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AMY KASS: I think what Hawthorne shows us is the depth to which these two possibilitiesójollity
and gloomógo to our native grain, the core of our native grain. This is not a problem
that we got rid of, either fictionally or historically. You think Woodstock and you
think the rise of Evangelical religions. You think the hippies versus the Establishment.
In the caricatures that we get, or the satires that we get, they abound, and theyíre still
here. And the tensions that existÖand to find some way of living with both of those
things, heís providing us with one way of doing so and heís embracing, it seems to
me, the alterative of marriage based on freedom and love within a religious community or within
some kind of religion. But I think that whatís really important is to see that weóeach of
usóhave to negotiate those tensions.
DIANA SCHAUB: So that the Utopianism is present among the Puritans as it is among the Merry
Mounters. And in that sense uhh, they both show emotional elements of the American kind
of aspiration ìletís just start over, letís make it the way we want it to be,î and so
it does seem to me that Hawthorne is also a critic of that Utopian strand within America.
YUVAL LEVIN: Both escape to the forest for reasons that arenít as different as they
think they are.
AMY KASS: Thatís exactly right.
YUVAL LEVIN: So in that sense, both need the family to be reminded of what it is they think
they can change, but canít.
LEON KASS: The acknowledgement that human nature has to be taken as it is and refined
and not simply deformed in the name of some ideology or creed. And that life in its concreteness
with some of its sort of fundamental passions ummm has to be honored if youíre going to
have a community that isnít going to umm maim the human beings who live among them.