Hawthorne's Own Solitary Life example essay topic

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne's life, as seen in his writing, shows solitary self analysis expressed as symbolism which exhibits the weakness he found in all mankind. The ease in which one can understand his symbolism has influenced American Literature. Hawthorne's cynical themes of human nature were represented in The Ministers Black veil, The Birthmark, and Rappaccini's Daughter. Hawthorne's preoccupation with scientific and Puritan religious values shows his belief in mans shortcomings through the faults of his main characters. The solitary character, found in Hawthorne's short stories, was based on his own life.

He lived a reclusive life starting at four when his father died of yellow fever. His mother, Elizabeth Clark Manning Hathorne, and her three children were forced to move back to her father's house. In a house filled with thirteen others and a mother who mourned her husband in seclusion Nathaniel found it necessary to spend as much time alone as possible. His interest in reading began at seven when he injured his foot in a ball game and recuperating for several years instilled in him the love of literature (Hart 320). Being alone was a habit for him and deepened when he would spend time alone at his family's lake in Maine (Rivendell s). Later while going to Bowden college he met and became friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horatio Bridge and Franklin Pierce.

Although his first friendships would help establish his career as a writer he continued to be withdrawn and lonely until he married Sophia Peabody in 1842 (Herzberg, 439). The structured religious views that Hawthorne rebelled against were also instilled in him at an early age. Although he grew up surrounded by Puritans, he was raised as an Unitarian and claimed no church at all, his transcendental is friends helped influence his beliefs (American 228). Hawthorne's belief surmounted that happiness requires a oneness of mind, heart, spirit, will, and imagination. In 1839 he invested time and money into a socialist society experiment called Brook Farm Community. Finding that his nonsocial behaviors continued to hinder him Nathaniel left after only a few short months (American 224).

All of his conflicting ideas about the Puritan religion, original sin and his own place in the world has let the reader understand Hawthorne's journey of self awareness. In 1828, after leaving college, he privately published his first novel Fanshawe. He was unhappy with the response and withdrew it from circulation (Herzberg 440). Only writing for magazines his stories caught the public eye and in 1837 a compilation of his short stories were publisher as Twice - Told Tales. According to James D. Hart, Hawthorne was quoted in saying that the stories in Twice - told tales were the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade. One of these stories that deals with his views on Puritanism was The Ministers Black Veil.

The Ministers Black Veil is a story in which the parishioner's of the puritan church are taken aback by their ministers insistence in wearing a black veil over his face. The minister symbolized Hawthorne's own solitary life. Hawthorne felt that he was alone in a crowd and separated from others. He could not walk the streets... the genteel and timid would turn aside to avoid him, the children fled from his approach, breaking their merriest sports. The black veil was a material emblem (that) separated him from happiness but it also made Father Hopper a very efficient clergyman in that he could sympathize with all dark affections and Strangers came long distances to attend service at his church (Lauter 2222). Some believe that the Hawthorne's internalized guilt over his family's past history caused him to add the W to his Name.

His ancestors were William Hawthorne who in 1630 ordered the whipping of a Quaker woman and 1692 John Hathorne was a judge in the Salem witch trials (Magill 197). Hawthorne's feelings of Puritan history shaped his religion guilt which manifested itself in The Ministers Black Veil. The black veil symbolized how the religious feel that their beliefs protect them and make them above reproach. Letting the reader wonder what the secret sin of the Minister was, demonstrates Hawthorne's idea that we will never know what misdeed men hold in their heart and if the deed was exposed it would separates us more.

He names Puritans as hypocrites when Father Hopper says Tremble also at each other! ... on every visage a Black veil! The theme of The Ministers Black Veil could be summed up in the sermon Father Hopper gave The subject had reference to secret sin, and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them (Lauter 2217-2224). The Puritans, in Hawthorne's eyes, were full of moral pride and self righteous indignation, too busy judging each other and not themselves. After Hawthorne published Twice - Told Tales, thanks to Franklin Pierce, he enjoyed a brief period of employment at the Boston Common House (Bowmen). In 1841 he moved to Brook Farm trying to combine his writing and his practical life, but daily labors kept him unsatisfied and he stayed only six months before his need to write compelled him to leave (American 224). In 1842 Nathaniel and Sophia were married and moved to Old Manse in Concord, where he finally allowed someone to share in his solitude.

After living there for three years he published Mosses from Old Manse which contain The Birthmark and Rappaccini's daughter (Compton). The Birthmark also represented a solitary figure being separated by mankind. After being married only a short time Georgiana, the heroin in the Birthmark, isolates herself from her husband because of an offending mark on her face. Her husband Aylmer, a scientist who shutters at the sight of the birthmark found this one defect grow more and more intolerable, with every moment of their lives. Being a scientist of great knowledge Aylmer decides it is his duty to remove Georgiana's visible mark of earthly imperfection.

In the Ministers Black Veil the minister is separated because of the symbol of sin. Georgiana's is also separated when Aylmer selects the birthmark as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay and death... (Lauter 2225-2226). Another woman isolated by a secret sin is Beatrice in Rappaccini's Daughter. Rappaccini who cares infinitely more for science than mankind raised Beatrice so that she had been nourished with poisons from her birth upward, until her whole nature was so imbued with them, that she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence. Even though her sin was not visible as the black veil or the birthmark poison was her element of life.

She could not go out of the garden because as she told Giovanni the effect if my father's fatal love of science... estranged me from all society of my kind (Lauter 2241-2250). Hawthorne reveals his feeling toward science and men of higher learning in The Birthmark and Rappaccini's Daughter. The Puritans believed that their religion protected them from sin with Gods help, but the scientists believed that they were God in creating their scientific experiments. In The Birthmark, the assistant, Aminadab is a man of low stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage... his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that encrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature but Aylmer description is the opposite Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

Thinking himself God - like Aylmer calls Aminadab man of clay and continues with his experiments to create perfection in the form of his wife (Lauter 2228-2234). The conflict between science and God is represented in the climax of the stories. Georgiana, with the symbol of the Hand of God upon her cheek, has been left to be sacrificed by Aylmer a scientist with a God complex. In the end he succeeds in removing the blemish but only by losing her because she is fit for heaven where she is made perfect by the real God (Lauter 2228-2234).

The garden in Rappaccini's Daughter is described as the Eden of present day where Rappaccini has placed Beatrice and Giovanni as Adam and Eve. Shortly after declaring to Giovanni though my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God's creature, and craves love as its daily food... Yes; spurn me! - tread upon me! - Kill me! Giovanni gives her the antidote, made by a rival scientist, that is almost divine in its efficacy and does succeed in sending Beatrice where the evil... will pass away like a dream (Lauter 2239-2255). Hawthorne's disdain for scientist is evident that he always makes them the villain in his stories.

In The Birthmark Aylmer's laboratory has the appearance of hell. Aylmer in his youth, had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature... he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano... from the dark bosom of the earth In the lab there was a furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire... seemed to be burning for ages. Nathaniel did not take his own work as seriously as his scientific characters (Lauter 2228-2233). The beginning of Rappaccini's Daughter is filled with self mockery where he makes fun of his own writing career. In Rappaccini's Daughter Rappaccini has put science before even his own health he was like a person in inferior health. His face was all overspread with the most sickly and sallow hue because He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, of whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the greatest heap of his accumulated knowledge (Lauter 2236-2244).

The men of scenic in both stories have put their love of science before everything including their lives and loves. Nathaniel was married at the time he wrote Mosses from an Old Manse so the reader would think that it effected his views on women. When Georgiana realizes that her husband will go to any lengths to remove the mark upon her face she does not question his motives because she doesn t want to lose his love. Even after she is told the experiment could be dangerous she cries out There is but one danger - that this horrible stigma shall be left upon my cheek!

... Remove it! remove it! - whatever the cost - or we shall both go mad! She also foreshadows her own death by stating I might wish to put off this birth-mark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself... (Lauter 2223-2224). Beatrice is beautiful and is qualified to fill a professor's chair. Then Giovanni tells her that he has heard how smart she is, she denies it by saying methinks I would fain rid myself of even that small knowledge...

Signor, do not believe these stories about my science. (Lauter 2241-2247). Hawthorne calmed his own anxiety about marriage when he wrote The Ministers Black Veil. Faced by a lifetime of Parson Hopper's black veil, Elizabeth is so shallow that she replies Then, farewell! but Hawthorne redeems her later saying she was the nurse... whose calm affection had endured thus Long, in secrecy, in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not perish, even at the dying hour of father Hopper (Lauter 2221-2223). Even though the women in Hawthorns stories are beautiful and good at heart they are flawed which in the end brings about their own death or others. It seems as though he though little of women but you must consider that women of the eighteenth century are far different than today's woman.

A married woman of the 1800's had little choice with her life. After the writing of these short stories he wrote the novel that has made him famous for his symbolism. Like many of his earlier stories The Scarlet Letter contained a solitary figure isolated behind a symbol. After the publication of his greatest novel he moved to Lenox, Massachusetts where he met and influenced the writings of Herman Melville.

Hawthorne became a consult in England with the help of life long friend and President of the United States Franklin Pierce (Rivendell s). After which Hawthorne wrote little and continued his pessimistic views about his work. Finally able to enjoy a degree of financial comfort he traveled through out Europe (Hart 358). On May nineteenth, 1864, while traveling with Pierce, Nathaniel Hawthorne Died of a brain tumor in Plymouth, New Hampshire (Rivendell s). Nathaniel Hawthorne lifetime of writing gave us a standard in which all American literature has been gauged. Hawthorne's work let us view his lonely existence, though the guilt that he lived with and his personal views on traditional puritan roles and scientific progress.

The invisible ghosts of ancestors influenced his feelings of isolation from society and the symbols that he established separated his characters from life were representative of his own. Although Nathaniel Hawthorne never became independently wealthy from his writings his prominence in literature was established when he wrote The Scarlet Letter. If he had accomplished nothing else in his lifetime this alone would be a monument to his life.

Bibliography

American Writers a Collection of Literary Biographies, Volume II (1974) New York: Charles Scribner's Son pg.
223-244 Bowmen J.S. (Ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography Oxford UK: Cambridge University Press Compton's Home Library (CD ROM) (1998) Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia Soft Key Multimedia Inc.
Hart, James (1965) The Oxford Companion to American Literature, Forth and Fifth Edition New York: Oxford University Press pg.
357-358 Herzberg, Max The Readers Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962) New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company pg. 439-441 Lauter, Paul (Ed.) The Heath Anthology of American Literature Third Edition (1998) Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (2216-2255) Magill, Frank (Ed.
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