Historical Background (1)

  The history of modern America is crucially an extended account of immigration, with waves of newcomers displacing the indigenous population, often through force.

The first permanent colony in New England was established at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. During the nineteenth century, these pioneering settlers became known as the “Pilgrim Fathers”, highlighting the fact that their precarious voyage across the Atlantic Ocean was essentially a pilgrimage in search of religious freedom.

  In 1534, Henry VIII had broken with the religious authority of the Pope. Throughout the sixteenth century, the nature of the relationship between England and Rome fluctuated dramatically. Under Queen Mary, for example, Roman Catholicism was restored, and followers of the Protestant religion, who had flourished under Edward VI, found themselves persecuted.

Elizabeth I sought to establish a middle way, accommodating both parties, but there were still fervent calls for English religion to be “purified”  of traces of Roman Catholic worship. The campaigners for this purge were known as “Puritans”.  The Pilgrim Fathers were essentially committed advocates of the Puritan cause. Unable to secure the reforms they desired, under Elizabeth I and subsequently under James I, they took refuge initially in the Netherlands. Then, in 1620, the made the momentous journey to the New World, which seemed to promise an opportunity to create a society regulated according to their own conception of religious truth, without fear of persecution.

Increasingly, with time, emphasis came to fall upon possibilities for material advancement offered by the New World, but to begin with New England was conceived as a place of spiritual renewal. The intense gravity of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Bostonians reflects their awareness of this immense seriousness of Puritan aspirations. Note that back in England, the Civil War, which resulted in the beheading of Charles I, was another momentous attempt to establish a model society run according to Puritan principles. Those events in the Old World were exactly contemporary with the action of The Scarlet Letter.

Historical Backgroud (2)

  The years in which Nathaniel Hawthorne lived and wrote were turbulent ones for the young nation. The country did share a cultural harmony based on strong community values linking hard work and virtue to success. In addition, the majority of citizens shared the idea that the United States, under divine guidance, was destined for greatness. Among negatives, however, was the sense that some of the original values of the Revolution  were being lost. Political reform movements sprang up. Utopian experiments were tried. New religious sects, unhappy with old theologies, broke away from the established churches.

Over the course of Hawthorne’s life, the United States was engaged in three wars, skirmishes with the Native American peoples, economic depressions, and problems with newly arriving immigrants. Looming large on the horizon and eventually leading to civil war was the conflict over slavery. Like that of many writers, Hawthorne’s work reflects the times in which he lived

The idea of writing as a career was also evolving. Increased literacy was creating a market for mass-produced books. Fiction became increasingly popular with readers, and the young nation was looking for writers who might compete on the cultural level of the Europeans. Writing became a way to possible fame and fortune. To be financially successful, however, a writer had to be very good and productive at his craft. Most writers had to work at occupations other than writing to support their families

The Scarlet Letter was well received when it was published in 1850. It is one of those rare works which, recognized as a “classic” immediately upon publication, has remained in print and impressed generations of readers. Despite the desire of the reading public in 1850 for balance of humor and pathos in new works, the publisher was enthusiastic over what Hawthorne thought to be a defect, The Scarlet Letter stressed the dark and somber side of human affairs.

The critics were nearly unanimous in their proclaiming The Scarlet Letter a major American novel. History has proven these critics right; The Scarlet Letter has never been out of print in its century-and-a-half existence. While very religious critics found his topic, a couple enmeshed in adultery, to be immoral, and Hawthorne’s treatment of them too sympathetic, most commented on the novel’s stylistic perfection, its intensity of effect, and its insight into the human soul. Hawthorne was quickly elevated to the position of the nation’s foremost man of letters.

New England Puritanism.

  In 1846, Nathaniel Hawthorne published a collection of stories entitled Masses from and Old Manse. In an essay responding enthusiastically to that volume, Herman Melville noted Nathaniel Hawthorne’s  “great power of blackness”  and attributed that grave quality to his “Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin”. Melville shared that sombre vision, and arguably intensified its effects in Nathaniel Hawthorne. But we can see from The Custom-House that Nathaniel Hawthorne was profoundly conscious of his family’s prominence in the history of New England. Puritanism, which had John Calvin’s teachings as its theological basis.

As he makes clear, The Scarlet Letter is set during  “a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of divine institutions”. The society in which Hester Prynne lived was theocratic; that is, it was governed according to the unequivocal authority of God’s law.

Many of the emigrants from England were fleeing religious persecution, But Nathaniel Hawthorne makes intolerance their own dominant characteristic. Perhaps he was prompted to heighten that aspect through his awareness of later episodes, such as the notorious Salem witch-trials of 1692, in which one of his ancestors, was thoroughly implicated.

The Puritan ethos disdained earthly pleasures, and frowned upon physical indulgence of any kind. Music and theatrical entertainments were considered trivial distractions from piety. Food was kept simple, and was eaten in moderation. Puritan dress was uniformly sombre, functional and guaranteed to grant no delight to the eye. Decoration was equated to vanity, so Hester Prynne’s elaborate embroidery should be seen as a radical challenge to attitudes underpinning an entire way of life. Note, however, that Nathaniel Hawthorne does refer on a number of occasions to vestiges of a more indulgent taste, in the appearance of Governor Bellingham’s house, for example, or in his liking for ale, which some members of the community have preserved, despite their better intentions.

During the composition of his novel, Nathaniel Hawthorne consulted Caleb Snow’s A History of Boston (1825), and Joseph Felt’s The Annals of Salem (1827), in order to incorporate historically verifiable material. It is important to recognise, however, that Nathaniel Hawthorne was not engaged in a systematic factual reconstruction. Dates and details allowed contemporary readers a sense of the changes which had occurred in New England over the preceding two centuries, but concern for accuracy was far less important to Nathaniel Hawthorne than the integrity of his literary design.

The Declaration of Independence.

  It is necessary to remember that when The Scarlet Letter was first published, in 1850, America, as a modern democratic republic, was less than seventy-five years old. Although political independence from the Old World had been declared in 1776, the new nation remained heavily indebted to Europe in cultural terms.

There was concern, felt strongly in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s social circle, that in the mid-nineteenth century the ideals upon which the new nation had been founded (notably the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) were being betrayed, by industrialisation anf the growth of cities, by racial oppression and prejudice, by the unjust treatment of women, and by engagement in a series of wars. During the decade preceding publication of             The Scarlet Letter, movements agitating for reform, and experimental communities flourished, indicating the extent to which failure of American aspirations was recognised. Little more than a decade after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance appeared, America was plunged into a disastrous and traumatic Civil War which had a devastating effect upon the republic’s early faith in its glorious future.

Nineteenth-century American Feminism.

  In 1848, two years before Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter, a convention assembled in Seneca Falls, New York, to establish the basis for political activism in pursuit of women’s rights. The advancement of women was becoming a public issue, as well as a concern amongst women in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s own circle, including Margaret Fuller and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was highly critical of Fuller’s views, and disapproved of the way she conducted her life. Her radical feminist beliefs ignored what he felt were ineradicable and necessary differences between men and women. So when, at the end of The Scarlet Letter, Hester expresses a vision which reflects Fuller’s own, it is necessary to recognise that Nathaniel Hawthorne draws back from espousing such dissident opinions.

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was just as insistent as Fuller that the restraints framing women’s social activity were artificial, and could readily be cast off. She was the author of twenty-seven books in the fields of theology, sociology and history. The education of women was a special concern for her. Nathaniel Hawthorne, however, withheld his daughters from formal schooling, believing that to be the privilege of males.

New England Transcendentalism.

During the 1830s, a group known as the Transcendentalists became an influential intellectual presence in Boston. The key figure was Ralph Waldo Emerson, arguably the most influential of all American philosophers, and an essayist and poet of considerable talent.

Prominent amongst his followers was Henry David Thoreau, whose Walden: or life in the Woods (1854) remains one of the most singular and compelling works of American literature. Margaret Fuller was another important member of the group, editor of their magazine, The Dial, and author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

Emerson preached that human beings were perfectible, that each individual contains a spark of the divine, and that by conventions of behaviour, a perfect society could be realised on earth. This conception of human nature was the grounding for his faith in democracy, with the basis of political equality being nothing less than the common divinity of men and women. In part the Transcendentalists were responding to perceived injustices and inequalities in American life, and were seeking to regain the promise of an ideal world which the New World had once seemed to offer.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was caught up in the initial excitement, especially as Elizabeth Peabody, sister of his wife Sophia, co-founded The Dial with Fuller. In 1841, he entered Brook Farm, en experiment in communal living. At the end of eight months, he declared himself weary of paradise. His disillusionment with Transcendentalist optimism is registered in The Blithedale Romance (1852).

Nathaniel Hawthorne, who always had reservations, became profoundly sceptical about the Transcendentalist project, with its unbounded aspirations, and anarchistic politics. He shared its concern for the future of American democracy, but increasingly he regarded Transcendentalist idealism as self-deluding, and felt that a surer way for Americans to proceed would follow from acknowledgement of the past, and recognition of the innate sinfulness which, after the Fall from Eden, is the common inheritance of humankind. This view was intensified through his close friendship with the great, and hugely sceptical wreter Herman Melville.

The emergence of the American novel.

  At the time Nathaniel Hawthorne began to write, the taste of American readers was dominated by European, and especially British authors, whose books they found widely available in inexpensive editions. During the Early 1840s, the absence of a working copyright agreement meant that English novelists, such as Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disraeli, received no royalty payments for copies sold in America. However, American writers, such as James Fenimore Cooper had to be paid royalties. In consequence, the imported works were notably cheaper, and that added to the enthusiasm with which they were received.

There was a determination amongst American intellectuals, however, to foster a national literature. It was felt that the arts were an index of cultural health, which had been neglected amidst the basic challenges and the practical difficulties involved in establishing a new society. Cooper (1789-1851), now remembered especially for The Last of the Mohicans (1826), set an important example, although his work was characterised by a certain gentility, which reflected his privileged background. Washington Irving (1783-1859) also achieved eminence, but although he is well-known for his story of Rip van Winkle in the Catskill Mountains, his writing generally is pervaded by the legacy of Old World literary styles and concerns. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), recognised today as an extremely significant figure, was viewed by his contemporaries as a curious eccentric, whose obsessions could not be considered representative of America. So, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s prose and the poetryof Walt Whitman (1819-1892) were celebrated as the emergence of a distinctive voice, and foundations for a national literature.