So I don’t see that there is anything left for me but to be an author” (European Graduate School EGS). In choosing to be an author, he felt he was answering a literary calling. Nathaniel’s original last name was Hathorne. He added a ‘w’ when he was in his early 20s to distance himself from his ancestors and their dark legacy. Even though he tried to distinguish himself from his family, Hawthorne still believed that all men and women could have a lapse in judgment and drift toward sin and self-destruction. After college, Hawthorne spent about six months at Brook Farm, an experimental community where all the people shared their work and money. However, he did not share the same hopefulness and optimism as the transcendentalist participants who were at Brook Farm. Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody in 1842 and lived in Concord. They had three children named Una, Rose, and Julian. Throughout Hawthorne’s life he worked as a surveyor, author, and a diplomat to England. He died in his sleep in 1864.
The “Minister’s Black Veil” is one of Hawthorne’s short stories. The setting is in a Massachusetts Puritan town during the 18th century. Parson Hooper comes to the Milford meetinghouse on a bright and sunny Sunday morning with a black veil covering his eyes. The townspeople immediately start gossiping and wondering why he is a wearing a veil. The Parson preaches a sermon on secret sin and was considered one of the best sermons that his congregation has ever heard. His congregation immediately leaves the meetinghouse when he the service is over. The townspeople continue to gossip and wonder if Parson Hooper has gone crazy or if maybe trying to cover up a shameful sin. He appears again at two important ceremonies still wearing the black veil. He ...
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...tly discards that come to inform their work most strongly” (Rahn). Hawthorne’s writings helped shift the balance of power of English literature towards the United States and away from the British Isles. Hawthorne’s new American literature was daring, fresh, and young. The effect Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writings had on American literature will always be recognized and remembered. Even though he saw the world being filled with doubt, mistakes, and believed everyone had a dark side, his writings still classify him as one of the greatest American writers. His writings focused mostly on personal guilt and the difficulty of spiritual and moral choices. He believed everyone had a dark side. Hawthorne had a great impact on the 19th century literary world due to his heritage and beliefs, his short story “The Minister’s Black Veil,” and his effect on the transcendental movement.
There is no end to the ambiguity in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”; this essay hopes to explore this problem within the tale.
... resided in their first permanent home, The Wayside, at Concord. Hawthorne’s health eventually began to fail him, but since he refused to submit to medical examination, the details of his health issues remain unclear. He eventually died in Plymouth, New Hampshire on May 19, 1864 (Magill 1; Campbell 1; “Nathaniel Hawthorne”; Eldred 1).
Hawthorne spent his college years studying at Maine’s Bowdoin College. While attending, he had class with another famous author, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The two were never very
Literary critics seem to come to a consensus on the subject of Hawthorne’s preference for solitude. Edmund Fuller and B. Jo Kinnick in “Stories Derived from New England Living” state that “Hawthorne was essentially of a solitary nature, and group life was not for him. . .” (30) Sculley Bradley, Richmond Croom Beatty and E. Hudson Long in “The Social Criticism of a Public Man” say that “a young man engrossed in historical study and in learning the writer’s craft is not notably queer if he does not seek society. . . .” (47) Stanley T. Williams in “Hawthorne’s Puritan Mind” states: “Soon after Hawthorne’s birth in 1804, circumstances intensified his innate Puritan characteristics: his analysis of the mind, his somber outlook on living, his tendency to withdraw from his fellows” (40). According to A.N. Kaul in his Introduction to Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, the themes of isolation and alienation were ones which Hawthorne was “deeply preoccupied with” in his writings (2).
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, the descendent of a long line of Puritan ancestors, including John Hathorne, a presiding magistrate in the Salem witch trials. After his father was lost at sea when he was only four, his mother became overly protective and pushed him toward more isolated pursuits. Hawthorne's childhood left him overly shy and bookish, and molded his life as a writer. Hawthorne is one of the most modern of writers who rounds off the puritan cycle in American writing
BIOGRAM The man Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author of the nineteenth century, was born in 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. It was there that he lived a poverty-stricken childhood without the financial support of a father, because he had passed away in 1808. Hawthorne was raised strictly Puritan, his great-grandfather had even been one of the judges in the Puritan witchcraft trials during the 1600s. This and Hawthorne’s destitute upbringing advanced his understanding of human nature and distress felt by social, religious, and economic inequities.
In 1842 Hawthorne became friends with the Transcendentalists in Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who also drew on the Puritan legacy. However, generally he did not have much confidence in intellectuals and artists, and eventually he had to admit, that "the treasure of intellectual gold" did not provide food for his family. In 1842 Hawthorne married Peabody, an active participant in the Transcendentalist movement, and settled with her in Concord. A growing family and mounting debts compelled their return to Salem. Hawthorne was unable to earn a living as a writer and in 1846 he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem. He worked there for three years until he was fired.
"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a short story that was first published in the 1836 edition of the Token and Atlantic Souvenir and reappeared over time in Twice-Told Tales, a collection of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The short story narrates the events following Reverend Mr. Hooper's decision to begin wearing a black veil that obscures his full face, except for his mouth and chin. Mr. Hooper simply arrives one day at the meeting house wearing the semi-transparent black veil and refuses from then on to take it of, leading to the loss of his fiancée and isolation form the world. He is even buried in the black veil. Yet, what is important to note are Mr. Hooper's last words to those surrounding his deathbed. He tells them namely in anger that all of them wear black veils: “I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a Black Veil!”. This declaration underlines the meanings of the veil in the story as symbolic of sin, darkness, and the duality within human nature. Thus, "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a literary work of art that demonstrates the author's use of allegory to highlight the psychological angle of the story and characters.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the reader is introduced to Parson Hooper, the reverend of a small Puritan village. One Sunday morning, Hooper arrived to mass with a black veil over his impassive face. The townspeople began to feel uneasy due to their minister’s unusual behavior. When Parson appeared, “Few could refrain from twisting their heads towards the door; many stood upright….” (Monteiro 2). Throughout the story Hooper does not take off the black veil and the townspeople, including Reverend Clark from a nearby village, treat him as if he were contagious disease. A veil typically is used to represent sorrow, but in this story it is used to represent hidden sins. No one exactly knows why he
Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the more well known and well respected American authors to this day. Hawthorne was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts to a Puritan family which had a long New England history. Although Hawthorne was not extremely interested in the idea of higher education he did attended and graduated from Bowdoin college. In 1842 Hawthorne was married to Sophia Peabody and they had three children together until Nathaniels untimely death in 1862 at the age of 59. His short stories are just one of the many reasons for his popularity. Hawthorne like most writers has his own method with which he writes. The term which is most often used when discussing a writer's method of writing is called style. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes with a style which is unique to him and that is what makes his writing so special. In the short stories The Ministers Black Veil, Young Goodman Brown, and The Birthmark patterns in Hawthorne's style become evident. In his writing Hawthorne uses a formal tone, long descriptive sentences which are full of complex vocabulary, a very dark/gothic tone, his characters are often victims of alienation and scrutiny, and lastly it can be noted that Hawthorne inserts autobiographical elements into each of his characters.
When the news came of his father’s death, Hawthorne’s mother withdrew into her upstairs bedroom, coming out only rarely during the remaining forty years of her life. The boy and his two sisters lived in almost complete isolation from her and from each other (29).
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The House of Seven Gables, was born on July 4, 1804 in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. He was a proud son and grandson of New England seafarers. His father pass away leaving his mother widowed. Hawthorne and his family consist of his mother, and his two sisters. After finishing college, he returned to Salem determined to be a writer. He fought twelve years to perfect his literary skills. Then in 1851, he wrote The House of Seven Gables. On May 19, 1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne met his death. Hawthorne describe his work, The House of Seven Gables to be a romance: “the point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us.” (pg 7, Hawthorne) A romance works to relate with the readers by creating a mixture of historical events and fictional events. It invokes humans' consciences by getting the readers to reflect back on their past actions “usually through a far more sub-tile process than the ostensible one.” (pg 8, Hawthorne) Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon and Clifford Pyncheon are two of the main characters in the book, The House of Seven Gables; it allows the readers to re-evaluate the nature of human character.
The Minister’s Black Veil, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1836, is a parable about a minister, Mr. Hooper, who constantly wears a mysterious black veil over his face. The people in the town of Milford, are perplexed by the minister’s veil and cannot figure out why he insists on wearing it all of the time. The veil tends to create a dark atmosphere where ever the minister goes, and the minister cannot even stand to look at his own reflection. In Nathaniel Hawthorne 's literary work, The Minister 's Black Veil, the ambiance of the veil, separation from happiness that it creates, and the permanency of the black veil symbolize sin in people’s lives.
In the short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Nathaniel Hawthorne tells the Mr. Hooper’s black veil and the words that can describe between him and the veil. Hawthorne demonstrates how a black veil can describe as many words. Through the story, Hawthorne introduces the reader to Mr. Hooper, a parson in Milford meeting-house and a gentlemanly person, who wears a black veil. Therefore, Mr. Hooper rejects from his finance and his people, because they ask him to move the veil, but he does not want to do it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Mr. Hooper’s black veil symbolizes sins, darkness, and secrecy in order to determine sins that he cannot tell to anyone, darkness around his face and neighbors, and secrecy about the black veil.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's works are notable for their treatment of guilt and the complexities of moral choices. "Moral and religious concerns, in short, are almost always present in Hawthorne's work"(Foster, 56). Given Hawthorne's background, it is not a stretch of the imagination to say that his novels are critiques of Puritanism. Hawthorne lived in the deeply scarred New England area, separated from Puritanism by only one generation. His grandfather had been one of the judges in the Salem Witch Trials. Personal issues include the various ways Hawthorne's family and specific events in his life influenced his writing. Readers can easily recognize how "Young Goodman Brown" incorporates facts about his Puritan ancestors. Father Hooper in "The Minister's Black Veil" may be symbolically paralleled to Hawthorne's ancestors, trying to hide a sin they have committed. His descendants' remarks on him in The Custom House introduction to The Scarlet Letter mix pride in Hawthorne's prominence and a sense of inherited guilt for his deeds as judge. Hawthorne's guilt of wrongs committed by his ancestors was paramount in the development of his literary career. He investigates human weaknesses through the time period of his ancestors. Generally Hawthorne's writings contained powerful symbolic and psychological effects of pride, guilt, sin and punishment.