#2 hawthorne, asma & rowlandson: identity.

Nathaniel Hawthrone’s The Scarlet Letter

In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is given her identity from the Puritan society in which she lives. When Hester is forced to wear the scarlet "A" on her chest as a punishment for adultery, she is also, in a sense, forced to embody its essence and implication. The scarlet letter was indeed a way for society to label Hester as a sinner and to use her as a representation of what not to be, but Hester embraced the scarlet letter in a way that made it beautiful, rather than grotesque. She made it her own. And the scarlet letter, too, made Hester beautiful:

"Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, where astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. . . But the point that drew all eyes. . . was the Scarlet Letter, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and inclosing her in a sphere of herself."

In a lot of ways, The Scarlet Letter, is about the taking on of an identity that was never your own and transforming it into something larger. The ways that Hester Prynne both uses and neglects her assigned identity aids in her coming into a self hood and uniqueness that's not a representation of her crime but a representation of her inner strength to deny a status that's not an accurate portrayal of her character.


Further, in the film, Easy A, Olive decides to control the identity society gave her. Rumor accused her of having sex, and when she realized the attention she received, she began wearing a scarlet letter. And, like Hester, she used the mark to her advantage. Plus, Easy A, is a pretty cool modern adoption of The Scarlet Letter.

Asma’s "Torture, Terrorist and Zombies"
I really liked what Asma had to in context of the Holocaust: "The Nazis rejected monogenism because the idea that all races had a common origin lent itself to the democratic contention that Jews, blacks, and Aryans were essentially brothers and sisters descendants of common parent stock. The polygenist doctrine of eternal divisions between races made it easy to think of the souls of other races (if they had them) as fundamentally other." I think it was Alison, who brought up the idea of the "other" in class and the function of the other in society. Hester was an other in society--having her own limits, boundaries, prescriptions and assumptions. She operated on a level outside of society. "Otherness" also is a way we categorize the "social dirt".  

Asma ask in the section "Instinctual Xenophobia", "Why do we transform other groups, whole races, into monsters?" Asma puts up a few theoretical responses to answer this question: that it is economically or socially advantageous, and instinctual--but cultural--fear, an obstructive view of the "other". Regardless the reasons, historically people are xenophobic. Whole cultures will go to extremes to protect or even guarantee their ethnic progress. For example: Chinese workers--when sent to work abroad--are sterilized so they will not be able to reproduce with women of other ethnic groups. Also, in America, during World War I, there was a law that restricted the number of Chinese and Islanders that were allowed to migrate to the US. Even now in the US today, xenophobia is still prevalent. Arizona has anti-immigration laws; The US government has a "Defence of Marriage Act" that defends one groups rights to marry, while neglecting an other's rights and arguing that it is what is best for a nation. All of these laws or societal norms is the product of fears.

Mary Rowlandson’s "A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson" 
When Mary Rowlandson is taken captured by the natives, everything is literally gone: “all was gone (except my life), and I knew not but the next moment that might go too.” She only had her baby and her bible to keep her person—her identity—alive. When her child died, she wrote: “I went to take the dead child in my arms to carry it with me, but the bid me let it alone; there was no resisting, but go I must and leave it…I took the first opportunity I could get to go look after my dead child.” She desperately needed that child in order for her to remain in some sort of constant identity. She needs to be a mother and care for her child so she could maintain her identity in the midst of everything surreal that was happening. I think, when crazy things are happening, we tend to cling to the things that make us comfortable and things that reassure our existence as we know it. And, if we are religious or spiritual we subscribe more readily to our values and moral, and put more trust—if not all—into powers beyond us. Rowlandson did exactly this. Rowlandson’s narrative has God, his power, his presence, weaved throughout in every aspect. Her belief in God, gave her strength and permitted her to feel a sense of community: “I cannot but take notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the time with us were squaws, and they traveled with all they had, bag and baggage, and yet they got over this river…God did not give them courage or activity to go over after us.” God, too, was on Rowlandson’s side.

We talked briefly about ways that Rowlandson started to identify with her capturers. When Rowladnson felt helpless and started to have moments of doubt in her faith (and particularly) after losing her child, she found familiar comforts with the natives.

In the Sixteenth Removal Rowlandson writes something pretty cool: “My strength seemed to come again, and recruit my feeble knees, and aching heart. Yet it pleased them to go but one mile that night, and there we stayed two days. In that time came a company of Indians to us, nearly thirty, all on horseback. My heart skipped within me, thinking they had been Englishmen at the first sight of them, for they were thinking they had been Englishmen at the first sight of them, for they were dressed in English apparel, with hats, white neckcloths, and sashes about their waist; and ribbons upon their shoulders; but when they came near, there was a vast difference between the lovely face of Christians, and foul looks of those heathens, which much damped my spirit again.” Lovely faces of Christians.. foul looks of heathens. Woah.