Lecture 5.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)
- Background:
Period of the American Renaissance (1836-1861, the term coined by F.O. Mathiessen):
Discovery of the SELF as central category (auto-nomos vs. 17th c. theo-nomos and 18th c. hetero-nomos)
“The true meaning of the Spiritual is: Real” (Emerson)
19th Century Transcendentalism
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Nature (1836): the relationship between Man and Nature transcends usefulness; emphasis on the metaphysical joy of the possibility of becoming one with the Universe, unique intimacy, the idea of the Oversoul
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): Walden (1854): the choice of self-isolation from a corrupt civilization “solitude” as ideal state
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Loosely related to the Transcendentalists (his wife: Sophia Peabody, sister of Elizabeth Peabody, member of the Transcendentalist group), but genuinely, existentially interested in the darker side of these questions.
Basic themes:
isolation the possibility of becoming “the Outcast of the Universe” (“Wakefield”)
sin concealed and hidden in every heart – the dark layers of the soul have their metaphysical scope as well; the sins of society
lack of privacy (man in society: a fact, not a choice, a doom in itself)
the “Horror of the Unknown”the familiar world turning inside out (“the moonlit familiar room”—Introductory to The Scarlet Letter) American Dream vs. American Nightmare
moral ambiguity (good vs. bad at stake, except one can never know which is which)
puritanism(ancestors: Judge John Hathorne, Salem witch trials 1692 “Goody” Cloyce, Martha Carrier, “Goody” Corey) – painful sense of belonging and not belonging to this prominent New England family
Puritan ideas: -- predestination
-- innate depravity
Sovereign God, unpredictable, salvation: only by faith and grace
BUT: by the third generation, evidence vs. faith: distortion, “visible saints”, “spiritual fitness movement”, “spiritual calorie table”, community: members spying on one another: hypocrisy
temptation of, and failure in the possibility of human perfection (creation) in art and science (“The Artist of the Beautiful”, “The Birthmark”, “Rapaccini’s Daughter)
Basic forms:
the short story
-- Twice-Told Tales (1837), including “The Minister’s Black Veil”, “Wakefield”, “The Maypole of Merrymount”
Edgar Allan Poe: “Review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales”: the first theoretical work on the genre in America (importance of the unity of effect, to be read at one sitting). “We know of few compositions which the critic can more honestly commend than these Twice-Told Tales. As Americans, we feel proud of the book. Mr. Hawthorne is original at all points.”
-- Mosses from an Old Manse (1846), including “The Birthmark”, “Young Goodman Brown”, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
Herman Melville: “Hawthorne and His Mosses”: “What a wild moonlight of contemplative humor bathes that Old Manse! The rich and rare distilment of a spicy and slowly-oozing heart …. A humor so spiritually gentle, so high, so deep, and yet so richly relishable that it were hardly inappropriate in an angel”
YET: James T. Fields, publisher: “Hawthorne is an artist whose province is the sharp, penetrating and pitiless scrutiny of morbid hearts”
the novel -- “romance”: as opposed to thenovel that presents a daylight aspect of society described from an outer point of view, the romance presents the nighttime aspect of the relationship between the individual and society from an inner point of view, gothic elements, anxiety, guilt! “A” – “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all” (New England Primer)
3 romances “New England Trilogy” (Harry Levine)
The Scarlet Letter (1850) PAST
Adultery, discrimination, stigmatization, possibilities of self reliance, the sanctity of the human heart
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) PRESENT (governed by the past)
Decline of the Pyncheon family, Maule’s curse
The Blithedale Romance (1852) FUTURE (doomed by the past and the present)
Criticising the Transcendentalists, the “Brook Farm Experiment” (the possibility of a utopistic community)
On the basis of his experience as United States consul in Liverpool, England (1853-57) and his time spent in Italy (1857-59):
The Marble Faun (1860)
Comparison of American and European culture – the international theme (admired and later developed by Henry James)
Conclusion:
A career out of failure – well connected but not understood!
A “dissident” in society, suffering from the combination of loneliness and lack of privacy
Deliberate critical subversion of the American Dream into American Nightmare