Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote poetry, nonfiction, and the novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Romance. He also wrote numerous short stories, many which appeared in magazines and were later complied into two volumes: Mosses from an Old Manse and Twice-Told Tales. Hawthorne is one of America’s literary legends, paving the way for many modern-day writers, as well as writers of his day. He and Edgar Allen Poe are credited with the development of the American short story. In his literary criticism of Twice-Told Tales, Poe stated, “Of Mr. Hawthorne's Tales we would say, emphatically, that they belong to the highest region of Art--an Art subservient to genius of a very lofty order....” (par. 5). Hawthorne, in a letter to one of his publishers, is also credited with referring to women writers as the “damnd mob of scribbling women” (Baym, Again, 20). In a letter to his wife, Sophia, Hawthorne discusses fellow writer, Grace Greenwood, by saying:
My dearest, I cannot enough thank God, that with a higher and deeper intellect than any other woman, thou hast never—forgive me the bare idea!—never prostituted thyself to the public, as that woman has, and as a thousand others do. It does seem to me to deprive women of all delicacy; it has pretty much an effect on them as it would to walk abroad through the streets, physically stark naked. Women are too good for authorship and that is the reason it spoils them so. [Emphasis added] (qtd. in Baym, “Again” 24)
Given these comments, one could easily dismiss Hawthorne as a man who detests women writers or perhaps creative women. This paper will argue that although Hawthorne was antifeminist, he did not truly despise women writers, and in fact he respected them; however he simply did not want to compete with them as writers.
To get an adequate understanding of Hawthorne and the development of his attitudes about women, it is important to review his life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (or as I like to call him, “Nate”) was born to Nathaniel Hathorne Sr. and Elizabeth “Betsey” Clarke Manning. The Hathorne family had a long history in the Salem area. In fact, Nate’s great-great-grandfather was one of the judges during the Salem witch trials. (This lineage has been considered as one of the reasons Nate would later add a “w” to his family name.) Nate’s father, Nathaniel Sr., was a sea captain and was at sea during the birth of all three of his children: Elizabeth “Ebe” (1802), Nate (1804), and Maria Louisa “Louisa” (1808). Captain Hathorne died in 1808, two months after the birth of Louisa and three months before Nate’s fourth birthday. Widowed and the mother of three, Betsey returned to her family for assistance and support. Having come from a large family, Betsey’s children were surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. After his grandparents died, and his uncles left, Nate was the sole grandson of the Manning family. Wineapple notes that a childhood injury to his foot, “afford[ed] him a certain guilty pleasure, the injury kept [Nate] the center of attention.” As a result, Ebe noted that Nate “was particularly petted,” and would later come to “identif[y] not with just the men but with the women of his household, particularly his mother and two sisters” (Wineapple 26-27).
Nate had a very close relationship with his mother and his sisters, all of whom were supportive of his endeavors. Ponder and Idol note that “such a childhood in the midst of a variety of girls and women gave Hawthorne an antipatriarchal, feminist perspective on life. He knew firsthand about the cruel impoverishment of single women” (4). They further state that “Ebe was also his competitor, no doubt spurring him on to his early publishing attempts. He wrote to Louisa, ‘Tell Ebe she’s not the only one of the family whose works have appeared in the papers’” and that “he [Nate] and Ebe evidently traded their writing samples” (5).
So now we see the early beginnings of the great Nathaniel Hawthorne, a boy doted on and pampered by his family, encouraged in his endeavors, and surrounded by girls and women—intelligent women at that.
Nate became acquainted with Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Peabody was a devoted supporter of Nate’s work, despite their sometimes differing views on such issues as slavery. It was through his association with Peabody that Nate met Sophia, Elizabeth’s sister. Sophia spent the majority of her life sickly, but when Nate came to the Peabody home to visit, Sophia would make an appearance, and in 1842 they married. Sophia was intelligent and artistic. While Sophia had her own artistic talents in painting and eloquent letter writing, she preferred to focus her energies on her husband and children. In a letter to her husband, Sophia wrote, “I do not need to stand apart from our daily life to see how fair & blest is our lot. . . . Every mother is not like me—because indeed no other mother has such a father of her children, & and such a husband as herself” (qtd. in Hurst 54). Hurst explores the many ways that Sophia supported her husband, including allowing him to isolate while he wrote and making attempts to keep their children quite and away from their father.
Hawthorne went from the adulation of his mother, sisters, and his mother’s family to the worship of the Peabody women, most notably Elizabeth and Sophia. In his family, he was the star, and the women around him were his audience. He learned to perform for them. He wrote those things in which they would find a sense of identity. During his life, Nate became accustomed to having his way with the women around him. His foot injury allowed him to be able to stay home from school. His wife permitted him to alienate himself to produce his writing. So while Nate had a favorable view of the women around him (he was not only very close to the women in his family, but he also frequently asked their opinions on his works, and eventually Sophia became his critic), he nevertheless did not want to share the spotlight with them. Sophia drew an illustration for “The Gentle Boy,” and Nate dedicated the story to her, but he also talked her out of having her writing or paintings published (“The Wife and Children” par 2). Knapp describes Sophia’s “Roman Journal” as “a living document of the soul,” but Nate did not want the world to know of his wife’s talent (par 1).
Although Nate spent his life surrounded by girls and women, many of them talented and educated, he also wanted to remain in the lead role on the stage of his life, with the females around him in supporting roles.
In many of his short stories, Hawthorne’s female characters resemble the women in his life. Frequently, they are devoted and strong in their own way, but ultimately they give in to the men in their lives, even when their judgment warns them against it.
“The Artist of the Beautiful,” is the story of a watchmaker who finds himself alienated in his attempt to create the beautiful from machinery, Annie, the female character in the story, is described as being both “pretty” and sensitive enough to remind her father to stop his criticisms of Owen Warland because “He hears you! . . . His ears are as delicate as his feelings; and you know how easily disturbed they are” (249). Hawthorne further creates Annie as an “emotional” being, more “befitting” of a woman as “the thought stole into his [Owen’s] mind that this young girl possessed the gift to comprehended him better than all the world besides” (258). Annie is the object of Owen’s devotion, but she is also devoted. She doesn’t really challenge her father: she marries the man her father admires more, the blacksmith, Robert Danforth.
“The Birthmark” is one of Nate’s short stories that deals with the theme of science versus nature, and man’s search for perfection. In this case, it is Alymer who is married to the lovely Georgiana, who has a small, hand-shaped birthmark on her cheek that keeps her one breath from being “perfect.” Alymer tries to convince Georgiana that he can remove the birthmark from her face, ultimately rendering her truly perfect. Initially Georgiana declines, stating, that “it has been so often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so” (176). Nate doesn’t create her to be strong and independent, but rather, Georgiana describes herself as simple enough to believe what others have told her. She doesn’t decline her husband’s offer to remove it because she likes it or feels that it is a part of her. Rather, in time, she becomes so desperate for her husband’s attention, because he has come to resent her and the tiny hand that she consents. She gives in to her man—and the procedure kills her.
Elizabeth, the “plighted bride” of Mr. Hooper, the minister of “The Minister’s Black Veil,” shows a little more independence. After being denied her request that her love remove his veil, she tells him, “Then, farewell!” (155). Although she did not give into Hooper, she also did not show true strength. Her real reason for wanting him to remove the veil was “what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an innocent sorrow,” reminding him that “Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers, that you hid your face under the conscious of a secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, do away with this scandal!” (152)
Then there is the story of “Wakefield” who:
[A]bsented himself for a long time from his wife. . . .when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed form memory, and his wife, long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening, quietly, as form a day’s absence, and became a loving spouse till death. (124-125)
This accounts for Nate’s understanding of women. He appreciated women. If he didn’t, the female characters in his stories would not have come across as they did. We the readers feel a sense of pity or empathy for the women in his stories. Why couldn’t Alymer accept Georgiana as she was? Why did Rappaccini have to poison his own daughter? These were the women in his stories, his image of what a woman should be. She could be intelligent and even slightly strong, but she should always be loyal and faithful. That is the way the women in Nate’s life were: they let him have center stage.
Nathaniel Hawthorne admired women, and he loved intelligent women, but he did not want to compete against them on his stage—the literary stage. Like an actor, he struggled enough to make ends meet. Just as Elizabethan theater forbade women from playing the roles of women, Hawthorne did not want women writing stories. He wanted that to be left to men, and if it remained a man’s world (even if it was a woman’s world that was being written), his competition was only half what it had the potential of being.
Was Hawthorne a chauvinist? Most likely. A misogynist? No way.
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