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Sin, Free Will, and “Pessimism” in Hawthorne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Henry G. Fairbanks
Henry G. Fairbanks*
Affiliation:
St. Michael's College, Winooski, Vermont
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Extract

Any survey of Hawthorne's life makes it apparent that he was not a churchgoing man. On the other hand, a study of Hawthorne's works discloses that he was a religious man in whose outlook the Christian heritage was cardinal. With respect to its traditional theology he was more orthodox than not: With the basic spirit of Christianity, as it informed values and viewpoints, he was thoroughly imbued. With its institutionalized forms, however, he had no direct affiliation after his youth. It is true that his environment was still Christian externally and that he could draw upon the reserves of Christian culture accumulated by centuries of tradition in America and Europe. But the burden of his faith rested heavily upon himself.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 5 , December 1956 , pp. 975 - 989
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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References

1 Complete Works, ed. W. G. T. Shedd, 7 vols. (New York, 1884), vi (Table Talk), 303.

2 Apologia Pro Vita Sua (New York and London, 1947), p. 220.

3 Speculations (London, 1924), pp. 70–71, 50–52.

4 Complete Works, With Introductory Notes By George Parsons Lathrop, Riverside ed., 13 vols. (Boston and New York, 1892), ii, 455; hereafter referred to by volume number.

5 In The Marble Faun (vi, 491), Hawthorne has Miriam repeat the traditional theological explanation: “that very sin,—into which Adam precipitated himself and all his race.”

6 Examples of the specifically physical effects of sin are: the violent upheaval of Dimmes-dale's habits after his resolve to flee (v, 258–265); the gradual physiognomic alterations in Chillingworth (v, 156, 205); the flowers that droop in Clifford's grasp (m, 209); the animals that scurry from “post-lapsarian” Donatello (vi, 286–288).

7 The American Notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Randall Stewart (New Haven, 1932), p. lxxiii; hereafter referred to as American Notebooks.

8 Austin Warren, Nathaniel Hawthorne: Representative Selections (New York, 1934), pp. xxvii-xxviii: “He seems more concerned with sin in the abstract than with particular offenses, even that particular sin, adultery, which has come in Protestant countries to preempt the term.”

9 See also “David Swan” (i, 217–218), where the rogues who failed to kill sleeping David never “once imagined that the recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their souls, in letters as durable as eternity.”

10 See also Kenyon's final reference to Miriam (vi, 526): “But, after all, her crime lay merely in a glance. She did no murder!”

11 “Hawthorne's Psychology of the Head and Heart,” PMLA, lxv (1950), 120–132.

12 Khlists were members of a Russian heretical sect who indulged in promiscuous orgies as a form of religious exaltation, on the premise that there is no salvation without repentance and no repentance without grave matter for regret. Rasputin, reputedly, was a Khlist (W. H. Chamberlin, Soviet Russia: A Living Record and a History, Boston, 1931, p. 309; see also Edmund A. Walsh, The Fall of the Russian Empire, Boston, 1928, pp. 108–109).

13 See “Benjamin Franklin” in Biographical Stories (xxi, 199) for Hawthorne's most explicit statement on the impotence of evil, per se, to effect good: “But, indeed, can we suppose that our all-wise and just Creator would have so ordered the affairs of the world that a wrong act should be the true method of attaining a right end? … And I do verily believe …, this great truth—that evil can produce only evil—that good ends must be wrought out by good means.”

14 See also the children in “The Gentle Boy” (i, 110–112) and the daughter of the Dan-forths in “The Artist of the Beautiful” (ii, 528,535).

15 F. O. Matthiessen, The James Family (New York, 1947), pp. 481–482.

16 Archibald MacLeish, “The Irresponsibles,” A Time to Speak (Boston, 1941), pp. 105, 108–109, 113–114, 118–121. By making art an exclusive end in itself, the “religion of art” increasingly isolated the artist from the community.

17 Henry James, Hawthorne (New York, 1880), pp. 58–60, 57.

18 It should be observed that both these figures are also artists: Coverdale, more obviously, as a poet; Holgrave in the lesser (but symbolic) sense that he is a daguerreotypist and, occasionally, a short story writer.

19 American Notebooks, pp. 210–211; cf. Hester's analysis of Pearl (v, 116–117).

20 See above, ii. 7 and 8.

21 According to traditional teaching, Adam's original fall from grace was perpetuated in all his descendants in an inclination towards evil, which reflected the penalties of darkened intellect and weakened will.

22 “‘That Inward Sphere’: Notes on Hawthorne's Heart Imagery and Symbolism,” PMLA, lxv, 109.

23 Hawthorne's Short Stories (New York, 1946), p. xv.

24 See also Hawthorne's common use of bright colors for dramatic contrast as pointed out in Walter Blair's “Color, Light, and Shadow in Hawthorne's Fiction,” New Eng. Quart., xv (1942), 74–94; and as analyzed in Leland Schubert's Hawthorne, the Artist, Fine-Art Devices in Fiction (Chapel Hill, 1944), passim. Note also Malcolm Cowley's observations on Hawthorne's use of mirror images, pools, and fountain surfaces (The Portable Hawthorne, New York, 1948, pp. 8–9). Of the images used by Hawthorne to depict the heart, water-associated images constitute the second largest group, almost equal in number to the prison images (Shroeder, p. 107).

25 Op. cit., p. xxxix. Possibly Warren has in mind the dissipation of an American clergyman whom Hawthorne describes (The English Notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Randall Stewart, MLA, 1941, pp. 113–114). This is hardly characteristic of Hawthorne's manner, being unique. The tone may, conceivably, be regarded as sardonic, but in no way exultant. And, as this incident was developed in the first volume of Our Old Home (va, 45), the very opposite of “exultant” is true of Hawthorne's reaction. It would be more pertinent to judge Hawthorne's characteristic attitude by his handling of Arthur Dimmesdale's fall from grace. Note also Hawthorne's comment on Phoebe's perplexity upon discovering evil in respectable Judge Pyncheon. “A doubt of this nature has a most disturbing influence, and … comes with fearful and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, and limit-loving class, in which we find our little country-girl. Dispositions more boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery, since there must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of it as a low one. A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into chaos” (iii, 161).

26 Julian Hawthorne, Eawthorne and His Circle (New York and London, 1903), p. 33: “he [Melville] told me …, that he was convinced that there was some secret in my father's life which had never been revealed, and which accounted for the gloomy passages in his books.”