Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Author of Scarlet Letter
By Sabila Aisyahrani (61413027)
Nathaniel
Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.He was born in Salem,
Massachusetts, July 4th in 1804. The original name of the family was Hathorne,
but in his early 20s, Hawthorne changed his name by adding 'w' letter to hide a
relation with John Hathorne, a prominent judge in the Salem witch trials. Also
among his ancestors was William Hathorne, one of the Puritan settlers who
arrived in New England in 1630. William Harthorne was an important member of Massachusetts Bay Colony and held many
political positions including magistrate and judge, becoming infamous for his
harsh sentencing.
In 1808, Hawthorne father, Nathaniel Hathorne,
Sr., was a sea captain, died of yellow fever in Suriname when Hawthorne was 4
years old. His mother and 2 sisters moved in with maternal relatives, the
Mannings, in Salem, where they lived for 10 years. His mother was very protective
to him, it made him being a prude person and bookish. In 1813, he injured his
leg while playing ‘bat and ball’ and became lameness for a year, though several
physicians could find nothing wrong with him.
In the summer of 1816, the family lived as a boarders
with farmers before they moved to a house which built by his uncles, Richard
and Robert Manning in Raymond, Maine, near Sebago Lake. In 1819, he was sent
back to Salem for school, but he had homesickness because he had being too far
away from his mother and sisters. However, in his homesickness in Salem, he was
making a homemade newspaper, The Spectator. It was written by himself and
included essays, poems, and some articles. When his uncle read it, he thought
that Hawthorne should went to college.
In 1821, Hawthorne’s uncle sent him to Bowdoin
College and helped him to finance his college education until he graduated. The
reason his uncle sent him to Bowdoin College because he had family connection
and also because its relatively inexpensive tuition rate. During his college
day, he met a poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future naval commander Horatio
Bridge, and future president Franklin Pierce. He did not study for any
particular profession, he was an avid reader and writer. He thought it was interesting
to note all instruction in modern
literature and history. He was an
average student, and graduated in 1825.
He lived in Salem after graduated from Bowdoin
College. He spent time in his mother’s house. In there, he spent much time for
reading and writing. He studied new England history and read much about
Puritan. During this time, he wrote many short stories although when his first
try at getting a collection published was failed and made him burned his work
on fire. In 1828, he published his first novel, “Fanshawe” anonymously, but it did not receive much attention from
all people. It made him very diligent in his intent on being a writer and
slowly had many new short stories collection.
In 1836, Hawthorne lived in Boston with the poet
Thomas Green Fessenden. He served as the editor and writer for American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining
Knowledge. He was offered an appointment as weigher and gauger at the
Boston Custom House at salary of $ 1,500 a year and he accepted. He contributed
his short stories, such as, “My Kinsman,
Major Molineux” , “Roger Malvis’s Brutal” , and “Young Goodman Brown” to
various magazines, and it became famous short stories, but it did not published
by his name. His friend, Horatio Bridge convinced him to publish under his own
name. “Twice-Told Tales” was a
success and had favorable reviews from Henry Wardsworth Longfellow.
Hawthorne resigned his position in Boston Custom
House in 1841, and deciding to participate in the Transcendentalist movement’s
experimental Brook Farm where he felt he would able to make enough some money
to marry his lover.
His Lover was Sophia Peabody. She was an
illustrator and trancendentalist. She was a sister of Elizabeth Peabody who was
his ex-girlfriend. She was a reclusive person. Her early life, she often had
migrains and underwent several experimental medical treatments. She mostly
bedridden until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne. After that, her headaches seem to recover.
On July
9th 1842, Hawthorne and Sophia were married at her parent’s home in Boston.
They moved to Concord and rent the old manse from Ralph Waldo Emerson in there,
which was the center of the Trancendental movement. In there, Hawthorne wrote
and published some varieties of tales and sketches.
Hawthorne and Sophia had three children. The
eldest is Una, she was born in 1844 and named in reference to epic poem titled The Faerie Queene. It was made by Sir
Edmund Spenser. Their second child was born in 1846, he called his son Julian.
In the same year, Hawthorne published his work named Mosses from an Old Manse. The youngest is Rose, she was born in
1851. Her name was referred to by Hawthorne as his Autumnal Flower.
Hawthorne back to Salem in 1845 and he was
officially appointed surveyor of the Boston Custom House. Because of this, he
had difficulty writing during this period. However, he lost his job because the
employment was vulnarable to the politics of the spoils system. He was quit
after the president election of 1848. He wrote a letter of protest to the
Boston Daily Advertiser which was attackd by Whigs and supported by Democrats. The
following year he experienced the loss of his mother, but it was also the year
that Hawthorne found a worn letter “A” in the attic of the old home. Because of
it, the inspiration came to him and he wrote his novel The Scarlet Letter.
The Scarlet Letter was a story about of adulteress
Hester Prynne and Arthur dimmesdale was self-described by him as a “hell-fired
story.” It published in mid-March 1850. The Scarlet Letter was one of the first
mass-produced books in United States upon its release and it gathered much
praise and critism for novels supposed morbidity. It sold 2,500 volumes within
ten days and earned Hawthorne $1,500 over 14 years in America.
He and his family left Salem for temporary
residence in Lenox, a small town in the Berkshires in the end of March 1850. He
met Herman Melville and became mutual friend. Herman Melville had just ead
Hawthorne’s short story collection Mosses From an Old Manse. In 1851, Melville
published new work Moby-dick and he dedicated it to Hawthorne.
Hawthorne’s time in The Brekshires was very
productive. He published The House of the Seven
Gablets, The Snow Image, and other
Twice-Told Tales and a short stories retelling myths, A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, a book which he had been thinking
about writing since 1846. The next year, he published The Blithdale Romance after he moved to Wayside, Concord.
He returned to Concord and bought The Hillside and
renamed it The Wayside in 1852. Their neighbors in Concord were Emerson and
Henry David Thoreau. In this year, Hawthorne wrote the campaign biography of
his friend Franklin Pierce and titled The
Life of Franklin Pierce. In the biography, he described Pierce as a
statesman and soldier who had accomplished no great feats because of his
“little noise” and so “withdrew into the background”. He also left out Pierce’s
drinking habit despite rumors of his alcoholism. When Pierce was winning the
election and being a president, Hawthorne was appointed to a position in
England that was similar to his previous custom house position. He was being a
Consul at Liverpool, England. Hawthorne’s appointment ended at the close of the
Pierce admisitration and the Hawthorne family toured France and Italy.
While in Europe Hawthorne had inspired to write
his novel The Marble Fun. It was romance mixes elements of a fable,
pastoral, gothic novel, travel guide. The novel published in 1860. It was his lastest
novel after seven years. After his novel published, Hawthorne and family back
to Wayside and continued to write his journal although his health was beginning
to run down.
During
American Civil War, Hawthorne still loved to travel with William D. Ticknor to
Washington D.C. He met Abraham Lincoln and the other notable figures. In this
experience he wrote an essay “Chiefly about War Matters” in 1862.
He
was suffering from pain in his stomach. He always refused to see a doctor and became
weakest and depressed. He
insisted on recuperative trip with his friend, Franklin Pierce, though his
neighbor, Bronson Alcott was concerned Hawthorne was too ill. While on a tour
of the White Mountains, Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19th
1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire.
Franklin
Pierce sent a telegram to Elizabeth Peabody, Sophia’s sister to inform Sophia
about Hawthorne’s death. She was too saddened by the news to handle the funeral
arrangements herself. Her son, Julian just knew his father’s death in the next
day.
Longfellow
wrote a tribute poem to Nathaniel Hawthorne and published it in 1866. It titled
The Bell of Lynn.
He was buried on what is known as “Authors’ Ridge” in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery,
Concord, Massachusetts.
Life After Hawthorne Passed away
The family continued to live at The Wayside four
more years after Hawthorne died. When their needs increase and their income
from Hawthorne’s book wipe off, they decided to move for awhile to Dresden,
Germany because the cost of living in there more cheaper. When the children had
their own way to face their life, she decided to move to London, where she
still had friends. She diagnosed typhoid pneumonia and died in 1871. She was
buried at Kensal Green, thousands of miles from her husband’s grave.
The children had different ways.
Una became engaged to a young poet who will died because tuberculosis. She
lived with her sister and brother and then in Anglican convent. Because she
died in her thirty-three. Julian took his time for writing, capitalizing on his
father’s name and pouring out novels, histories, essays, and a biography of his
parents. He married in young age and had ten children. At his sixty-six, he
served a brief term in prison for selling shares in a worthless mine. In 1934,
he died.
The youngest, Rose was married
at twenty to a writer who was an alcoholic. She lost her only child because of
diphteria and divorced with her husband. After that, she coverted to
Catholicism. She launched one of the first hospices in America on the Lower
East Side of New York City. Later, she established the Rosary Hill Home for
indigent patients with incureable cancer. It still functions in Hawthorne, New
York. She died in 1926.
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