HAWTHORNE AND THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE
From Pennell, Melissa McFarland. Masterpieces of American Romantic Literature.
Greenwood, 2007. pp. 80-81.
In the early nineteenth century, writers transformed the historical novel from a narrative that used a historical period merely as a source of costume and event to one that attempted to convey the mindset and understanding of the characters as shaped by historical circumstances. Following the lead of Sir Walter Scott, authors incorporated into their fiction the manners and mores of a given historical era and used them to develop more fully the individuality of characters and to explore the conflicts their characters faced. Hawthorne was drawn to the potential the historical novel offered, but he wished for greater latitude in defining the scope of his narrative, so preferred the term “romance.” He felt the romance allowed an author the freedom to go beyond the everyday, to consider possibilities as well as probabilities. In Hawthorne’s view, the romance permits a writer to enter into what he calls in The Scarlet Letter a “neutral territory.” In that realm, the writer can “mingle” or merge the actual and the ideal. Calling his work a romance gave Hawthorne license to acknowledge that narrative is a product of the imagination while asserting the validity of the connections it makes between the tangible and the abstract.
Aware that earlier writers drew a line between fiction and fact, Hawthorne sought ways to suggest that truth stands behind fiction, even though fiction is the product of the imagination. He also wanted his readers to be aware that fiction may draw upon the record of history, but is not bound simply to repeat it. To Hawthorne, the romance invited an author to let the power of his or her imagination bring to light those aspects of experience that are usually hidden from public view. Drawing upon the New England past as he had come to understand it, Hawthorne used the narrative of The Scarlet Letter to explore issues such as the nature of passion, revenge, and guilt, as well as the power and meaning of symbols. By treating such issues through the dynamics of his characters lives, Hawthorne recovered more of the human drama of a particular era than what the factual record of history alone can reveal.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, whose historical romances entailed high adventure, expansive settings, and complicated plot lines, Hawthorne focuses his attention on the private conflicts and struggles experienced by his characters. He restricts the action to the small geographic area of the Boston settlement and its immediate surroundings. He places many of his important scenes in domestic interiors to underscore the dramatic tension in his characters’ private lives. Even the public space incorporated into the narrative, especially the scaffold, conveys an atmosphere of enclosure and restriction, contributing to the intensity of the narrative. The only time Hawthorne’s characters feel that they have any privacy and are free from the oversight of the Puritan community occurs in the forest, a space that Hawthorne associates with ideas of personal freedom, but which the Puritan community associates with moral danger and the devil’s influence.