Nathaniel Hawthorne, Una Hawthorne, andThe Scarlet Letter: Interactive Selfhoods and the Cultural Construction of Gender

Abstract

Gender conflicts troubled Hawthorne's personal life and afflicted his daughter Una badly enough to bring on episodes of disabling psychic isturbance. They are likewise inherent inThe Scarlet Letter, where Hawthorne subverts the norms of womanhood and manhood that were asserted by the domestic ideal, a middle-class version of male dominance then coming to the fore. Yet the work also affirms that those norms provide a measure against which his daughter's aberrations should be corrected. Hawthorne's solution to Una's problem is depicted in Pearl's redemption, so that Una's unhappy later life—as well as Hawthorne's—provides a biographical countertext. By treating Nathaniel Hawthorne, Una Hawthorne, andThe Scarlet Letteras interdefining arenas of conflict, this essay provides a glimpse into the processes by which gender is constructed in persons and works of art.

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