The Effects of Secret Sin in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Representation of Evil in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Effects of Secret Sin in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Representation of Evil in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864 ) is a writer whose name invariably seems to appear in critical discussion of romantic literature . In this however , I will examine the short fiction of Hawthorne , discussing the manner in which the author uses symbolic and physical embodiments of evil and secret sin in his work . Versions of the night journey away from home and the community , from conscious , everyday social life , to the wilderness where the hidden

self satisfies , or is forced to realize , its subconscious fears and promptings comprise the central Hawthornean plot beneath the narrative and historical displacements of tales like Young Goodman Brown ' My Kinsman , Major Molineux ' Roger Malvin 's Burial ' The Scarlet Letter ' The Minister 's Black Veil ' and Rappaccini`s Daughter ' In these stories Hawthorne uses the image of the evil (and of those who serve him ) to allegorize the moral conflict within his own soul and , by extension , those of all people . From this point of view , Hawthorne 's early development as a storyteller consisted in learning to objectify his private concerns , remove them to a historical setting , and universalize their meaning . This author presented his audiences , either explicitly or implicitly , with demonic figures , and my intention is to illustrate the ways in which Hawthornean uses this evil in his manuscripts

When I read The Scarlet Letter , I could not avoid feeling that Hawthorne , speaking of sin and sinfulness , had in view nothing as specific as Scobie 's adultery and blasphemy . When he referred to sin , he seemed to assume a force of evil so pervasive that it did not need to be embodied in anyone or in any particular action . In The Scarlet Letter however , he invented two characters , Hester and Arthur , who do not believe that what they had done was a sin . On the contrary . What we did had a consecration of its own ' Hester says to Dimmesdale . We felt it so ! We said so to each other . Hast thou forgotten it ' and even though Dimmesdale subdues her intensity - Hush , Hester '--he also says , No I have not forgotten (140 ) That leaves open the question of Hawthorne 's ability to imagine what it would be - or what it meant in the New England of the mid-seventeenth century - to commit a mortal sin The sexual character of the relation between Hester and Dimmesdale is so vaguely rendered that only the existence of Pearl as a consequence of it makes it credible . Even if we add our own erotic imagination to Hawthorne 's caution , it is still the case that he conceives of sin as a social transgression only , an act by which one isolates oneself from the community to which he belongs . The sense of evil was moving from theology and morality to politics . Evil was incorrigible because no social institution could accommodate it . The Puritan community as Hawthorne depicts it was strikingly impoverished in ritual and...