1. Introduction:
The descriptions of nature in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories evoke an ambiguous impression. On the one hand, they occupy considerable space and therefore have to be regarded as essential parts of the story worth a close interpretation. The distinct attention for nature in Hawthorne’s work was instantly noticed by his contemporaries. A very early account is of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose poem “Hawthorne” cherishes the “tender undertone” in Hawthorne’s nature descriptions.(1)
On the other hand, the descriptions of nature are not really autonomous, but should rather be seen as background settings for the action. Nature, for example, provides the fitting surrounding for the protagonist who is just about to fall from grace (“Young Goodman Brown”), or it serves as a means of additional characterization (“The Gentle Boy” and “The Scarlet Letter”), or it is a realization of a moral message (“The Hollow of the Three Hills”).
Consequently, nature has an emblematic function, and its description can be regarded as a possibility to express a narrator’s emotional states of various kinds, which originate in the author’s own attitude to the action of the story.(2)
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1 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Hawthorne.” In: J. D. McClatchy: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poems and Other Writings. New York, 2000. p. 474-5.
2 In her analysis of nature personification in The Scarlet Letter Janice B. Daniel finds that Hawthorne’s nature descriptions serve to provide “a disembodied voice [as] an effective device which allows the narrator to have differing perspectives.” Janice B. Daniel: “’Apples of the Thoughts and Fancies’: Nature as Narrator
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Introduction:
- The descriptions of nature in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories evoke an ambiguous impression.
- The distinct attention for nature in Hawthorne- s work was instantly noticed by his contemporaries.
- Nature has an emblematic function: and its description can be regarded as a possibility to express a narrator:s emotional states of various kinds, which origmate in the author' s attitude to the action of the Story.
- Hau-thorne seems to resemble Thoreau or even Cooper in this regard, although his descriptions of nature do not primarily serve the purpose to give a realistic picture of the environment.
- Their purpose is rather to provide pictures of thoughts, whose essence I will show to be Puritan: and thus to exempliö,• the overall struggle Hawthome employs as one of the forces that keep his stories going: the opposition between culture and wildemess, befiveen the market place of the Puritan settlement and the yet unconquered nature, the forest surrounding it.
- In order to be able to analyze the descriptions of nature as means of providing the reader With the Puritan thought mentioned above, the analysis of the depiction nature in Hau-thorne's short stories has to take closely into account the intellectual and historical background of Hawthorne- his Puritan inheritance as well as his continuous attempt to rid himself of it.
- Additionally, the analysis has to include autobiographical elements in order to shed light on Hawthorne- s technique of describing nature In return, the personal accounts of Hauthome hawe to be seen against his Puritan background.
- Consequently, since the descriptions of nature in Hawthome's works to a cenain degree åulfill the purpose of providing a contrmersial picture of Puritan thought, I deem it to be reasonable to ask the following questions:
- In how far are Hawthorne's descriptions of nature to be interpreted in relation to the overall problematic stmcture that similar descriptions of American landscapes in the ninetieth century also express: for example Washington Irvines, or Henry David Thoreau's? How does Hawthome overcome this problematic structure — if at all?
- Furthermore we have to ask if descriptions of nature mirror a discrepancy befiveen the altist Havvthorne, and the moralist in Hawthorne.
- This question leads us to the consideration of the following: Considering the fact that Hau-thorne:s moral views are inseparable from Puritan thought: we have to inquire into the relationship between Hawthorne's artistic concepts of nature description as opposed to the nature descriptions he conceiRd to be a backing for an overall moral purpose.
- The results of this short analysis will be used to show that Hau-thorne generally and particularly in his early work used nature descriptions as a means to convey and criticize a Puritan moral message, which in the settings of his stories in the seventeenth century serves as a picture of nineteenth century dealings With nature as slowly arising from the state of the unknoun, wild Other, to the position of an organic necessity of life.
- Argument:
- The larger part of Hawthorne's stories do not play in nature, be it a natural landscape yet untouched by man or a sheer wilderness, but in the settlements of New England: on the market-place, the nucleus of the Puritan community.
- Town and wilderness seem to form a bipolar construction.
- The reader is introduced into the local settings through expressions like "There is a certain church in the city of New York "The sexton stood in the porch of the Milford Meeting House [ _ or "One afternoon, last summerz while walking along Washington Street.
- And even in those narratives that set their action outside the settlements, nature seems to have nothing but a complementary, a background functiom.
- Nevertheless takmg into account Hawthome' s original intention we find that a close look on nature was amongst his foremost artistic aims:
- Thus my airdrawn pictures will be set in frames perhaps more Valuable than the pictures themselves: smce they will be embossed With groups of charactertstic figures: amid the lake and the mountain scenery: the villages and the fertile fields, of our native land.
- The next sentence, however, sheds another light on this: "But I write this book for the sake of its moral which many a dreaming youth may profit by [ _ Hawthome seems to be committed to two aims.
- The author as an artist is devoted to the description and glorification of 'Cour native land" on the one handz but the moralist teacher, caught in the web of Puritan principles: regards the owerall moral doctrine that can be drawn from his stories as their prime content — to which the artistry of description has to subordinate.
- Hau-thorne's literary interest of the early creative years seems to be the cultivated landscape: not untouched nature: "Had Nature, in that deep hour, become a worshipper in the house that man had.
- This and the passage cited above demonstrates that the early Hawthome still largely agrees u.ith a Puritan attitude that attributes a community-related and religious dimension to the cultivation of nature and shows little respect for its original, wild shape.
- Hawthorne's endeavors as an altist and as a teacher seem to be united in his acceptance of a Puritan principle; the aims his nature descriptions exhibit few discrepancy whatsoever between the artist and the moralist.
- The more Hawthome gained a relative distance from Puritan values, he abandoned the thought of civilization and cultivation of the wildemess as an end in itself, the result being that the aims of an author and artist Who cannot lay aside his character of a teacher: began to diverge.
- For the Mist, cultivated landscapes began to directly reflect the confinement to a way of life imposed on man by Puritan values Hawthome was now beginning to view critically, although it is questionable if Hau-thorne ever managed to rid himself entirely of the same confinement he attempted to overcome in his late descriptions of nature.
- Early stages of a critical approach towards the Puritan concept of nature as well as Hawthome' s inability to consequently pursue his criticism till its very end are expressed in "The May Pole of Merry Mount," where the strict bipolar opposition between town and wilderness is broken up into a merry union of man and nature — only to become reinforced.
- I think this conflict of author intentions that originate in Hawthorne's conflicting ideas about his Puritan heritage and his own feelings tou•ards nature to be a reason for the fact that lively descriptions of unconquered, original nature do only rarely find their way into Hau-thorne's stories.
- Among the very few is ' 'The May-P01e of Merry Mount," where Hau-thorne describes the beauty of both worlds, untamed nature as well as the civilized realm of Puritan settlement:
- Howewer: we mostly find nature account for colorless scenery suited for few things else than providing the background for a moral message.
- Hau-thorne himselfmakes these Puritan, didactic messages fairly explicit.
- So he decidedly confines the Puritan hero in ' 'The Minister's Black Veil" to a sad exclusion of the colors of the outer world With the help of a black although the minister Ivas known to have ' 'a Placid cheelfulness, which often excited a cheerftl smile" 2 from his parish before.
- Similarly: Hawthome lets the cynic in "The Great Carbuncle" deliberately lock himself in vinual blindness by means of his self-blinding cynicism, and in real blindness, since a pair of black glasses locks out the outer world.
- Influenced, intimidated by the overvvhelming example of European literature, the young Hau-thorne shared the opimon of many of his contemporaries that the American landscape could not stand as an autonomous literary topic, for it lacked the elements of dire history that made European landscapes worthy of description, and for it has newer been able to shed off its characteristics as the hostile "other" as opposed to the settlement Consequently, it should submit itself under the reign of thought: under the moral message.
- Unlike his friend Washington In-ing. Who found wildemess and lack of cultivation appealing and accounting for America's peculiar value, Hawthome Ivas not convinced of the optimism that made Irving see a whole new uorld of literary possibilities in American nature.
- Having been acquainted to Europe's abundance of history, we see him complain in the preface of "The Marble Faun" that:
- no author, without a trial, can conceive of the diffculty in "Titing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy "Tong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as it is happily the case With my dear native land.
- Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall flowers, need ruin to make them grow.
- No passage better conveys the dilemma of Hawthome 's conflicting ambitions regarding the description of landscapes.
- The moralist clearly prefers American nature to European, seeing Puritan values expressed most distinctly in a strong opposition to nature that must end in nature's tameness, its "commonplace prosperity_" The anist, on the contrary: misses nature's wild Side, the "min", and perceives its disadvantages in its lack of a past, of "picturesque and gloomy wrong".
- But whereas Washington Irving, Who found himself in a similar situation and expressed his admiration for both the old and the new world in "An Authods Account of overcame his intimidation by simply admitting that things lying ahead are as easy to appreciate as things past Hawthome remained stuck in his dilemma for the largest part of his creative years — in none of Hawthome's deplctions do we find the rich poetic associations of nature that Irving attributed to his descriptions of itz thus elevating nature description to an an of its that needed no ' 'moral" or secondary purpose.
- The description of a natural environment as an end in itself is a rare element in American literature from the 17th to the 19thcentury.
- Instead of nature descriptions: we rather find accounts of human impact on nature, or his fight against and victory ower itl.
- The Romantic nineteenth century, however, experienced first steps towards a different approach James Femmore Cooper: for example, joyfully paints the background scenery for his Leather-Stocking Tales in colors that relate us his love for nature's beauty and sublimlty.
- Many passages are dedicated to the description of nature alone, so that we can justly assume that Cooper's depiction of nature is an afllstic end in itself.
- Among the Transcendentalists: Emerson regards nature as a system of metaphysical allegory, signifying itself as well as a system of thought beyond it.
- Thoreau combines poetical and purely descriptive approaches in his essays to convey his philosophy.
- Hau-thorne seems to be far from Cooper's or Thoreau's poetical: nearly exclusively descriptive approaches to nature.
- The possibility of moral, theoretical interpretation of his nature descriptions rather tempt us to side him With Emerson, but discrepancies such as the impact of Hawthome's Puritan background on his view of nature, as compared to Emerson- s almost heretic concept of a '%ook of nature", can only lead us to the conclusion that Hawthome: although embracing the Romantic approach towards nature, as a result of his role of a moral teacher situates himself in a totally different intellectual position we hawe problems defining it With either pre-Romantic or Romantic.
- Many stances of narratmg techniques mirror the almost twofold intellectual positions towards nature.
- Hawthome often uses the •,oice of a narrator reflecting on nature, who: although relating to the viewer a cenain beauty in What he sees, stands completely apart from the scene related.
- His narrator- s favorite vantage points are raised or isolated spots from which he can overview the landscape, such as the tower in "Sights from a Steeple" the window in "Sunday at Home": the drifting thoughts of someone thinking of his far-off childhood in "My Kinsman Major Molineux", or even through personification of nature In "The Toll-Gatherer's Day•" the narrator sits on the side of a street and simply watches people passing by — the vantage point of the narrating character is clearly separated from all other characters: even from his 01.vn environment.
- Thus, the landscapes described seem to be seen from a bird's eye view and consequently remind more of a draun map than of a description With plastic depth.
- Descriptions of nature, furthermore: appear to be recollected from memory and exhibit strong isolationist traits.
- The isolation of Hawthorne's narrator, Who appears to be "a recluse, like myself, or a prisoner: to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his chamber remind us of the author himself, of whom we know from his own account that he had u.Titten his first stories alone in a tiny attic room.
- Similarly, Hawthorne- s narrators take a glimpse on the outer uorld through a hole in their attic walls— comparable to a passage from the American Notebooks: where Hawthome tells us of the way he visualizes the surroundings for a story.
- Zielsetzung und Themenschwerpunkte
- The main objective of this text is to analyze the descriptions of nature in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, particularly in relation to his Puritan heritage and his own feelings towards nature.
- The text aims to demonstrate how Hawthorne uses nature descriptions as a means to convey and criticize a Puritan moral message.
- It explores the conflict between Hawthorne's artistic intentions and his role as a moral teacher.
- The text examines the relationship between Hawthorne's descriptions of nature and the overall problematic structure that similar descriptions of American landscapes in the nineteenth century express.
- It also investigates the discrepancy between the artist Hawthorne and the moralist in Hawthorne, highlighting how his moral views are inseparable from Puritan thought.
- Introduction: This chapter introduces the ambiguous nature of nature descriptions in Hawthorne's short stories and highlights the importance of considering his Puritan background and his attempts to distance himself from it.
- Argument: This chapter examines the overall structure of Hawthorne's stories, noting that they primarily focus on the settlements of New England rather than on untamed nature. It also discusses Hawthorne's conflicting aims as an artist and a moralist, and how his early work reflects a strong adherence to Puritan principles.
Zusammenfassung der Kapitel
Schlüsselwörter
Die Schlüsselwörter und Schwerpunktthemen des Textes umfassen die Naturbeschreibungen in Nathaniel Hawthornes Kurzgeschichten, den Puritanismus, die amerikanische Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts, den Gegensatz zwischen Kultur und Wildnis, die Rolle des Autors als Künstler und Morallehrer sowie die Ambivalenz der Naturdarstellung in Hawthornes Werk. Der Text beleuchtet die Beziehung zwischen Hawthornes literarischen Intentionen und seinem puritanischen Erbe, analysiert die Bedeutung von Naturbeschreibungen als Mittel zur Vermittlung und Kritik puritanischer Moralvorstellungen und untersucht die Ambivalenz von Hawthornes Naturdarstellung im Kontext der amerikanischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Silja Rübsamen (Autor:in), 2001, Challenging Puritan Thought? Nathaniel Hawthorne´s Nature Descriptions, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/3086
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