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                                                            The Scarlet Letter was a critical and popular success. The illicit love affair of Hester Prynne with the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and the birth of their child Pearl, takes place before the book opens. In Puritan New England, Hester, the mother of an illegitimate child, wears the scarlet A (for adulteress, named in the book by this initial) for years rather than reveal that her lover was the saintly young village minister. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, proceeds togd torment the guiltstricken man, who confesses his adultery before dying in Hester's arms. Hester plans to take her daughter Pearl to Europe to begin a new life. Toward the end of the dark romance Hawthorne wrote: "Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!" - Hester Prynne has been seen as a pioneer feminist in the line from Anne Hutchinson to Margaret Fuller, a classic nurturer, a sexually autonomous woman, and an American equivalent of Anna Karenina. The influence of the novel is apparent in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930). Hawthorne's daughter Una served as the model for Pearl.

Hawthorne was one of the first American writers to explore the hidden motivations of his characters. Among his allegorical stories is 'The Artist of the Beautiful' (1844) in which his protagonist creates an insect, perhaps a steam-driven butterfly. A girl he admires asks whether he made it, and he answers: bfc"Wherefore ask who created it, so it is beautiful?" Eventually the insect is killed by an unfeeling child. Hawthorne once wrote of his workroom: "This deserves to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands and thousands of visions have appeared to me in it."

"The Custom-House" sketch, prefatory to The Scarlet Letter, was based partly on his experiences in Salem. The novel appeared in 1850 and told a story of the earliest victims of Puritan obsession and spiritual intolerance. The central theme is the effect of guilt, anxiety and sorrow. Hawthorne's picture of the sin-obsessed Puritans has subsequently been criticized - they were less extreme than presented in the works of Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, Steven King, and many others. The House of the Seven Gables was published the following year. The story is based on the legend of a curse pronounced on Hawthorne's own family by a woman, who was condemned to death during the Salem witchcraft trials. The curse is mirrored in the decay of the Pyncheons' seven-gabled mansion. Finally the descendant of the ghfkilled woman marries a young niece of the family, and the hereditary sin ends.

THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE (1852), set in a utopian New England community, examines the flaws inherent in practical utopianism. Hawthorne had earlier invested and lived in the Brook Farm Commune, West Roxbury. This led to speculations that the doomed heroine was a portrait of the transcendentalist Margaret Fuller. During his productive period Hawthorne also established a warm friendship with Herman Melville, who dedicated Moby-Dick to him.

In 1853 Franklin Pierce became President. Hawthorne, who had written a campaign biography for him, was appointed as consul in Liverpool, England. He lived there for four years, and then spent a year and half in Italy writing THE MARBLE FAUN (1860), a story about the conflict between innocence and guilt. It was his last completed novel. In his Concord home, The Wayside, he wrote the essays contained in OUR OLD HOME (1863). Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, N.H. on a trip to the mountains with his friend Franklin Pierce. After his death his wife edited and published his notebooks. Modern editions of these works include many of the sections which she cut out or altered. The authors' son Julian was convicted in 1912 of defrauding the public.

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About Nathaniel Hawthorne
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