Dissertation

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: A STUDY OF THE DIVIDED SELF

STAY, BYRON LEE

1980

Overview

Hawthorne's fiction is predicated on the tension inherent in his perception of the self as simultaneously private and public. This duality is evident in his letters, journals, and other autobiographical writing as well as in his fictional characters. On the one hand, Hawthorne saw himself as an artist--private, antisocial and intuitive. On the other hand, he longed to be a valued and active member of the community--to be public, social and rational. While his autobiographical writings reveal a deep split within Hawthorne the man, Hawthorne's fiction reveals an attempt to objectify and resolve these polarities and mollify their destructive impact upon the psyche. This need to objectify and resolve inner conflict is particularly evident in Hawthorne's use of history. He forges a link between past and present by recreating an experience of history in his fiction, and by allowing such an experience to transcend the distinctions between private experience and public responsibility. Hawthorne's short works possess virtually all the themes of self-disintegration common to his longer romances. But his full length romances afford the most continuity in this examination and demonstrate most clearly Hawthorne's increasing doubt that such a quest can have a positive outcome. In The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables he retains much of the optimism of his early tales. But beginning with The Blithedale Romance and to a greater extent in The Marble Faun, Hawthorne's disillusionment is evident. As the disillusion becomes stronger his center of self slowly disintegrates and ultimately prevents him from re-establishing a corresponding center in his fiction.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: American literature
• ISBN: 9798644960590