Nathaniel Hawthorne, An American Classic
Puritan Writer of the New World
Whitman, Poe, Emerson, Whittier, Dickinson, Fuller, Thoreau, Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne comprise the generation of writers who invented American literature. Most were born after the turbulent days leading up to and following the American Revolution. Their writing often focused on lofty goals, despair, failure and was heavily influenced by the overriding effects of Puritanism, which seemed to contradict its own religious tenets with intolerance of Quakers and led to the now famous witchcraft trials of 1692.
Hawthorne Family History
Hawthorne family history preceded the birth of this Early American writer. The Hathornes (the family's original name) came to the New World as ardent Puritans in 1630, bringing with them unalienable religious struggles of generations of his ancestors. It may be said Hawthorne's own family history predicated his deep awareness and concern for the ills of Puritanism and the legacy it brought to America. His first American ancestor was William Hathorne. William Hathorne is recorded in history as giving the order for all Quakers to be beaten through the streets of Salem.
Continuing Legacy
John Hathorne, William's son, a judge during the horrors of the Salem witch trials, became all the more intolerant and infamous than his father had. One of his judiciary victims pronounced a curse upon Judge Hathorne and all of his descendents.
The Politics of the Times
It is not possible to ignore similiarities that exist between Hawthorne family history and evolving American history. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. Four years after his birth, his father, Nathaniel Sr., a sea captain, died of yellow fever in Surinam, leaving a wife, a son and two daughters. As an author, it is believed, Nathaniel added the "w" to the family name to disassociate himself from the past family history of the Salem Witch Trials.
Nathaniel Hawthorne inherited a sense of guilt as a result of the actions of his forebears. He sensed that this New World was torn between principles of democracy, liberty and equality and cruelty, violence and greed that seemingly guided economic and political life.
After his father's death, his family moved to Raymond, Maine, a place he would come to refer to as "delightful days". He returned to Salem to be educated. Under the influence of his uncle, Robert Manning, he was encouraged to attend college in Bowdoin. He met the future president Franklin Pierce on his way to Bowdoin and the future poet Longfellow.
Hawthorne, The Writer
It may be said Nathaniel Hawthorne began his writing in earnest around the year 1837. A dark, swarthy young man, he carved out a living as a weigher and gauger at Boston Common House. Shortly thereafter, he wrote several of his first works, short stories, Young Goodman Brown and The Minister's Black Veil which eventually were condensed by Horatio Bridge into Twice-Told Tales which would widen Hawthorne's writing reputation. His good looks notwithstanding, Hawthorne experienced several benign flirtations. In 1841, he married Sophia Peabody, a woman somewhat as reclusive as Hawthorne himself had been.
Hawthorne and Sophia, whom he referred to as Dove, eventually moved to Concord Massachusetts where his second literary compilation was written, Mosses From An Old Manse. The couple eventually bore three children: two daughters and a son. His writing life waned for several years until he finally wrote The Scarlet Letter in March of 1850. This was followed in 1851 by The House of Seven Gables and in 1852 by The Blithedale Romance. Later that year, he wrote the biographical Life of Franklin Pierce.
In 1853, Tanglewood Tales was published. He would write The Marble Faun in 1860, the first book he'd written in seven years, even as his health began to fail him. Four years later, Nathaniel Hawthorne, an inventor of American literature, died and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.
Sources:
- Randall Stewart, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography, Yale University Press 1948
- Introduction, Michael Boughn; Wordsworth Editions Limited 1995
- Colliers Encyclopedia
- Frederick Crews, The Sins of the Father; Hawthorne's Psychological Themes, NY Oxford University Press 1966
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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