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The Wizardry of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Seven Gables as Fairy Tale and Parable

1978; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 4; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/esc.1978.0024

1913-4835

Ed Kleiman,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

THE W IZ A R D R Y OF N A T H A N IE L H A W T H O R N E : SEVEN GABLES A S FA IR Y TA LE AN D P A R A B L E E. KLEIMAN University of Manitoba In a letter which Nathaniel Hawthorne sent to Horatio Bridge shortly after the appearance of The Scarlet Letter, we can discern some of the shaping forces that would soon be at work in The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne writes: I feel an infinite contempt for [the people of Salem] - and probably have expressed more of it than I intended - for my preliminary chapter [in The Scarlet Letter] has caused the greatest uproar that has happened here since witch-times. If I escape from town without being tarred and feathered, I shall consider it good-luck. I wish they would tar and feather me; it would be such an entirely novel kind of distinction for a literary man. And, from such judges as my fellow-citizens, I should look upon it as a higher honor than a laurel crown.1 Clearly, the venom and malice associated with "witch-times" still has power to wound and persecute. And, to his astonishment, Hawthorne finds that in this continuing conflict circumstances have allied him with the persecuted - with those who are "tarred and feathered." Blake might have said that Hawthorne was close to becoming one "of the Devil's party without knowing it." For like Holgrave, who is thought to be studying "the Black Art, up there in his lonesome chamber,"2 Hawthorne also engages in a practice which involves capturing people's "images" within the borders of his art. And if that art presupposes a knowledge of how the past casts a spell upon the present, as it does in The House of the Seven Gables, why then the artist, if he is to counteract this spell, must become something of a magician or wizard himself. Perhaps he must even become an alchemist of the imagination if he is to aid that process which results in the Pyncheon elm finally putting forth a golden bough. In other words, Hawthorne's imagination may itself have served as the metaphysical battleground, the timeless arena, in which persecuted witches and wizards were at last able to confront the fury of the Puritan mob with enough vision to recognize the true nature of the forces-the "spells" or "ghosts" - that had possessed the Puritan community, planted so stubbornly in the New World. And if the New England "garden" were being threatened in this way, then perhaps the role which the artist must assume is that of a Merlin whose E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , i v , 3 , F a ll 19 7 8 290 tower is one of the major defences of the newly found Eden. That this identifica­ tion was not entirely unconscious on Hawthorne's part is borne out by the fact that later, in Concord, he often spoke of the study which he had built for himself at the Wayside as his "sky-parlor" or "tow er."3 In adopting such a role, then, what Hawthorne reflects in his mingling of styles - in his setting off of fairy tale against moral parable, classical fable against Biblical tradition - is his own form of wizardry. For in The House of the Seven Gables, these are the heterogeneous materials with which this alchemist of the imagination found himself creating his portrait of the Western Eden. Moreover, a consideration of the historical and metaphysical concerns out of which Hawthorne writes also provides a new light in which to examine certain passages which have already received a good deal of critical attention: the dancing puppets of the Italian organ-grinder, for example, or the images of the "ascending spiral curve," the blackened "wooden church," and the abandoned "farm-house." Yet looking at these materials in the light of the artistic view­ point suggested above should result in something more than mere recapitula­ tion : we should be able to decide not only on the degree...