Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) is critically acclaimed for the portrayal of New England Puritans in his fiction. The grim picture of the rigid and forbidding Puritan community in his works reflects the widespread attitude towards Puritans, yet Professor Deborah L. Madsen, in her paper, “Hawthorne’s Puritans: From Fact to Fiction” claims that this monolithic portrayal of Puritanism results in a ‘powerful misrepresentation of the actual puritans [and] of the dynamics of Puritan theology’ (Madsen 1999, p 510) . The present response is a critical review of Madsen’s paper. The title of the paper is appropriate. While ‘Hawthorne’s Puritans’ implies a difference between actual Puritans and those conceptualized by Hawthorne, ‘From Fact to Fiction’ extends this idea by suggesting the disparity between history/fact and Hawthorne’s fiction. Madsen’s study argues that Hawthorne attempts to defend his puritan ancestors by creating a monolithic Puritanism, in which the conduct of all authoritarian puritans resembles that of his own ancestors such as John and William Hathorne. The ultimate goal of Hawthorne, according to Madsen, is to excuse ‘the sins of his fathers by showing that they were incapable of acting otherwise’ (Madsen, 1999, p. 510). What Madsen means by ‘a monolithic Puritanism’ is one that here allows ‘only one interpretation of itself and its significance’ (Madsen, 1999, p.516). In other words, it is an essentialist and stereotypical representation that does not take into account the complexities and the changeability of puritan behavior in an attempt to portray its underlying and unchanging essence. The outcome is a fixed and commonly-held image of puritans as a ‘grim and gloomy race, impatient with human weakness and m... ... middle of paper ... ...h they are written and the social sphere in which he moved, his background, and various other influences on him. In conclusion, she brings out how Hawthorne’s fiction creates a biased and monolithic portrayal of the puritans ignoring the complexity of their theology and culture. Ideally, Madsen should have shed some light upon this complexity which could have substantiated her claim that Hawthorne denies the existence of any sophistication in puritan culture and theology. Works Cited Hawthorne, N., 1850. The Scarlet Letter available at: http://www.forgottenbooks.org Montrose, L. A., 1989. "Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture," in Veeser, A., 1989. The New Historicism, New York, London: Routledge. pp. 15-36. Madsen, D.L., 1999. Hawthorne’s Puritans: From Fact to Fiction. Journal of American Studies, 33 (1999), 3, 509-517
In America, the period of Romanticism brought up many depictions of society that held their place in America many decades ago. This society was made up of Puritans who held a strong belief system and was even their form of governing. Romantic authors like Washington Irving, who wrote “The Devil and Tom Walker”, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote The Scarlet Letter included Puritans in their stories to convey a message. In both works, the authors focus on Puritans in their stories to convey an image of who Puritans were and what they did, though not in a positive light through the use of the devil and the setting of a forest. This is because of how Romanticism generally satirized Puritans and tried to portray them as completely contradictory
Lang, H.J.. “How Ambiguous Is Hawthorne.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
Religion was the foundation of the early Colonial American Puritan writings. Many of the early settlements were comprised of men and women who fled Europe in the face of persecution to come to a new land and worship according to their own will. Their beliefs were stalwartly rooted in the fact that God should be involved with all facets of their lives and constantly worshiped. These Puritans writings focused on their religious foundations related to their exodus from Europe and religions role in their life on the new continent. Their literature helped to proselytize the message of God and focused on hard work and strict adherence to religious principles, thus avoiding eternal damnation. These main themes are evident in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mathers, and John Winthrop. This paper will explore the writings of these three men and how their religious views shaped their literary works, styles, and their historical and political views.
Puritanism as a religion declined, both by diluting its core beliefs and by losing its members. This phenomenon was at work even in colonial days, at the religion’s height, because it contained destructive characteristics. It devolved into something barely recognizable in the course of a few generations. We can observe that the decline of Puritanism occurred because it bore within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Lang, H.J.. “How Ambiguous Is Hawthorne.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.
After the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus, people flocked to America in search of a new life. One of these groups was the Puritans, who fled England as a result of persecution by the crown. The Puritans were known for their extreme devotion to religion, and their goal to have their community to be as a “city upon a hill”. This idea of a city upon a hill shows how they want everyone to look up to them, but this also meant that all of their actions would be elevated and magnified. This reflects the strict rules and harsh punishments that are engraved into the very depths of their society. Crimes such as adultery could be punishable by death. Two hundred years after the initial settlement of the Puritans, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes about Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman living in one of the first settlements in America who has a coming to America story similar to other Puritans of her time, until she is found guilty of adultery. The Scarlet Letter may seem like a simple story about a Puritan women living in America during the early stages of the New World, in reality this is not true. Hawthorne’s use of symbolism through the appearance, and setting of the characters to show the state of the mind and feelings of the individuals in The Scarlet Letter makes the story far more complex and meaningful than an author simply writing a story about a Puritan woman. This interpretation of The Scarlet Letter can be compared to The Obliquity of Signs: The Scarlet Letter written by Millicent Bell.
... like Hester. He is implying that she is the victim and that the Puritans are actually at fault for this sin. Hawthorne's main goal is to convey the Puritans as sinful and unholy. He does not approve of the sin they hide and he thinks there should be punishment for their actions.
Williams, Stanley T. “Hawthorne’s Puritan Mind.” In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.
Williams, Stanley T. “Hawthorne’s Puritan Mind.” In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996.
We establish that Hawthorne is conscious of the fact that there is a distinction among the private as well as the social realms, particularly during the first Puritan societies. Hawthorne tries through hard work to bring and stick back together this gap. Furthermore, we as readers, discover Hawthorne’s beliefs on America in two angles. On the one side, America was Hawthorne’s much-loved place, the “Promised Land,” like the Puritans perceived America to be; on the other side, America was a land in which the idea of freedom is ambivalent, however it also reached hypocrisy. We see that every time when freedom is at risk or being used wrongly about people then Hawthorne comes up and emphasizes those risks of ambivalent. Whether Hawthorne agrees or disagrees with American writers, he still bases his ideas and perceptions on
Additionally, “Hawthorne created allegories of the dark, irredeemable human condition, a point of view most likely traceable to the author’s New England Puritan roots.” (Constantakis
Critics of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work agree his writing intends to expose the unfair treatment of people and the rulings made by the church of the Puritan society. Critic Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
In his short fiction, “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne demonstrates how a man isn’t depraved by nature. In fact, the story becomes an allegory of the power of reason and how it can destroy a person’s life, if one only trust on reason alone. Through his tale, Hawthorne is speaking to his intended audience, the Calvinist Puritans, whose belief of predestination, Hawthorne disagrees with. In his attempt to shed light into the past transgression of the Puritan community, regarding the witch trials, Hawthorne is trying to make their wrong doing known through his story. In this story, the main character of the story, Goodman Brown is a representation of the Puritan community, who becomes blinded by his own reliance on reason which leads
"The tendency of that Hawthorne had for calling unpleasant things 'Puritanic' is an indication that he rejected Puritanism…" (Gerber, p.41)
Puritanism is, thus, an American heritage; but there is an ambivalent negotiation on the part of authors like Hawthorne and Melville in whose texts we see part acceptance and part questioning of that cultural heritage. For this negotiation, while for Hawthorne it is the experience of marginalization and being set aprt (and not of adultery, sin and punishment) which is crucial and that the fall is possibility for the fallen, for Melville it takes the form of accommodation of the other.