New Historicism: Puritan New England In The 19th Century

The use of literary criticisms is essential in helping to deeper understand what an author was actually trying to say. There are several literary criticisms used to breakdown works. New Historicism has been informed through different kinds of criticism, including psychoanalytic criticism, feminist criticism, and especially deconstruction. This allows self identifying new historicists to be seen as feminist, Marxist, or deconstructionist. New Historicism is a literary criticism that allows us to connect events that occur in different time periods and locations. New Historicism in not necessarily a theory that was made up out of the blue. It came as a result of the application of established theories connected with historical content. Since
The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan New England in the 1640’s, but because it was written by Hawthorne much later, shows many signs of life in the 19th century. New Historicists would see The Scarlet Letter as an “artifact of the 19th century” rather than the 1640s. Many of the critics who have analyzed The Scarlet Letter from a new historicist point of view tend to focus on the romance applied. We have an entirely different definition than did Hawthorne, who saw it as a antisocial slogan. Many new historicists think the Puritan location is a disguise to mask what the true purpose of the book was. The book was really a cautionary tale against revolutionary behavior. At Hawthorne’s time, the French revolution and Austrian revolution were occurring. At the time the book was set, the English civil wars were occurring. Hawthorne’s fear of revolution could date back to the time he was released as the surveyor at the Custom House. Hester and Dimmesdale’s actions were revolutionary, and they resulted in the death of Dimmesdale. The Scarlet Letter is also a novel written about progress, since Puritan societies generally stayed in the times they were in and did not