I do not have the time to be quite as long-winded as usual, but I wanted to give a little bit of a postscript to the "Scarlet Letter" post from a few days ago. Last night was my American Literature, and we discussed the book in detail. As is the case in most graduate classes, it was mostly argument and defense on the part of my fellow students and I. What is funny is that the makeup of this class is so very different from any class that I have taken at UD in the last couple of years.
University of Dallas is a Catholic university, and the people that I have come into contact with certainly do not lean towards the conservative side of the aisle. This class is the exception to that rule. The professor is an older gentlemen (to put it kindly), and he seems as far from a Catholic as anyone I have ever met. Perhaps he draws a certain kind of student, because the entire conversation last night was so tainted with conservative Christianity that it was hard to take seriously.
In short, Hester was a whore, Pearl was Satan's-spawn, Dimmesdale was a scoundrel, and Chillingsworth was evil through and through. The class followed the story as if it were the Bible itself, and they did it all under the guise of serious literary study. Here's the problem for those of you who have not studied it. Hawthorne was writing of a colonial town in the 1600's, but he did not write it until the 1800's. He was making obvious criticisms of the customs and mores of the puritanical-villages of yesteryear, but we skipped over this fact entirely. The class refused to see it as anything more than a proclamation of exactly what Hawthorne seemed to be exposing. We read it as Puritans, and perhaps we missed the entire message of the novel.
University of Dallas is a Catholic university, and the people that I have come into contact with certainly do not lean towards the conservative side of the aisle. This class is the exception to that rule. The professor is an older gentlemen (to put it kindly), and he seems as far from a Catholic as anyone I have ever met. Perhaps he draws a certain kind of student, because the entire conversation last night was so tainted with conservative Christianity that it was hard to take seriously.
In short, Hester was a whore, Pearl was Satan's-spawn, Dimmesdale was a scoundrel, and Chillingsworth was evil through and through. The class followed the story as if it were the Bible itself, and they did it all under the guise of serious literary study. Here's the problem for those of you who have not studied it. Hawthorne was writing of a colonial town in the 1600's, but he did not write it until the 1800's. He was making obvious criticisms of the customs and mores of the puritanical-villages of yesteryear, but we skipped over this fact entirely. The class refused to see it as anything more than a proclamation of exactly what Hawthorne seemed to be exposing. We read it as Puritans, and perhaps we missed the entire message of the novel.
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