Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804—1864 )
• One of the greatest
masters of
American fiction
• His novels and
tales are
penetrating
explorations of
moral and spiritual
conflicts.
Bowdoin College in Maine
House of Seven Gables
Major works: novels
• Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)
• The Scarlet Letter (1850)--His masterpiece,
which established him as the Leading
American native novelist of the 19th
century
• The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
• Blithedale Romance (1852)
• Marble Faun (1860)
Major works: short stories
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Young Goodman Brown (1835)
The Minister’s Black Veil (1836)
Dr. Rappaccini’s Daughter
The Celestial Rail-Road (1843)
ANTI-TRANSCENDENTALISM
• Evil Exists
• Nature is not always good
• Pessimistic Outlook
Hawthorne’s Point of View
• He has a “black” vision of life and human beings.
In almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discusses
sin and evil.
• One source of evil that Hawthorne is concerned
most is overreaching intellect, which usually refers
to someone who is too proud, too sure of himself.
Chillingworth is a specimen of Hawthorne's chilling,
cold-blooded human animals.
• Hawthorne's view of man and human history
originates, to a great extent, in Puritanism. He
believed that “the wrong doing of one generation
lives into the successive ones”.
Themes in Hawthorne’s Writings
• Moral allegories——a story where
everything is symbol, used commonly to
instruct especially in religious matters
• The sinful man
• Hypocrisy
• The Dark side of human nature
• Religion in nature
Hawthorne’s Writing Style
• A man of literary craftsmanship, extraordinary in the
use of symbol: symbols serve as a weapon to
attack reality. It can be found everywhere in his
writing.
Revelation of characters’ psychology: he is good
at exploring the complexity of human psychology.
The use of the supernatural mixed with the actual.
His stories are parable (allegory)——to teach a
lesson
Use of ambiguity to keep the reader in the world of
uncertainty——multiple point of view