Touching The Scarlet Letter

Sari Altschuler’s paper adopts a different perspective on the visual, beginning with the 1885 raised-print The Scarlet Letter published by the Perkins Institution for the Blind to consider what it might reveal about... [ view full abstract ]

Sari Altschuler’s paper adopts a different perspective on the visual, beginning with the 1885 raised-print The Scarlet Letter published by the Perkins Institution for the Blind to consider what it might reveal about Hawthorne’s famous novel. The tactile-and-visual reading practices the volumes insist upon complicate the primarily visual readings that dominate conversation about the novel. The Perkins volumes help us see the complex relationship between visual and tactile reading at the heart of Hawthorne’s investigation. The Perkins Scarlet Letter thus invites us to return a disability media history—Hawthorne’s connections to media for the blind and the popularity of Perkins’s work—to our own understanding of The Scarlet Letter, revealing the fundamental role that haptic reading plays in shaping characterization, plot, and symbolism. Starting with Pearl’s tactile education, this reading expands to illustrate how the distinct ways of knowing that emerge from haptic reading operate more broadly in the novel. Finally returning to the story’s central object—the scarlet letter—Altschuler reconsiders the novel’s treatment of stigma in light of this history. She concludes by arguing for the broader value of using disability’s media history to read literature.