Paper in Famous Works of Literature Written in English, 15 ECTS, Fall 2010
by Anna-Lena Jönsson
Instructor: Marina Ludwigs
Why The Biographical Source of Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife By Julian Hawthorne And The Following Feud Can, And Maybe Should, Be Neglected For A More Important Re-Reading Of Nathaniel Hawthornes Fictional Character Hester Prynne In The Scarlet Letter As Inspired By The Real Life of Margaret Fuller?
A work is biographical if it covers all of a person's life. As such, biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. Was Margaret Fuller Nathaniel Hawthornes muse? My opinion is that Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter is evidently influnced by Hawthornes meeting with the real-life Margaret Fuller within the Transcendalist circles, but that although Hester Prynne gives such a strong fictional voice to the issue of adultery in its time in purital New England, both Nathaniel and even more so his son Julien Hawthorne as discussed in ”Julian Hawthorne and the “Scandal” of Margaret Fuller” from American Literary History (1995) 7 (2): 210-233 by Thomas R Mitchell, didn't dare to acknowledge her importance for the book during their lifetime because of moral pressure from society. Despite the almost propagandalike counter-argumentative biographical book by Julian Hawthorne about his parents happy marriage, as a contrast to Hester Prynne and in defence of the womans place in marriage and her place as a housewife, this biographical work of Julian, I argue, tends to be of less importance or be neglected today when we re-read the character Hester Prynne. From my own standpoint as a woman, about a thousand years after the book is written, I argue that Margaret Fullers importance as a rolemodel for Hester Prynne is today absolutely relevant when re-reading and interpreting the female character in its time and place in America and even today in Sweden. Despite the narrative voice and the description of Hester Prynne as a person in an extraordinary circumstance of sexism, the moral feud between Julian Hawthorne and Margaret Fullers admires that, although almost forgotten now, had the consequance that her books were not reprinted for a long time and although the Transcendentalists philosophy, that Margeret Fuller personified, that advocated "a free life of the free spirit" as well as ”a sought to achieve understanding and personal growth” for women and men equal, is something we still need to discuss even in the 21st century.
The character Hester Prynne's affair outside the marriage pictures her shamed and alienated from the rest of the community. She speculates on human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions. Hester’s tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker. You can read it as if Nathaniel Hawthorne as a narrator tends to disapprove of Hester’s independent philosophizing, but I suggest that Nathaniel Hawthorne secretly admired his fictional characters independence and her ideas. Throughout The Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not necessarily extraordinary woman. Instead it is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her such an important protagonist. Her philosophical voice is narrated for example in ”It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter XIII "Another View of Hester". Can the protagonist Hester and her ideas of love and hate between men and women be interpreted as a feminist issue? I think yes as by the novel’s end, Hester has become a mother figure to the women of the community. The shame attached to the scarlet letter, the A for adultery she is judged by and carries, is it long gone? Readers interpret perhaps today that her punishment stemmed in part from the town fathers’ sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from the sexist forces under which they themselves suffer. But has the time come where the quote about her advice for other woman as: ”Hester comforted and counseled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness." Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter,Chapter XXIV Conclusion. I think we have come a long way since this New England puritan feud, but the feminist issue is still in prime time discussion even today. But how does the narrative character traces back to of the life of Margaret Fuller?
Margaret Fuller was the first full-time American female book reviewer in the history of journalism when she joined The New York Tribune, her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century proclaimed a new time where men and women will be regarded as equal and as a fact she did have a child out of marriage. In Julian Hawthorne and the “Scandal” of Margaret Fuller the purital feud starts with : ”Margaret Fuller has at last taken her place with the numberless other dismal frauds who fill the limbo of human pretension and failure.” Julian Hawthorne, Boston Evening Transcript, 2 January 1885. Despite the public defense of Fuller by her friends and family following Julian's publication of the biographical book Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, (extended to almost 1,000 pages), where his ferous insistence on his father's infallibility and his own vituperative attacks on Margaret Fuller started a literary feud. Did it damaged her position within the American literary canon forever? Why is my opinion that Julian's book and vivid mediapropaganda against Fuller has lost its importance as a canon and permits a need of a new 21st century re-reading of Margaret Fuller as the Muse of the fictional character Hester Prynne ? It is true that 1884 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, for instance, would not be reprinted again until 1973. Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in its twelfth printing in 1884, would be reprinted only once more (1893) before its revival in 1969. Thus, during the two crucial periods in which the American literary canon was institutionalized Margaret Fullers work was simply out of print. As a consequance Fuller's sudden became devalued in and was, in fact, part of Julian's strategy to strengthen his father's position as a celebrated American author. It is a fact that Nathaniel Hawthorne is regarded as a classic that has hold through time, but this feud as devaluing the work of Margaret Fuller, has it remained?
I argue that history must be constantly rewritten. A counter-argument could be the view that we as readers and interpreters are blind to the historical moment and the purital society in which the book was written and that the time had had its day but in my opinion the book The Scarlet Letter and the character Hester Prynne re-read as Margaret Fuller feels more relevant than ever. But is it of relevance to try to understand the method of historial and biographical records as a still eliagble way of literary critisism and also raise the topic about why books gets a worldwide concept of canonization whilst reading about the different issues in the the Hawthornes and Fullercase? Thomas R Mitchell's long article implies that ”The feud that Julian constructed is equally fascinating as an instructively dramatic exposure of the usually unarticulated, often unconscious politics behind the making and unmaking of literary reputations and national canons. And in the rhetorical extremes with which the participants of the feud defended their chosen idols, we see also just how fitting is literature's appropriation of the concept of canonization to describe the need to create and defend a faith in unblemished cultural saints.” Why does the historical biographical facts about Nathaniel, his son Julian, and Margaret in encyclopedias and the mentioned article vary and to which extent are they cross-referenced, and interpreteting this at large, can biographical reading as literary method change over time? In literary referencebooks of the 21st century the feud discussed in Julian Hawthorne and the “Scandal” of Margaret Fuller is not mentioned either on the notes on Nathaniel Hawthorne nor Margaret Fuller. Fuller is mentioned as inspiration for Hawthorne in the Swedish National Encyclopdia, but information of their friendship is rather vague and it is suggested that she inspired another character in another of Hawthornes work. In Britannica both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller has informative biographs but without cross-referencing and Julian Hawthorne as a writer and this biographical book about his parents is totally omitted. I believe the significance of Fuller as a sort of muse for Nathaniel Hawthornes has not yet been clarified and thus there is still a need to revises the historical and biographical records. Is there a possibility of future revision?
My standpointview of Hester Prynne as an important fictional protagonist and Margaret Fuller as a perhaps neglected important person in the history of literature have although still a need to be updated by revisionist historians of American literature that raise Fuller's reputation on the same very grounds that Julian once used to destroy it. If a work is biographical it is supposed to cover all of a person's life, thus the feud between Julian Hawthorne and Margaret Fullers friends is a historical fact and needs to be concidered perhaps, but I think that while reading the book today as an authoritative American classic the Hester Prynne and her characters voice within the narrative is something that has survived in time. We can still identify with her fate. Margaret Fuller as a person of early feminism has, although perhaps without the specific and necessary references to her or her literary work, has survived within the Transcendentalists philosophy that advocated "a free life of the free spirit" as well as ”a sought to achieve understanding and personal growth” for both men and women. Julian Hawthorne wanted to brand his fathers great work and at the same time get a personal mark within the literary legacy. Even if he had some influence as to why Fullers work and to the consequence that the books never where reprinted, he himself is not a post in encyclopedias as Britannica today while Margaret Fullers biography is. The circumstances shaping our re-reading of the narrative voice of Hester Prynne as a fictional character remains and could be read as a modern and even postmodern picture of a woman enduring the extraordinary circumstances in a life and is what makes her such an important protagonist. Hester Prynne said - ”Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.”~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Chapter XIII "Another View of Hester". The hatred of Julian Hawthorne has not remained although, maybe the topic of puritism is still relevant when looking at the current discussion in, for example, Swedish media about the value of the nuclear family. You could express that the puritan idea about the family, as argumented by Julian Hawthorne, still is valid for the Swedish political party Kristdemokraterna but the debate today is maybe more nuanced and not defined as hatred towards woman that has children out of the marriage, but my opinion is that many strong intelligent women are still shamely regarded with hostility and needs advice from such a protagonist such as Hester.
