РефератыИностранный языкHaHawthorne Essay Research Paper Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne Essay Research Paper Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne Essay, Research Paper


Nathaniel Hawthorne


Nathaniel Hawthorne s life, as seen in his writing, shows solitary self analysis


expressed as symbolism which exhibits the weakness he found in all mankind. The ease in


which one can understand his symbolism has influenced American Literature.


Hawthorne s cynical themes of human nature were represented in The Ministers Black


veil, The Birthmark, and Rappaccini s Daughter. Hawthorne s preoccupation with


scientific and Puritan religious values shows his belief in mans shortcomings through the


faults of his main characters.


The solitary character, found in Hawthorne s short stories, was based on his own


life. He lived a reclusive life starting at four when his father died of yellow fever. His


mother, Elizabeth Clark Manning Hathorne, and her three children were forced to move


back to her father s house. In a house filled with thirteen others and a mother who


mourned her husband in seclusion Nathaniel found it necessary to spend as much time


alone as possible. His interest in reading began at seven when he injured his foot in a ball


game and recuperating for several years instilled in him the love of literature (Hart 320).


Being alone was a habit for him and deepened when he would spend time alone at his


family s lake in Maine ( Rivendell s). Later while going to Bowdin college he met and


became friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horatio Bridge and Franklin Pierce.


Although his first friendships would help establish his career as a writer he continued to


be withdrawn and lonely until he married Sophia Peabody in 1842 (Herzberg, 439).


The structured religious views that Hawthorne rebelled against were also instilled


in him at an early age. Although he grew up surrounded by Puritans, he was raised as an


Unitarian and clamed no church at all, his transcendentalist friends helped influence his


beliefs (American 228). Hawthorne s belief surmounted that happiness requires a oneness


of mind, heart, spirit, will, and imagination. In 1839 he invested time and money into a


socialist society experiment called Brook Farm Community. Finding that his nonsocial


behaviors continued to hinder him Nathaniel left after only a few short months (American


224). All of his conflicting ideas about the Puritan religion, original sin and his own place


in the world has let the reader understand Hawthorne s journey of self awareness.


In 1828, after leaving college, he privately published his first novel Fanshawe. He


was unhappy with the response and withdrew it from circulation (Herzberg 440). Only


writing for magazines his stories caught the public eye and in 1837 a compilation of his


short stories were publisher as Twice – Told Tales. According to James D. Hart,


Hawthorne was quoted in saying that the stories in Twice – told tales were the pale tint of


flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade . One of these stories that deals with his


views on Puritanism was The Ministers Black Veil.


The Ministers Black Veil is a story in which the parishioner s of the puritan church


are taken aback by their ministers insistence in wearing a black veil over his face. The


minister symbolized Hawthorne s own solitary life. Hawthorne felt that he was alone in a


crowd and separated from others. He could not walk the streets……the genteel and timid


would turn aside to avoid him , the children fled from his approach, breaking their


merriest sports . The black veil was a material emblem (that) separated him from


happiness but it also made Father Hopper a very efficient clergyman in that he could


sympathize with all dark affections and Strangers came long distances to attend service


at his church (Lauter 2222).


Some believe that the Hawthorne s internalized guilt over his family’s past history


caused him to add the W to his Name. His ancestors were William Hawthorne who in


1630 ordered the whipping of a Quaker woman and 1692 John Hathorne was a judge in


the Salem witch trials (Magill 197). Hawthorne s feelings of Puritan history shaped his


religion guilt which manifested itself in The Ministers Black Veil. The black veil


symbolized how the religious feel that their beliefs protect them and make them above


reproach. Letting the reader wonder what the secret sin of the Minister was, demonstrates


Hawthorne s idea that we will never know what misdeed men hold in their heart and if the


deed was exposed it would separates us more. He names Puritans as hypocrites when


Father Hopper says Tremble also at each other! …. on every visage a Black veil! . The


theme of The Ministers Black Veil could be summed up in the sermon Father Hopper


gave The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from


our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even


forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them (Lauter 2217 -2224). The Puritans, in


Hawthorne s eyes, were full of moral pride and self righteous indignation, too busy


judging each other and not themselves.


After Hawthorne published Twice – Told Tales, thanks to Franklin Pierce, he


enjoyed a brief period of employment at the Boston Common House (Bowmen). In 1841


he moved to Brook Farm trying to combine his writing and his practical life, but daily


labors kept him unsatisfied and he stayed only six months before his need to write


compelled him to leave (American 224). In 1842 Nathaniel and Sophia were married and


moved to Old Manse in Concord, where he finally allowed someone to share in his


solitude. After living there for three years he published Mosses from Old Manse which


contain The Birthmark and Rappaccini s daughter (Comptons).


The Birthmark also represented a solitary figure being separated by mankind. After


being married only a short time Georgiana, the heroin in the Birthmark, isolates herself


from her husband because of an offending mark on her face. Her husband Aylmer, a


scientist who shutters at the sight of the birthmark found this one defect grow more and


more intolerable, with every moment of their lives. Being a scientist of great knowledge


Aylmer decides it is his duty to remove Georgiana s visible mark of earthly


imperfection . In the Ministers Black Veil the minister is separated because of the symbol


of sin. Georgiana s is also separated when Aylmer selects the birthmark as the symbol of


his wife s liability to sin, sorrow, decay and death … (Lauter 2225 – 2226).


Another woman isolated by a secret sin is Beatrice in Rappaccini s Daughter.


Rappaccini who cares infinitely more for science than mankind raised Beatrice so that


she had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature was


so imbued with them, that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence . Even


though her sin was not visible as the black veil or the birthmark poison was her element


of life . She could not go out of the garden because as she told Giovanni the effect if my


father s fatal love of science … estranged me from all society of my kind ( Lauter 2241 -


2250).


Hawthorne reveals his feeling toward science and men of higher learning in The


Birthmark and Rappaccini s Daughter. The Puritans believed that their religion prot

ected


them from sin with Gods help, but the scientists believed that they were God in creating


their scientific experiments. In The Birthmark, the assistant, Aminadab is a man of low


stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage … his shaggy hair,


his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that encrusted him, he seemed to


represent man s physical nature but Aylmer description is the opposite Aylmer s slender


figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element .


Thinking himself God – like Aylmer calls Aminadab man of clay and continues with his


experiments to create perfection in the form of his wife (Lauter 2228-2234).


The conflict between science and God is represented in the climax of the stories.


Georgiana, with the symbol of the Hand of God upon her cheek, has been left to be


sacrificed by Aylmer a scientist with a God complex. In the end he succeeds in removing


the blemish but only by losing her because she is fit for heaven where she is made


perfect by the real God (Lauter 2228-2234). The garden in Rappaccini s Daughter is


described as the Eden of present day where Rappaccini has placed Beatrice and


Giovanni as Adam and Eve. Shortly after declaring to Giovanni though my body be


nourished with poison, my spirit is God s creature, and craves love as its daily food …


Yes; spurn me! – tread upon me! – Kill me! Giovanni gives her the antidote, made by a


rival scientist, that is almost divine in its efficacy and does succeed in sending Beatrice


where the evil… will pass away like a dream (Lauter 2239 – 2255).


Hawthorne s disdain for scientist is evident that he always makes them the villain


in his stories. In The Birthmark Aylmer s laboratory has the appearance of hell. Alylmer


in his youth, had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature … he had satisfied


himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano … from the dark


bosom of the earth In the lab there was a furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with


the intense glow of its fire … seemed to be burning for ages . Nathaniel did not take his


own work as seriously as his scientific characters (Lauter 2228 – 2233). The beginning of


Rappaccini s Daughter is filled with self mockery where he makes fun of his own writing


career. In Rappaccini s Daughter Rappaccini has put science before even his own health


he was like a person in inferior health. His face was all overspread with the most sickly


and sallow hue because He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, of


whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard


seed to the greatest heap of his accumulated knowledge (Lauter 2236 – 2244). The men


of scenic in both stories have put their love of science before everything including their


lives and loves.


Nathaniel was married at the time he wrote Mosses from an Old Manse so the


reader would think that it effected his views on women. When Georgiana realizes that her


husband will go to any lengths to remove the mark upon her face she does not question his


motives because she doesn t want to lose his love. Even after she is told the experiment


could be dangerous she cries out There is but one danger – that this horrible stigma shall


be left upon my cheek! …. Remove it! remove it! – whatever the cost – or we shall both


go mad! She also foreshadows her own death by stating I might wish to put off this


birth-mark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself …. (Lauter 2223 – 2224). Beatrice


is beautiful and is qualified to fill a professor s chair . Then Giovanni tells her that he has


heard how smart she is, she denies it by saying methinks I would fain rid myself of even


that small knowledge … Signor, do not believe these stories about my science. (Lauter


2241- 2247). Hawthorne calmed his own anxiety about marriage when he wrote The


Ministers Black Veil. Faced by a lifetime of Parson Hopper s black veil, Elizabeth is so


shallow that she replies Then, farewell! but Hawthorne redeems her later saying she was


the nurse … whose calm affection had endured thus Long, in secrecy, in solitude, amid


the chill of age, and would not perish, even at the dying hour of father Hopper (Lauter


2221 – 2223). Even though the women in Hawthorns stories are beautiful and good at


heart they are flawed which in the end brings about their own death or others. It seems as


though he though little of women but you must consider that women of the eighteenth


century are far different than today s woman. A married woman of the 1800 s had little


choice with her life.


After the writing of these short stories he wrote the novel that has made


him famous for his symbolism. Like many of his earlier stories The Scarlet Letter


contained a solitary figure isolated behind a symbol. After the publication of his greatest


novel he moved to Lenox, Massachusetts where he met and influenced the writings of


Herman Melville. Hawthorne became a consult in England with the help of life long friend


and President of the United States Franklin Pierce ( Rivendell s). After which Hawthorne


wrote little and continued his pessimistic views about his work. Finally able to enjoy a


degree of financial comfort he traveled through out Europe (Hart 358). On May


nineteenth, 1864, while traveling with Pierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne Died of a brain tumor


in Plymouth, New Hampshire (Rivendell s).


Nathaniel Hawthorne lifetime of writing gave us a standard in which all American


literature has been gauged. Hawthorne s work let us view his lonely existence, though the


guilt that he lived with and his personal views on traditional puritan roles and scientific


progress. The invisible ghosts of ancestors influenced his feelings of isolation from society


and the symbols that he established separated his characters from life were representative


of his own. Although Nathaniel Hawthorne never became independently wealthy from his


writings his prominence in literature was established when he wrote The Scarlet Letter. If


he had accomplished nothing else in his lifetime this alone would be a monument to his


life.


Works Cited


American Writers a Collection of Literary Biographies, Volume II (1974) New York:


Charles Scribner s Son pg. 223 – 244


Bowmen J.S. (Ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography


Oxford UK: Cambridge University Press


Compton s Home Library (CD ROM) (1998) Compton s Interactive Encyclopedia


Soft Key Multimedia Inc.


Hart, James (1965) The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Forth and Fifth


Edition New York: Oxford University Press pg. 357 – 358


Herzberg, Max The Readers Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962) New York:


Thomas Y. Crowell Company pg. 439 – 441


Lauter, Paul (Ed.) The Heath Anthology of American Literature Third Edition (1998)


Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (2216 – 2255)


Magill, Frank (Ed.) (1980) Magill Surveys American Literature, Colonial Age to 1890


California: Salem Press Inc. pg. 197 – 200


Rivendell s American Literature Page Nathaniel Hawthorne Online Internet Available


at http://www.watson.org/rivendadell/americanlitature.html

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