July 24, 2024: Revisiting the Canon: Nathaniel Hawthorne

[This pastweekend we celebrated ErnestHemingway’s 125th birthday. While I’ve been very glad to do mypart to diversifyour curricula way beyond the canon, I also believe there are still lotsof valuable AmericanStudies reasons to read canonical authors. So this weekI’ll make that case for Hemingway and four other canonized folks!]

On how twoover-taught texts can still be under-appreciated.

Unlikeyesterday’s subject James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne is an authorabout whom I’ve writtena great deal in this space, including an entire week-longseries inspired by The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and thispost on The Blithedale Romance (1852) among others. Yetinterestingly enough, I don’t think I’ve written much about the two Hawthornetexts with which American high school students are consistently confronted (andbased on what I’ve heard from those students when they arrive in collegeliterature courses, the encounter does feel very much like a confrontation tomost of them): his short story “YoungGoodman Brown” (1835) and his novel The ScarletLetter (1850). I’m not sure Hawthorne’s very 19th-century stylecan really speak to most 21st century teenagers, so I’m not here todisagree with their frustrations with his ubiquitous classroom presence. But atthe same time, I would argue that the frustrations can lead not only our highschool students but also and more importantly for this point all of the rest ofus (who might well carry such classroom challenges with us into later life) tomiss just how much both those texts have to offer.

Part ofwhat makes “Young Goodman Brown” well worth our time is connected with Houseof the Seven Gables, as both the story and the novel offer uniqueand thoughtful perspectives on one of our most frustrating and telling Americanhistories: the SalemWitch Trials. As a descendentof a Witch Trials judge, Hawthorne was particularly horrified by what had happenedin late 17th century Salem, and in “Young Goodman Brown” that personalinterest leads him to a nuanced engagement with how both individuals andcommunities can get to such extreme and destructive moments. But Hawthorne’smulti-layered story is just as interested in a profoundly universal theme, onealso explored in Bruce Springsteen’s deeply personal Tunnelof Love (1987) album: whether and how we can ever really know anotherperson, even (if not especially) the one to whom we’re married. Therelationship and arc of Young Goodman Brown and his new wife Faith representsone of the most tragic yet also one of the most human depictions of marriage inall of American literature, making this a story with meanings far beyond itshistorical setting and subject.

The ScarletLetter likewise features a pair of central romantic relationships, and I’dargue that both HesterPrynne’s marriage to Roger Chillingsworth and her affair with ArthurDimmesdale are similarly thoughtful and illuminating about the dynamics,limits, and possibilities of such relationships in all of our lives. But whilethose two male characters take up a great deal of space in Hawthorne’s novel(and while their evolving relationship with each other is complex and crucialin its own right), at the end of the day this book is all about itsfemale protagonist, and to my mind she’s one of the best in Americanliterary history (both on her own terms and as a mother to the somewhat lesswell-developed but still fascinating character of herdaughter Pearl). I don’t broadly disagree with the overarching argument of JudithFetterley’s The Resisting Reader (1978), her thesis that muchof canonical American literature reflects at best a limited male perspective onfemale identity. But I think Hawthorne’s most-canonized and best novel comprisesa compelling alternative to that trend.

NextCanonStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?