Examining the complex relationships between the political, popular,
sexual, and textual interests of Nathaniel Hawthorne's work, Lauren
Berlant argues that Hawthorne mounted a sophisticated challenge to
America's collective fantasy of national unity. She shows how
Hawthorne's idea of citizenship emerged from an attempt to
adjudicate among the official and the popular, the national and the
local, the collective and the individual, utopia and history.
At the core of Berlant's work is a three-part study of "The Scarlet
Letter," analyzing the modes and effects of national identity that
characterize the narrator's representation of Puritan culture and
his construction of the novel's political present tense. This
analysis emerges from an introductory chapter on American
citizenship in the 1850s and a following chapter on national
fantasy, ranging from Hawthorne's early work "Alice Doane's Appeal"
to the Statue of Liberty. In her conclusion, Berlant suggests that
Hawthorne views everyday life and local political identities as
alternate routes to the revitalization of the political and utopian
promises of modern national life.
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