Subversive Silence:€¦ · Web viewTwo years lapse without any word from Hester’s husband, and...

The University of Florida

Subversive Silence:

A Rhetorical Recovery of Hester Prynne

Natalie Hernandez

4/25/2012

This project is a recovery of the rhetorical practices of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. I propose that Hester is a subaltern citizen-subject that is able to speak from within a societal void using silent rhetoric or a rhetoric of resistance. By embodying her punishment, Hester is able to produce privacy within a grey area or marginal space on the outskirts of the community that allows her to interact with the community on her own terms. Hester embodies her rhetorical message without having to openly or outwardly rebel against her community utilizing a rhetoric of restraint. Hester restrains her own individualistic and therefore rebellious and revolutionary ideas from the society by refusing to interact with the society and she also restrains the status quo from interacting with her as much as possible. Hester is also able to draw other female subaltern citizen-subjects into her space where she can verbally militarize them by sharing her experience and advice. Her advice is a reflection of personal life experience serving as power-knowledge for the women who will be protected by the riding the coat tails of Hester’s new reputation within the community.

HernandezUFID: 8959-7581

Subversive Silence

Introduction

Traditionally, feminist rhetoricians have recovered written texts by women who are

“culturally silenced” (Kaplan 169) by a privileged white western male dominated literary and

rhetorical canon. Their work recovers the important rhetorical contributions women have made

throughout history in a wide range of contexts. This body of scholarship has helped expand our

understanding of how women have used their bodies and voice to gain agency for themselves

and their communities. However, this body of scholarship has largely ignored the rhetorical acts

of fictional female characters, which if explored, could deepen understanding of women’s social

position and the experiences of historically silenced populations. If fictional female characters

would be recovered, such work would also reveal a wider range of rhetorical strategies than

previously acknowledged--strategies that can be and often have been utilized to “break cultural

bounds and gain personal power” ("Hester Prynne: Sinner, Victim, Object, Winner.") within a

patriarchal status quo.

Working from a feminist rhetorical perspective, this essay aims to recover the rhetorical

practices of the fictional protagonist, Hester Prynne, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet

Letter. The Scarlet Letter is a novel discussing social order, crime, punishment, and social

progress. The story is set in a patriarchal New England community that is socially governed

under a veil of religious laws and leaders. The story begins with an omniscient narrator

informing the reader about the history of a woman who is about to be publically punished on the

scaffold for adultery. This woman is Hester Prynne, and she is a young English immigrant who

was married yet traveled to the town without her husband to socially situate her within the strict

Puritan and patriarchal status quo. Two years lapse without any word from Hester’s husband,

2


and he is presumed dead, so the young girl begins to have secretive extra marital affairs with the

town reverend, Arthur Dimmesdale. When she becomes pregnant, the community punishes her

twice as harshly because she withholds information- the identity of her child’s father- from

government and religious officials. In doing so, Hester actively withholds information the status

quo needs to assert its authority over a transgressor and in doing so directly opposes its authority.

In his work, Person argues that in addition to Hester’s silence being a strategy, it also makes her

a complicit in Dimmesdale’s death: “a vengeful silence that has the effect of action” (470). I

believe this reading too strongly grounds Hester’s identity in her relationship with the male

dominated society. This would not correlate with the idea that Hawthorne’s novel is an

exploration of the feminist movement and defines her through patriarchal terms.

The fact that Hester is a female transgressing a punishment apparatus governed by men

representing a male dominated status quo adds to the severity of her crime. Her punishment

comes in three waves: first, she is confined to a prison and forced to wear a scarlet letter A on

her chest; second, she was forced to stand on a scaffold in front of the community; and third, she

was ostracized from that community. The bulk of the story situates Hester as an individual that

can interact with the Puritan status quo, but is not dependent on it. The omniscient narrator

characterizes Hester through her action, inaction, speech, and silence as being strong, reflective,

thoughtful, and rebellious. In fact, the narrator places significant emphasis on Hester’s reflexive

and thoughtful nature to illustrate how she is able to silently subvert the punishment apparatus

lead and controlled by religiously dogmatic men. Simultaneously, Hester participates and

coexists rebelliously and subversively along side a patriarchal status quo without a husband to

socially situate her within that status quo.

3


This story is well known in the American literary canon, and a vast amount of

contemporary scholarship considers Hester as a model for what feminism might mean for

American women, the home, and society at large. Scholars have yet to explore, however, how

Prynne employs rhetorical strategies, including constraint and silence, to negotiate agency. Later

scholarship views her silence as a part of self-punishment and labels it simply as a product of her

“misfortune” (Doubleday 827) rather than an intended rhetorical and subversive strategy. Darrel

Abel’s article “Hawthorne’s Hester” even goes as far as to claim that Hester is not even a

primary player in the novel, let alone in her own society. The majority of the scholarship on

Hester Prynne, like Barlowe’s book The Scarlet Mob of Scribblers, neglects to see Hester’s

rhetorical agency because they base their interpretations of Hester on simple, fixed, or stagnant

conceptions of women. Barlowe’s reading (43) of Hester, for example, assumes that Hester not

only has no agency as a female individual in a patriarchal society, but also that her actions had

no effect on her community. Such interpretation is based on Barlowe’s reading of Hester’s

silence. Barlowe argues: “if the silence of the oppressed is the response desired by the social

order-and by its complicit constituency, then silence cannot function as a subversive, disruptive

means to the ends of social justice and change” (130).

In her work Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence, Cheryl Glenn models how re-

conceptualizing silence in movements of resistance can create a rhetorical understanding of

silence that enables us to interpret Hester’s actions differently. Glenn’s work even goes as far as

to partially recover and define Hester’s power as an individual through her subversive silence.

This essay extends Glenn’s work as I argue that Hester’s silence my indeed not be subversive or

disruptive; however, Hester’s rhetorical, social actions practiced under a veil of silence do enable

her to achieve agency. Hester’s silence embodies a rhetoric of constraint within which Hester is

4


able to (1) grant herself freedom to live independently of a husband and (2) influence the

dominating status quo’s gaze. More specifically, while Hester Prynne is able to obtain a semi-

fluid social position that “implicitly challenges the authority” of the status quo (Gramsci 52) via

her embroidery work, and she is able to change public opinion of her via her charity work and

restraint of rebellion. Also, while existing just outside the scope of domination and control of the

hegemonic power structure, she is able to sustain a “space of difference” and influence civil

society within that power structure. Such rhetorical reading of Hester Prynne’s silence and

actions in the novel illustrates how subaltern populations can create mechanisms of expression

and creativity within their own means. In this paper, I thus draw on theories of multiple scholars

such Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, to illustrate how Hester Prynne is able to gain

agency as a subaltern citizen-subject within an oppressed void by manipulating various rhetorical

strategies under the veil of silence to liberate herself and her ideas from an oppressive patriarchal

status quo.

This recovery, in turn, has potential to demonstrate how The Scarlett Letter can be read

as a feminist critique. In her article “Reading Feminist Readings: Recuperative Reading and the

Silent Heroine of Feminist Criticism,” Carla Kaplan outlines “the task of feminist criticism…in

three connected ways: (1) exposing the mechanisms of cultural silencing; (2) revaluing dismissed

or ignored women’s writing [creativity]; and (3) recovering alternative forms of women’s

creative expression” (169). In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne enacts such feminist criticism in all

three ways. First, the novel explores how public punishment, which functions as an institution of

societal control by threat of humiliation and shame, acts as a mechanism of cultural silencing

equal only to religious dogma in the novel. Second, Hester’s artistic embroidery skills –an

expression of her creativity- secures her the freedom and ability to penetrate into various levels

5


of society without actually having to interact with that society. Third, Hawthorne “recover[s]

alternative forms of women’s creative expression” (169) when he portrays Hester as using

silence and constraint to consensually interact with a society that aims to subjugate her,

completing her spiritual maturation into a rhetorically-powerful woman.

From this feminist rhetorical perspective, it is possible to explore how Hawthorne

theoretically explores the limits and possibilities of feminist acts. His depictions can be thus be

interpreted as evidence of an open and curious masculine mind exploring the realm of femininity

at a time when feminism and women’s rights were coming into the national consciousness and

“cultural conversation” (Barlowe). Hawthorne, after all, wrote The Scarlet Letter in the late

1840’s in Massachusetts, relatively near the Seneca Falls convention in New York that took

place in 1848. This essay suggests, then, that Hawthorne utilizes Hester as a case study through

which he might examine how oppression and submission work within society while

simultaneously exploring how women such as Hester Prynne can gain rhetorical agency in a

dogmatic and patriarchal society.

Hester as Subaltern

1

The term subaltern has a rich and diverse history in contemporary literary theory, which

cannot be fully unpacked in this essay. However, it is important to define this term here in order

to understand how this term is being used in relation to the power struggle between Hester

Prynne and the dogmatic Puritan society. In a broad sense, according to the Oxford English

Dictionary, subaltern is an adjective “of lower status”

(http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/subaltern?region=us&q=subaltern). Typically thought

of in relation to the military, Antonio Gramsci first used subaltern to think about it in relation to

6

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/subaltern?region=us&q=subaltern


a social position in his Prison Notebooks. While recognizing the term to mean subordinate, as it

does in military terminology, he states that “the subaltern classes, by definition, are not unified

and cannot unite until they are able to become a ‘state’: their history, therefore, is intertwined

with that of civil society, and thereby with the history of States and groups of States” (52). The

subaltern class’s ability to exist “along side civil society” (52) serves as a reminder of the

weaknesses of the status quo as well as the limitations of its power and ability to control. The

“space of difference” (de Kock 29-47) within the status quo, which the subaltern class creates

and fosters for the proliferation of its own physical and mental freedom, serves to preserve and

exercise the subaltern’s agency.

2

Subaltern, as a term, was later taken up in postcolonial theory, especially by those

involved with subaltern studies. Post-colonial theory, to a great extent, is concerned with alterity,

otherness, and power. Post-colonial studies investigates how marginalization occurs for a

colonized subject whose alterity or difference either directly opposes the hegemonic power

structure or threatens or challenges its power or authority over the population. These

marginalized and oppressed individuals are often recognized as being less than or subordinate to

members belonging to the status quo as a result of their difference. Subaltern studies, in a

specific sense, refers to a body of work taken up by a group of South Asian historians interested

in the diverse and significant roles non-elites played in South Asian history. The term subaltern

became a central focus of post-colonial theory as these historians explored how non-elites

defined as subalterns, directly opposed the authority of the colonial empire while still being

marginalized and oppressed.

7


Since this deployment of the term subaltern, the term has frequently been used in a wide

range of disciplines and thus taken on a more general definition. In a general sense, many

scholars use subaltern to refer to “marginalized groups and the lower classes – a person rendered

without agency by his or her social status” (Gopal 1). Here, scholars investigate how the

subaltern, as alterior other, is able to utilize that difference to achieve some sort of social change

that weakens the power or decreases the authority of the status quo over the general population.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak warns about the over application and misuse of the term. In her

opinion, groups whom feel marginalized and oppressed are over claiming the term subaltern

without fully understanding its meaning: “they should see what the mechanics of discrimination

are. They are within the hegemonic discourse wanting a piece of the pie and not being allowed,

so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern” (de

Kock 29-47). While Spivak’s argument is important to consider, others push us to think about

subalterns in relation to social groups. Homi Bhabha for instance, uses the term “to define

oppressed, minority groups whose presence was crucial to the self-definition of the majority

group: subaltern social groups were also in a position to subvert the authority of those who had

hegemonic power” (Bhabha 50). It is this definition that I see most appropriate to Hester

Prynne’s situation even as I do not offer a traditional Post-colonial reading of the novel

throughout this essay.

Hester Prynne is referred to here as a subaltern citizen-subject for various reasons. First

and foremost Hester is deemed an outsider in the Puritan community even before her sexual

transgression. Hester arrives alone in a strictly religious and patriarchal community without a

husband to socially situate her within the strict Puritan and patriarchal status quo. Immediately,

Hester is recognized as an other or outsider:

8


Yonder woman, Sir, you must you must know, was the wife of a certain learned man,

English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some good time agone,

he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this

purpose, he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary

affairs. Marry, good sir, in some two years, or less that the woman has been a dweller

here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentlemen, Master Prynne; and his

young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance. (Hawthorne 57-58)

Arriving before her husband and living alone for two years without knowing whether he is dead

or alive forces Hester to live in a grey area within society, yet not on an equal basis with it. Her

social and moral transgression, an affair with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, serves only to

further her outsider status. In addition, her refusal to give Dimmesdale’s name during her

imprisonment and scaffolding is a refusal to acknowledge the authority of the status quo. The

government is an institution of the status quo whose role is first to maintain social order, but

primarily to ensure and maintain its own authority. Hester’s moral and social transgression

violates that first role, but her refusal to give Dimmesdale’s name is a direct opposition to the

status quo and implicitly challenges the status quo as well as directly threatens its right to

govern. Thus, Hester can be seen as a subaltern not only because she is perceived as other but

also because she directly opposes the central authority of her local government.

Never is Hester’s subaltern role more apparent than in the conclusion of the novel when

her individualism and revolutionary thought (Hawthorne 143-144) are physically expressed in

her own rendition of the community safe house. It is here that Hester shares advice with other

oppressed individuals in the community and offers them comfort and a place of refuge from the

9


oppression of the status quo. This “space of difference” is embodied by her self-imposed

seclusion to a cottage that exists just outside the Puritan community.

On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to

any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier

settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its

comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already

marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the

sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone

grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote

that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed.

In this little, lone-some dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the

license of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester

established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately

attached itself to the spot. (73)

The most important characteristic of Hester’s cottage is that it exists independently, while still in

view of the community. Its presence, much like Hester’s, reminds the community that an other

or an alternative to the existing status quo exists just outside their reach. At the end of the novel,

the cottage becomes a place of refuge where Hester “comforted and counseled” (Hawthorne 227)

other sinners, especially subjugated women feeling the weight of their oppression. As will be

further developed later in this essay, it is thus a “space of difference” in which Hester is free to

act upon her rebellious spirit and radical ideology to challenge the status quo and achieve agency

for herself and other female members of the community. Hester can be conceived as a subaltern,

10


then, not only because she is marginalized and oppressed, but also because she directly and

actively opposes the patriarchal hegemony.

In this essay, I articulate how Hester Prynne, as a subaltern, is able to utilize her

marginalization, oppression, and her “space of difference” as a platform from which to speak. I

specifically illustrate how she deploys creative agency to create various rhetorical strategies and

enact social change within the community. These rhetorical strategies are: rhetoric of

concealment through silence; creativity as a means for providing social interaction; appeals to

generosity through philanthropy. These rhetorical strategies are accepted by the status quo

because they so resemble traditional conceptions of femininity and thus appear to the status quo

as subjugation. Yet, in effect, these rhetorical strategies allow Hester to push the boundaries of

social acceptance; gain autonomy for herself as an individual whole while still remaining a

member of the community; foster revolutionary thoughts; and create a safe house where other

oppressed or subjugated citizens may develop and mature into revolutionary individuals before

facing the oppressive punishment of the societal punishment apparatus. As such, Hester is a

forerunner in a feminist movement that has not yet taken place. She sets the groundwork for

subaltern movements, like feminism, to take hold and produce social change within a

community. The existence of Hester’s safe house within the community provides the biggest

preparation for feminism to take hold within the community.

Rhetoric of Restraint

During the course of the novel, Hester enacts a rhetoric of restraint. We can think of

rhetoric of restraint as a bodily choice to limit or conceal one’s actions in order to achieve a

specific goal. One might especially rhetorically restrain certain actions, which would bring

unwanted attention to a movement or individual that is unprepared to enter into open opposition

11


with the status quo. Limiting one’s actions in such ways affects the audiences’ opinions and

perceptions towards an individual because that individual decides which traits, thoughts, and

feelings are seen and emphasized. Restraint can be particularly effective rhetorical moves if they

are motivated or inspired by the desire to appear in a certain light to a specific audience or if this

restraint affects the message being conveyed.

In Hester Prynne’s case, Hester literally restrains her external actions and silences her

speech in order to conceal the revolutionary thinking and philosophizing—“oftentimes, she could

scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand” (Hawthorne

77). Such actions were misinterpreted by the community as submission as discussed by the

narrator in Chapter 13-- “[i]t is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often

conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought

suffices them” (Hawthorne 144). Yet, if interpreted from a rhetorical perspective, such acts of

restraint can be seen as rhetorically powerful as they embody the individual’s punishment in

order to conceal her actual desires for rebellion.

Hester’s rhetorics of restraint go beyond the mere refrain of action. After the first scaffold

scene, Hester continues her individualistic rebellion by refusing social interaction beyond her

social service with other community members, who formed an extension of the penal system and

the oppressive status quo. By restraining from public interaction, except to take selfless

philanthropic actions, Hester portrays an increasingly sympathetic figure.

[m]eeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they

were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This

might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the

latter quality on the public mind” (Hawthorne 141).

12


The status quo and the community interpret Hester’s apparent self-punishment and self-

subordination or outer complacency as a signifier of her social subordination. Such actions,

however, can be interpreted as a physical embodiment of her rhetoric of restraint. By

constraining her social interactions, Hester is able to gain sympathy and transcend social barriers

without raising alarm within the punishment apparatus. In an essence, Hester utilizes the

ambiguity and mystery that accompanies silence in order to disguise her true subversive thoughts

and feelings.

Hester’s also enacts rhetorics of restraint by ostracizing herself. Living outside an

oppressive status quo prevents her from further transgressing the moral values of the society,

since she essentially is not part of it. But more importantly, because she does not outwardly fight

against the oppressive status quo or its punishment apparatus, the status quo is ignorant of her

rebellious new ideas about “a fair and suitable position” (Hawthorne 144) for women in New

England society. And by shielding her individualistic thoughts and revolutionary spirit against

the oppression of the status quo, Hester gains a right to privacy and asserts her own agency as a

woman and as an individual:

her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought…-she cast

away the fragments of a broken chain. The world’s law was no law for her mind… It is

remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most

quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without

investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester

(Hawthorne 143-144).

Hester’s restraint, in other words, frees her from the constant battle against the status quo.

Having the burden of a panoptic status quo lifted from the consciousness of the subaltern citizen-

13


subject, she is able to enact her own ideas about humanism and help the unfortunate all while

maintaining social independence and her own individuality.

In enacting such restraints in terms of charitable actions and space, Hester is able to

generate more sympathy toward herself. Hester’s embroidered scarlet letter that had once served

as a reminder to Hester and all others of her sexual transgression, for instance, becomes: “the

symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her, -so much power to do, and power to

sympathize, -that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original

signification”(Hawthorne 141). Hester’s restraints thus generate shared positive identifications.

In his scholarship, Kenneth Burke explains “rhetoric is the art of persuasion, or a study of the

means of persuasion available for any given situation” (46). According to Burke, for rhetorical

(in)actions of people or movements to be effective, they must allow the audience to “identify

himself with such bodies or movements, largely through sympathetic attitudes of [their] own”

(268). Hester restrains her resistance and revolutionary thoughts so that the community can

more easily identify with her as a sympathetic figure and will therefore be persuaded by her

(in)actions. Through restraint, Hester is actually able to ”reverse” how she is identified in

society: “they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin, for which

she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since” (Hawthorne

142). Therefore, while once identified as a fallen woman, a social and moral deviant and a public

enemy, Hester becomes in the eyes of her community a leader and wise woman. It is almost as if

Hester embodies the feminist movement of 1840’s New England herself and her sexual

transgression lead to a spiritual and moral awakening to the unjust social positions of women in

1840 New England society.

14


In sum, by embodying her punishment, ostracizing herself, and thus generating shared

identifications, Hester is able to give the appearance of a subjugated citizen-subject and create a

newfound space of difference to achieve individual and social power within the confines of her

punishment. While Hester’s power is limited to the scope of society within which she is allowed

to interact, its mere presence signals a weakness in the formerly oppressive status quo and sets

the foundation or groundwork necessary for more of the new to burst out from seclusion in the

future.

Hester’s Rhetorical Appeal to Generosity

Hester’s public punishment was designed to subjugate her rebellious spirit and transform

her into an obedient citizen-subject. She had to be publically punished in order to give an

example to the rest of the community and because her crime (adultery) had physically public

consequences (pregnancy), her punishment needed to parallel this crime in order to uphold the

authority of the status quo. Shortly after being convicted, Hester is made to stand on a scaffold

with a scarlet letter on her chest and the living proof of sin nestled in her arms. While Hester is

on the scaffold, the spectators are harsh and unforgiving towards her social and moral

transgression: they criticize this punishment as being too lenient; they judge Hester for her

passions; and they criticize her ostentatious embroidery of the scarlet letter. As Foucault

suggests, authorities encourage a crowd’s active participation in the condemned woman’s

interrogation “as a sign of allegiance” (Foucault 59) with the status quo. “‘Speak, woman!’ said a

voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold” (Hawthorne 63). In

such claims to badger Hester, the crowd supports the authority of the status quo by becoming an

extension of the penal system extending Hester’s punishment during the public ceremony by

participating in the sentencing and punishment.

15


In addition, after the public ceremony, the community continues punishment over a

longer range of time by ostracizing Hester and defining her by her transgression:

[b]ut now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door, began the daily custom, and

she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or

sink beneath it…giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at

which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody

their images of women’s frailty and sinful passion (Hawthorne 71).

According to Foucault, in order for public punishment to be effective, the audience needs to take

on the role of the authority and extend the punishment so that the condemned person serves not

only as a constant reminder of the long-term consequences of transgressing the status quo, but

also as a carnivalesque figure where the community can project their own sins and passions onto

that individual and punish her doubly; once for her sins and twice for their own that they keep

hidden. The effect, which is social conformity towards the continual unjust oppression of the

subaltern, is evident in the novel.

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish

that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of

the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that

brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she

entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often

her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of

children…first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries…

Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked

curiously at the scarlet letter, -and none ever failed to do so, -they branded it afresh into

16


Hester’s soul…But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to

inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester

Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot

never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture

(Hawthorne 77).

As evident in this passage, the community extends and continues the status quo’s punishment

through its judgmental and scornful gaze even after the public ceremony of punishment is over.

This continued punishment attempts to follow Foucault’s model of the Panopticon that

“induce[s] in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic

functioning of power…the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise

unnecessary” (Foucault 201). By maintaining Hester’s moral transgression at the forefront of the

community’s consciousness, the status quo continually tries to reassert its power over her.

In order to match her resistance to such oppression, Hester utilizes what Gramsci calls

“the instrumental mass” in the same way that the status quo utilized the same mass against her.

She does so first of all through her art--“her handiwork became what would now be termed the

fashion” (Hawthorne 74); This handiwork earns Hester her freedom of social fluidity between

the social classes, essentially freeing her of all societal expectations and limitations. Hester’s

“delicate and imaginative skill” (Hawthorne 74) was seen on various levels of society from “the

ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked

the baby’s little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the

dead” (Hawthorne 75). Because her art was highly valued, Hester is able to consensually interact

with all levels of society. Even the most prominent members of society came to her for her art,

which puts her in a position of power.

17


Hester also manipulates public opinion about her by appealing to the public’s generosity

and, in effect, changing the way they viewed the symbols of her crime. After the scaffolding,

Hester becomes an outcast of society, a sort of moral leper existing only in the selective areas of

the community where she was tolerated.

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she

belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she

came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone

as if she inhabited another sphere (Hawthorne 76).

Outcast from society, her embroidery and her charity became her only interaction with society.

Such charity could be interpreted as her being reduced to a mere social servant. But this

servitude is voluntary and is an effective intentional act to manipulate the way she is viewed in

society.

Hester lives on the edge of social society and sporadically interacts with it in only those

sectors that exist in the grey areas of social society, like poverty and sickness. Yet through her

philanthropy, Hester is able to situate herself socially within society parallel to her physical

situation in the cottage just outside the community. In other words, Hester’s social position

within society is outside of the status quo but she remains active or within view of the members

of society. This social position is similar to her cottage’s physical position in the community,

outside of the central part of town, but within view.

she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefits

were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her substance to every demand of

poverty… None so self-devoted as Hester, when pestilence stalked through the town. In

all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at

18


once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the

household that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy twilight with her fellow-

creatures…elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber” (Hawthorne

140).

Instead of outwardly and publicly rebelling, then, Hester appeals to the generosity of the

community by outwardly conforming to her punishment and doing charity work. Via her

philanthropy, Hester is able to create positive views about herself and improve her social

situation.

[T]he public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice, when too

strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice,

when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.

Interpreting Hester Prynne’s deportment as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined

to show its former victim a more benign countenance” (Hawthorne 141).

As a result of her charity, then, Hester becomes an increasingly sympathetic figure to the

community as the novel progresses.

This sympathy is evident in the community’s gossip and their changing definition of what

the scarlet letter is a symbol of: “many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original

signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s

strength” (Hawthorne 141). This shift in the societal opinion of Hester illustrates a theme that

one does not have to vocally express one’s own rebellion to be revolutionary as long as one’s

actions are indicative of or faithful to the cause or idea being promoted. Not only do the

intentional philanthropic choices of Hester Prynne prove to be a more efficient way to compete

with an oppressive status quo and a community that largely values social reputation, but it also

19


seems the only way to overcome an ironic embodiment of the oppressive nature of the status quo

one is rebelling against.

Hester’s Subversive Safe House

Hester also utilizes her punishment as social outcast to create a grey area or safety zone in

her cottage. Hester settles in the cottage where she is sheltered from the panoptic gaze of the

status quo. Within this cottage, Hester is able to disguise her subversive thinking by embodying

the proper social signifiers of femininity according to the status quo. It is in this cottage that she

raises Pearl and does her sewing; outwardly Hester resembles a rehabilitated criminal and

subjugated citizen-subject. Inwardly, however, she “vainly imagined that she herself might be

the destined prophetess” (Hawthorne 227) of the new truth of “mutual happiness” (Hawthorne

227) between men and women. Later in the novel, Hester expands this subversive use by

utilizing it to ideologically influence other subaltern women who come after her for advice about

their own social dilemmas. As such Hester’s cottage represents a safe house within the Puritan

community, that is a “place for hearing and mutual recognition…with people they [the subaltern

population] share an identity with” (Watkins 6). The safe house is a term defined by Mary

Louise Pratt in her essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” that denotes “social and intellectual spaces

where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogeneous, sovereign communities

with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, [and] temporary protection from legacies of

oppression” (586). This paper recognizes the safe house, first, as a place of refuge outside the

reach of the status quo’s judgment and punishment apparatus, second, as a place of heavy

thought, and third, as a place of comradery where one might share experiences with others who

are or will be experiencing similar conflicts and or situations.

20


In the cottage or safe house, Hester advises the community and arms them with the

wisdom and experience they will need to face the punishment apparatus and the status quo.

And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit

and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her

counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more

especially, - in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced,

or erring and sinful passion, - or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because

unvalued and unsought, - came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so

wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counseled them, as best she

might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that at some brighter period, when the

world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be

revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer

ground of mutual happiness” (Hawthorne 227).

As evidenced by this quote, Hester’s cottage represents a grey area just outside the reach of the

status quo, but still within view of the society. This grey area is “a space of difference” within

which Hester is free to act upon her rebellious spirit and radical ideology in order to challenge

the status quo and achieve agency for herself and other community members. When the safe

house is viewed as “a space of difference”, it can be interpreted as the perfect location for the

verbal and or ideological militarization or armament of the subaltern population. Hester can be

conceived as a subaltern, then, not only because she is marginalized and oppressed, but also

because she is directly and actively opposing the status quo. In addition, the time spent in this

safe house by women with similar societal transgressions as Hester, serves as a temporal space

outside the law of the Puritan community and by extension the status quo. Because by definition

21


there can be no space outside the status quo or its laws and oppressive character, this space is

only temporary. The time spent in this temporary space, however, outside the law or within the

new social space accompanied by Hester’s advice and experience serves as a metaphorical

secretive militarization of the subaltern population.

In Hawthorne’s novel, women who have transgressed the mores of the Puritan society

represent the subaltern population. This temporary time away from the panoptic status quo

helps the subaltern population to gain equal footing with that of the punishment apparatus and

the status quo before actually taking it on full force as publically recognized criminals. Watkins

explains, “[b]eing in a safe house can reaffirm who you are, so you have the strength to go back

into the contact zone, certain of what you represent. Safe houses give people a place to work out

and understand things in a safe environment” (6). This small change in preparation to meet the

social gaze and their punishment will greatly increase their success at maintaining their own

individuality and not becoming a mindless subjugated citizen-subject. This supports the claims

made by Foucault and negated by Spivak that “the oppressed, if given the chance… and on the

way to solidarity through alliance politics… can speak and know their conditions” (Spivak 78).

Hester in an essence creates a new space for this alliance of the subaltern population, so that they

may “work out” (Watkins 6) social issues and better understand themselves and their position in

society “in a safe environment” (Watkins 6).

Hester as Feminist

Throughout this essay I have focused on how Hester’s specific acts were intended

rhetorical devices and now I would like to push that a step further and illustrate how these

intended rhetorical devices supported what I believe to be Hester’s feminist message. Although

Hester is a fictional character, I believe that Hawthorne manipulated her life experiences and

22


social interactions to work through a case study of a small scale feminist movement in one small

town in order to make a social commentary of the larger ongoing American Feminist Movement

represented by the Seneca Falls Convention. Therefore, I believe it is important to analyze the

implications of Hester’s rhetorical acts and attempt to understand what feminist message she was

attempting to work through or express. Specifically, I argue that Hester re-appropriates

traditional (mis)conceptions of femininity such as silence, philanthropy, and domesticity to allow

for camouflaging within the religiously conservative status quo while not compromising her own

individuality. This re-appropriation is also the vehicle through which Hester speaks her message

of resistance without furthering her own punishment or facing direct opposition from the status

quo.

The first traditional conception about femininity that Hester re-appropriates is silence.

As previously discussed Hester applies different variations of silent rhetoric throughout the novel

by refusing social interaction and by choosing to limit or conceal her actions in public. This

application of silent rhetoric earns her the ability to speak consensually with the dominating

status quo instead of becoming dominated by its religious dogma. While silent women are

usually described in the passive form, Hester is not silenced by her punishment or the oppressive

status quo. Quite the opposite actually, she withholds the identity of Pearl’s father from the

punishment apparatus and she withholds Chillingworth’s actual identity from the community. In

remaining silent about such identities in the face of interrogation, Hester is able to create and

demand privacy for her body and independence for her mind. In keeping her sexual relationship

with Dimmesdale private knowledge, Hester demands the right to privacy for her body. And by

keeping Chillingworth’s identity a secret, she maintains her ability to live alone and to act

independently instead of being controlled by a husband. Instead of silence being a signifier of

23


subordination, obedience, or knowing one’s place, Hester re-appropriates silence so that it

becomes a tool of resistance, independence, and self-sufficiency.

The second traditional conception about femininity that Hester re-appropriates is

philanthropy. Philanthropy is traditionally conceived as being a social servant, which is often

equated with passiveness and subordination. Hester gains most of her agency or power from the

sympathetic image of a charitable woman that her philanthropic actions coupled with rhetorics of

restrain create, which in turn allows her to define herself in a new way. It is because Hester is so

selfless and nondiscriminatory towards the sick and the poor, regardless of their treatment of her,

that Hester is able to re-appropriate the meaning of the scarlet letter on her chest from carrying a

negative stigma, to one that is significantly more positive. Therefore, instead of philanthropy

and charity work emphasizing the domestic role of women in society, Hester re-appropriates

philanthropy to change the connotation of her punishment and to present herself as a leader

within the community. A role she takes on in the conclusion of the novel when she counsels the

other subaltern women.

The third traditional conception about femininity that Hester re-appropriates is

domesticity. During the late 1800s, domesticity was regarded as a feminine virtue; the home was

considered a woman's “proper sphere” and the “best refuge” for women’s delicate nature

(Welter, 1966: 153 and 162). An interesting perversion of this social construct is that because the

domestic space is considered a feminine space therefore, the patriarchal status quo cannot

interfere with her subversive meetings. Hester further complicates the status quo’s perception of

femininity by utilizing her own domestic space for subversive discussions instead of traditional

housework. Hester catalyzes social change by creating “a space of difference” within her

isolation and exile from the community. She does this by embodying the signifiers of her

24


subjugation (exile, out casting, and isolation) and utilizing them to gain a space of privacy for her

revolutionary thoughts and ideas. It is in this way, the public perception of Hester changes to

being more positive because they are unaware of her ideas and because she appeals to their

generosity by knowing her place. Hester’s apparent acknowledgment of her social position as

subaltern and her apparent conformity with her social out casting and isolation appeals to the

generosity of the public and so they become more willing to change their perception of her. It is

as a result of this change in the public’s perception of Hester’s character that other social and

moral transgressors are willing to view her as a positive leader and are willing to come to her

safe house and participate and expand the movement Hester represents.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Hester Prynne, the fictional protagonist from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel

The Scarlet Letter, should be recognized as a feminist rhetorician that catalyzed and fostered

social change within her own community by changing public opinion about her own social

position. While the result of the change is not clearly or directly stated at the end of the novel, I

believe that this was an intentional ambiguity left by Hawthorne to foster discussion about the

novel. This ambiguity also mirrors the reality of the American Feminist Movement; it is

ongoing, disjointed, and it is almost impossible to discuss causality within the movement. Hester

and her movement towards a less oppressive status quo and greater individuality within the

Puritan community are characterized through with this same ambiguity. Hester’s movement

does not start with her scaffold and end with her grave, her affect on society continues through

her legacy and through the “space of difference” she created in the safe house cottage. And in

25


doing so, she was able to create by manipulating subversive silence so as to circumvent the

oppressive character of dogmatic status quo.

26


Works Consulted

Abel, Darrel. "Hawthorne's Hester." College English 13.6 (1952): 303-309.

Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 2005.

Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Trans. Peter Hallward. New

York: Verso, 2002.

Barlowe, Jamie. "Rereading Women: Hester Prynne-Ism and the Scarlet Mob of Scribblers."

American Literary History 9.2 (1997).

Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Ed.

Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zhon. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. 253-264.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14.

Cronin, Morton. "Hawthorne on Romantic Love and the Status of Women." PMLA 69.1 (1954):

89-98.

de Kock, Leon. "Interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak : New Nation Writers Conference in

South Africa." A Review of International English Literature. 23 (3) 1992. 29-47.

Doubleday, Neal Frank. "Hawthorne's Hester and Feminism." PMLA 54.3 (1939): 825-828.

Foss, Karen, Sonja Foss and cindy Griffin. "Introduction." Foss, Karen, Sonja Foss and Cindy

Griffin. Feminist Rhetorical Theories. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc, 1999. 1-

10.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House, Inc,

1977.

Green, Mitchell. Speech Acts. Ed. Edward N Zalta. 21 March 2009. 13 November 2011

<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/speech-acts/>.

27


Haberly, David T. "Hawthorne in the Province of Women." The New England Quarterly 74.4

(2001): 580-621.

Haslam, Jason. "Pits, Penitentiaries and Penitentiaries: Reframing the Detained Subject." Texas

Studies in Literature and Language 50.3 (2008): 268-284.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

"Hester Prynne: Sinner, Victim, Object, Winner." All Things Considered. National Public

Radio. Seabrook, Andrea. 02 March 2008. Radio. 27 March 2012

<www.npr.org/2008/03/02/87805369/hester-prynne-sinner-victim-object-winner>.

Kennedy, Kristen. "Hipparchia the CynicL Feminist Rhetoric and the Ethics of Embodiment."

Hypatia 12.2 (1999): 48-71.

Person, Leland S. Jr. "Hester's Revenge: The Power of Silence in the Scarlet Letter." Nineteenth-

Century Literature (1989): 465-483.

Ross, Mary Ellen. "Feminism and the Problem of Moral Character." Journal of Feminist Studies

in Religion 5.2 (1989): 47-64.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" Chrisman, Laura and Williams,

Patrick. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1994. 66-111.

Wallace, James D. "Hawthorne and the Scribbling Women Reconsidered." American Literature

62.2 (1990): 201-222.

Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18.2 (1966):

151-174.

28

Subversive Silence:€¦ · Web viewTwo years lapse without any word from Hester’s husband, and...

Documents

Transcript of Subversive Silence:€¦ · Web viewTwo years lapse without any word from Hester’s husband, and...