‘정동 소외자’로서 헤스터: 주홍글자 속 대안적 공동체의 가능성

Abstract

The Puritan community in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter condemns and shuns Hester Prynne for the sin of adultery. However, Hester’s affective leanings never quite align with these austere morals, in many ways vitiating the punishment inflicted on her. This paper draws on Sara Ahmed’s conceptions of the happy script, affective community, and affect aliens to examine The Scarlet Letter’s portrayal of Puritanism, the Puritan community, and Hester in turn. I begin by looking at Arthur Dimmesdale’s bodily security and affective insecurity within the Puritan community as an instance of how religious tenets gain their staying power through the regulation of private affect. I then center on Hester’s status as affect alien by examining her affective detachment from the community’s attempt to cast her as unhappy. The paper locates possibility in an affective alienation, arguing that affect aliens cannot be reduced to unhappy souls crushed by their departure from the happy script. Rather, they are individuals capable of following their own affective orientations and plotting a course for themselves. Ultimately, affect aliens such as Hester broaden the horizons for an existence in which one may flesh out a life that can be imagined and grappled with instead of merely accepted and adhered to.