Romanticism in the scarlet letter
Romanticism can be defined as a literary movement marked especially by emphasis on the imagination and the emotions and by the use of autobiographical material. The years from 1810 to 1865 marked the period of romanticism. The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, is a piece of literature from the Romantic period. Intuition, supernatural occurrences, and nature reflecting the emotions are all techniques of Romanticism used in The Scarlet Letter. The power or faculty of knowing occurrences without conscious reasoning is intuition. Pearl asked Dimmesdale, "Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, tomorrow noontide?" (104). She asked him the aforementioned question because she believes he has also sinned and should have been on the scaffold with them seven years ago. Pearl has made an "A" out of eelgrass. Hester wonders why she has made it and asks if she knows what her "A" means. Pearl replies, "It is for the same reason the minister keeps his hand over his heart." (132). Pearl senses that Dimmesdale also has an "A", and he keeps his hand over his heart to hi
The uses of intuition, supernatural occurrence, and nature as a reflection of emotions are all techniques used in Romantic Literature. This was said by Pearl while listening to "its talk". "It is done! The whole town will awake, and hurry forth, and find me here!" (100). This is supernatural because Dimmesdale is screaming at the top of his lungs, expecting the whole town to wake and see him upon the scaffold. Nature reflects the emotions when it acts as a mirror for human emotions. (2)The whole prison is covered in dark shrubbery except for the one rosebush. The Scarlet Letter is composed of these elements of Romanticism; therefore, it can be determined that the novel is an example of literature from the Romantic period. Nature is reflecting the emotions when Hawthorne gives the wilderness its own feelings such as, happiness, anger, sorrow, ect. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud; but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it; or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inconspicuous portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. She asks, "What does this sad little brook say, Mother?" Hester replies, "If thou hadst sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it, even as it is telling me of mine!"(141). Hawthorne used a natural occurring event to mask the supernatural occurrence of the "A" appearing in the sky. "Oh, brook! Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring.
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