How Did Nathaniel Hawthorne Influence Society

Everyone has experiences that change their lives and influence all that they do. Everyone has that special someone, or something, that impacts their choices and work. Nathaniel Hawthorne definitely had these types of experiences throughout his lifetime. Authors in particular have certain people they look up to when it comes to their writing, and Hawthorne had many different people like this as he was writing all of his novels, including The Scarlet Letter. He also was inspired and influenced like different events he experienced in his years, in good ways and bad.

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

One main event that triggered him to begin writing The Scarlet Letter was the election of former president, Zachary Taylor. During this time period Hawthorne was in a hole financially. However, through some connections he got a job being the Surveyor of the Port at the Salem custom house. After Taylor’s inauguration, his party members accused Hawthorne of corruption and fraud. Because of this, he was fired from his position in June of 1849. As if being fired was not enough, his mother passed away less than two months later. After these two horrible catastrophes, he shut everything else out and began writing The Scarlet Letter. If he was not fired from his surveyor job, many believe he would not have written this novel, simply because he would not have had the time. Also, if his mother did not pass, it is believed that he would have not had a reason to shut up self out, thus not writing the novel.

Another big influence on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing of his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter, was money. At the time before he started writing his novel, he had very little money, and his first daughter was recently born. He needed to write in order to support his family. He planned on writing a long short story, however the amount of money he would make from writing a novel was too much to pass