The Scarlet Letter: A Critical Review

ABSTRACT

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century romance The Scarlet Letter centers on the simple transgression of adultery and its social consequences. Hawthorne’s narrative and storytelling skill, however, are far from simple; the author manages to subtly and cleverly set the tale within a framework of other transgressions. Ideas of space and other social constructions, including language and belief systems, are tested and subverted in this description of a seventeenth-century Puritan settlement. In this article David Littlefield and Rachel Sara critically analyze this classic American text to build an original argument that identifies the multiple forms of transgression outlined within the text. This argument is explored within the context of the theme “Body + Space” and innovatively demonstrates how the book pre-figures much twentieth-century thinking on the subject.

Keywords:

• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Scarlet Letter
• transgression
• liminality
• boundaries
• body and space
• fiction
• text
• language

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Littlefield

David Littlefield is a senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of the West of England, Bristol. He has authored or edited a number of books on architecture, cities and design, including “London (Re)generation,” an edition of Architectural Design (Wiley, 2012). David is a member of the steering committee of the Architectural Humanities Research Association, a member of the network Mapping Spectral Traces and a cofounder of the Estranged Space network. David co-organized the tenth international conference of the AHRA on the subject of Transgression, Bristol, 2013. David's other research interests include notions of heritage and authenticity, and the role of the site-responsive installation in generating readings of place.

Rachel Sara

Dr Rachel Sara is program leader for the Master of Architecture program at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. She is a director of the Design Research Group at UWE, is a Ph.D. and master's supervisor, and teaches Design Research and Design Studio. Her research particularly explores “other” forms of architecture, specifically examining architecture without architects through investigations of the performed architecture of the carnival, a collaboration with a dance artist to explore a practice somewhere between architecture and dance, and a look at the transient architecture of the campsite. She was cocurator of the Transgression: Architecture Without Architects exhibition at the Bristol Architecture Centre in 2012, and coauthored the associated book Architecture + Transgression. She coedited The Architecture of Transgression AD (2013) and co-organized the tenth international conference of the AHRA on the subject of Transgression, Bristol, in 2013.