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Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804. Hawthorne’s father, a sea captain, married Elizabeth Clarke Manning in 1801. His mother’s English ancestors immigrated to the New World in 1679. After his father’s death, Hawthorne and his family moved into the populous Manning household (Marks). When Hawthorne was twelve years old, the family moved to Maine, where the Mannings some land. After some time, Hawthorne went back to Salem in 1820 and began preparing for college while also working for his uncle. While working and preparing for school, he read from many great authors and produced a family newspaper, The Spectator. Hawthorne was the first person in his family to go to college. Hawthorne attended Bowdoin, where he graduated eighteenth in a class of thirty-eight (Marks). Once returning to Salem he began a self-imposed apprenticeship. During this time, he in private published Fanshawe. Hawthorne wrote and published many short stories that failed to interest publishers. From 1853 to 1857, Hawthorne served as American consul in England. After four year...
Nathaniel Hawthorne the author of The Scarlet Letter uses the literary device of chiaroscuro to effectively develop his characters. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804 to a prominent family. His father passed away on a voyage when he was four years old. His relatives recognized his talent, and they helped pay his way to Bowdoin College. Hawthorne and his classmates became the most prominent people in America at that time. He had many strong ties with important people from attending Bowdoin, such as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Franklin Pierce. In 1828, his first novel, Fanshawe was anonymously published at his own expense. In 1842, he befriended Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, and married Sophia Peabody, an active member of the Transcendentalist movement. In 1846, he was appointed surveyor of the Port of Salem where he worked for the next three years, being unable to earn a living as a writer. He wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1850, showing the Puritans as hypocrites fixated on sin. This romance was an immediate success, even though it received many criticisms for its risqué topic. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne effectively uses chiaroscuro to develop the personalities of Hester Prynne, Pearl, and Arthur Dimmesdale.
“Nathaniel Hawthorne – Biography.” The European Graduate School. The European Graduate School, n.d. Web. 17 Feb. 2014
Sullivan, Wilson. “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” In New England Men of Letters. New York: Macmillan Co., 1972.
Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804 (Magill 1; Campbell 1; “Nathaniel Hawthorne”; Eldred 1). He was born into the sixth generation of his Salem family, and was a descendant of a long line of New England Puritans, which contributed in his interest in the Puritan way of life. The family was originally known as the “Hathornes”, but Nathaniel added the “w” to his name so it would become “Hawthorne”. The Hawthornes had been involved in religious persecution with their first American ancestor, William. Another ancestor, John Hathorne, was one of the three judges at the seventeenth-century Salem witchcraft trials. Hawthorne’s father was a sea captain, and when he was four years old (1808), his father died on a voyage in Surinam, Dutch Guinea (Campbell 1). Hawthorne was left alone with his mother and two sisters. He spent his early years in Salem and in Maine, during which he showed an interest in his father’s nautical adventures and read his logbooks often, even after his death (Magill 1). His maternal relatives recognized his literary talent at such a you...
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the Puritan community banned all forms of sin. Sin was looked upon as evil, being connected to the devil and his dark ways. Hester Prynne, the main character of the story, was shunned by the rest of the Puritan world after committing the sin of adultery. She lived in a world where it was not accepted. She was isolated from the world around her, having little hope. Throughout the novel, symbols such as the character of the kind woman, the wild rose bush outside of the prison doors and the character of Pearl, Hester Prynne's illegitimate child, are used to show that even in a world full of sin and darkness, there is always hope.
Edgar Allan Poe was born at 33 Hollis Street, Boston, Mass., on January 19, 1809, the son of poverty stricken actors, David, and Elizabeth (born Arnold) Poe. His parents were then filling an engagement in a Boston theatre, and the appearances of both, together with their sojourns in various places during their wandering careers, are to be plainly traced in the play bills of the time.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in the year 1804 in the heart of Salem, Massachusetts, where to Salem witch trials were conducted. Hawthorne was born in an unforgiving time period, where life revolved around religion and family. Hawthorne’s father died of Yellow Fever in the year 1808. Nathaniel grew up fatherless, which had a lasting effect on who he later became to be. Education at the time was centered on reading and writing, with a heavy religious influence. “The education of the next generation was important to further "purify" the church and perfect social living” (Kizer). However, since his father passed away, there was no other man to instill the Puritan beliefs into young Nathaniel. Hawthorne later on was able to see the culture through a different lens than the people surrounding him, which made him slightly opposed to the Puritan way of life. He became intellectually rebellious; not thinking in the same way that his peers or family was.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804 (net). He attended Bowdoin College with famous writers such as Horatio Bridge and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (net). In 1850, Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter (1222). It is considered by many that The Scarlet Letter, “represents the height of Hawthorne’s literary genius. At this time, Boston was the center of a very Puritan society. Throughout the novel Hawthorne uses many symbols. For example, one prominent symbol is the scaffold. During this period in time, the scaffold was used for public humiliation. Those who had committed either a crime or a sin were forced to stand upon it in front of everybody in the town, as a form of confession or public recognition of one’s sin. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold not only represents the act of confessing but it also can be seen as a symbol of the stern, inflexible doctrine of the Puritan faith. The Scarlet Letter is centered on the three scaffold scenes, which unite the work, beginning, middle, and end. Hawthorne uses these scenes to aid in his development of the main characters, Hester Pryne, the Reverend Mr. Dimmsdale, and to a lesser degree, Roger Chillingsworth.
one's who stand alone with no one to look to for love or support. "For
Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdoin College. His first novel, Fanshawe, was unsuccessful and Hawthorne himself disavowed it as amateurish. However, he wrote several successful short stories, including "My Kinsman, Major Molyneaux," "Roger Malvin's Burial" and "Young Goodman Brown." However, insufficient earnings as a writer forced Hawthorne to enter a career as a Boston Custom House measurer in 1839. After three years Hawthorne was dismissed from his job with the Salem Custom House. By 1842 his writing amassed Hawthorne a sufficient income for him to marry Sophia Peabody and move to The Manse in Concord, which was at that time the center of the Transcendental movement. Hawthorne returned to Salem in 1845, where he was appointed surveyor of the Boston Custom House by President James Polk, but was dismissed from this post when Zachary Taylor became president. Hawthorne then devoted himself to his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. He zealously worked on the novel with a determination he had not known before. His intense suffering infused the novel with imaginative energy, leading him to describe it as the "hell-fired story." On February 3, 1850, Hawthorne read the final pages to his wife. He wrote, "It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. After his graduation from Bowdoin College in Maine, he quickly became a well-known author of literary tales concerning early American life. Between 1825 and 1850, he developed his talent by writing short fiction, and he gained international fame for his fictional novel The Scarlet Letter in 1850 (Clendenning 118). Rufus Wilmot Griswold...
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.
The Scarlet Letter is a romance written by Nathaniel Hawthorne that takes place in the Puritan Community in Boston, Massachusetts during the 17th century. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, who commits the sin of adultery with the minister of the church, Reverend Dimmesdale, and conceives a baby girl, Pearl. Hester's husband, Roger Chillingworth, returns and seeks revenge. As Pearl grows up, her mother learns how to deal with the scarlet letter of shame and Dimmesdale feels guilt. When they decide to run away, Dimmesdale confesses his sin in public and he dies. The story end with the death of Chillingworth and all his belongings and property go to little Pearl. Pearl grows up and probably gets married and Hester becomes a mother for all women in need.
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). Hawthorne’s personal isolation from people from 1825 to 1837 was probably due to his lifelong shyness among people. This reluctance to freely socialize may have been a result of a foot injury: “an injury to his foot at the age of nine reduced his physical activity for almost two years” (Martin 16). Wagenknecht says in Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Man, His Tales and Romances that this accident “reduced him for over two years to a state of invalidism that probably contributed toward developing his taste for reading” (2). Or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s shyness was perhaps due to the death of his father when he was but four years old. Regarding the impact of this death upon Hawthorne, Edmund Fuller and B. Jo Kinnick in “Stories Derived from New England Living,” say:
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to a family that had been prominent in the area since colonial times. Hawthorne was very handsome and never had problems with looks. When Nathaniel was four, his father died on a voyage in Surinam. Hawthorne was extremely concerned with traditional values. From 1836 to 1844, the Boston-centered Transcendentalist movement, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was an important force in New England intellectual circles. The Transcendentalists believed that human existence transcended the sensory realm, and rejected formalism in favor of individual responsibility. The Scarlet Letter shows some Transcendentalist influence, including a belief in individual choice and consequence, and an emphasis on symbolism.