HUX 575 - KEY PERIODS AND MOVEMENTS: 19th Century American Literature

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HUMANITIES 575
KEY PERIODS AND MOVEMENTS: LITERATURE
19^th Century American Literature

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Chronology

1804-37	Nathaniel Hawthorne born July 4, on Union Street, Salem, Massachusetts, second of three children and only son of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hawthorne. Descended on both sides from prominent New England ancestors.
1808	Death of his father, a sea captain, at Surinam, in Dutch Guiana, leaving a widow and children poor and partially dependent on her relatives, the Mannings.
1809	Moved with his mother and sisters, Elizabeth and Maria Louisa, to the Manning house on Herbert Street.
1813	Was restricted in his activities by a foot injury, and thus was encouraged in his reading.
1818	Moved with his mother and sisters to land inherited from the Mannings at Raymond, Maine.
1819	Returned in July to Salem to study in Samuel Archer’s School.
1821-25	Attended Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce were his classmates.
1825	Returned to the "chamber under the eaves" in his mother’s house in Salem and spent a dozen years of relative seclusion, reading and writing, rather than entering a trade or profession, as was expected of him.
1828	Published Fanshawe: A Tale, anonymously and at his own expense. It drew heavily on his experiences at Bowdoin College. Later recalled the book and destroyed all the copies he could locate. October, traveled to New Haven, taking advantage now as he did later of the fact that his Manning uncles were stagecoach owners.
1830	Published in the Salem Gazette his first story, "The Hollow of the Three Hills."
1830-37	Wrote tales and sketches which appeared in newspapers, magazines, and especially The Token, an annual published by Samuel Griswold Goodrich.
1831	August, traveled in New Hampshire.
1832	September, traveled in Vermont and New Hampshire. Often was incognito on these summer excursions and stored his mind and his notebook with materials for use in his fiction.
1833	Summer, visited in Swampscott, near Salem, where he apparently made observations later incorporated in "The Village Uncle."
1836	March-August, edited The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge at Boston. With the help of his sister Elizabeth, wrote or excerpted from books and periodicals the matter required to fill each monthly issue.
1837	Published Peter Parley’s Universal History, which he wrote, again with Elizabeth’s help, for the Peter Parley series issued by Samuel Griswold Goodrich. Brought out a collection of eighteen stories and sketches in Twice-Told Tales. His Bowdoin classmate Horatio Bridge guaranteed the publisher against loss. July 3-August 5, visited Horatio Bridge at Augusta, Maine.
1838	July 26-September 11, visited North Adams, Massachusetts, and in his notebook recorded details of character, scene, and incident which he later employed in writing "Ethan Brand."
1839	Became engaged to marry Sophia Peabody, the semi-invalid daughter of Dr. Nathaniel and Amelia Peabody. Her sister Elizabeth was a teacher and a pioneer in the development of kindergartens; her other sister, Mary Tyler, became the wife of the educator Horace Mann.
1839-40	Measurer in the Boston customhouse. Wrote very little in these years except for the entries in his notebook.
1841	Published Grandfather’s Chair, Famous Old People, and Liberty Tree, composed of historical and biographical accounts written for children. April, joined the Brook Farm Community at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he hoped to provide a home and a living for Sophia and also reserve time for his writing. Invested $1,500 in the venture, but before the end of the year had withdrawn.
1842	Published an expanded edition of Twice-Told Tales in two volumes and Biographical Stories. July 9, was married to Sophia Peabody at Boston. Theirs proved to be an idyllic marriage.
1842-45	Lived at the Old Manse, Concord, where he had as neighbors and associates Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott. Wrote sketches and tales, "allegories of the heart," many of which were published in the Democratic Review.
1846	Published Mosses from an Old Manse. June 22, son Julian born.
1846-49	Surveyor in the Salem customhouse. Death of his mother while he was engaged in writing The Scarlet Letter.
1850	Published The Scarlet Letter, which won him considerable fame.
1851	Published The House of the Seven Gables, The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, and True Stories from History and Biography. May 20, daughter Rose born.
1851-52	Lived at West Newton, Massachusetts.
1852	Published The Blithdale Romance, which reflected in great detail his experiences at Brook Farm, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, and the campaign biography of Franklin Pierce.
1852-53	Lived at the Wayside, Concord.
1853	Published Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys.
1853-57	Appointed by President Pierce to serve as United States Consul at Liverpool.
1857-59	Lived in Rome and Florence. Frequented the art museums and wrote extended notebook entries which he later reworked for inclusion in The Marble Faun.
1859	Lived at Redcar, England.
1860	Published The Marble Faun, his last completed work of fiction. Returned to the Wayside. Strove in vain to finish another romance and at his death left four fragments: Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret, Septimius Felton, The Ancestral Footstep, and The Doliver Romance.
1862	March-April, visited Horatio Bridge in Washington, D. C Called on President Lincoln as a member of a delegation from Massachusetts. Wrote "Chiefly About War Matters."
1863	December, published Our Old Home, which contains a series of essays on England and English-American relations.
1864	April 10, was shaken by the death of his friend W. D. Ticknor. May 11, accompanied Franklin Pierce to New Hampshire in search of improved health. May 19, died at Plymouth, New Hampshire. May 23, was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord.

Hawthorne’s heredity, it is clear, tied him closely to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its repressive, authoritarian past. William Hathorne (Nathaniel himself later added the w) came to the colony in 1630, became a major in the Salem militia, a Speaker in the House of Delegates, and a stern magistrate who, as Nathaniel Hawthorne tells, was infamously recorded in Quaker history as having condemned "woman of their sect" to public whipping. His son John, as Nathaniel once again notes, "inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him." Thus, throughout his life, Nathaniel Hawthorne felt the pangs of inherited ancestral guilt, a concern he returned to again and again in his fictions. The man’s luminous literary career was marked by an obsessive need to explore, to try to understand, even, perhaps, to atone for the sins of his forebears. Deeply sensitive (some say morbidly so) to these Puritan backgrounds, Hawthorne repeatedly addressed in fictional context those painful dilemmas of Sin and Punishment, Guilt and Expiation, concerns that appeared to be his natural psychological inheritance.

A profoundly introspective person who deplored what he called his "accursed habit of solitude," Hawthorne examined the panorama of life in terms of symbolism and allegory (another Puritan legacy). He came to apply a dark and brooding aesthetic to his reflective, meditative study of the moral problems that have afflicted society eternally and universally; yet, both novels that we shall study are peculiarly American, their thematic roots anchored deeply in native soil. The Scarlet Letter, in particular, evolved into being as a mature, polished work through a series of incremental steps unfolding in the dramatic sensibility of this thoughtful artist, who forever jotted down ideas for use in projected stories. Here, for example, are notebook entries from the year 1844:

The search of an investigator for the Unpardonable Sin; he at last finds it in his own heart and practice.

ЗЗЗ

The Unpardonable Sin might consist in a want of love and reverence for the Human soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope or purpose of mankind it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity, content that it should be wicked in whatever kind or degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart?

ЗЗЗ

Sketch of a person, who, by strength of character, or assistant circumstances, has reduced another to absolute slavery and dependence on him. Then show, that the person who appeared to be the master, must inevitably be at least as much a slave, if not more, than the other.

ЗЗЗ

The life of a woman, who, by the old colony law, was condemned always to wear the letter A, sewed on her garment, in token of her having committed adultery.

Ever earlier, too, had Hawthorne been working toward the full, rich, allusive treatment of the effects of Sin—moral, psychological, symbolic—he ultimately achieved in The Scarlet Letter. "The Minister’s Black Veil" (1836) explores the phenomenon of secret or subjective sin; "Young Goodman Brown" (1836), similarly, explores hidden sin and hypocrisy, the revealing of a pure countenance to an unaware community but a dark soul to the Demon in the forest. "The Birthmark" (1843), "Rappaccini’s Daughter" (1844), and "Ethan Brand" (1848) deal with Hawthorne’s concept of the Unpardonable Sin, the violation of the human personality, the coldness of pure science when divorced from humane considerations: the alienation that occurs when one makes a "brother man" the nefarious subject of experiment. These serious themes—and more—energize Hawthorne’s complex examination of man’s dark side and man’s hope. In a critical study of Hawthorne published in 1879, Henry James (whom we shall be studying later) made this pertinent, significant observation:

The publication of The Scarlet Letter was, in the United States, a literary event of the first importance. the book was the finest piece of imaginative writing yet but forth in this country. There was a consciousness of this in the welcome that was given it—a satisfaction in the idea of America having produced a novel that belonged to literature and to the forefront of it.

Read The Scarlet Letter. Read the appended essay on Hawthorne by D. H. Lawrence. From among the wide range and number of critical studies of Hawthorne, many of which focus in part—and some totally—on The Scarlet Letter, read at least two essays that examine different problems of the novel.

MOTIFS, STRATEGIES, AND THEMES TO FOLLOW:

Note the patterning of The Scarlet Letter. The text appears to be divided into a clearly discernible structure:

Chapters 1-8: the defining motif is the community; one meets the entire Puritan social structure, from governor to witch. The dynamics of everyday life and attitude in the organized community is juxtaposed with the isolated Hester Prynne.
Chapters 9-12: the defining motif here is the rapid ascent to power of Roger Chillingworth, his complete domination over the weak, confused minister.
Chapters 13-20: Hester Prynne is the controlling figure in this section. Her strength, her efforts at salvation in spite of her pariah status, and her rational, reasonable attempt to transcend her sin bring this character to the height of Hawthorne’s perception into the meaning of expiation.
Chapters 21-24: This final section belong to the Reverend Dimmesdale who, at length, is reunited with his essential self by following the accepted Puritan path of public confession.

Each character seems to be on a Quest:

Dimmesdale seeks Salvation
Hester seeks Redemption
Chillingworth seeks possession of Dimmsdale’s soul
Pearl seeks her "heavenly father"

With his penchant for allegory, perhaps in working toward this pattern Hawthorne orchestrated the following arrangement:

Dimmesdale = the Soul
Hester = the Heart
Chillingworth = the Intellect
Pearl = Innocence, Truth

Note, too, that major scenes in The Scarlet Letter take place on the scaffold of the pillory. First, Hester is seen there with infant Pearl, visible symbol of the mother’s sin. Next, Hester and Pearl are joined there one evening by Dimmesdale where the three "formed an electric chain." Finally, Dimmesdale’s Election Day confession is made there, as satanic Roger Chillingworth tries to urge him to maintain the dark secret that has corroded the Puritan minister’s soul.
Hawthorne sets up, as it were, a hierarchy of Sin. Some are worse than others, but the vilest is the Unpardonable Sin. What exactly is it?
Observe and analyze Hawthorne’s symbolism. How does he use the following:

the black flower?
the letter A?
a "dark, flabby leaf"?
the brook?
the forest?
the scaffold?

Hawthorne uses light and dark imagery throughout The Scarlet Letter. Note instances and explain their symbolic value.
Hawthorne uses deliberate ambiguity with a fine, aesthetic touch. Note, at this climactic scene:

	With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from
		before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to
		describe that revelation.

What was revealed? And in this same realm of ambiguity, what were some suggested meanings in the text for the letter A?

What is the relevance of the opening chapter "The Custom House"?

There are, indeed, many ways to approach a reading of this fiction, for as a true masterpiece it contains elements that continue to resonate in readers for generations after it was composed.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

For your continued study of The Scarlet Letter, then, here is a listing of some useful sources. This list—like all other bibliographical entries in this course—is by no means definitive. Our classic American authors have become veritable "industries" to critics and scholars. Thus, you might well consult valuable commentaries not set down here; nevertheless, here are some suggestions:

Crews, Frederick C. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne’s Psychological Themes. NY: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Fogle, Richard H. Hawthorne’s Fiction: The Light & the Dark, revised ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964.

Hoeltje, Hubert H. Inward Sky: The Mind & Heart of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Durham: Duke University Press, 1962.

James, Henry. Hawthorne. London: Macmillan, 1879. Reprinted by Cornell University Press, 1956.

Male, Roy R. Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957.

Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1980.

Miller, Edwin H. Salem Is My Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991.

Stewart, Randall. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.

Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography. NY: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne. NY: William Sloane Inc., 1949.

Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Man & Writer. NY: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955. Revised edition, 1963.

Woodberry, George. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1902. Reprinted, 1967. The following texts deal exclusively with The Scarlet Letter:

Colacurcio, Michael. (ed.) New Essays on The Scarlet Letter. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Gerber, John C. (ed.) Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Scarlet Letter. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968.

Gross, Seymour. (ed.) A Scarlet Letter Handbook. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1960. Reprinted, 1967.

Kesterson, David B. (ed.) Critical Essays on The Scarlet Letter. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. These texts deal exclusively with The House of The Seven Gables:

Asselineau, Roger. (ed.) Merrill Studies in The House of The Seven Gables. Columbus, OH: Chas. Merrill Co., 1970.

Buitenhuis, Peter. The House of The Seven Gables: A Reading. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991.

Gross, Seymour. (ed.) Norton Critical Edition of The House of The Seven Gables. NY: Norton, 1967.

Read The House of The Seven Gables. Check into some secondary source commentary on this novel.

MOTIFS, STRATEGIES AND THEMES TO FOLLOW:

a.	For an aesthetic/historical background, you might keep in mind this excerpt from Hawthorne’s American Notebook of 1844:
	To represent the influence which Dead Men have among living affairs; for
		instance, a Dead Man controls the disposition of wealth; a Dead Man sits on the judgment seat, and the living judges do but respect his decisions; Dead Men’s opinions in all things control the living truth; we believe in Dead Men’s religion; we laugh at Dead Men’s jokes; we cry a Dead Men’s pathos; everywhere and in all matters, Dead Men tyrannize over us.

Note the frequent Past/Present contrasts in the tale.

b.	See how substantially you can apply this assessment by Henry James in his pioneering study of Hawthorne:

The House of the Seven Gables: The drama is a small one, but Hawthorne does
	not put it before us for its own superficial sake, for the dry facts of the case, but for something in it which he holds to be symbolic and of large application, something that points a moral and that it behooves us to remember, the scenes in the rusty wooden house whose gables give its name to the story, have something of the dignity both of history and tragedy

c.	Observe and analyze Hawthorne’s symbolism. How does he employ the following:

posies?

the garden?

an arched window?

soap bubbles?

the house?

a daguerreotype?

the well?

the train?

d.	Watch once more the Puritan patterning of the novel with its emphasis on themes of Sin, Guilt, Expiation, and Retribution; its Gothic use of the dark witchcraft behind Maule’s Curse; its study of Alienation and isolation, Greed and Pride.

e.	While The Scarlet Letter was rigidly focused on the small, circumscribed Puritan community, The House of the Seven Gables moves into the outside world; there is charted a clear journey from Isolation to Community. This novel, thus, is regarded as an early tale on the new, unfolding phenomenon: urban America.

f.	Explain Clifford as "The Artist of the Beautiful," an aesthetic type Hawthorne defined as being necessarily obsessed with Beauty and therefore insulated from the harsh practicalities of a mundane, pedestrian society which had little regard for such "unproductive whimsies."

g.	Holgrave as modern man? Holgrave as scientist? Holgrave as artist? Holgrave as a newly emerging American sensibility capable of rejecting a domineering past? Holgrave as hero?

Mathew Maule and Alice Pynchon: how are elements of both the Puritan ethic and the urge toward Modernism reflected in the tale of their relationship? Hawthorne’s use of the 19^th century pseudo-science of Mesmerism contributes the Gothic aura of darkness and mystery. Can the doctrine of Total Depravity (Original Sin) and Election (Predestination) be made to operate in the author’s aesthetic here?

i.	How important is the distinction between Novel and Romance made by Hawthorne in his Preface?

"The end of an old race—this is the situation that Hawthorne has depicted," says Henry James. Thus, the HOUSE of Usher"; and that in the 20^th century which William Faulkner examined in "the fall of the HOUSE of Compson" so chronicled in his novel The Sound and the Fury. Was Hawthorne offering his personally orchestrated obituary for the long legacy of the magistrates William and John Hawthorne?

ASSIGNMENTS:

Now that you have read the novels and consulted secondary source material, it is time to write your Hawthorne paper, if you have chosen OPTION A (A, I suppose, would be a very appropriate option for Hawthorne!). You may develop and work out your own topic; you may be guided by the suggestions offered under "Motifs, Strategies, and Themes"; you may find ideas and directions amidst the secondary sources. Document (footnote!) your sources fully.