John Hathorne Influences

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man who was both plagued and absorbed by the legacy of the Puritans in New England. He was related to John Hathorne, a Puritan judge during the infamous Salem Witch trials of 1692. In The Scarlet Letter, his fictional account of mid-17th century Boston presents an opportunity to examine different themes commonly associated with Puritans. Particularly the nature of sin, personal identity and the repression of natural urges are themes that appear repeatedly through the novel. While his account of this time period may not be completely historically accurate, it is indicative of the persistent thematic influence of Puritan culture on American and New England society.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the most important authors in the history of American literature and the genre of Romanticism or Dark Romanticism, due to his unique style of writing and his focus upon subjects of Puritan religion and the unknown. I consider Hawthorne an important author, due to the fact that he skillfully and accurately based his fictional writings upon happenings of colonial times, was one of the first authors to display unfortunate outcomes for his characters’ immoral choices according to Puritan beliefs, and wrote of things that were considered taboo in his time, such as witchcraft, scientific innovation and experimentation. I strongly believe that Hawthorne’s influence for his writings were his Puritan ancestral background, his fascination with Puritan beliefs, and his interest in what was considered the unknown such as witchcraft and science. According to the Norton Anthology Textbook Vol. B, Nathaniel Hawthorne was “born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804” (370). Hawthorne belonged “to a family whose ancestral roots were tied to Puritan history, with his family being among the first settlers of Massachusetts and having one of his relatives serve as a judge during the Salem witch trials” (370). Hawthorne, as a young boy, “had a particular interest in writings such as John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, and by his mid-teens he took interest in British novelists such as Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollet, William Godwin, and Sir Walter Scott”

Writing an excellent book, short story,or poem is an ability very few people posses : Nathaniel Hawthorne is someone who had this talent. Hawthorne's writing is mostly centered around romantic fiction, he has written a plethora of things but he is mostly remembered for his short stories and novels. Before divulging into his work, a reader should know where his writing comes from, his inspirations, originality and what some would call pure genius. The author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, is an individual whose work has been and should continue to be analyzed for years to come due to his unique twist on romantic fiction. Many of his works have casted a silhouette over America through his intricate stories and writing style that revealed the themes of psychology and human nature during the 19th century. Hawthorne’s ominous style makes his works into oddities compared to the other romantic fiction novels in his time. Many of his works, such as The Scarlet Letter, exemplifies the epitome of Hawthorne’s distinct outlook on the moralistic attitudes of

Hester Prynne’s sin was adultery. This sin was regarded very seriously by the Puritans, and was often punished by death. Hester’s punishment was to endure a public shaming on a scaffold for three hours and wear a scarlet letter "A" on her chest for the rest of her life in the town. Although Hawthorne does not pardon Hester’s sin, he considers it

Nathaniel Hawthorne comes from a bloodline that is associated with the Salem witch trials in 1692. His great-great-grandfather was a puritan that took part in the executions during the witch trilas, explaining Hawthorne’s fondness with the religion. Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his interest in the News England Puritan past. Most of Hawthorne’s writings implement the Puritan ways and faith in which most of the characters act upon or main faith is revolved around. “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Scarlet Letter” are both one of Hawthorne’s many pieces that are prime examples of the Puritan religion affecting his writing. Through the story Hawthorne uses many allegories representing Christian, but also puritan faith and many symbols relating to them also.

The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil’s magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later” (Blumberg). The period in which the Salem Witch Trials took place was a dark period in American history. America was a vast wilderness, unexplored, corrupted by an overzealous society. This group of people is known as the puritans. Their christian based faith was strict but their punishments were even stricter. Their actions and crimes they commited impacted generations after generations to come. A good example of this can be seen through Nathaniel Hawthorne's writings especially his best selling novel “The Scarlet Letter”. His novel is the tale of a young puritan girl, named Hester Prynne ,who is too harshly judged for her actions. Some might observe that these three things are connected. These observers are right. These three topics are all connected by the idea of women oppression and how the early puritans and the Salem Witch Trials were cancerous to american society. The Puritans beliefs and their involvement in the Salem Witch Trials, as proven by the writings of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, is seen in the long run

Hawthorne’s work takes America’s Puritan past as its subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses the material to the greatest effect. The Puritans were

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne’s punishment for adultery is to stand on a scaffold in the middle of town for three hours, and to wear a scarlet letter on her garment for the rest of her life. Today judges sometimes use public humiliation instead of traditional punishments, like jail time or community service, to punish criminals. In today’s society public humiliation should not continue be used to punish criminals in today's society.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a writer in the 1800s, an anti-transcendentalist, and the great-nephew of John Hathorne, a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne is obsessed with Puritanism and, due to being obsessed, bases all his writings on Puritan towns. All of his stories take place in New England in the 1600s, before the Salem Witch Trials; The Scarlet Letter is one of these stories. In his novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the symbolism of the Wild Rosebush, Hester’s Cabin, and the sunlight and the forest to contribute to the overall theme of imperfection.

The novel opens with the people of the town gathering outside the jailhouse with “grim rigidity” (Hawthorne 47) waiting for Hester to appear. As she proceeds to exit the jail, Hester encounters snide remarks from people around her. She describes leaving the jailhouse as agonizing: “Haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung in the street for them all to spurn and trample upon” (Hawthorne 52). Her society makes Hester feel inferior and unwelcome after she commits a sin, reflecting their lack of compassion and sympathy for each other. When she is given her punishment to wear the scarlet letter on her chest for as long as she lives, the townspeople react negatively and demand a harsher punishment. A woman in the crowd asserts “At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead” (Hawthorne 49). Yet another yells, “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it” (Hawthorne 49). In saying this, they allude to the idea that Hester should have faced a more severe punishment, preferably one that involved physical pain. From Hester’s treatment, it is clear that Puritans are “a grim and gloomy race, impatient with

The main character in The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne, emerged from the gloom of this dark society's punishment. For her crime of adultery, she faced the most commonly used punishment—public humiliation. Although this involved no physical harm, its use in such a proper society brought ridicule and shame paralleling a punishment as harsh as death itself. Hester stood amidst the crowd for three tortuous hours, struggling to withstand the burning glares of the townspeople feeling, "as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once." (40). This display was made even more severe because she was also sentenced "to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom," the letter "A", for the rest of her life (43). The scarlet symbol for adultery branded Hester as a sinner to others, and when she was alone it burned like fire into her innermost heart to remind her of the life-shattering punishment society sentenced her for a single sin.

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the greatest American authors of the nineteenth century. He published his first novel Fanshawe, in 1828. However, he is widely known for his novels The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. His novel, The Scarlet Letter, can be analyzed from historical, psychological and feminist critical perspectives by examining his life from the past, as well as his reflections while writing The Scarlet Letter. In order to understand the book properly, it’s necessary to use these three perspectives.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a prominent author of the era of American Romanticism. His original surname was “Hathorne”; however, due to his ancestry’s involvement in the Salem Witch Trials and his wish to distance himself from their heinous actions, he changed it to “Hawthorne” when he began writing as an occupation. The Salem Witch Trials became a recurring theme in his works, including in The House of Seven Gables.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Hathorne) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, his parents being Nathaniel and Elizabeth Clark Hathorne (Manning). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life had been steeped into a Puritan legacy. One of his ancestors is most notably known as William Hathorne, where he is mostly known as being one of three harsh judges during the Salem Witch Trials (in where men and women alike were sentenced and accused of using witchcraft). Nathaniel did not want to be known as being related to his ancestor, and had later added a “w” to his last name to distance himself from the family. This can also be seen in how he relates himself to his works, such as “The House of the Seven Gables,” in which an ancestor of the Pyncheon family was also a judge and

The Scarlet Letter is a modern classic of American literature written about controversy and published with controversy. The main topic of the book, adultery, is written in a dark and sad way, as Hawthorne describes injustice, fate or predetermination and conscience ( Van Doren, 1998) . No other American novel of the time has such a controversial theme as Hawthorne's, The Scarlet Letter. The setting of Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is the seventeenth century Puritan New England. But Hawthorne's writing for this book is heavily influenced by his own nineteenth century culture. Hawthorne strongly believed in Providence. Hawthorne was descended from the Puritan