Hawthorne and His Puritans

8/8/2019 Hawthorne and His Puritans

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Nathaniel Hawthorne and

His Puritans

Mr. Richard Geib

27 August 2008


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NATHANIEL

HAWTHORNE Old New England

family

Grows up in genteelpoverty

Bowdoin College

Apprenticeship: 10

years alone in atticbrooding on past.

Perfecting writing

style and wrestlingwith demons of past.


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HAWTHONRE AND

FAMILIAL LEGACYThere stands the meeting-house [A] meaner

temple was never consecrated to the worship of thedeity.

And there a woman, - it is Ann Coleman, -naked from the waist upward, and bound to the tailof a cart, is dragged through the Main-street at thepace of a brisk walk, while the constable follows w itha whip of knotted cords He puts his heart into

every stroke, zealous to fulfill the injunction of MajorHawthornes warrant in the spirit and the letter..There came down a stroke that has drawn blood! Tensuch stripes are to be given in Salem, ten in Boston,

and ten in Dedham; and w ith those thirty strips ofblood upon her, she is to be driven into the forest.

Hawthorne,Main Street


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HAWTHONRE AND

FAMILIAL LEGACYLet us thank God for having given

us such ancestors; and let eachsuccessive generation thank him not

less fervently for being one stepfurther from them in the march ofages.

Hawthorne, Main St r eet


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THE CONFLICTED

HAWTHORNE Guilt over family

role in Puritan past

Puritans asintolerant andcruel

Revisionist history:

Puritans as prisonand cemeterybuilding people

But.


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THE CONFLICTED

HAWTHORNE Hawthorne also

bitterly disliked hisown time: theJacksonianDemocracy of the1850s.

Its busy individualism

and materialisticmoney-grubbingnature seemed toothin and flat towrite about.

Hawthorne sets his

romance 200 some

years in the past!

Puritan Era1640-1700

Hawthornepublishes hisScarlet Letter

in 1850.


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AMBIVALENCE TOWARDS

PURITANS Hawthorne took

them seriously

Strong moralfibers and vibrantinner lives

Contrasted tosuperficial andweak willed natureof own time

The CustomHouse!


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HAWTHORNE AND

SALEM CUSTOM HOUSE College friendship

with FranklinPierce

Appointed toCustom House in

Loses positionafter Piercesdefeat in 1848.

Settling old scores

in The CustomHouse President Franklin Pierce1844-1848


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HAWTHORNE AND

SALEM CUSTOM HOUSE Hawthornes

extreme difficultlyin finding areading public

and in making aliving off writing

THEME: Theunappreciatedartist in acommercialsociety.


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HAWTHORNE AND THE

ROMANCE VS. NOVEL

WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardlybe observed that he w ishes to claim a certain latitude,both as to its fashion and material, which he would nothave felt himself entitled to assume had he professed tobe w riting a Novel. The latter form of composition is

presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely tothe possible, but to the probable and ordinary course ofman's experience. The former-while, as a work of art, itmust rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins

unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truthof the human heart-has fairly a right to present that truthunder circumstances, to a great extent, of the w riter'sown choosing or creation. I f he think fit, also, he may somanage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or

mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows ofthe picture.


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HAWTHORNES CAT EYES:GOTHIC ROMANCE AND THETWILIGHT IN THE DARKNESS


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EL GRECO: LIGHT AND

SHADOWS


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EL GRECO: LIGHTAND SHADOWS


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HAWTHORNE AND HIS

PURITANSJust art thou in these

thy judgments, thouwho art and wast, OHoly One. For menhave shed the blood ofsaints and prophets.And thou has giventhem blood to drink! I t

is their due!REVELEATION 16:5-6

The Scarlet Letter as positively a hell-fired story,

into which I found it impossible to throw anycheering light. [Haw thorne]

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Hawthorne and His Puritans