Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864) Image Courtesy Library of Congress

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)Image Courtesy Library of Congress

2. Key Facts about Hawthorne • born in Salem, Massachusetts,1804, into a family that had long been in the area: One ancestor had come over in 1630 and another – Judge John Hathorne -- presided over the Salem witch trials. • In 1825, graduated from Bowdoin College - became friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce (14th president of the United States). • After graduation, he spent 12 years in his mother’s 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 uncle’s stage-line business; and he found himself interested in long, sensational murder trials.

3. Key Facts about Hawthorne • developed a fascination for introspection, morbidity, and the dark side of existence - more psychologically than socially dark. • 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).

4. Key Issues: Hawthorne and the Puritans • Hawthorne’s best work was inspired by the Puritans. These include The Scarlet Letter, “Young Goodman Brown,”“The Minister’s 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.” • For Hawthorne, the Puritan way of thinking represented a censorship of the imagination. • Hawthorne’s 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.

5. Puritanism vs. Romanticism • Hawthorne was a Romantic, which means that he valued individuality, free expression, passion, nature, chaos and wildness over order and precision, and emotion over fact. • The Puritans, however, valued religious instruction over everything else. They were Calvinists. (ancestors of Baptists and Presbyterians), which meant they believed that salvation was pre-determined. They did not deviate from religious dogma. However, they were quite optimistic and valued individuality and hard work.

6. 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. • His works are often moral allegories and deal with the “sinful man,” hypocrisy, and the “dark side” of human nature • They are also often religious in nature

7. 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. • The Scarlet Letter is a novel about sin

8. Key Issues: Isolation& Withdrawal • Many of Hawthorne’s characters live in isolation, frequently self-imposed. • Hawthorne’s characters seem afraid of revealing themselves to one another. • Many characters in Hawthorne’s fiction avoid marriage or intimacy. • His characters replace intimacy with other external concerns.

9. Key Issues: Ambiguities • Hawthorne’s fiction is complex. He is intentionally ambiguous as he captures the complexity of existence. • The interplay of light-dark imagery in several works suggests not only an awareness of polarities but also the realization that polarities cannot always be reconciled. • Very rarely are Hawthorne’s characters completely good or admirable, or completely evil.

10. Who were the Puritans? Wanted a “pure” church No candles No Images No stained glass windows Rejected the “showy” church of England Led very somber lives governed solely by a strict interpretation of the Bible No “nonsense” – dancing, gambling, drama, etc

11. Basic Beliefs of the Puritan Church Jesus Christ is the Son of God – died on the cross for all everyone’s sins The whole Bible is the word of God and it is to be followed to the letter. The belief that these ideas are fact are known as a person’s faith

12. Basic Beliefs of the Puritan Church Faith is what is necessary to get into heaven. If you don’t go to heaven you go to hell. Sins, as defined by the Bible, are to be avoided at all cost. A catechism is a book that is used to teach basic principles of the church. To challenge the catechism is heresy.

13. The Infamous Puritans The Salem Witch Trials put the Puritans prominently in the history books Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible put it in literature classes forever