Nathaniel Hawthorne18041864 Image Courtesy Library of Congress

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Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)Image Courtesy
Library of Congress
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Key Dates Hawthorne in Context

• Consider the classic American works published in
  a five-year period with the United States
  seventy-five years old
• 1850 Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter
• Emersons Representative Men
• 1851 Melvilles Moby-Dick
• 1852 Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin
• 1854 Thoreaus Walden
• 1855 Whitmans Leaves of Grass

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Key Facts about Hawthorne

• Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on
  July 4, 1804, into a family that had long been in
  the area One ancestor had come over in 1630 and
  another presided over the Salem witch trials.
• In 1825, he graduated from Bowdoin College, where
  he became friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  and Franklin Pierce (later to become the 14th
  president of the United States).
• After graduation, he spent the next twelve years
  in his mothers Salem home developing his
  literary skills. He called this period his
  twelve dark years in an effort to create a
  legend of a gloomy, solitary existence.
• In truth, he visited friends and frequented local
  taverns he took summer tours taking advantage of
  an uncles stage-line business and he found
  himself interested in long, sensational murder
  trials.

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Key Facts about Hawthorne

• Hawthorne, however, did develop a fascination for
  introspection, morbidity, and the dark side of
  existence. Thus, those years were more
  psychologically than socially dark.
• In 1837, Hawthorne published Twice-Told Tales, a
  collection of short stories that he had published
  in magazines. Sales were slight.
• Beginning in 1839 and until 1849, he worked at
  the Boston Custom House through political
  connections.
• In 1841, he spent seven months at Brook Farm, the
  Transcendentalist utopian community.
• 1842, he married Sophia Peabody and they settled
  in Old Manse, the home of Emersons ancestors and
  Emerson himself when he wrote Nature in 1836.

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Key Facts about Hawthorne

• With sales of his writings still meager, he
  returned to Salem and took a job as a surveyor in
  the Custom House in 1846. That same year, he
  issued a collection of short stories, Mosses from
  an Old Manse. When the Democrats were defeated in
  the 1849 election, Hawthorne lost his position in
  the Custom House. He began work on The Scarlet
  Letter.
• Published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter was an
  immediate success, bringing Hawthorne fame and
  profit.
• Now at the height of his powers, Hawthorne
  published major works, The House of the Seven
  Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Romance (1852).

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Key Facts about Hawthorne

• In 1852, Hawthorne wrote The Life of Franklin
  Pierce. When Pierce, his college friend became
  U.S. president, he rewarded Hawthorne by making
  him consul at Liverpool (1853-1857). The
  appointment gave Hawthorne a chance to tour
  England and Europe. In 1860, Hawthorne published
  the allegorical novel The Marble Faun, inspired
  by a year in Italy.
• Hawthorne returned home in 1860. His last years
  were marked by anxiety over financial worries and
  the Civil War.
• Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864 while on a walking
  tour.

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Key Issues Hawthorne and the Puritans

• Hawthornes best work was inspired by the
  Puritans. Consider The Scarlet Letter, Young
  Goodman Brown, The Ministers Black Veil, The
  Maypole of Merry Mount, and Ethan Brand.
• The Puritans gave Hawthorne artistic material
  from which he could speculate about the psyche
  and the effects of the past on the present.
• Hawthorne presents the Puritans as dour, gloomy,
  narrow-minded, and dismal wretches (ATIL, p.
  1336).
• For Hawthorne, the Puritan ethos represented a
  censorship of the imagination.
• Hawthornes portrait of the Puritans is harsh and
  not completely accurate. The Puritans did try to
  enjoy life they liked colorful clothes they
  took pride in well-kept homes and they liked to
  take a drink, although they despised the drunkard.

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Key Issues The Subconscious Mind

• Hawthorne is concerned with internal struggles
  and dilemmas, and what lies beneath the conscious
  mind.
• Internal forces often pull his characters in two
  directions.
• While Emerson calls on individuals to trust
  thyself and listen to their inner voice,
  Hawthorne seems to respond with a question which
  inner voice do I listen to?
• In My Kinsman, Major Molineux, Robin Molineux
  seems to be looking for his uncles residence
  and he is. But is he subconsciously trying to
  subvert this intention? What does Hawthorne
  mean, for instance, by Robins instinctive
  antipathy to authority (ATIL, p. 1303)?
• Consider Wakefield who leaves his wife on a
  whim-wham (p. 1321) remember Emersons whim
  in Self-Reliance (p. 936). Wakefields motives
  seem inscrutable.

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Key Issues The Journey Within the Loss of
Innocence

• Unconsciously, Hawthornes characters frequently
  wander into unfamiliar territories, sometimes
  representative of inner explorations, as in the
  allegorical Young Goodman Brown, whose journey
  into the heart of the solitary woods can be
  read as a journey into his own heart.
• Consider Goodman Browns inner investigation.
  How does it result in a loss of innocence?
• Frequently in Hawthorne, the loss of innocence or
  an awareness of a sin-ridden world has
  devastating results. Consider Ethan Brand and
  Goodman Brown. Why is Robin Molineux more
  fortunate?
• Characters are often confused by their new-found
  knowledge. Can Rappaccinis Daughter be
  interpreted with this in mind?

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Key Issues Sin

• Hawthorne is interested in the psychological
  aspects of sin, not the act of sinning or the sin
  itself. He focuses on the effects of the sin on
  the sinners and on those close to the sinners.
• Hawthorne investigates the effects of inherited
  sin, hidden sin, and the consequences of exposing
  sin.
• Many Hawthorne characters are obsessed with sin.
  Consider Ethan Brand, Goodman Brown, Reverend
  Hooper, John Endicott, and others.
• In Rappaccinis Daughter, Beatrice suffers for
  the sins of her father.
• The Scarlet Letter is a novel about sin.
  Consider the effects of the sin on Hester and
  Pearl consider Dimmesdales struggle with hidden
  sin, and the corruption of Chillingworth as he
  pries into the heart of another in an attempt to
  expose sin.

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Key Issues Sin

• In Hawthorne and his Mosses, Melville writes of
  Hawthorne
• Certain it is, however, that this great power of
  blackness in him derives its force from its
  appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate
  Depravity and Original Sin, from whose
  visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply
  thinking mind is always wholly free.

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Key Issues Isolation Withdrawal

• Many of Hawthornes characters live in isolation,
  frequently self-imposed.
• Hawthornes characters seem afraid of revealing
  themselves to one another.
• Many characters in Hawthornes fiction avoid
  marriage or intimacy Goodman Brown after his
  loss of innocence, Rev. Hooper, Ethan Brand, and
  Aylmer in The Birthmark.
• His characters replace intimacy with other
  external concerns.

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Key Issues The Search for Knowledge Perfection

• When Hawthornes characters strive for perfection
  of any sort, the results are devastating for them
  and their families.
• Intellectual pride operates throughout
  Hawthornes fiction Rappaccinis Daughter,
  The Birthmark, Young Goodman Brown, The
  Ministers Black Veil, and The Scarlet Letter.
• Consider Ethan Brand, in which the protagonist
  explains the unpardonable sin and its
  consequences.

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Key Issues Ambiguities

• Hawthornes fiction is complex. He is
  intentionally ambiguous as he captures the
  complexity of existence.
• The interplay of light-dark imagery in several
  works ( Young Goodman Brown, Ethan Brand, My
  Kinsman, Major Molineux in ATIL 11/e, shorter
  ed.) suggests not only an awareness of polarities
  but also the realization that polarities cannot
  always be reconciled. (This is also true of The
  Scarlet Letter, not included in the volume.)
• Very rarely are Hawthornes characters completely
  good or admirable, or completely evil.
• Hawthornes allegories and parables rarely lend
  themselves to neat interpretations. Consider
  Young Goodman Brown, The Ministers Black
  Veil. (This is also true of his complex novel,
  The Marble Faun.)

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Key Issues Ambiguities

• The world and morality are ambiguous in
  Hawthornes fiction, and yet as the laughter
  indicates at the end of several stories
  (Birthmark, Molineux), Hawthorne seems to be
  comfortable with ambiguity in a way that Melville
  was not. Hawthorne wrote of his friend He can
  neither believe nor be comfortable in his
  unbelief (Journal, November 20, 1856).
• Hawthorne seems to demonstrate what John Keats
  called negative capability that is when man
  is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries,
  doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact
  reason (Keats, letter, December 1817).

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Key Issues Intrusive Narrators Humor

• Intrusive Narrators
• Even in an era that welcomed intrusive narrators,
  Hawthornes are among the most surprisingly
  intrusive. Consider the comments on laughter in
  Ethan Brand, for example (ATIL, p. 689).
• Humor
• From time to time, Hawthorne can be humorous.
• He can be self-deprecating. Consider The
  Custom-House and his journals (not in this
  volume).
• He can be ironically humorous. Consider the many
  references to Robin Molineux as shrewd.
• In their lack of compassion, his characters can
  demonstrate perhaps a dark sense of humor
  Aminadabs inappropriate laughter in The
  Birthmark, Bartrams comment at the end of
  Ethan Brand, and the Man in the Moons comment
  at the end of Molineux.

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Key Issues Young Goodman Brown

• Hawthorne wrote Young Goodman Brown in 1835.
  It has become an American classic and, in many
  ways, is Hawthornes representative short story.
• In Goodman Brown Hawthorne explores his
  dominant themes, themes that would later find
  full force in The Scarlet Letter.
• Consider Puritanism in Goodman Brown
• Goodman Brown appears to be a potential leader of
  his Puritan community. Consider why he goes into
  the woods? Could he have been asked to
  investigate some kind of evil doings?
• Is Brown, like many of Hawthornes Puritans,
  preoccupied with the goodness and evil in others
  and himself? Does he seem morbidly
  introspective? Is he humorless and joyless?

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Key Issues Young Goodman Brown

• The Subconscious Mind and the Journey Within
• Consider the internal forces operating on Brown,
  which might include doubts about his own goodness
  and purity. Brown, newly married, is in a
  transitional state in his life.
• Consider the story as an allegory. Could the
  forest be Browns own heart and soul? Note how
  in the heart of the dark wilderness Brown was
  the chief horror of the scene (p. 645) or the
  reference to the heart of the solitary woods
  (p. 646).
• Consider the sudden appearance of his companion
  who bears a considerable resemblance to Brown
  (p. 642). Could he represent a part of Brown
  himself? The part Brown tries to resist but must
  yield to in his investigation?

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Key Issues Young Goodman Brown

• The Journey Within, the Loss of Innocence,
  Isolation and Withdrawal
• Consider the following The fiend in his own
  shape is less hideous than when he rages in the
  breast of man (p. 646 ).
• Browns companion tells him that all must
  penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
  sin (p. 648). Brown then realizes all that was
  wicked in his own heart and that evil is the
  nature of mankind (p. 648).
• Browns discovery, or self-discovery, leads him
  to lose his innocent Faith, as he shrank from
  the bosom of his wife (p. 649), withdrew from
  his community, and sank into a solitary and
  lifelong melancholy.

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Key Issues Young Goodman Brown

• Sin and Perfection
• Do Brown and the Puritans seem obsessed with sin
  in the story? Do they have an implicit belief
  that near perfection is possible?
• Ambiguities
• Light and dark images and shadows suggest
  distortion, uncertainty, and a lack of clarity.
  Consider the following
• The dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest
  trees concealed maybe Indians or maybe the devil
  (p. 641).
• At the time of the journey it was deep dusk and
  much could only be nearly discerned (p. 642).

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Key Issues Young Goodman Brown

• Consider the field, with red light and a fire
  blazing, hemmed in by the dark wall, where
  the congregation alternately shone forth, then
  disappeared in a shadow, and again grew out of
  the darkness (p. 646).
• The four blazing pines obscurely discovered
  shapes and visages of horror on the smoke
  wreaths (p. 647).
• Consider the lurid light and the questions
  about the basin hollowed in the rock (p. 648).
• In addition, sounds are unclear, indistinct (p.
  645).
• Ultimately, the story poses a question had Brown
  fallen asleep and dreamed his vision or did he
  witness an actual witch-meeting?

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Readings

• The American Tradition in Literature 11/e
• Read the heading and selections for Nathaniel
  Hawthorne (pp. 626-97)
• Ariel American
• Visit Ariel American and explore the resources on
  Hawthorne, including an electronic version of
  Young Goodman Brown with hyperlinked notes and
  a video clip of a dramatization of this classic
  tale.

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Writing Topics

• Compare Hawthornes and Poes use of Gothic
  settings and imagery, dreams and hypnagogic
  states (the state between sleep and wakefulness).
  
• Consider the hypnagogic state of Goodman Brown
  (pp. 640-49) with that of the narrator of The
  Raven (pp. 574-77). How because of this state
  do their surroundings take on different meanings?
  
• Consider the importance of setting to The
  Birthmark (particularly the laboratory) (pp.
  657-68) with that of Ligeia (pp. 581-91).
• Consider the Gothic overtones and the quests of
  the protagonists of The Ministers Black Veil
  (pp. 649-57) and Ethan Brand (pp. 686-97) with
  that of The Fall of the House of Usher (pp.
  597-604)