Carol Gilligan's The Birth of Pleasure and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Abstract

With his notion of the struggle between men and women, Nathaniel Hawthorne was focusing upon the crisis of his age, a situation that in Gilligan's own viewpoint, 20th century American theater takes over. The renowned psychologist Carol Gilligan based her stage adaptation of Hawthorne's novel upon her new book, The Birth of Pleasure, ( May, 2002), She changed the 1830 novel in into a dramatic form on November, 2002. Gilligan's book examines various aspects of passion, pleasure as well as factors involved in them. The book evokes obsessive devotion to a capitalist life, particularly the author's own American life. It brings forth a large scope of the diverse facets of American life at the beginnings of the Century. It calls to mind again severe social restraints as standard for the 90s. The study further demonstrates the advantages of shifting the novel to performance.