Hawthorne Writing Style

1170 Words3 Pages

Hawthorne Writing Style

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a prominent early American Author who

contributed greatly to the evolution of modern American literature. A

New England native, Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July

4, 1804 and died on May 19, 1864 in New Hampshire. An avid seaman,

Hawthorne^s father died in 1808 when Nathaniel Hawthorne was only a

young child. After his father^s death, Hawthorne showed a keen

interest in his father^s worldwide nautical adventures and often read

the logbooks his father had compiled from sailing abroad. Hawthorne

was a descendant of a long line of New England Puritans, which sparked

his interest in the Puritan way of life. After he graduated from

Bowdoin College in 1825, Hawthorne returned to his home in Salem were

he began to write in semi-seclusion. Hawthorne published his first

novel, Fanshawe in 1828. In 1839, Hawthorne was appointed weigher and

gauger at the Boston Custom House. He later married Sophia Amelia

Peabody in 1842. In the following years, Hawthorne wrote his more

famous novels which shaped his own literary style, as well as the

genres of the romance novel and short story. Eventually, Hawthorne

developed a style of romance fiction representative of his own

beliefs. Although Nathaniel Hawthorne^s writing style was often viewed

as outdated when compared to modern literature, Hawthorne conveyed

modern themes of psychology and human nature through his crafty use of

allegory and symbolism. To begin with, Hawthorne^s style was

commonplace for a writer of the nineteenth century. During the time

period in which Hawthorne wrote, printing technology was not yet

advanced enough to easily reproduce photographs in books. Therefore,

Hawthorne frequently wrote lengthy visual descriptions since his

audience had no other means to see the setting of the novel. (Magill:1

840). One example of such descriptions was in The Scarlet Letter when

Hawthorne intricately describes the prison door and its surroundings.

Another aspect of Hawthorne^s writing which was exclusive to his time

period was the use of formal dialogue which remained fairly consistent

from character to character (Magill:2 140). Such overblown dialogue

was evident in The Scarlet Letter when the dialogue of Pearl, a young

child, exhibited no difference from the dialogue of the other

characters in the novel. Hawthorne adopted the use of overly formal

dialogue partly from a British writer, Sir Walter Scott, whose works

were popular in the United States and Great Britain (Magill:1 841).

Although Hawthorne^s dialogue was overly formal, it was an accurate

tool in describing human emotion (Gale). Absence of character

confrontation was another component of Hawthorne^s literary style.

Open Document