헤스터 길들이기? -『주홍글자』다시 읽기

Abstract

This paper attempts to reread Hawthorne's most hypercanonized work, The Scarlet Letter in Foucauldian genealogical perspective. Foucault‘s genealogical method provides a way of recuperating a part of history hidden, submerged, obliterated by the official history. Seen in a genealogical perspective, Hester's story can be viewed as one in which Hawthorne attempts to trace back to the Puritan settlement in its earliest days in order to explore woman's status and related conflicts in his day.As is often argued, Hawthorne shows a persistent interest in the Puritan origin of the nation and also sets the story of The Scarlet Letter in Boston in the early period of its settlement. Under the Puritan legal system, Hester's sin of adultery was a clear example of defying the patriarchal Puritan authorities, and as such, she is sentenced to stand for three hours on the scaffold and then wear the letter A throughout her life. This kind of public punishment, most frequently exerted in the Puritan settlement, can be seen both as a public operation in which hegemonic authority is re-asserted and as a process in which "discipline" in Foucaudian sense incessantly forces the deviant to stay confined in the boundary of the law. However, in the end, the Puritan way of punishment fails to discipline Hester. Becoming a Hutchinson-like figure, Hester rather exemplifies the potential for feminist voice, which however does not get voiced but rather silenced as women get saturated and constrained by domestic ideology of nineteenth-century America.