subjectsfor that of citizens. It also temperedhierarchical which because of its capacity for identification with sympathy, emotion. across barriersof status is a decidedlyunhierarchical rhetoriccontinuedto channelsympaEven so, much republican thy into serviceof the state by implyingthat sympathiescultivatedin the familywould lead to local and regionalones before culminatingin identificationwith all members of the nation. the functionof the state is narrative, Withinthis developmental to enforcethe civil orderin the nameof "thepeople"sympathetically bound togetheras a nation. In contrast,Hawthornesugmodel for the relation not developmental, gests an interactive, -theneed to temand the state.Also stressing betweensympathy Hawrule with a capacityfor sympathy, per harsh,hierarchical with membersof identification thornedoes not see sympathetic the nation as necessarilyan expansionof the moral capacityof individualcitizens.On the contrary,his continualstress on the importanceof local attachmentssuggeststhat the state should can be cultiguaranteea civil orderin which such attachments not because in they themselves, valuable vated becausethey are will eventuallylead to an attachmentto the nation. National of a higherorderthanmore for himarenot inevitably sympathies local ones.17 model is compatiblewith a belief interactive Hawthorne's indeed,by many,if not all sharedby many,if not all Americans, The primarygoal for them is not citizensof liberaldemocracies. to producecitizenswho displayloyaltyto the stateas necessarily of "the people"bound togetheras a nation. The representative citizenscapableof choosis goal instead to produceindependent ing wherethey can best developtheircapacities.To be sure,this goal is in partconditionedby the ideologyof liberaldemocracies, like the US, whichvaluesfreedomof choice. In the US of Haw-
endorsed thegovthorne's daythatfreedomwasofficially through ernment's whereas Britsupportof a citizen's rightto expatriation, ish subjectsowedperpetualallegianceto theirsovereign (Tsiang;
James).18
Of course,it is one thing to emphasizefreedomof choice and quite anotherto providethe conditionsmakingit possible. If much recentcriticismof US literature has used this disparity to questionhow "free"freedomof choice "reallyis,"we should also not forgetthat it is one thing to acknowledge that a preference for freedomof choice is in part a productof ideologyand quite anotherto claim that such a preference makes no difference. The power of The ScarletLetter as civic myth has to do with its dramatization of the difference thata preference for freedom of choice can makeand how importantthe existenceof an independentcivil society is for its cultivation.That difference is most poignantlydramatizedin Hester'sdecision to returnto Boston at the end of the book. Thatdecisionis freelychosenin the sensethatno one forces Hesterto makeit, but it is certainly not a decisionmadewithout pressurefrom many complicatedhistorical and psychological factors,just as one's decision as to where to maintainor seek citizenshipis not simplya rationalchoice about possibilitiesfor politicalor economicfreedombut one conditionedby numerous factorsthat one cannotcontrol,suchas whereone was born and whereone's intimateties are located. In this regardHester'sreturn is especiallyimportantbecause she returnsno longer primarilydefinedby relationsof statusthat so governedthe women of her time; that is, the status of lover,mother,or wife. On the with her loverand husbanddead and her child apparcontrary, entlymarriedand in anothercountry,she returnsas a woman,a womandevoted,nonetheless, not to individual fulfillment but to the interpersonalrelationsof civil society. It is in this space, whichincorporates "manyof the associationsand identitiesthat we value outside of, priorto, or in the shadowof state and citizenship"(Walzer, Introduction1), that Hesterprovidesus paradoxicallywith a modelof good citizenship thatno liberaldemocracycan affordto do without. 5. Hester'sUnexceptional Return At the startof the novel the scarletletterhas "theeffectof a spell"on Hester,"takingher out of the ordinary relationswith and her in humanity, inclosing a sphereby herself"(54). As the novel goes on, however, it assumesthe scaffold's role of promot-
197
ing good citizenship.With Hester'sreturn and her willing resumptionof the letter-"for not the sternestmagistrateof the period would have imposedit" (263)-the scarletletter has, as has argued,finallydone its office.Butjust as SacvanBercovitch Hester's actionschangethe meaningthat people giveto the scarlet A, so too they alter the sense of good citizenshipwith which the book begins. The book beginswith an image of good citizenshipas the sort of absoluteobediencethat Winthropwantedhis subjectsto The distanceHawthornemoves away give to their magistrates. from that image can be measuredby a comparisonbetween Dimmesdaleand Hester.Temptedin the forest to break comgoes back Dimmesdale pletelywith the dictatesof civil authority, on his resolveand instead seeks salvationby submittingtotally in the civicactivito the existingcivil orderthroughparticipation ties of the election-dayceremonies.His submissionculminates in his sermon that teleologicallyprojectsa utopian vision of a cohesive-and, it is importantto emphasize,closed-Puritan communityinto the future. Dimmesdale,in other words, becomes the obedient subjectthat Winthropdesires.He is joined during these public ceremoniesby almost the entire Puritan crowd,whichsubmits"withchildlikeloyalty"to its rulers(250). is not among that crowd.Her good citizenship Hester,however, comes because of, ratherthan despite of, her failureto submit so loyally. the civil law in a Throughher returnHesteracknowledges way that she did not in her rebelliousearlierdays. Nonetheless, she does not, as Dimmesdaledoes, submit totally to the state. toleration she receivesthe Puritanmagistrates' On the contrary, of-actions that are not directlyunder of-and evenadmiration their supervision.Concernedwith counseling and comforting those who feel marginalized by officialPuritansociety,especially women whose attemptsat intimacyhad failed, those activities extend the parametersof good citizenshipto an interpersonal realmconcernedwith affairsof the heart that no affairsof state If Dimmesdalesimplychannelshis seem capableof remedying. into total serviceto the state,Hesterdracapacityfor sympathy matizes how importantit is for the state to promote spaces in whilesimultacan be cultivated whichthe capacityfor sympathy neously guardingagainst the dangers of naturalliberty.Thus, even though Hester has no place within the civic sphere, she, unlike Dimmesdale,helps to bring about a possible structural of Puritansociety by havingit includewhatwe can realignment civil society. call the nascentformationof an independent Stressingthe importanceof the civil order,the Puritans,as
had no placefor an independent civil represented by Hawthorne, societybecausetheyfelt the needto controlall aspectsof life. As the concernoverPearl's the narrator notes regarding upbringing, of even slighterpublicinterest,and of far less intrinsic "Matters weight than the welfareof Hesterand her child, were strangely of legislatures and acts of the mixed up with the deliberations state"(101).Indeed,the relative independence grantedto Hester contrastswithan earlierdescripat the end of the book markedly tion of her cottagewhichshe could possess only "by the license of the magistrates,who still kept an inquisitorialwatch over her"(81).19 If the Puritantheocracy, like all absolutistformsof governcivil society,such a sociment, has no room for an independent ety is an essential feature of liberal democracies.In Michael Walzer's words, "It is very risky for a democraticgovernment when the state takes up all the availableroom and thereare no alternative associations,no protectedsocial space,wherepeople can seek relieffrom politics, nursewounds,find comfort,build strengthfor future encounters"(Introduction1). It is so risky that one of the functionsof the statein liberaldemocracies is to ensurethat alternativeassociationsand protectedspaces exist. In dramatizing the importance of theirexistence,Hester'sactivities on her returnto Boston indicatethe kinds of nonpolitical transformations that for Hawthornewere necessaryfor democraticruleto emergefromthe Puritans'authoritarian rule. By emphasizing the Puritans'authoritarianism ratherthan theirdemocracy, Hawthorne workson/withthe antebellum myth of the Puritanorigins of Americandemocracy. That myth has been perpetuatedby both supportersof the country'sclaim to foster democraticrule and critics of it, such as Bercovitchand LaurenBerlant,the two best recentreadersof Hawthorne's politics. Like most recentcritics,includingmyself,both Bercovitch and Berlantread The ScarletLetter'sseventeenth-century moment of representation as a commenton its antebellum moment of production.20 But, unlike me, they do so by turninga nineliberal democracyinto a secularversion of the teenth-century Puritans' seventeenth-century theocracy.21Fitting The Scarlet Letterinto the projecthe has conductedthroughouthis distinguishedcareer,Bercovitch narrative of secuplots a complicated in whichthe New EnglandWaybecomesthe American larization Way,while Berlantwithout elaborationsimplyposits the continuitiesof the "Puritan/American project"(158). Supplementing her narrative of secularization with Louis Althusser's accountof the ideological interpellationof subjects, Berlant reads Hawthorne's of seventeenth-century portrayal Boston allegorically to
Literary History 199 American
nationalcitizenshipin early of understanding solvethe "problem subjectshave nationalAmerica"(6), assumingthat Winthrop's the same relationto the state as citizensin a nineteenth-century democracy, a relationthat "in theory"allows "neithera private part to whichthe state is not privy,nor a thoughtoutside of the model,in whichall aspects state'saffairs" (98). But if Althusser's of civil society are simplypart of the state'sideologicalapparatheocracy workfor a seventeenth-century tus, mightconceivably and its demandsfor absolute obedience,it does not work for liberaldemocracies.Convincedthat it does, Berlantfeels compelled to look for resistanceto the total control that Althusser porattributesto the state and finds it, as do I, in Hawthorne's life relationsand consciousness" trayalof "thescene of everyday (95). What she fails to realize is that, far from challengingthe locatingthe potentialfor resisideology of liberaldemocracies, tance in such everydayassociationsis a vital part of that ideology. Bercovitchis acutely awareof how resistanceto the state can serve the ideology of liberaldemocracies.Nonetheless,his democracyas a secularneed to see the US's nineteenth-century theocracybeized version of the Puritans'seventeenth-century novel in readingof Hawthorne's trayshis otherwisemagnificent crisis for Puritanism the since great two importantways. First, needs to assertthat Bercovitch was the antinomiancontroversy, "the only plausiblemodes of Americandissent are those that centeron the self" and then to read The Scarlet Letter as a book about Hester'sindividualism (31). But Hester,I hope I have established,is definedmuchmore by her commitmentto interperwhichis not to say that sonalrelationsthanby herindividualism, that she displaysin does not value the independence Hawthorne of other Puritan "childlike contrastto the subjects.But loyalty" is not a productof a naturally for Hawthorne that independence in the associaself-sufficient self;it is insteadbredand cultivated civil society.22 tional activitiesof an independent has to do with Hawthorne's secondmisreading Bercovitch's attitude toward the nation. Certainlymany Americanssee the US as fulfillinga divinemission,just as the Puritanssaw themwork on/withthat selvesas the chosen people. But Hawthorne's to be confined is too by Bercovpowerful myth exceptionalist howeversubtleand complicated of secularization, itch'snarrative well-documented Hawthorne's is. On the contrary, that narrative reformersquestions the sacred skepticismabout revolutionary For instance,both the Puritan missionthey grantto themselves. in Englandand the FrenchRevolutiontoppledsoverRevolution mission in eigns claimingdivine authority,and yet Cromwell's
200
The ScarletLetteras Civic Myth
Froma Hawthornian is thedanger perspective, will not thatAmerica

stray from its divine. missionuthaits willne
while the revolutionEnglandwas to establisha New Jerusalem the king'sclaimto absoluteauthority ariesof Francetransferred to the nation and, with religiouszeal, condemnedto death anyFroma Hawthornian one opposedto its new principles. perspective, the danger is not that America will stray from its divine and mission,but that it will follow the path of otherrevolutions
believe too fervently that it has such an exceptional destiny.
'
follow thepathof other andbelieve revolutions thatit has toofervently suchan exceptional destiny.
That ever-present dangermeans that, although there is a structuraldifferencebetween an antebellumdemocracyand a seventeenth-century theocracy,perpetual work is requiredto that "losesall senseof the distinction guardagainsta patriotism between State, nation, and government"(Bourne 357). Hawthatworkin his introductory sketchof "The thorneaccomplishes as well as in his novel.Hawthorne, StephenNisCustom-House" was heavilyinvolvedin local partisan senbaumhas documented, hardto retainhis civil servicepost politicsand foughtextremely in the Custom House. Nonetheless,his fictionalversion of his dismissaltells a differentstory. If, as Gordon Hutner puts it, "introduces his novelaboutthe publichistoryof priHawthorne vateliveswith his privatehistoryof publiclives"(20), in both the in the novel and the sketchhe ends by locatinghis protagonists And just as spaceof civil societybetweenthe publicand private. the novel looks ironicallyat variousideals of good citizenship, so does the sketch.For instance,Hawthorne's portrayalof the ex-militarymen working at the Custom House undercutsthe an ideal that contributed to the elecideal of the citizen-soldier, tion of militaryhero ZacharyTayloras presidentand thus indidismissal.Taylor's electionis a perfect rectlyled to Hawthorne's exampleof the failureof a second ideal:people displayingand in the politicalprotheirvirtuethroughparticipation cultivating theirown intercess. Farfroma realmin whichcitizenssacrifice ests for the good of the nation,politicsin "TheCustom-House" efhas degenerated into a battle of self-interest. Its debilitating in the spoils system,which, fects aremost prominently displayed hands, puts a lie to a thirdideal: the especiallyin Hawthorne's good citizen as devotedcivil servant. Presidedover by a flag that marksit as "a civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam's government"(5), the Custom House is occupiedby people who fail to heed the fiercelook of the Americaneagle over its entrancethat warns "all citizens, carefulof their safety,againstintrudingon the premiseswhich she overshadows with herwings"(5). Instead,they seek "to shelter themselvesunder the wing of the federaleagle" (5), not so much to serve the country as to be guaranteeda comfortable livelihood.The expectationthat the federaleagle's"bosom has
pillow"(5) is the all the softnessand snugnessof an eider-down of the childlike loyalty that causes the Puritan mirror-image rule. Choosing crowduncriticallyto submit to its magistrates' neitherthe nation'smaternalprotectionnor its paternalauthorweavesa fictionin whichhe best servesthe counity,Hawthorne try not as a civil servantpaid by the state but as a nonpartisan writerlocated in an independentcivil society.Thus he portrays himselfas happilyleaving the Custom House so that he could once again take up his pen. The novel that he subsequently wrote,whichmore than any otherwork has becomepart of the "generalincorporationof literatureinto education"and thus ethos is dissemthroughwhichthe [national] partof the "channel inatedand ... the means by which outsidersare broughtinside it,"gives substanceto the cliche that democracyis a way of life as well as a politicalsystem(Brodhead61, 60). 6. Conclusion If The Scarlet Letter suggests that political institutions its emphasison good citizenalone cannot make a democracy, ship in the civil as well as in the civic sphereis by no means a solution to all of the country'sproblems.The issue of race, for instance,marksan importantlimit to that emphasis.Conflicted betweenloyaltiesto an individualstate and to the federalunion, for a reasonto fightthe CivilWar.23 Writing searched Hawthorne "If issue of the he identified slavery. to his friendHoratioBridge,
we are fighting for the annihilation of slavery . . . it might be a
wise object, and offersa tangibleresult,and the only one which is consistentwith a futureUnion betweenNorth and South. A continuanceof the war would soon make this plain to us; and we should see the expediencyof preparingour black brethren for futurecitizenshipby allowingthemto fightfor theirown liberties, and educatingthem throughheroic influences"(Letters 381). Whereasthe annihilationof slaverywas indeed the basis for restoringthe Union, a trulyequitablecitizenshipfor blacks was, as we know,derailedby the reconciliationof white North and South. Even though he died in 1864, Hawthorneunintentionally anticipatesa reason for those derailedeffortsin his metaphoric descriptionsof the scarletletter.The letter is called variouslya mark, a brand, a badge of shame, and a stigma. What Hawthornecouldnot haveknownwasthata few yearsafterTheScarlet Letterappeared,JusticeTaneyin the Dred Scott case would use similarmetaphorsto deny citizenshipto anyoneof African
202 TheScarlet Letter as CivicMyth
thereis only one class descent-free or slave.Sincein a republic of citizens,Taneyargued,"the deep and enduringmarksof inferiorityand degradation" implantedon blackshad so "stigmathat tized" them they were excludedfrom the sovereignbody constitutingthe nation (416). In an effortto undo the damage done by Dred Scott,the Supreme Courtafterthe CivilWarruled that the ThirteenthAmendmentforbade not only slaverybut also all "badges and incidents" of slavery. The difference between a badgeand a stigmais significant.A badgecan be removed; a stigma,coming from the Greekword for a brand,is implanted for a lifetime-and for Taneycould be passed from generation to generation (Thomas). The Scarlet Letter endsby givingHestera choiceof whether to wear her "badgeof shame"(161). She willinglychooses to wear it, in part because throughher own agency the letter has "ceased to be a stigma" (263). In contrast, the possibility of achievingthe status of model citizen throughindividualeffort was deniedAfricanAmericansbecausetheirracemeantthat, as a group, they inheriteda badge of slavery,whose stigma persisted. The civil society argumentabout "uncoerced humanassociations"by itself is not adequateto deal with that problem (Walzer,"Concept"7). Instead a much more traditionalargument about active citizen participationin the political sphere would seemto be calledfor. Clearly,a danger of an exclusiveemphasis on good citizenshipin civil societyis politicalquietismof the sort that Hawthorne succumbedto in the 1850swhen he arguedthat slavery would witherand die of its own accord.As regrettable as Hawthorne's thatbiographical quietismwas,however, fact shouldnot be, as some criticsmakeit, the finalwordon "thepolitics"of his most famousnovel (Cheyfitz; Arac, "Politics"). The Scarlet Letter does not so much rejectcivic notions of good citizenshipas aboutthemwhileexpanding questionemptyplatitudes our sense of whatthey can entail.Thatexpandedsenseof good citizenship is by no means sufficientto solve issues of racial inequalityas if any one course of action is-but it may be an important componentof any solution.Indeed,it is not simplyan accident thatthe movementagitating for first-class for African citizenship Americanswas calledthe civil rightsmovement.To be sure,civil rightsby definitionare guaranteed by the-state,and to be effective they haveto be enforcedby the state.Nonetheless,agitation for civil rightsremindsus that one of the most importantgoals of politicalactivismis the creationof a spacewherethe voluntary associationslocatedin civil society exist accordingto principles
of equity and fairness.As Walzerputs it, "Only a democratic civil civil society;only a democratic statecan createa democratic society can sustain a democraticstate. The civility that makes democraticpolitics possiblecan only be learnedin the associacapabilithe roughlyequaland widelydispersed tionalnetworks; ties that sustainthe networkshave to be fosteredby the democratic state" ("Concept" 24).24
What Walzerdoes not do, however,is give us a concrete civil societylooks like.Thushis helpsenseof whata democratic by needs to be supplemented ful, but too balanced,formulation that a majordebatewithindemocratic politicsis the observation how to definea democratic civil society.The Scarlet Letter does not providethat definition,but it does contributeto democratic politics by implying an answerto another question raised by Walzer'sformulation:which comes first, democraticstate or the standardaccount that democraticcivil society?Challenging in the politicalinstitutions locatesthe seedsof a laterdemocracy New England,The Scarlet Letter implies of seventeenth-century that the nascent formationof an independentcivil society precedes and helps to generatea democraticstate. If that implied it does-it has also narrative has limits-and like all narratives servedas a powerfuland enablingcivicmythfor many,likethose whom Hester counsels, whose failed efforts at sympathymake them feel marginalized by the existing-not so-civil order.25
Notes
1. Thomas Hobbes in De Cive, published in Latin in 1642 and translated into English in 1651, did use citizen to designate membership in a commonwealth. But he did not use it as Aristotle did to designate a member of a republic who has the capacity to both rule and be ruled. Instead, like the French absolutist Jean Bodin, he distinguished citizens, who had specific benefits, from other subjects, like denizens, who did not have all or any of them. In Leviathan(1651) Hobbes uses citizen more in the sense of a city dweller. For instance, he writes of a man: "Let him therefore consider with himself, when taking a journey, he armes himselfe, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his dores; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there bee Lawes, and publike Officers, armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow Citizens, when he locks his dores; and his children, and servants, when he locks his chests" (186-87). "Fellow Citizens" are clearly those "fellow subjects" who dwell in close proximity to the man. 2. Morgan also uses the term good citizen when he acknowledges that the Puritans' phrase would have been a "civil man" (Puritan Family 1).
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The Scarlet Letter as Civic Myth
3. For an excellent summary of speeches by people like Daniel Webster, Joseph Story, and Edward Everett that share Bancroft's view of the Puritans' republican institutions, see John P. McWilliams, 25-36. On Bancroft, see Levin. 4. In noting that many of Hawthorne'scritics remain as much within the myth of the Puritan origins of US citizenship as he does, I am not implying that I somehow can stand outside of and above myth to expose it as an ideological distortion. Whereas I fully recognize that The Scarlet Letter, as a work of fiction, does not give us a historically accurate account of seventeenth-century Puritan society and political thought, to dismiss it as mere ideology does not get us very far. On the contrary, since according to today's critical commonplace we are always within ideology, it is not enough to expose persistent national myths as ideological, which is how the present generation of critics of American literature has generally distinguished itself from the myth and symbol school. What we need to do as well is to evaluate the effect of various myths in terms of what Kenneth Burke called "equipment for living-' Such work on/ with myth might help to generate a revitalized political criticism that once again, like Aristotle, sees politics as the art of the possible. 5. Informed by events in the former Soviet bloc in 1989, where the economic sphere was controlled by the state, this and other current definitions do not include the economic in civil society, as did Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and Hegel. 6. My point is not that Hawthorne set out to write a story arguing for the importance of an independent civil society in the way that a political economist might. His goal was to write the most compelling story that he could. Nonetheless, in its reception, especially the role it has played in education in the US, The Scarlet Letter, with its representation of people's desires and how those desires can best be fulfilled, imparts certain attitudes, values, and structures of feeling that coincide with the attitudes, values, and structures of feeling associated with civil society arguments. Furthermore, even if Hawthorne did not selfconsciously set out to make an argument for an independent civil society, he would have known about such arguments through the Scottish Enlightenment figures of Adam Smith and Ferguson. 7. The quotation comes from An Account of a Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind in a Letter to the Marquisof Montrose,the Earls of Rothes, Roxburgand Haddington(1703). It might seem ironic that in making a plea for the US to unite and to forget regional differences Choate quotes a Scottish nationalist. At the same time, Fletcher advocated a federal union of Scotland and England, so he could be said to have anticipated the federal system of the US. 8. Choate is echoed by Will Kymlicka, the contemporary theorist of multicultural citizenship, who argues that finding a shared national identity in history "often requiresa very selective, even manipulativeretelling of that history" (189). 9. On Hawthorne and a national literature, see Doubleday. See also Arac, "Narrative Forms,"who argues that The Scarlet Letter is an aesthetic narrative, not a national narrative, and that it became representative of the nation only through a retrospective process of canonization that devalued national narratives. Arac's provocative argument reminds us that literaturecan do many more
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things than give us compelling stories about national membership and values. Indeed, many works do not even have the potential to become civic myths. Nonetheless, The Scarlet Letter's engagement with the myth of Puritan origins does give it that potential. More important, Arac focuses on a work's form and content, but form and content alone do not make a narrative national; its reception plays a role as well. Whereas a study of The Scarlet Letter's reception is beyond the scope of this essay (see Brodhead), the important question for me is why Arac's "aesthetic narratives,"like The Scarlet Letter and Adventures of HuckleberryFinn (1884), become civic myths while more explicitly national or patriotic narratives have lost favor over time. Simply to raise that question is to suggest that literature'srelation to nationalist ideologies is a complicated one. Answering it might also demonstrate, as I try to do in this essay, that those ideologies are themselves more complicated than the ones that many recent literary critics are so intent on demystifying. 10. Some of the most provocative-if conflicting-accounts of Hawthorne's relation to the Puritans are Baym; Bell; Bercovitch; Colacurcio, "Footsteps" and "Woman'sOwn Choice"; and Pease. 11. Almost three decades ago Colacurcio began turning critics' attention away from the novel's love story to examine the chapter 'Another View of Hester" and Hester's final return. Nonetheless, he pointedly remarks on the danger of turning "awayfrom the richness and particularity of Hester's own love story" ("Footsteps" 461). In contrast, Berlant sees the love story as a retreat from the book's more important political concerns: "Now the tale of Hester and Dimmesdale, a political scandal, is reduced to a mere love plot" (154). According to Bercovitch the dramatic reunion of Hester and Dimmesdale in the forest "is a lovers' reunion, a pledge of mutual dependence, and no doubt readers have sometimes responded in these terms, if only by association with other texts. But in this text the focus of our response is the individual, not the couple (or the family)" (122). In contrast, see Millington's claim that Bercovitch's "erasure of the book's emotional investments" is "characteristicof the present moment in the history of Americanist criticism" (6, 2). Millington's observation helps me to address what might seem to be a contradiction in my argument. If, as I claim in note 9, a work's status as civic myth depends in large part on its reception, do not all readings contribute to that status? And if they do, how can I claim that some readings are misreadings? There is no easy answer to those questions, but I can at least suggest the direction that an answer might take. First, it is partially true that the entire reception of a work-including its misreadings-helps to give a work the status of civic myth, since without a widespread reception the book could not serve as myth. Nonetheless, the fact should not keep us from recognizing that very often popular readings tend to perpetuate commonplace myths and miss how a novel or story also works on those myths. Take, for instance, the recent Demi Moore film of The Scarlet Letter. By completely sympathizing with the lovers against a harsh Puritan society it misreads the novel as much as many undergraduates do. If the book were indeed that simple-minded, it would not have had a very long reception history. Even so, by responding to this emotional aspect of the book, such misreadings do give us a sense of the book's popular power that critical dismissals of the love plot miss. A novel or story that simply works on myth without working with it will have little chance of having a popular reception. My reading of The Scarlet Letter as civic myth tries to account for both its long and its popular reception.
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12. Of this moment, when the two "recognize that, in spite of all their open and secret misery, they are still lovers, and capable of claiming for the very body of their sin a species of justification," William Dean Howells writes, "There is greatness in this scene unmatched, I think, in the book, and I was almost ready to say, out of it" (105, 108). 13. See Colacurcio, "Woman'sOwn Choice," and his student Berlant, who asserts that for Winthrop the citizen is a woman. Citizens, we need to remember, are subjects, but not all subjects are citizens. 14. The best discussion of sympathy in the novel is Hutner. 15. For more on cases involving the "unwritten law,"see Ireland, "Insanity"; Hartog; and Ganz. 16. Adultery has a complicated history in Anglo-American law. It was not a criminal act in common law, but was dealt with in ecclesiastical courts. As a result, the legal fiction of criminal conversation developed to allow commonlaw courts to rule on adultery, even if under an assumed name (Korobkin). Then in 1650, Puritans in England criminalized adultery.Even before that event a number of colonies, including Massachusetts, had criminalized the act. For the actual laws of adultery in seventeenth-century New England, see Dayton; Hull; Koehler; Norton; and Ramsey. 17. See Berlant's excellent discussion of how Hawthorne adjudicates "the different claims for federal, state, local, and private identity that circulate through the American system" (203). See also Carey McWilliams and note 23. 18. Hawthorne's celebration in "The Custom-House" of the renewing powers of "frequent transplantation" indirectly lends support to arguments for the right to expatriation (8-9). Although he describes what, "in lack of a better phrase," he must call "affection" for his "native place" of Salem (8), he also insists, "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth" (11-12). 19. Pease makes a number of interesting points about The Scarlet Letter in relation to civic duty, but he neglects the crucial role of civil society and confines himself to a discussion of the "reciprocity between the public and private worlds" (82). His sense of community also depends upon Rousseau's "general will," which Pease equates with an American notion of a "public will" (24). But an independent civil society is important because it allows for associations that resist potentially tyrannical conformity enforced in the name of an abstract "general will," the most obvious example being the "reign of terror" It is no accident that Pease champions Hawthorne's Puritans, finding in them a positive "unrealized vision of community" (53). 20. According to Colacurcio, "If the plot leaves Hester Prynne suspended between the repressive but obsolescent world of Ann Hutchinson and the dan-
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gerous new freedoms of the world of Margaret Fuller, the theme of the romance takes us very surely from the high noon of the Puritan theocracy to the dawn of the Romantic Protest in the nineteenth century" (Province32). Both Gilmore and Herbert argue that The Scarlet Letter's world may be Puritan New England but that its major characters have a nineteenth-century moral outlook. Both follow Baym, who claims that Hawthorne "has created an authoritarian [Puritan] state with a Victorian moral outlook" (215). Baym's comment is extremely important since it reminds us of the extent to which Hawthorne's representation of the Puritans is work on/with myth, not an accurate representation. 21. Bercovitch's narrative of secularization necessarily minimizes important developments in the eighteenth century, such as the structural transformation of the public sphere and its relation to the rise of a relatively independent civil society (Habermas). 22. "Rather than revealing that . . . 'the only plausible modes of American dissent are those that center on the self,' The Scarlet Letter seems to demonstrate that the only form of selfhood worth having is generated by reciprocal connection to others-and that one may choose constraints because there are no meanings without them. Hester's deepest yearning, this is to say, is not for freedom but for a reimagined social life (the very thing that in Bercovitch's account, consensus ideology removes from view) for a lover and for a community able to accommodate the forms of connection she envisions for them" (Millington 6). To which I add: the relative freedom from state supervision provided by an independent civil society enhances the possibility of imagining and working toward that different social life. 23. In an essay that caused some to question his patriotism Hawthorne wrote: "The anomaly of two allegiances (of which that of the State comes nearest home to a man's feelings, and includes the altar and the hearth, while the General Government claims his devotion only to an airy mode of law, and has no symbol but a flag)" means that "[t]here never existed any other government, against which treason was so easy, and could defend itself by such plausible arguments" ("Chiefly" 416). He added: "In the vast extent of our countrytoo vast, by far, to be taken into one small human heart-we inevitably limit to our own State, or, at farthest, to our own Section, that sentiment of physical love for the soil which renders an Englishman, for example, so intensely sensitive to the dignity and well-being of his little island" ("Chiefly"416-17). 24. Walzer continues, "The state can never be what it appears to be in liberal theory, a mere framework for civil society. It is also the instrument of the struggle, used to give particular shape to the common life." Nonetheless, he adds that it is not necessary to find "in politics, as Rousseau urged, the greater part of our happiness. Most of us will be happier elsewhere, involved only sometimes in affairs of state. But we must leave the state open to our sometime involvement" ("Concept" 24). 25. I am grateful for the comments provided by Jayne Lewis, Robert Milder, Frederick Newberry, Steven Mailloux, and audiences at the University of Oregon, the University of Washington, and the Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin.
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Citizen Hester: "The Scarlet Letter" as Civic Myth Author(s): Brook Thomas Source: American Literary History, Vol.

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