Historical/Biographical
Overview of Nathaniel
Hawthorne and Puritanism
1806 - 1864
Nathaniel Hawthorne was
born in Salem, MA on July
4, 1806
His father was a sea
captain and a descendent
of prominent men in the
Puritan theocracy of the
1600s
The first of his ancestors,
William Hathorne, came
to Massachusetts Bay
Colony in 1603 with a
“Bible and a sword” and
persecuted Quakers. He
was said to have whipped
a Quaker woman through
the streets of Salem.
His great-great grandfather, John
Hathorne, was one of the three
judges that presided over the
Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
Another ancestor helped fight the
Indians in the 1600s.
Hawthorne felt extreme pride and
guilt for the sins of his ancestors.
His ancestors’ attacks against
Quakers, Indians, and accused
witches were both a source of
interest and conflict for him.
He changed the spelling of his name
from Hathorne to Hawthorne to
disassociate himself.
The Puritans set up a theocracy in New
England when they came to America
from England in 1630. The church was a
self-governing body, answerable to no
higher authority.
They wanted to “purify” the Church of
England of remnants from the Roman
Catholic “popery”.
Their civil government strictly enforced
public morality by prohibiting vices like
drunkenness, gambling, ostentatious
dress, swearing, and Sabbath- breaking.
The Church was the political and social
center of life in Salem.
Puritanism emphasized the Calvinistic
obsession toward morality, sexual
repression, shame and declaration of
guilt, and spiritual salvation.
The Puritan Doctrine
Basic Beliefs of Puritanism
Original Sin: Because of Adam and
Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden,
all humans were born in a state
of sin and without God’s
salvation, man remained in a
state of sin.
Predestination: Whether one
achieved salvation was
determined by God; only God
could decide a person’s future
and everything that happened
was at God’s will. This decision
would not be affected by how
human beings behaved during
their lives. God offered no
incentives for upright moral
behavior. No good actions on
their part could change God’s
divine decree and alter their
preordained fates. They did not
believe in free will to decide
their fate.
Reasons Predestination Appealed to the
Puritans
The Puritans embraced predestination and
were comfortable with the idea as it
provided them solace and security in a
very confusing world.
At this time growth of commerce brought
profit for some but unemployment,
inflation, misery, vagrancy and crime to
others.
Tension between Catholics and Protestants
made their lives uncertain.
America was a strange wild place that they
sought to tame.
Predestination answered their inner needs
for comfort and reassurance: God had a
plan for all humanity and everyone had a
role to play. Suffering in the present world
would produce a perfect peace, heaven on
earth. Every event tended toward triumph
of good over evil, order from disorder,
Christ over Satan.
The Elect: They also believed
that God, in His infinite mercy,
would spare a small number of
“elect” individuals from eternal
hellfire that all men deserved.
This elect group would be
blessed by a profound sense of
inner assurance that they
possessed God’s saving grace
(conversion).
They believed that living a godly
moral life was not a CAUSE of a
person’s salvation, but an
EFFECT of being chosen by God
to enjoy bliss in Heaven.
The uncertainty (not knowing
who would be saved) only
made believers redouble their
efforts to practice selfexamination and to purify their
lives and society as whole.
Conversion: Despite the baptism
and religious education, the only
way to receive full membership
into the church and receive
communion was to experience a
conversion.
A conversion was a sudden
realization brought about by
divine intervention, a vision, or
perhaps a dream.
This was the ultimate sign of faith
and election (that they were
among one of God’s chosen).
So, people were eager to experience
a conversion.
Baptism and Education: Children were
baptized into the church and taught
Puritan doctrine.
They believed that man had to be
instructed to realize his own
wickedness so at childhood,
education began.
Children were taught that man was not
only suspect but guilty of depravity.
Persons instructed in the catechism from
their youth could consider a person
of good works and character to be a
witch merely on the basis of
spectral evidence in spite of his or
her good standing in the
community.
Wealth: Outward wealth was a sign
of inner grace.
Success on earth reflected God’s
love.
This encouraged the Puritans to
work had in order to achieve
earthly success.
They led godly and disciplined lives
– not because it would earn
them salvation – but because
their ability to master their evil
inclinations and live in an upright
society provided them some
evidence that they were among
God’s chosen.
Relations With Indians
The religious and social practices of the
Indians were unfamiliar and strange to
the straight-laced conservative
Puritans.
The Puritans believed Indians were
uncivilized, inferior, and associated
them with the devil, witches, and evil
spirits.
Puritan settlers had several belligerent
encounters with Indians and they lived
in fear of Indian attacks. One bloody
incident was King Phillip’s War (1675 76) led by Chief Metacom (a.k.a. King
Phillip) and several tribes. Fighting
lasted 14 months and destroyed 12
villages.
The Puritans saw their victories as a sign
of God’s favor.
Salem Witch Trials
In 17th century New England, most people shared
a strong belief in witchcraft and in “wonders
of the invisible world” (witches, the power of
Satan to assume visible form, the foretelling
power of dreams and omens, and other
supernatural phenomena).
In 1692 Salem experienced mass hysteria and
paranoia that resulted in twenty people put
to death for witchcraft.
More than 100 people were jailed and many died
during their imprisonment.
Almost all accused “witches” were older women,
who tended to be independent and
nonconformist.
This episode and its aftermath marked the end of
Puritan authority in New England and, with
dawning rationalism, the belief in devils
striking out from some “invisible” world.
Hawthorne’s Times
In 1820’s and 1830’s, America was
undergoing the Second Great
Awakening .
This was a time of religious tent revivals,
people regaining an enthusiasm for
religion and marked by an emphasis
on personal piety.
Additionally, these revivals focused on
developing a strong work ethic,
frugality, and temperance.
Hawthorne observed this religious
movement and became deeply
concerned with the merits and
consequences of religious fanaticism.
He saw this as another attempt by a
church to sway its membership
toward total obedience and faith.
Growing up, Nathaniel Hawthorne could
not escape the influence of Puritan
society, not only from residing with his
father’s devout Puritan family as a child
but also due to Hawthorne’s realizations
of his own family history.
Many of Hawthorne’s literary works
reflect his ambivalence toward his Puritan
heritage. This was even more disturbing
because critics of this period condemned
Puritan ideals.
Writing during the Second Great
Awakening in 1835, Hawthorne
commented on the dangers of extreme
religious enthusiasm, as well as shedding
light upon the dual nature of the Puritans
– they realized man was flawed and
needed to constantly better himself, yet
persecuted those they deemed unfit for
society.
Major Themes in
Hawthorne’s Works
Hawthorne's family history and specific events in his
life informed his writings.
In many of his stories, Hawthorne uses history to
examine issues of community and individualism,
explaining both the madness in Salem and much
subsequent madness.
An analysis of the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne will
not only reveal his interest in exploring the themes
and ideas behind the Puritan period, but also, in the
true spirit of the tradition of Romanticism that he was
writing, they examine more ethereal notions such as
nature, beauty, romantic love, and of course, the
supernatural.
Some of Hawthorne's major themes include self-trust
versus accommodation to authority; obsessive versus
open-mindedness; hypocrisy versus candor; presumed
guilt or innocence; the penalties of isolation; crimes
against the human heart; patriarchal power; belief in
fate or free will; the truths available to the mind
during dream and reverie; and the impossibility of
earthly perfection.
Bibliography
• http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/Quakers&Witches
/YoungGoodmanBrown/Introduction.html
• http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/Hawthorne.htm
• http://sakridge.umwblogs.org/put-pen-to-paper/portfolio/theinfluence-of-history-and-puritanism-on-young-goodman-brown/
• http://college.cengage.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/hawt
horn.html
• http://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/kingphilips-war
• http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyi
nfo/puritan.htm