LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 19:11 November 2019
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Elf Child: Recounting American History

Jitendra Kumar Singh


Courtesy: https://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-Letter-Original-Illustrations-Illustrated/dp/1949460843/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2EJVOJU2PDYI&keywords=the+scarlet+letter&qid=1574127366&s=books&sprefix=The+Sca%2Caps%2C305&sr=1-3

Abstract

Children's literature is a significant tool for the amusement of children and portrayal of childhood in the frame of an adult's intention. Defining it, Hollandale expresses “Children’s literature is narrative, an important characteristic of which is the provision of access to understanding through empathy with the lives and experiences of others” (Hollandale, 1997). Hollandale (1997, p. 62) notes that the experiences recorded need not be fictional but might, for example, be based on the author’s memory of his or her childhood (Signs of Childness in Children's Books, 62). Charlotte Huck points out that children’s literature is “the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language” (Children’s literature in the elementary school, 5). It is socially and culturally constructed and focuses on the lives and experiences of children, thus enabling young people to broaden their old world view through the imaginative apprehension of new experiences.

Almost all the literature projected by the adult writers deals with youngness, innocence, enthusiasm, valorization of its socio-cultural and psychological aspects with the portrayal of children. And this literature is the embodiment as the adult's world dominance over the child’s world. But the sensitization of the child always contrasts with the sensitiveness of the adults. Children resonate with the adults’ sensitivity and the adults’ so-called old world experience reincarnates the child for a younger age.

Since children’s literature is comprised of adults’ writing and was mainstream literary competence of the early American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne utilized the genre to connect with readers. He orchestrated the young and the aged personages to ascend the conflict between England and New England. The Scarlet Letter suffered from “hidden conflictive” intention of textual representation of the young “Pearl”. The name “Pearl” itself contrasts with the authorial consciousness and deconstructs the centrality from present day to the specific past. Her identity haunts the inner consciousness, and the demented semblance of Arthur Dimmsdale.

This paper will examine the meanings and implications of the appellation “children and adult in the context of The Scarlet Letter “as defined within a body of mainstream fiction formative literature. It, subsequently, will highlight how this text negotiates questions related to refugee status, immigration, identity, and belonging, contributing in many instances to a bland re-creation of a formerly oppressed but now coherent and increasingly prosperous and Americanized people.

The children's literature plays an important role in defining the relatively new community to itself and mainstream America. In its dissemination of truisms about Confucian heritage and stereotypes of "model minorities, "the literature reveals as much about American ideological desires as it does about the ‘new Americans’". My paper strives to read Hawthorne's child character Pearl as the reflection of the American past. While we witness in the deepening of sensuality in Pearl’s character a reminiscence of the past, we are concerned with Hawthorne’s socio-cultural and psychological insights in the projection of such a child character.

Keywords: Nathaniel Hawthorne, children’s literature, American history, The Scarlet Letter, Pearl, Americanized people

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Jitendra Kumar Singh
Ph.D. Scholar
Dept. of English
Banaras Hindu University
jeet91singh@gmail.com
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