Degrees of Permanence: Hawthorne, Emerson, and the Circle-Spiral in Social Reform
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Date
2015-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
This essay examines circular imagery in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Circles" and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. By following this trope throughout both authors' texts -- and by putting their works into dialogue with one another -- it draws out the paradoxical coexistence of permanence and change in social reform. In this effort, the essay also investigates the history of the circle as a literary form, colonialism in North America across the 17th and 19th centuries, and issues of U.S. struggle and expansion in the mid-1800s. Ultimately, this trope illustrates the individual-community dynamic of progress, defining a process of social change that applies to Hester's, Hawthorne's, and the reader's historical moments.
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Keywords
Social reform, The Scarlet Letter, Circle imagery, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson