Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter

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Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804, with the surname Hathorne. It is widely thought that the reason for the spelling change was that he hailed from the town of Salem, where a number of his relatives had been involved with the infamous witch trials that took place in the closing decade of the 1600s. In fact, his great grandfather, John, had been an executioner. Nathaniel did publish some early material using his original surname however, so it seems more likely that he changed it to save confusion over spelling as it was pronounced in a similar way to ‘Hawthorne’ anyway.

Hawthorne was unsure of his abilities as a writer initially, publishing his first novel Fanshawe anonymously in 1828. In addition, there was no established market for novels so he remained only locally known as a writer until he published The Scarlet Letter in 1850. By then it was possible to mass produce books and this title was one of the first in American literary history. The book also sold well and enabled Hawthorne to become a professional author at a time when one could count them all on one hand.

In a more competitive environment Hawthorne may not have done so well, but as it was he had a ready market waiting to buy his books. Despite their morbidity and intensity they sold well because people had developed a taste for reading fiction. In part this was due to the establishment of stable and polite society in America since the dust had settled from the revolution. It became fashionable to be seen to have the time to read and it gave like-minded people a talking point over dinner and during other social occasions.

Hawthorne was undoubtedly skilled at his craft. He wrote well, had an eye for literary detail and understood that allegory was a useful devise in ensuring that readers got more from his books than just a good story. In this regard he was at odds with Edgar Allan Poe, who was more freeform with his words, indulging in prose that explored the recesses of his imagination without being moralistic or allegorical. One might say that Poe used writing as an art form, while Hawthorne used it as a craft. He took a pragmatic approach by being more mindful of what his readership would wish to read. Poe worked with creative abandon, coming up with ever more challenging visions.

Hawthorne took a wife, Sophia Peabody, with whom he had three children. Sophia moved to England with her children following Hawthorne’s death in 1864. She was an accomplished artist and a member of the American transcendentalist movement, which promoted the idea of individualistic spiritualism as a means of attaining a heightened state of mind, as opposed to indoctrination by organized religion. This was not something that her husband particularly concurred with and he used his later writing to criticize its principles.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was given to writing extremely intense and dark prose. The Scarlet Letter is rather like the recollection of a feverish nightmare. It doesn’t so much invite the reader in, as pull them in, and then attempt to suffocate them with depressing allegory about what can happen to people when they break the moral and ethical codes of civilized society.

This is an American novel, yet it is more puritanical than most Victorian novels, of which it was contemporaneous, being published in 1850. Hawthorne seems not to have been overly religious himself, but he explores themes of strict doctrine by setting the book in a 17th-century Boston, where Puritanism is in its heyday. So, this book is a period novel of its day, harking back to an era when misbehaviour could have dire consequences

The Puritans were, in essence, very conservative Protestants with intransigent beliefs about good and bad behaviour. This censorious moral view was especially stern when it came to matters of pleasure, including sex. The Protestant church had risen in reaction to the lax excesses of the Catholic Church, which either drew a blind eye to behavioural weakness or allowed people to confess their sins. The Puritans took things as far as they could the other way, so that punishment and penance were the outcome for anyone who broke the rules. Of course, one had to share the same belief system in order to understand and agree to such measures. This seems to be the central theme that Hawthorne is addressing and exploring in The Scarlet Letter.