American Literature
Excerpt taken from [Link]
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Mass., on July 4, 1804, into the sixth
generation of his Salem family. His ancestors included Puritan magnates, judges, and
seamen. Two aspects of his heritage were especially to affect his imagination. The
Hathornes (Nathaniel added the "w" to the name) had been involved in religious
persecution with their first American forebear, William, and John Hathorne was one of
the three judges at the 17th-century Salem witchcraft trials. Further, the family had over
the generations gradually declined from its early prominence and prosperity into relative
obscurity and indigence. Thus the Pyncheons and the Maules of Hawthorne's Salem
novel The House of the Seven Gables represent the two different faces of his
ancestors, and his feelings about his birthplace were mixed. With deep and
unbreakable ties to Salem, he nevertheless found its physical and cultural environment
as chilly as its prevalent east wind.
Early Life and Education
Nathaniel's father, a sea captain, died in 1808, leaving his wife and three children
dependent on relatives. Nathaniel, the only son, spent his early years in Salem and in
Maine. A leg injury immobilized the boy for a considerable period, during which he
developed an exceptional taste for reading and contemplation. His childhood was
calm, a little isolated but far from unhappy, especially since as a handsome and
attractive only son he was idolized by his mother and his two sisters.
With the aid of his prosperous maternal uncles, the Mannings, Hawthorne attended
Bowdoin College from 1821 to 1825, when he graduated. Among his classmates were
poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Franklin Pierce, the future president of the United
States, who was to be at his friend's deathbed;and Horatio Bridge, who was to subsidize
the publication of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales in 1837. At Bowdoin, Hawthorne read
widely and received solid instruction in English composition and the classics, particularly
in Latin. His persistent refusal to engage in public speaking prevented his achieving any
marked academic distinction, but he made a creditable record. On one occasion he was
fined 50 cents for gambling at cards, but his conduct was not otherwise singled out for
official disapproval. Though small and isolated, the Bowdoin of the 1820s was an
unusually good college, and Hawthorne undoubtedly profited by his formal education, as
well as making steadfast friends. Such men as Longfellow, Pierce, and Bridge remained
devoted to him throughout life, and each would render him timely assistance.
Years as a Recluse
Hawthorne's life was not externally exciting or remarkable, but it presents an interesting
symbolic pattern. As John Keats said of Shakespeare, he led a life of allegory and his
works are the comments on it. Returning from Bowdoin, Hawthorne spent from 1825 to
1837 in his mother's Salem household. Later he looked back upon these years as a
period of dreamlike isolation and solitude, spent in a haunted chamber, where he sat
enchanted while other men moved on. The "solitary years" were, however, his
literary apprenticeship, during which he learned to write tales and sketches that are
still unrivaled and unique.
Recent biographers have shown that this period of Hawthorne's life was less lonely
than he remembered it to be. In literal truth, he did have social engagements, played
cards, and went to the
theater and the Lyceum; his sister Elizabeth remarked that "if there was any gathering
of people in the town he always went out; he liked a crowd." Nevertheless, he
consistently remembered these 12 years as a strange, dark dream, though his view of
their consequences varied.
"In this dismal chamber Fame was won, " Hawthorne wrote, perhaps a little ironically, in
1836. To his fiancée, Sophia Peabody, he later confided, "If ever I should have a
biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so
much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were
formed." On the whole, he felt that his isolation had been beneficial: " … if I had sooner
made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered
with earthly dust, and my heart would have become callous by rude encounters with the
multitude"—an observation that he made more than once.
Writing the Short Stories
Most of Hawthorne's early stories were published anonymously in magazines and
giftbooks. In his own words, he was "for a
good many years, the obscurest man of letters in America." In 1837 the publication of
Twice-Told Tales somewhat lifted this spell of darkness. In the preface to the 1851
edition he spoke of "the apparently opposite peculiarities" of these stories. Despite the
circumstances under which they were written, "they are not the talk of a secluded man
with his own mind and heart … but his attempts, and very imperfectly successful ones,
to open an intercourse with the world." The Twice-Told Tales he supplemented with two
later collections, Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) and The Snow-Image (1851), along
with Grandfather's Chair (1841), a history for children of New England through the
Revolution; the Journal of an African Cruiser (1845), edited from the observations of his
friend Horatio Bridge while he was purser on an American frigate; and the second
edition of the Tales (1842).
Hawthorne's short stories came slowly but steadily into critical favor, and the best of
them have become American classics. It may well be claimed for them as a whole that
they are the outstanding achievement in their genre to be found in the English language
during the 19th century. Lucid, graceful, and well composed, they combine an
old-fashioned neoclassic purity of diction with a latent and hard complexity of meaning.
They are broadly allegorical but infused with imaginative passion. The combination has
produced very different opinions of their value, which Hawthorne himself acutely
foresaw, remarking that his touches "have often an effect of tameness, " and that his
work, "if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight
atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look
exceedingly
like a volume of blank pages" (1851 Preface, Twice-Told Tales). Hawthorne is a master
of balance and suggestion who inveterately understates: the texture of his tales, as of
his novels, is so delicate that some readers cannot see it at all. But many, too, will testify
as Herman Melville did to his "power of blackness." Of Hawthorne's story "Young
Goodman Brown, " Melville wrote, "You would of course suppose that it was a simple
little tale. … Whereas it is as deep as Dante: nor can you finish it, without addressing the
author in his own words: 'It is yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
sin."' Out in the World
By his own account it was Hawthorne's love of his Salem neighbor Sophia Peabody
that brought him from his "haunted chamber" out into the world. His books were far from
profitable enough to support a prospective wife and family, so in 1838 he went to work
in the Boston Custom House and then spent part of 1841 in the famous Brook Farm
community in hopes of finding a pleasant and economical haven for Sophia and
himself. It is curious that the seclusive Hawthorne was always interested in experiments
in community living: in Brook Farm, in the New England Shaker settlements, and later in
Greenwich Hospital in London. He was to record his mingled feelings of sympathy and
skepticism about Brook Farm in The Blithedale Romance (1852).
At any rate, Hawthorne and Sophia, whom he married in 1842, resorted not to Brook
Farm but to the Old Manse in Concord, where they spent several years of idyllic
happiness in as much
solitude as they could achieve. Concord, however, contained Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Ellery Channing, and Hawthorne was in
frequent contact with these important thinkers, though his was not a nature for
transcendental affirmations.
Writing the Novels
Facing the world once more, Hawthorne obtained in 1846 the position of surveyor in the
Salem Custom House, from which as a Democrat he was expelled after the Whig victory
in the 1848 presidential election. He did not leave without a fight and considerable
bitterness, and he took revenge in the "Custom-House" introduction to The Scarlet Letter
(1850) and in The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he portrayed his chief
Whig enemy as the harsh and hypocritical Judge Pyncheon. His dismissal, however,
turned out to be a blessing, since it gave him leisure in which to write his greatest and
crucial success, The Scarlet Letter. Except for his early Fanshawe (1828), which he
suppressed shortly after publication, The Scarlet Letter was his first novel, or, as he
preferred to say, "romance"; thus his literary career divided into two distinct parts, since
he now almost wholly abandoned the shorter tale.
The period 1850-1853 was Hawthorne's most prolific. Doubtless stimulated by the
enthusiastic reception accorded The Scarlet Letter, he went on with The House of the
Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, along with AWonder Book (1852) and
Tanglewood Tales (1853), exquisitely fanciful stories for children
from Greek mythology. During 1850 the Hawthornes lived at the Red House in Lenox in
the Berkshire Hills, and Hawthorne formed a memorable friendship with novelist Herman
Melville, whose Arrowhead Farm was some miles away on the outskirts of Pittsfield. The
association was more important to Melville than to Hawthorne, since Melville was 15
years younger and much the more impressionable of the two men. It left its mark in
Melville's celebrated review of Mosses from an Old Manse, in the dedication of his
Moby-Dick, and in some wonderful letters. Hawthorne's share in their correspondence
has not survived, but he clearly aided Melville with insight and sympathy.
Years Abroad
In 1852 Franklin Pierce was elected to the presidency of the United States, and
Hawthorne, who was induced to write his campaign biography, was appointed to the
important overseas post of American consul at Liverpool, in which he served form 1853
to 1857 with considerable efficiency. These English years resulted in Our Old Home
(1863), a volume drawn from the since-published "English Note-Books." It was to give
considerable offense to the English public. Hawthorne felt a very deep affinity for "our
old home, " but as with his other "old home, " Salem, his feelings were mingled, and he
did not hesitate to express them. In 1857 the Hawthornes left England for Italy, where
they spent their time primarily in Rome and Florence. They returned to England, where
Hawthorne finished his last and longest complete novel, the "Roman romance" The
Marble Faun (1860). They finally returned to the United States,
after an absence of seven years, and took up residence in their first permanent home,
The Wayside, at Concord, which Hawthorne had bought from Bronson Alcott.
Last Years
Hawthorne was to live only four more years. Although he had always been an
exceptionally vigorous man, his health inexplicably declined; and since he refused to
submit to any thorough medical examination, his malady remains mysterious. During
these last years in Concord he struggled with no less than four romances, The
Ancestral Footstep, Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, Septimius Felton, and The Dolliver
Romance, but completed none of them. Ironically, they are obsessively concerned with
the theme of "earthly immortality" and the "elixir of life, " which he had earlier touched
upon in stories like "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (Twice-Told Tales).
Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864. He had set off for the New Hampshire hills with
Franklin Pierce. He had always been fond of such expeditions and hoped to benefit
from this one. But he died the second night out in Plymouth, N.H., presumably in his
sleep. The circumstances of his end were somehow representative of the man, at once
settled and at the same time restless when too long in one place. He once said that
New England was enough to fill his heart, yet he sought the broader experience of
Europe. Modest in expectations, he had yet desired to live fully.
Hawthorne's Literary Background
The case of Hawthorne is complex, in his life and in his writings. A born writer, like
Edgar Allan Poe he suffered the difficulties of the writer in early-19th-century America:
an unsympathetic environment, the materialism of a physically expanding nation, the
lack of an artistic tradition. His Puritan heritage was both a support and a drawback. Its
tradition of soul-searching encouraged profundity, and its penchant for seeking God's
Providence in natural events provided Hawthorne with a way of seeing and interpreting.
It was a highly literate tradition as well. It was, however, notoriously unfriendly to
art—fiction as make-believe was mere vanity, and as imitation of God's creatures and
creations it was idolatry. A natural artist, Hawthorne was always to worry about the
morality of imitating and analyzing human nature in his art of fiction.
With his Puritanism, Hawthorne also inherited the Augustan culture of the early 18th
century—a common case in New England, but especially powerful in his. Thus came the
purity of his prose style, and its coolness and balance, in a sense retrogressive in his
own time. Yet he was also responsive to the influence of his near contemporaries, the
English romantics. He read widely and was vitally influenced by all the chief romantic
poets, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and John Keats. Hawthorne drew especially upon Coleridge's critical principles
for his own theory of the prose romance. Like the romantics, he too desired to live fully
and make the best use of his sensibilities, but his impulses were tempered by Augustan
moderation and Puritan self-distrust.
A serious and conscientious craftsman, Hawthorne yet was not committed (as was
Henry James) to the craft of fiction, not being minded to sacrifice either himself or those
who depended upon him to its demands. He held a rather too pessimistic view of his
own talent, and his deep Puritan skepticism of the value of merely human effort was
also a deterrent to complete dedication to fiction; the volume of his writing is substantial
but not great.
Power of Darkness
Hawthorne's belief in Providence could be discouraging, but it was also a source of
strength. Along with Melville, he was one of the great "no-sayers" of 19th-century
America. He accepted, imaginatively if not literally, the doctrine of the Fall of Man, and
thus the radical imperfection of man. In his work there is as much light as darkness, but
the dark is perhaps the more dramatic hue. In imaginative literature evil can be an
esthetic element with the dark as a contrast to light; and Hawthorne used contrast so
effectively that Henry James believed his "darkness" to be mere fanciful playing, with
evil and pain used simply as counters in his fictional game. Melville, however, perceived
more deeply that Hawthorne might be fascinated with the problem of evil as an element
of his design, yet at the same time treat it with the utmost seriousness ("Hawthorne and
his Mosses").
Tragedy is traditionally the most complex literary form, while it is also an imaginative
testing ground, in which the human spirit is broadened and deepened by its struggle
with the utmost
imaginable adversity. In The Scarlet Letter, for example, the protagonists Hester and
Dimmesdale are opposed not only by Puritan society but by something in
themselves, and by a mysterious and invisible principle of reality still more powerful.
Allegorical Structures and Themes
Hawthorne's fictional structures are basically allegorical confrontations of good and evil,
and his characters can usually be classified as types. He writes, however, not to prove
points or teach moral lessons, which are themselves his fictional materials rather than
his conclusions. The House of the Seven Gables, for instance, has a message, "the
truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and,
divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable
mischief." But Hawthorne reflects that when romances do teach anything, "it is usually
through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. … A high truth, indeed, fairly,
finely, and skillfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final
development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and
seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first" (Preface, The House of the
Seven Gables).
Isolation or "alienation" is Hawthorne's principal theme and problem, and loss of
contact with reality is the ultimate penalty he envisions. Characteristically, this results
from a separation of the "head, " or intellect, and the "heart, " a term that includes the
emotions, the passions, and the unconscious. The heart is the custodian of man's
deepest potentialities for good and evil,
and it is man's vital connection with reality. Too much "head" leads always to a
fatal intellectual pride, which distorts and finally destroys the wholeness of the real
world. This, for Hawthorne, is the worst sin or calamity that man is heir to.
