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Article: Considering possession in The Scarlet Letter.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in American Fiction
- Article date:
- March 22, 2001
- Author:
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In the much-discussed first line of "The Custom-House," Nathaniel Hawthorne announces not only his text's complicated attitude toward its audience, but also its even more complicated treatment of issues of demonic possession. "It is a little remarkable," Hawthorne writes, "that--though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public." (1) This line is interesting, of course, for what it suggests about Hawthorne's discomfort with the autobiographical mode. It is also interesting, I think, for the particular and ...