"I became interested in the representation of the other. I started the novel mainly because of two germs. One was Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, a novel that I had to read for my Ph.D. and also for my teaching classes and that has always been a favorite book of mine. I was always more interested in Pearl, the "legacy of passion," than in Hester but then I also felt that the end of the book had also been subject to a Eurocentered decision on the part of some critics who simply assume that Pearl Prynne has married an European count and has gone to Europe after the events told in the story. They have assumed this because at the end of the book Pearl is sending to her Puritan mother in colonial Massachusetts all these very exotic presents with heraldic crests that could not be decoded.' Now, I thought that these heraldic crests should have been decoded if they were European, and then the more documents I read, the more I realized how much trading there was for the importation of objects, ideas, even people-freaks especially from the Coromandel Coast in India. So Pearl Prynne was one of the inspirations for my book."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Short story writers from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesEditors from the United StatesPolitical authors from the United StatesCritics from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
1994 interview in Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee Edited by Bradley C. Edwards (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804 – 1864
US-amerikanischer Schriftsteller
128 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne →
Related Quotes
"Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to on…"
"Long, long may it be, ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic …"
"It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide—but so quickly close again!"
"Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam."
"Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day."
"Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life o…"
"If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dr…"
"In old times, the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians, coming down upon them from th…"
"Let us forget the other names of American statesmen, that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the loft…"
"By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, stree…"