Hawthorne had said that “a pure hand needs no glove to cover it,” thus his hand was the purest of them all. His literature, which inspires and entertains millions of people around the world, reveals so much about him that it seems like he stood right next to the reader. Born on a date that would later almost explain the magnitude of his accomplishments, July 4th, Nathaniel Hawthorne was destined to leave a long-lasting mark in this world. His ancestors gave him a past of a strong puritan mentality that would later shape his writing and his life.
Hawthorne’s father died when he was just a little boy, leaving his mom and her three kids at the mercy of the neighbors and relatives. His grandfather was a strong puritan leader who participated in the Salem with hunts, sentencing several women to death. That is possibly why the young author enjoyed the time when his mother isolated him from all evil and sin of the outside world. Hawthorne’s childhood was spent in the backcountry of Raymond, Maine. His enjoyment of this alienated life turned him into a romantic, able to sense nature’s goods and evils and put them down on paper like no other writer. The puritan lifestyle also influenced him deeply; the ideas of the watchful eye of God and civic virtue tormented this wonderful artist. Later he moved onto college where he met his friends, who would become disappointed at his friendship all the time. Hawthorne could not help he was a solitary boy who definitely preferred to be alone and undisturbed. He attended Bowdoin College in Maine where he joined delta kappa epsilon; a secret fraternity of aristocrats similar to the mason society.
After college, his career started. With the publication of his Twice-Told Tales came a need for more writing and a demand for it from the people. He kept devoting himself to his writing until he met the woman he would marry. In order to get enough money to marry Sophia he had to work at the Boston Custom house. He later started working with his hands and discovered a useful feature about this type of work. Brook Farm was a place where he could think philosophically while working with his body; the perfect mix of mind and body. This spiritual paradise had to end, after moving he started working at the Salem Custom House, settled and calm. There he finally collected the money necessary to marry the woman he would love for the rest of his life. They moved to concord together; a transcendental city in which protest was added to literary works. Later, his influential and good friend, President Pierce; who he met in a fraternity in college, appointed him as consul in Liverpool so his family got to travel around Europe. He died in his sleep, ironic for such a passionate life.
“Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them” said this true romantic. He also proved this in his early work. The Twice-Told Tales defines the beginning of a popularity that defeated time and several changes in society. It was a compilation of many different articles that had been published in magazines before. He wrote these tales slowly and never imagined they would get the attention and acclamation from the public that they gave them. This was the beginning of a new career, yet was not enough revenue for him. That is where the custom houses come in. The first story in it was an unsuccessful tale called Fanshawe. It was accompanied by many other unsuccessful tales that gained the respect of the public and started a career.
Another important and famous book he wrote was The Scarlet Letter. This is a truly romantic piece about two lovers that fail to meet when they come to the new world. The wife cheats on her husband finding herself humiliated after she had a child with the other man. Many other fantastic events occur to give the book an even more romantic feeling. He focuses his novel on the sin and the evil nature of humans. Allegory is also a very important component of this and most of his novels. The transcendentalist mindset got to him as he adopted this new type of metaphor that tries to persuade the reader of certain ideas.
“Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not,” he said, and he sure filled his place. Hawthorne’s work is the innovative in exploring the character’s secret motivations and hidden desires. He created complex characters and gave them life; a life he never had. Many romantic authors write about their own fantasies and the passionate life they dreamt sitting on their writing chair. Whatever Nathaniel Hawthorne’s motive had, his literature continues to let reader’s imagination go wild into that perfect mix between the body and the mind.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Campbell D. (2006). Nathaniel Hawthorne. Retrieved August 23, 2006. gonzaga.edu
- The Literature Network. (2006) Nathaniel Hawthorne. Retrieved 2006. gonzaga.edu
- Sparknotes. (2006). The Scarlet Letter. Retrieved 2006. sparknotes.com
- Classic Reader. (2006). Nathaniel Hawthorne. Retrieved 2005. gonzaga.edu
- Hawthorne, N. (1906). The Scarlet Letter. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Retrieved October 1, 2006 questia.com
