About the Scarlet Letter:
1. Gingerbread Victorian prose
2. Ambivalence and embarrassment about Salem
3. Europe as the focus of life
4. Characters as mannequins
   act out not their feelings but roles assigned to them
5. Chillingworth the evil magician; the minister
6. The rehabilitation of 17th century obscurantism.
7. The enlightenment bypassed Salem
8. No historical perspective on the 17th century
9. Cultural and political reactionary, trying to turn the clock back
10. Cartoon, poster characters
11. Witchcraft as a fact of life.
12. Demonization
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Tragic vision vs optimism: Emerson-Whitman vs Hawthorne-Melville
The vision of evil M-180