Adaptations

6

IMAGINING THE PURITAN BODY

The 1995 cinematic version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Roger Bromley

 

This chapter will explore the ways in which Puritanism was organized around a set of principles which elevated mind, reason and order, over the body, emotion and nature which were equated with chaos. The latter trio were also closely identified with the figure of woman, particularly the woman's body as the primary source of sin: hence the extensive attempts that were made to curb any sense of women's agentive activity. The 1995 film version of the novel The Scarlet Letter reverses the characteristic privileging hierarchy of Puritanism, but in making space for women as agents it succeeds only in inverting its organizing principles ...