Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864), ranks among America’s major authors. Between about 1825 and 1850, he developed his talent by writing short fiction and the novel Fanshawe (1828). Then he gained international fame for his novel The Scarlet Letter, a masterpiece of American literature.
Hawthorne’s works probe into human nature, especially its darker side. He set many stories against the somber background of Puritan New England, the world of his ancestors. Unlike most fiction writers of his time, he was not primarily interested in stirring the reader by sensational or sentimental effects. Hawthorne called his writing romance, which he defined as a method of showing “the depths of our common nature.” To Hawthorne, romance meant confronting reality, rather than evading it. Hawthorne often dealt with the themes of morality, sin, and redemption. Among his early influences were the parables and allegories of John Bunyan and Edmund Spenser.
Life.
Nathaniel Hathorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts He added the w to his name when he began publishing. Hawthorne graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. While attending Bowdoin, he became a friend of future U.S. President Franklin Pierce. After college, he settled in Salem and continued writing. Hawthorne worked in the Boston Custom House in 1839 and 1840 and was a member of the idealistic Brook Farm community near Boston briefly in 1841.
Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842. They moved to the now-famous Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where he continued writing.
Hawthorne was surveyor of customs in the port of Salem from 1846 to 1849. In 1853, President Pierce appointed Hawthorne to a four-year term as United States consul in Liverpool, England. After 1857, Hawthorne lived in Italy and again in England before returning to Concord in 1860. He died on May 18 or 19, 1864, while visiting New Hampshire with Pierce.
His stories and sketches.
Between 1825 and 1850, Hawthorne wrote more than 100 tales and sketches for periodicals. Most of these works were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1842, 1851), Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), and The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1851).
The stories and sketches reveal themes central to Hawthorne’s imagination. He was haunted by the Puritan society of Massachusetts during the 1600’s. To him, the society was represented by his stern forefathers, especially John Hathorne, who was a judge during the Salem witchcraft trials. Hawthorne painted a grim picture of the Puritan past in “Young Goodman Brown,” “The May-pole of Merrymount,” and other short stories. He was one of the first writers in the United States to re-create the past of his native region. Hawthorne showed the effects of secret guilt in “The Minister’s Black Veil” and other stories. In “Wakefield,” he described the effects of voluntary isolation from society.
In “The Birthmark,” “Ethan Brand,” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” three of Hawthorne’s finest stories, the central characters suffer from intellectual pride. Hawthorne called such pride “the Unpardonable Sin,” describing it as the “sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence with God.” Other stories, such as “The Artist of the Beautiful,” show Hawthorne’s concern for the artist’s role in society. In “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” Hawthorne treated the conflict between youth and established authority.
Hawthorne’s sketches deal chiefly with New England scenes of his time. They range in tone from the light whimsy of “A Rill from the Town Pump” to the satire of “The Celestial Railroad” and the dark fantasy of “The Haunted Mind.” Hawthorne also wrote two popular children’s books, A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853).
His novels.
The Scarlet Letter (1850) is introduced by “The Custom House,” an essay in which Hawthorne sketched the novel’s background and his experiences as a customs official while writing the book.
The novel itself is controlled by a single idea—the suffering that results from sin. Hawthorne believed that sin—adultery in The Scarlet Letter—results in the isolation of the sinners. Isolation leads to suffering, and suffering leads to further sinning and further suffering. The spiral continues until the sinners either destroy themselves or seek forgiveness and rejoin the community.
The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan Boston. The plot is formed by the interactions of the adulteress Hester Prynne, the adulterer Arthur Dimmesdale, and Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth. Hester symbolizes the force of love. Dimmesdale, a minister, represents the spirit, and Chillingworth symbolizes the mind.
Hawthorne shaped his tale in four parts, each dominated by a single force. The force in the first section (Chapters 1-8) is the Puritan community; in the second (Chapters 9-12) it is Chillingworth; in the third (Chapters 13-20) it is Hester; and in the closing part, Dimmesdale. Each section centers on one great dramatic scene in a symbolic setting. The symbolic setting in the first, second, and fourth sections is the scaffold in the Boston marketplace, on which sinners were exhibited and shamed. The forest with its darkness is the symbol in the third section. Hawthorne expanded and intensified the meaning of the action by pictures of light and dark colors he created verbally and by his quiet, ironic tone.
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) tells the story of a curse placed on the House of Pyncheon by Matthew Maule, a victim of the Salem witchcraft trials. Hawthorne traces the curse’s effect on the Pyncheon descendants and describes their final reconciliation to their past.
The Blithedale Romance (1852), a tragic love story, is Hawthorne’s closest approach to a novel of observed life. Hawthorne drew his characters in part from the men and women he had known in the Brook Farm community.
The Marble Faun (1860) is a psychological study of two young American artists in Italy and their relationship with a mysterious woman painter and a young nobleman.
