Nathaniel Hawthorne

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the ideas expounded by Nathaniel Hawthorne, often thought of today as a reflection of Puritan values, although in Puritan times, he would have been recognized as a reformer at best and a heretic at worst. The paper discusses several of his works, "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of Seven Gables," "Young Goodman Brown,, "The Birthmark," and "Rappaccini's Daughter," claiming they show evidence of countless examples of a stretching of strict values. The paper contends that, by rejecting the ideals of the Puritan and the Victorian eras, Hawthorne acts as a soothsayer of the coming age of cyclical relaxation that can be seen, respectively, in the Flapper Era and in the 1960s.

From the Paper:

"Much of Hawthorne's message in his most well known work, The Scarlet Letter is one of feminine independence. The structure of Hester's society was such that she was challenged by her circumstances and even more challenged by the community in which she lived. Her social standing fell to that of a relative harlot when her very public fall from grace was revealed by her pregnancy, a pregnancy clearly begotten outside of her marriage bed. As has been clearly pointed out countless time the work is steeped in the biblical traditions of the Puritan Era and Hawthorne himself interweaves countless analogous meanings in his work."

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