Scarlet Letter 红字.docx

1、Scarlet Letter 红字Scarlet LetterBorn July 4, 1804, Nathaniel Hathorne was the only son of Captain Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne. (Hawthorne added the “w” to his name after he graduated from college.) Following the death of Captain Hathorne in 1808, Nathaniel, his mother, an

2、d his two sisters were forced to move in with Mrs. Hathornes relatives, the Mannings. Here Nathaniel Hawthorn grew up in the company of women without a strong male role model; this environment may account for what biographers call his shyness and introverted personality. This period of Hawthornes li

3、fe was mixed with the joys of reading and the resentment of financial dependence. While he studied at an early age with Joseph E. Worcester, a well-known lexicographer, he was not particularly fond of school. An injury allowed him to stay home for a year when he was nine, and his early “friends” wer

4、e books by Shakespeare, Spenser, Bunyan, and 18th century novelists.During this time Mrs. Hathorne moved her family to land owned by the Mannings near Raymond, Maine. Nathaniels fondest memories of these days were when “I ran quite wild, and would, I doubt not, have willingly run wild till this time

5、, fishing all day long, or shooting with an old fowling piece.” This idyllic life in the wilderness exerted its charm on the boys imagination but ended in 1819 when he returned to Salem to prepare two years for college entrance.EducationIn 1821, Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

6、 Among his classmates were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would become a distinguished poet and Harvard professor, and Franklin Pierce, future 14th president of the United States. Another classmate, Horatio Bridge, was later to offer a Boston publisher a guarantee against loss if he would publish H

7、awthornes first collection of short stories.Hawthorne graduated middle of his class in 1825. Regarding his aspirations, he wrote, “I do not want to be a doctor and live by mens diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, nor a lawyer to live by their quarrels. So, I dont see that there is anythi

8、ng left for me but to be an author.”His Early CareerFor the next 12 years, Hawthorne lived in comparative isolation in an upstairs chamber at his mothers house, where he worked at perfecting his writing craft. He also began keeping notebooks or journals, a habit he continued throughout his life. He

9、often jotted down ideas and descriptions, and his words are now a rich source of information about his themes, ideas, style experiments, and subjects.In 1828, he published his first novel, Fanshaw: A Tale, at his own expense. Fanshaw was a short, imitation Gothic novel and poorly written. Dissatisfi

10、ed with this novel, Hawthorne attempted to buy up all the copies so that no one could read it. He did not publish another novel for almost 25 years. By 1838, he had written two-thirds of the short stories he was to write in his lifetime. None of these stories gained him much attention, and he could

11、not interest a publisher in printing a collection of his tales until 1837, when his college friend Horatio Bridge backed the publishing of Twice-Told Tales, a collection of Hawthornes stories that had been published separately in magazines. His schoolmate and friend, Longfellow, reviewed the book wi

12、th glowing terms. Edgar Allan Poe, known for his excoriating reviews of writers, not only wrote warmly of Hawthornes book but also took the opportunity to define the short story in his now famous review. Twice-Told Tales is considered a masterpiece of literature, and it contains unmistakably America

13、n stories.Financial Burdens and MarriageIn 1838, Hawthorne met Sophia Amelia Peabody, and the following year they were engaged. It was at this time that Hawthorne invested a thousand dollars of his meager capital in the Brook Farm Community at West Roxbury. There he became acquainted with Ralph Wald

14、o Emerson and the naturalist Henry David Thoreau. These transcendentalist thinkers influenced much of Hawthornes thinking about the importance of intuition rather than intellect in uncovering the truths of nature and human beings. Hawthorne left this experiment in November 1841, disillusioned with t

15、he viewpoint of the community, exhausted from the work, and without financial hope that he could support a wife. From this experience, however, he gained the setting for a later novel, The Blithedale Romance.In a trip to Boston after leaving Brook Farm, Hawthorne reached an understanding about a sal

16、ary for future contributions to the Democratic Review. He and Sophia married in Boston on July 9, 1842, and left for Concord, Massachusetts, where they took up residence in the now-famous “Old Manse.”Hawthornes life at the “Old Manse” was happy and productive, and these were some of the happiest yea

17、rs of his life. He was newly married, in love with his wife, and surrounded by many of the leading literary figures of the day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. During this time, Hawthorne wrote for the Democratic Review and produced some tales that woul

18、d be published in 1846 in Mosses from an Old Manse. Financial problems continued to plague the family, however. The birth of their first child, Una, caused Hawthorne to once again seek a financially secure job. With the help of his old friends, Hawthorne was appointed a surveyor for the port of Sale

19、m. His son, Julian, was born in 1846. Although the new job eased the financial problems for the family, Hawthorne again found little time to pursue his writing. Nevertheless, during this time, he was already forming ideas for a novel based on his Puritan ancestry and introduced by a preface about th

20、e Custom House where he worked. When the Whigs won the 1848 election, Hawthorne lost his position. It was a financial shock to the family, but it fortuitously provided him with time to write The Scarlet Letter.The Golden Years of WritingDuring these years Hawthorne was to write some of the greatest

21、prose of his life. In 1849, Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter, which won him much fame and greatly increased his reputation. While warmly received here and abroad, The Scarlet Letter sold only 8,000 copies in Hawthornes lifetime.In 1849, when the family moved to Lennox, Massachusetts, Hawthorne mad

22、e the acquaintance of Herman Melville, a young writer who became a good friend. Hawthorne encouraged the young Melville, who later thanked him by dedicating his book, Moby Dick, to him. During thisthe “Little Red House” period in LennoxHawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables and some minor wor

23、ks that were published in 1851.Around the time that Nathaniel and Sophias second daughter, Rose, was born, the family moved to West Newton, where Hawthorne finished and published his novel about the Brook Farm experience, The Blithedale Romance, and also A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys. Because the

24、re was little to no literature published for children, Hawthornes book was unique in this area.Later Writing and Years AbroadIn Concord, the Hawthornes found a permanent house, along with nine acres of land, which they purchased from Bronson Alcott, the transcendentalist writer and father of Louisa

25、May Alcott. Hawthorne renamed the house The Wayside, and in May, 1852, he and his family moved in. Here, Hawthorne was to write only two of his works: Tanglewood Tales, another collection designed for young readers, and A Life of Pierce, a campaign biography for his old friend from college. As a res

26、ult of the biography, President Pierce awarded Hawthorne with an appointment as United States consul in Liverpool, England. The Hawthornes spent the next seven years in Europe.Although Hawthorne wrote no additional fiction while serving as consul, he kept a journal that later served as a source of m

27、aterial for Our Old Home, a collection of sketches dealing with English scenery, life, and manners published in 1863. While in Italy, Hawthorne kept a notebook that provided material for his final, complete work of fiction, which was published in England as Transformation and, in America, as The Mar

28、ble Faun.By the autumn of 1863, Hawthorne was a sick man. In May, 1864, he traveled to New Hampshire with his old classmate Pierce in search of improved health. During this trip, he died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire. He was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord.

29、 Widely eulogized as one of Americas foremost writers, his fellow authors gathered to show their respect. Among his pallbearers were Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, and Emerson. Today he rests there with Washington Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, and the Alcotts, as well as his wife, Sophia.INTRODUCTION“The l

30、ife of the Custom House lies like a dream behind me . Soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its

31、 wooden houses, and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street It may be, however,oh, transporting and triumphant thought!that the great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days .” In the mid-1800s when Nathaniel Hawt

32、horne wrote these words in the Custom House preface to The Scarlet Letter, he could not have imagined the millions of readers a century later who would “think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days” and continue to make his novel a best-seller. The mist of imagination that falls over Salem, Massachu

33、setts, in his description is the same aura that permeates the setting of his novel. Look for the Boston of 1640 in history books, and you will not find the magical and Gothic elements that abound in Hawthornes story. For the mind of genius has created a Boston that is shrouded in darkness and mystery and surrounded by a f