Nathaniel Hawthorne and Puritan Culture

One of Hawthorne’s best novels was The Scarlet Letter which presents a stable and sad tale of love and betrayal it was set in the context of the seventeenth-century, Puritan, New England. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s authorial intentions were to be the first American writer to explore hidden motivations of characters. His intentions of his beliefs were to show people that witchcraft wasn’t real and that Puritans were paranoid. Even though he had a Puritan descent he hated them with a passion he was ashamed of what his grandfather was and he added the w to his name through the shame of his history. Nathaniel Hawthorne wanted to present the puritans with a negative stigma. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. His family descended from the early Puritan settlers in America and had lived in Salem since the 1600s. One of his ancestors was a judge in the Salem witchcraft trials where many women were executed. Hawthorne's father was a captain of a ship, he died when Nathaniel was aged 4, and his mother became a virtual recluse. Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where his best friends Franklin Pierce, who later became a president of the United States.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer who was a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature, he is best-known for The Scarlet Letter 1850 and The House of the Seven Gables 1851.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born 1804 and died in 1864. Between 1825 and 1836, Hawthorne worked as a writer and contributor to newspapers. Hawthorne was a writer all his life. The Democratic Review published two dozen stories by him and his life style. He has written a various amount of Novels ...

... middle of paper ...

...ut to believe what other people were saying they had lack of explanations and understanding of psychology. Most teenage girls were acting ‘out of the ordinary’ where as that wasn’t tolerated. The crucible is biased on a real life story. It is the background of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s grandfather it shows what he was like and his jointment in the Salem which trails. During the witch trials there was many scape goating in large groups of girls. John Hawthorne became tyrant because all his power abused the judging in the Salem witch trials. As everyone became hysteria through all the pressure. Everyone became mob mentally to feel safer and to remain safe. The people led a tough life, fraught with many dangers. These people were highly superstitious and believed strongly in the Devil, which partly explains why the idea of witchcraft, once suggested, took such a hold.