Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet letter

Andrea Ionita 3º ESO B

Biography Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in The United States in 1804, and he died in

England in 1864. About his life, he moved to Maine to study in the Bowdoin College , where he found the poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce.

After he published his first book, Twice-told Tales, he moved to Boston. There, he married the painter Sophia Peabody in 1842, and he settled in Concord, Massachusetts. There, they had as neighbors the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

In 1852 he wrote the biography of his older mate Franklin Pierce, event that made him won the elections, Hawthorne was appointed consul in Liverpool. In 1857 he was made redundant by different reasons, but the main one was he was ill. In 1864 he died due to a stomach cancer.

Although he is known by his tales, Hawthorne published five novels; the ones which are the best are The scarlet letter and The house of the seven gables. We can also appreciate his works belonged to the Romantic period, which means they had allegorical content and they recreated the puritan ideas that the society had during those years.

Literary context The Romantic period has its origins in England in 1798.

The literary and artistic movement known as Romanticism quickly spread to the rest of Europe and America. As a reaction against the Age of Reason that saw both the American and the French Revolutions, Romanticism emphasized everything the previous age did not: feelings, emotions, reason over feelings, mysticism and instinct, natural man over civilized man.

The main characteristics of Romanticism are: resulting in part from libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution , the Romantic movement had in common only a revolt against the prescribed rules of Classicism. The basic aims of Romanticism were several : a return to Nature and to the belief in the Goodness of Humanity; the rediscovery of the artist as a supremely individual creator; the development of nationalistic pride; and the exaltation of the senses and emotions over reason and intellect. In addition, Romanticism was a philosophical revolt against Rationalism.

Historical contextIn this period, The French Revolution in 1848, also known as the February Revolution , was one of the wave of revolutions in Europe.The feudal oppression and fiscal mismanagement contributed to a French society that was ripe for revolt.

Why? After the Tennis Court Oath it was clear that the revolutionary movement was going to be a no holds barred movement which would stop at nothing to topple the monarchy. From here onwards the civil disobediences began, which eventually paved the way for the revolutionary regime to get noticed and put the changes in effect. The storming of the Bastille prison in the East of Paris on the 14th July is regarded as being the landmark event that led to the social disorder. This was done in the attempt to gain arms and ammunitions from the prison. Inspired by this event the peasants revolted against the feudal lords eventually freeing themselves of the unfair contracts that they were signed into.

Works About some of the works written by Hawthorne:

* The house of the Seven Gables The house of the title is a gloomy New England mansion, haunted from its foundation by fraudulent dealings, accusations of witchcraft and sudden death. Characters: Hepzibah Pyncheon, Holgrave, Phoebe Pyncheon, Alice Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Uncle Venner, Ned Higgins, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon.

*The Marble Faun written on the eve of the American Civil war is set in a fantastical Italy. The romance mixes elements of a fable , pastoral ,gothic novel and travel guide. The four main characters are Miriam, a beautiful painter who is compared to Eve, Beatrice, Cenci, Lady Macbeth, Judith and Cleopatra, and is pursued by a mysterious, threatening man who is her "evil genius" through life; Hilda, an innocent copyist who is compared to the Virgin Mary and the white dove, and whose simple, unbendable moral principles can make her severe in spite of her tender heart; Kenyon, a sculptor, who represents rationalist humanism; and Donatello, the Count of Monte Beni, who is compared to Adam, and amazingly resembles the Faun of Praxiteles: The novel plays with the characters' belief that the count may be a descendant of the antique Faun, with Hawthorne withholding a definite statement even in the novel's concluding chapter.

*The Blithedale Romance was a famous novel called “the lightest, the brightest, the liveliest of Hawthorne's no humorous fictions. This book has no main characters because it describes the Contemporary and Modern criticism.

The Scarlet letter

The Scarlet letter was the most famous Hawthorne’s book. It was published in 1850.

Attending the summary of the book:

Who?Hester is a married woman who had an illegitimate daughter with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Roger Chillingworth is Hester Prynne's husband who had disappeared for two years. Pearl is Hester Prynne’s daughter.

What?Having recently given birth to a baby nobody knows who the father is, Hester Prynne is sentenced to use an "A" sticker on her clothes for the rest of her life. The "A" stands for "adulterer" and serves to segregate her from society. Hester refuses to say who the father of her child is because he is Arthur Dimmesdale, one of the most beloved reverends by people. Hester's husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns after being gone for two years and decides that his mission in life is to find out who the lover of Hester was. In the end, Dimmesdale publicly confesses his sin and dies there. Hester and her daughter move to Europe. At the end Hester died and she is buried next to her lover.In short, the Puritan Boston learns to admire and respect Hester Prynne. The novel juxtaposes the naturalness against the Puritan law. Hester gets an attached at her“ scarlet letter” and she is used to use it at the end of her life.

When?The United States in the  XVII century.

Where? The story happens in The Massachusetts Bay Colony.