hawthorne

Summary of Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. Descended from a prominent puritan family, Hawthorne was the sun of a sea captain who died when Hawthorn was 4 years old. He and his mother moved to a lonely farm in Maine when he was 14. After attending Bowdoin College, he devoted himself to writing. In 1829, he published his first novel Fansawe anonymously, but it was unsuccessful. In 1842, he married Sophia Peabody, a friend and follower of Emerson, Thoreau, and they settled in Concord. There he wrote the tales and sketches in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse.In order to earn a livelihood Hawthorne served as surveyor of the part at Salem, where he began writing his masterpiece,the Scarlet Letter.Hawthorne’s next novel, The House of the Seven Gables,takes place in the New England of his own period but nevertheless also deals with the effects of Puritanism. After that he befriended his neighbor Herman Melville who was one of the first to appreciate Hawthorne’s genius. Later, he stayed in England for a period which is reflected in the travel sketches of Our Old Home and he visited to Italy resulted in the novel The Marble Faun. He died during a trip with Franklin Pierce.

Aside from his importance as a novelist, Hawthorne is also justly celebrated as a short story writer. He helped to establish the American short story as a significant art form with his haunting tales of human loneliness, frustration, hypocrisy, eccentricity and frailty. Among his most brilliant stories are “The Minister’s Black Veil”, “Roger Melvin’s Burial” and “Young Goodman Brown”

The influence of Puritanism had a strong impact on him. Hawthorne was from a puritan family; therefore, he seemed to be haunted by the sense of evil or sin all his life. Hawthorne also held a negative or conservative attitude towards science.

His masterpiece The Scarlet Letter sets in 17th century Puritan New England, tells of the passionate, forbidden love affair linking a sensitive, religious young man, the Reverend Arthur Dimondale, and the sensuous, beautiful townsperson Hester Prynne. The novel explores deeply the human heart, presenting the problems of moral evil and guilt through allegory and symbolism. It is often considered the first

American psychological novel.（参考美国文学，张颖主编，东北师范大学出版社）