The Sliding of “The Scarlet Letter": A Poststructuralist Reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Abstract

In this paper both Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of the sign, which treats the binary relation between the signifier and the sign 的ed as one of arbitrariness- a signifier refers arbitrarily to a signified, and Jacques Lacan's theory of the sign, which, in its critique of Saussure's structuralism, holds that neither signifiers nor signifieds can be fixed finally, that is, the process of signification can never be closed off by imposing a final signified upon a signifier, are applied to re-reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece The Scarlet Letter in order to see how 川the scarlet letter" as a sign slides from one signifier to another, refusing to be nailed down. This approach, to use Roland Barthes' words, is to treat the text of The Scarlet Letter as "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds" - the galaxy of signifiers open up an endless and complicate process that not only unties the bound that originally binds the signifier "A" ("badge of sin" [The Scarlet Letter 82]) arbitrari ly to its signified "ADUL TERY" (product of Puritan ideology), but creates maximum possibilities/freedom of interminable interpretations and meaning (Barthes 5).