Facts About Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne is most associated with Puritan America and best known for creating Hester Prynne, the ill-fated wearer of the scarlet letter. However, he was more than that. Reading his works gives you different perspectives on themes of morality, evil and God. Full of rich symbolisms, his works has fascinated readers and critics in their quest for the psychology, the moral, cultural and spiritual that is truly Hawthorne.

Born on the Fourth of July and named after his father, a ship captain who left his mother widowed when he was just four years old, Hawthorne loved to read as a child. He spent his boyhood in Salem and left to attend Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His uncle Robert became his guardian. Hawthorne, who "scorned a common fate and declined a predictable profession", choose to write, "relying for support upon my pen" (Reynolds 17). In college, he became friends with Horatio Bridge who underwrote his first publication of short stories (Twice-Told Tales) and Franklin Pierce who became the fourteenth President of the Unite States who gave him a post as consul so he can continue writing (18). His first novel, Fanshawe published in 1828 was a "deafening failure' but he continued writing. In July 9, 1842, he married Sophia Peabody, who was described as both a "lusty woman" and the "Angelic Victorian" woman who was "independent, brilliant, defiant" and at the same time "passive, meek, and adoring" (23).

His mother's death in 1849 gave him the freedom to write The Scarlet Letter and creating the ethereal Hester Prynne. Shortly after its publication, he moved to Western Massachusetts and wrote The House of the Seven Gables. Reynolds (29) stated that "Hawthorne was coining a psychological vocabulary in literary terms, just decades before Freud embarked on a similar project". Relocating to rural Lennox, he became Herman Melville's lifelong friend, suspected of some historians to have a relationship that was not platonic owing to Melville's bisexuality (Reynolds 30). He went on to help his friend Franklin Pierce's campaign for presidency, lived in England and Italy and went back to the US. Hawthorne, asking a favor from his friend Pierce, journeyed to New England one last time and died in the Pemigewasset House in Plymouth, New Hampshire on May 19, 1864 (Reynolds 42).

Hawthorne has been inextricably linked with writers such as Freud and Henry James for his deeply psychological insight into the human mind and soul. Pfister describes Hawthorne's writings as a "history of a distinctively middle-class personal life that encompasses the family, gender, emotional relations, the body and sexuality" (2). The Scarlet Letter is his most famous work, giving us the story of a woman who had a scandalous affair with a minister. Adultery in Puritan America was not only a grave sin but it signified an end to a life where she will forever be branded with the mark that will separate her from society.

Exclusivity is evident and conformity is not only a virtue held in high esteem but also a key to survival. Being separated as a non-conformist means a life alone, shunned by the community as well as the merchants who sells food and other necessities. In Daniels' (221) analysis of the book, the woman branded was no more than an "accessory". Pearl, the fruit of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale's sin becomes the focus of the whole book. She is described as the "scarlet letter in another form, the scarlet letter endowed with life" (Daniels 221). Pearl has oftentimes been the symbol of their dishonor, the "badge of shame" if you will (222). Pearl's function as a living symbol of Hester's adultery, ability, affection, and role as feminine angel, connected to the story only through Hester's heart and emotional acuity, fails to acknowledge Hawthorne's complexity of character development in Pearl. In this analysis, she becomes nothing more than the scarlet letter personified" (223). However, Daniels also gives another interpretation of young Pearl's role as the 'effluence of her mother's lawless passion,' is the 'living emblem' of Hester's guilt not so much because she resembles the scarlet letter, but rather because she embodies what the letter can only represent--the very passions which motivate Hester's transgression, and the sufferings that accompany her punishment" (223). In the Scarlet Letter, Pearl evokes a more powerful symbol than the A on Hester's breast.

Hawthorne's short stories are also full of allegories told in such simple narrations that its simplicity betrays the symbolic power behind them. His Mosses from an Old Manse, written in their old house in Salem contained some of his best short stories. The Birthmark is a domestic story of a wife, Georgiana who posses a distinct birthmark on her cheek which became his husband Aylmer's obsession. Pfister (18) interprets Aylmer's action as truly psychological, describing him as an obsessive compulsive. "Through his choice of verbs, Hawthorne insinuates that our spotless scientist may still have dirty work in mind: he "cleared his fine countenance from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife." As the narrative unfolds, we find that where there's smoke, there's fire. This first cleansing is key: we see his effort to "clear" himself of signs of his "chemical" affinity, furnace-smoke, and the stain of acid" (18). Aylmer is interested in alchemy and uses science to remove the birthmark which he considers his only wife's defect, the only "visible mark of earthly imperfection" (Hawthorne 32). The Birthmark is a story of sexual repression and Aylmer's "prenuptial scrubbing" is compared to a purification ritual to rid the mind of dirty thoughts, which Pfister says (23) is a desire to masturbate. It is precisely this repressed and compulsive nature of the male character that in order for him to possess Georgiana's body and soul, she must be cleaned and free from imperfections.

Another story from the Mosses, Rappaccini's Daughter is a more exciting read. The premise is very old, that of a woman being a poison to men. To the young Giovanni, Beatrice is the only woman he wants, and the only one he can't have. Pfister (63-64) gives a paradoxical interpretation giving Beatrice the innocence and simplicity of a woman who has not been corrupted by the outside world. Confined to his father's garden, Beatrice, although poison herself becomes the victim and Giovanni is the monster symbolizing the "poisonous world outside". The imagery of flowers and plants everywhere gives us the distinct symbol of the feminine and her wiles. Pfister (65) states that this story may well be a symbolic reflection of her own experiences with the women in his life.

Considered as one of Hawthorne's greatest works, the House of the Seven Gables is also a symbol of discourse (Pfister 146). The gothic structure and description of the house lends to its mystery as well as creating frightening image in the reader's mind. Hawthorne, however, uses its gothic appeal to symbolize "the secret weapon of the middle class" where capitalists (in the form of Judge Pyncheon) are revealed as decaying relics of yesteryears (146). In this way, he inflicts a psychological curse on "those grasping mercantile monkeys whose sole desire is to accumulate "ill-gotten gold, or real estate" (147). Phoebe, the Pyncheons' cousin who grew up in the country, was created to "fumigate the malodorous damp rot and dry rot of the gothic' (149). She is the symbol of the middle class herself who helps around the house, a true domestic. Hawthorne suggests that she "can be of far greater cultural and psychological use" to those who are psychologically tattered like her cousin Clifford Pyncheon (150). Her simplicity and resilience in all aspects of her life makes her stronger than the delicate rich relatives. Phoebe's representation of the middle class and their struggle is accurate.

Nathaniel Hawthorne has become an iconic figure in American literature, contributing insight into human psychology, morality and ethics, the hierarchal structure of society and to literature in general. Although quite entertaining, his writings are also full of symbolic narratives reflecting the people of his time who couldn't express their own desires.
Works Cited

Daniels, Cindy Lou. Hawthorne's Pearl: Woman-Child of the Future. ATQ. Volume: 19.
Issue: 3. 2005: 221+.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Mosses from an Old Manse. Volume: 1. New York: 1888.

Pfister, Joel. The Production of Personal Life: Class, Gender, and the Psychological in
Hawthorne's Fiction. Stanford University: Stanford, CA: 1991.

Reynolds, Larry J. A Historical Guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oxford University Press.
New York: 2001.