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be withdrawn and lonely until he married Sophia Peabody in 1842 (Herzberg, 439).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