Pearl

            On Tuesday morning I finally memorized the second verse of “On n'est pas des grenouilles” (We Are Not Amphibians) by Serge Gainsbourg and worked on revising my translation. I didn't have the rhyme right before because every other line for my version will have to at least sort of rhyme with “amphibians.” There's also a quote I had to find the relevance of . A verse says we are not like that idiot who said , "Que d'eau que d'eau" and it turns out to have been the mayor of a town in France that was flooded and he said to the people "There's water everywhere." Obviously this will be meaningless to anyone who doesn't live in France so I'll have to find some English equivalent. 

            I weighed 90.6 kilos before breakfast. 

            At around 8:30 I started getting ready to leave for my US lit lecture. I had time to eat a few grapes but though I made coffee I had to leave before even taking a sip. 

            Professor Morgenstern wasn't in the classroom when I got there. There were less students than the first live day. I guess because everybody now knows where the hall is so there's less of a rush. 

            When I was setting up I realized that I'd forgotten my notebook and I looked around for paper to write on, but nobody seems to use paper anymore and so I was going to have to type notes on my laptop in a live lecture and hope I could type fast enough to catch everything. 

            The professor had problems getting the slides to project on the screen. She called tech but it was after 10:10 so she started without slides. 

            So far we have read different kinds of speech: declaration, petition, narrative, essays, but now a novel. Nathaniel Hawthorne calls The Scarlet Letter a romance. In the Custom House section he writes on what is romance: 

            "A child’s shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;— whatever has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has become a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairyland, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, without affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look about us and discover a form, beloved, but gone hence, now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moonshine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether it had returned from afar, or had never once stirred from our fireside." 

            What to take from in the novel. There are events that don't force us to decide their nature. The A on the chest. What is it? An injury? Self inflicted? 

            Tech came and now we had slides. 

            Bring this definition to the novel. The nature of events is undecided. Is the A god's mark or is it a collective delusion? Witnesses are divided if the mark exists. Most could see it but some not. The terrain between actual and imaginary, each imbuing the other. 

            Recall that Hawthorn sets his novel in a different time than his own. It is set in the 17th Century while he is writing in the 19th Century. The novel is also not set in the 17th Century. One can read it realistically or also as allegory and that it is more about his own time. 

            Individualism opposed to collectivism as in Emerson and Thoreau. It is a revolutionary ethos. The revolution is now for Thoreau, in every decision. Every individual is a revolutionary if they do not conform. “The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. . . ” (Emerson) Emerson is asking us to hear and think about the word “virtue”—to return it to an older meaning to “virilise” it. . . virtus (classical Latin) as in. . . manliness, valour, worth, merit, ability, particular excellence of character or ability, moral excellence, goodness, this quality personified as a goddess.

            Gender has come up but it is different in Hawthorne. He appeals to feminine or feminized figurative language and motherhood is also important. Connect this to Harper's "The Slave Mother." Considering slavery keep in mind the quotation from Toni Morrison about how we can't separate slavery from US culture. 

           This novel is about love and eroticism. It contains one of US lit's great child figures. The child is important in US lit for the reason the child is important in Emerson because of presocialness. The child is just outside the social and outside conformity. There is a relationship between the 17th Century and the 19th in the composition. 

            She shows a slide of Lilian Gish as Hester Prynn. 

            Someone mentions ECA. I ask what's ECA and some people snicker. It's a romantic comedy coming of age movie starring Emma Stone. She is accused of adultery and it's sort of based on The Scarlet Letter. I didn't find out until I looked it up later that the movie is called "Easy A." 

            She shows a slide of a painting representing Hester Prynn with her baby as Madonna and child. This is strange in relation to the Puritans. Another slide of Lillian Gish in the movie with an actor representing Dinsdale in the forest. 

            In Hawthorne's Salem, Mass. he had a Puritan ancestor who was a judge in the witch trials. Some people claimed he drew on his family history but he really just researched a lot of old documents. He did enough of his own research to shame most ambitious grad students. 

           He burned much of his early work. He was never as popular as sentimental women novelists like Harriet Beacher Stowe the lot of whom he called a damn mob of scribbling women. 

           He said his occupation was between popular culture, sentiment and the transcendentalists. He was self conscious of a sense for him between popular culture and high philosophy. 

            Ann Hutchinson is referred to in the novel. She comes up at the end of the first chapter with the rose bush outside the prison said to have sprung up under Ann's footsteps. She was the foundress of a religious sect. It is said that Hester if she had not become a mother would have become a religious leader like Hutchinson. Ann was a radical Puritan and a charismatic preacher who was tried, convicted and banished in 1637. She preached of personal revelation being as authoritative as scripture. We hear what Emerson and Thoreau took from this. Connect Ann and Hester. Hester is infused with Ann. Why he chose her is because several of the Puritan theologians who opposed her described personal revelation as figuratively an illigitimate child. 

            Hawthorne critic Michael Colacurcio, in “The Context of The Scarlet Letter” says “Hawthorne has engaged Hester entirely in an overt struggle with the unruly and unsatisfied sexual emotions which the Puritans obscurely felt to lie unsublimated behind Mrs. Hutchinson’s public career, and which they clearly felt would be unleashed upon their community by a public acceptance of her doctrine. . . Hawthorne regards awakened and not conventionally invested female sexual power as a source and type of individualistic nullification of social restraint." He is saying there was already an explicit sexual threat about Ann to the Puritans. He makes the case for sexualized feminine power as resistance to social conformity different from that of Emerson and Thoreau. 

            The scaffold is like an auction block. The Scarlet Letter was published the same year as the Fugitive Slave Act that held the north and south together. In the compromise northerners were obligated to return slaves. This made northerners feel implicated as free blacks were enslaved or re-enslaved. The Scarlet Latter was not overtly about slavery. Hawthorne was not an abolitionist, nor was he pro slavery. But is it possible to write a novel in the 19th Century United States and not have it touching slavery? She is just asking. 

            Jean Fagan Yellin in “The Scarlet Letter and the Antislavery Feminists” says, "Perhaps the most complex and influential literary work that uses the antislavery women’s iconography to reject their ideology is The Scarlet Letter. . .Although Hester is not marked by an iron chain but by a piece of needlework, recurrent references to the scarlet letter as brand force the connections between the embroidered symbol and the instruments of slavery." The scarlet letter is a brand. I pointed out that women criticizing the mildness of Hester's punishment say in the novel that the letter should have been a brand on her forehead. 

            Literature is timeless. Meaning is context bound but context is boundless. There is always more context in The Scarlet Letter, not just inside the text but also out. "Opening as if by her own free will." I said it's ironic because it is by her free will and so to say "as if" creates tension. 

            She's more free for being radically unfree. Radical freedom that can't be restrained 

            The first description of the A. She submits and defies in how she makes the A as an artist. The A could stand for “Adultery" but also "Artist". Making the A is her speech act. The Puritans were anti ornamentation. To be aesthetically minded is already sinful. A Puritan motto was "the altar of god needs no polishing." Bareness is all. The Scarlet Letter is a meditation on signification of meaning. The A is supposed to be unambiguous and shameful. But it is generative and fertile and can mean lots of things such as "Able." 

            We took a five minute break. 

            Dimsdale's appeal to Hester. Her response with Chilingworth watching. There are three scaffold moments marking the novel. Dimsdale the minister reads his speech again. His self division. Dimsdale is the father of Hester's child but in asking her to be his conscience and betray him he seeks refuge in her faithfulness. The minister's delivery speaks to everyone but what meaning do they get? Simultaneously the baby maybe recognizes the voice of her dad. Hester says no to church and state. Maybe Chilingworth speaks in the crowd and is the one she recognized. Hester says my child has a heavenly father and Dinsdale is relieved. The child has no father without Hester speaking. 

    Pearl is illegitimate and wild with no father. Paternity was for most of history a legal fiction. Now there are DNA tests but for most of time nobody knew for certain who the father of a child was. In the law of slavery the child follows the condition of the mother and so if the mother is a slave her child is a slave. Masters did not claim their children with slave mothers. Women giving birth in Puritan times were forced to name the father during childbirth. 

            The general point is that it's really a psychological and insistent text. He's interested in psychology and has influenced other authors mapping interiors. 

            Chilingworth vs Dimsdale. "He must needs be mine" is coded homoeroticism. 

            For Emerson how does self reliance work in relation with others. There is a dark, corrupt spiritual affinity. The conclusion could have been written by Freud. 

            Pearl's name is the antithesis of sin. She is inseparable from the letter itself. Hester dresses her daughter like the letter. Pearl makes her own scarlet letter out of seaweed. Pearl is an allegory for ideas and the freedom of a broken law but also realistically childlike. She is not the Victorian's sentimental child. She is more like the Freudian child before the letter. The child is fascinated by adult sexuality and trying to read adult behaviour. In the Elf Child chapter they want to take Pearl away from Hester. 

            I said it feels like a slap in the face to Puritanism that Pearl acts like pagan. It is like a Greek myth for her to say her origin was that she was plucked from a rose bush. Plus roses are red like the letter. Hester and Ann say no to the law. Pearl disappears into symbolism and allegory. 

            The scene in the woods is outside the social realm and outside the clutch of the church. In the chapter The Pastor and the Parishioner the wilderness is a space of romance influenced by Shakespeare's green world. In the Flood of Sunshine chapter Hawthorne is allegorizing that outside is inside. She is on the edge of hegemonic culture in a kind of freedom fantasy of the Indian standing for nature. 

            I said Hester could be a metaphor for the colonies with the Puritans representing English rule. The professor added that in that case the A could be America. 

            Hester tells Dimsdale about Chilingworth and it is like she is married to both. In chapter 17 Chilingworth is a greater sinner Dimsdale thinks. Dimsdale's definition of sin may be Hawthorne's. We are married says Chilingworth. 

            After the lecture I told the professor about a Last Week Tonight show from one and a half years ago that was on the subject of public shaming. It featured an interview with Monica Lewinsky and in the title the A in "shaming" was like the A of The Scarlet Letter. 

            I rode to Yonge and Bloor before heading home. When I got to my building the cops were doing something in and out of Popeyes. My neighbour Benji was standing outside and told me that he thinks the truck driver who was delivering food forgot to lock the door when he left and someone got in. 

            I took my broken mailbox key to Home Hardware and was told that they can copy broken keys but only one person there could do it and he wouldn't be there until Thursday.

            In the afternoon I posted my blogs and edited my lecture notes. I think typing them in class worked out okay and saved me time. I just had problems with my laptop freezing sometimes. I might try to type my Shakespeare lecture tomorrow to see if it gives me more time to read and work on my assignments. 

            I weighed 89.6 kilos at 18:45. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. 

            In this story Gomer and Lou Ann are on a date when they meet Bunny waiting for Carter. He's kept her waiting on the street for half an hour. Gomer invites her to join them for coffee.Bunny is impressed and charmed by what a gentleman Gomer is towards Lou Ann. Carter finds Bunny in the cafe and is pissed off she's not outside. He wants to be alone with Bunny but she keeps inviting Gomer and Lou Ann to join them as they go to the movies and take a drive. Later Carter loses Gomer and takes Bunny to the Jade Club but Gomer and Lou Ann show up there as well. While Gomer and Lou Ann are dancing Carter and Bunny have a big fight and break up. Lou Ann has the idea that she will talk with Carter and Gomer will talk with Bunny, but it backfires because Carter becomes interested in Lou Ann and Bunny in Gomer. Lou Ann says the solution is for her to go out on a date with Carter and Gomer go out with Bunny and both go to the Jade Club. Lou Ann says all they have to do is be themselves and that's true. Carter finds Lou Ann boring and too expectant of gentlemanly behaviour while Bunny finds it not as much fun to be handled so delicately. Carter and Bunny get back together. I finished editing my notes at around 22:00.