NathanielNathaniel HawthorneHawthorne

1804-1864

Family History

Great-great-grandfather, William Hathorne, ordered the whipping of Anne Coleman and four others in the streets of Salem.

Great-grandfather, John Hathorne, the magistrate presiding over the trial of the accused witches of Salem (1692).

Hawthorne preoccupied with family history.

Childhood

Born July 4, 1804 in Salem, MAFather died when Hawthorne was

four years oldHad two sisters: one older, one

youngerMother pregnant at time of marriageWent to live with mother’s relatives

(wealthy Mannings)Sent to Bowdoin College in Maine

Reclusive Years in Salem

Anonymously published short stories and a novel, Fanshawe.

Later formally withdrew most of this early work, discounting it as the work of inexperienced youth.

Burned most of his works from these years.

Back into Society

Editor for The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in 1836

Appointed to the Boston Custom House in 1839

Invested in Brook Farm communeBecame engaged to Sophia Peabody,

married in 1842

Sophia Peabody

From influential Salem familySister Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

Educator and suffragetteEditor of The Dial

Illustrator and painterOccasional invalidHad three children with Hawthorne:

Una, Julian, Rose

Governmental Offices

Took many government appointments to earn living

Between 1846 and 1849 served as a surveyor of the Salem Custom House.

Wrote campaign biography for Franklin PierceCollege classmate

Pierce appointed Hawthorne as the US Consul to Liverpool, England

His End

Lived abroad in England and Italy for a number of years

Time away provided material for The Marble Faun

Became ill and underwent a loss of literary creativity

Died in Plymouth, NH on May 19, 1864Buried in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery

in Concord

Not all authors of the period as optimistic as the transcendentalists.

Saw the universe as confusing and difficult.

Evil and suffering had to be explained, accounted for.Puritan backdrop

Life was ultimately mysterious.

The Dark Side of Humanity

Themes and Influence

IndividualismSocietyGuiltAlienationPuritan Society in New

EnglandSalem Witch TrialsPsychology

Hawthorne’s work preoccupied with effects of Puritanism in New England, strong sense of inherited guilt

Had connections to the Transcendentalists (was friends w/ Emerson and Thoreau), but had a very different philosophy: Instead of asserting freedom, he points out

human limitationsHis fiction:

Allegories of the heartSense of hidden depravity

11

Hawthorne’s Characteristics

Hawthorne’s Dualities

Love for allegory and symbolDealt with tensions involving:

light versus dark; warmth versus cold; faith versus doubt; heart versus mind; internal versus external worlds.

Features of His Works

Setting Themes

Idea FeatureTechnique

Puritan New EnglandEvil & sin“Black vision” toward

humansAmbiguitySymbolism

The Romance

ThemesThe dreamlikeThe imaginaryThe

supernaturalThe American

past

TechniquesAllegorical

abstractionTranscendence of

material worldOperates in

intermediate zone of imagination and dreams

“[I]t is that blackness in Hawthorne, of which I have spoken, that so fixes and fascinates me” (Herman Melville).

Negative Romanticism

Use of allegoryA story with both a literal

and symbolic meaningUse of symbolism

Symbol – a concrete item that represents an abstract idea

Also known for:Sense of structureMoral insight

Hawthorne’s Style

Literary Style

Hawthorne’s idea of romance versus novel Not entirely faithful to reality Does not portray real people, but does remain

true to human emotion At times, his allegories are difficult to

identify Used the voice of a storyteller to draw readers in

and set the stage for his hidden meanings The use of a storyteller also allows readers to

consider the “truth” of such tales Hawthorne’s argument was that readers’

imaginations could be manipulated through the mood and images of the text

Public Symbols

Conventional or “public” symbol: symbols that mean the same thing to most people because they are so much a part of human experience. journey=quest rivers=time and eternity apple/fruit=temptationsnake=evilpeacock=pridegarden=place where you can frolic (i.e. be

sexual)

Contextual Symbols

Contextual or “private” symbols: meaning generated by the work; different meaning in different context. Pink Ribbons in “Young Goodman Brown”:

innocence, girlishness; femininity; pink mixes innocence (white) with sexuality (red)

Staff in “YGB”: sin (devil’s staff); uncertainty of purpose (twisted); a journey (walking staff); judge’s pointer (Devil uses it to point at people and judge them)

Forest in “YGB”: uncertainty; wilderness; sin; confusion; nature as opposed to civilization; natural law vs. human law: good and bad connotations; compare to Puritan wilderness.

Allegory

Story with second meaning beneath the surface Even though the surface story may have its own

interest, the author’s major interest is in the ulterior meaning.

Can be defined as an extended metaphor or a series of symbols, but really can be distinguished from both. System of related comparisons, not one comparison

drawn out like an extended metaphorUsually a 1:1 correspondence b/t detail and meanings.

Differs from symbolism in that it emphasizes the meanings of the images, not the image itself.

Works

RomancesShort Stories

Tales

Select Works

Fanshawe (1828)Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)The Scarlet Letter (1850)The House of the Seven Gables

(1851)The Snow-Image (1851)The Blithedale Romance (1852)Life of Franklin Pierce (1852)The Marble Faun (1860)

Types of Stories: Science Fiction

“Celestial Railroad” (1843), strong allegorical qualityraised the question of the difficulty in

dealing with doubt and sin in human life“The Birthmark” (1843), “Rappaccini’s

Daughter”Explored the conflict between science and

nature

Types of Stories: Psychological

Secret guilt, problem, pride, envy, desire for revenge, problem of sin“The Minister’s Black Veil,”

“Wakefield,” “Lady Eleanore’s Mantle,” “Young Goodman Brown,” “Ethan Brand”

The Puritan Past – The Scarlet Letter (1850) – raises the question of whether Hester and her lover Dimmesdale were really sinful

I was lying back in my study-chair, with my heels luxuriously propped on an ottoman, reading for the two-hundredth time Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse, or his Twice-Told Tales, I forget which,--I only know that these books constitute my cloud-land, where I love to sail away in dreamy quietude, forgetting the war, the price of coal and flour, the rates of exchange, and the rise and fall of gold.  What do all these things matter, as seen from those enchanted gardens in Padua where the weird Rappaccini tends his enchanted plants, and his gorgeous daughter fills us with the light and magic of her presence, and saddens us with the shadowy allegoric mystery of her preternatural destiny?

Harriet Beecher Stowe on Hawthorne

From The Lady Who Does Her Own Work

(1864)

Intertextual References

Allusions in "Rappaccini‘s Daughter"Bible: Garden of EdenDante‘s Beatrice from

The Divine Comedy

The Garden of Eden

Garden: perverted Eden, unnatural paradise

Dr. Rappaccini ~ God over a re-created Adam and Eve

Beatrice ~ the temptress Eve who leads Giovanni to his fall

Or, in a different reading: Giovanni: tempts Beatrice/ Eve with the antidote/apple

Dante‘s Beatrice

"Hawthorne‘s deliberate evocation of The Divine Comedy and his use of the name Beatrice, which is synonymous in Dante‘s writings with ideal feminine goodness and beauty, serve to foreshadow Beatrice Rappaccini‘s ultimate purity" (Bertan, 260).

The Scarlet Letter

In a Puritan colony in 17th century New England, Hester Prynne scandalizes the community when she falls pregnant and refuses to name the father.

She is forced to wear a scarlet letter A as a permanent reminder of her shame.

Hawthorne’s most famous novel Chief Characters:

Hester Prynne: symbol of romantic individualism who remains in her heart the master of her free will

The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale: a negative character who can not face his “right for happiness”

Roger Chillingworth: a cold intellectual devoid of warm human feelings

Pearl: an illustration of the concept of natural human who emphasizes on being a natural being instead of being a moral duplication

30

The Scarlet Letter

Major Symbol: Letter A

Scarlet letter the central symbol.

Changes meaning for the characters as Hester’s character changes.

The A becomes a pathway to redemption

The Scarlet Letter

Hester Chillingworth Dimmesdale Pearl

SinEvil

Adultery

Ability

Angel

Atonement