When The Storm Subsides: Hawthornesque Discipline and Resistance in The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter presents a successful instance of the disciplinary normalization technique that Michel Foucault made problematic. Critics have assumed the repressive power of the scarlet letter and its disciplines and have vilified it without investigating its centrality to Hester’s individual self. Hester herself, however, did not change the literary meaning of the letter; rather, but the crowd willfully changed its interpretation of it. Foucault focuses on the people who are disciplined rather than the disciplines themselves and argues that the disciplined people could institute a counter-discourse. On the other hand, The Scarlet Letter seemingly views disciplinary power, surveillance techniques, and discursive violence as problems. Those three things, however, helped the crowd readapt Hester to their society.