I have recently been rereading The House of Seven Gables, and every time I read this book I am more amazed at how delightfully snarkey Nathaniel Hawthorne can be (over the past year or so he and I have become very close). I think every time I re-read one of his books, I know him a little better. I know the way he writes his men: weak, selfish, frail creatures; I'll know the kind of girl he falls for every time: strong, pretty, perfect in too many ways. I forgive Nate his failings for a chance to step into his mind, to see his America. I feel like his weird friend who stands in the corner and stares at people. No one talks to me, except Nate, who is there, whispering in my ear.
If you have read The Scarlet Letter at some point during your high school career you may have developed the opinion that Hawthorne (in the way he writes his characters) is trying to show us the wages of sin. Oh, if only it was that simple. Did you believe that Hawthorne believed that for Hester Prynn and Rev. Dinsdale there should be no path, but degradation and destruction for their sin? That is, as I understand it, the way Nate wants you to feel initially, but in his perfect world, Hester and the Rev live happily ever after (at least that's what he told me). We imagine them in heaven, after all, at the final trumpet. It's the town's people that finally kill Rev. Dinsdale. He can't face the shame and judgment in their eyes, not God's eyes, their eyes. Trust me, Nate wants you to caste yourself as one of the town's people and he wants you to judge Hester and the Rev. and he wants you to feel terrible at the end of the book when you find out what a tool you have been. How could you feel that way? What kind of a world is it we live in? ...seriously. It's the same for the Blithedale Romance, but it's The House of Seven Gables when Nate gets subtle and maybe a bit too smart for the casual reader.
I think sometimes it is tempting to not think very closely about art and the message any artist might be trying to convey. There is a temptation to think that things are best enjoyed peripherally. Why should something have to make you think? Why can't it be enjoyed on it's surface level? Well, I think my personal need to examine stories stems from a feeling of alien-nation-hood. That is to say I feel like an alien, like I'm from another world. I often don't understand you all, but I want to. You are all, after all, quite fascinating. I think examining literature is a way to understand human nature, not the human nature that they want you to understand, but the real human nature: where the rubber meets the road. Ol Nate and I, we're like two sides of the same coin. I am afraid of humanity because I don't understand, so it seems like a wild unpredictable animal; Nate is afraid because he understands you all too well. He know what you're capable of.
If you have read The Scarlet Letter at some point during your high school career you may have developed the opinion that Hawthorne (in the way he writes his characters) is trying to show us the wages of sin. Oh, if only it was that simple. Did you believe that Hawthorne believed that for Hester Prynn and Rev. Dinsdale there should be no path, but degradation and destruction for their sin? That is, as I understand it, the way Nate wants you to feel initially, but in his perfect world, Hester and the Rev live happily ever after (at least that's what he told me). We imagine them in heaven, after all, at the final trumpet. It's the town's people that finally kill Rev. Dinsdale. He can't face the shame and judgment in their eyes, not God's eyes, their eyes. Trust me, Nate wants you to caste yourself as one of the town's people and he wants you to judge Hester and the Rev. and he wants you to feel terrible at the end of the book when you find out what a tool you have been. How could you feel that way? What kind of a world is it we live in? ...seriously. It's the same for the Blithedale Romance, but it's The House of Seven Gables when Nate gets subtle and maybe a bit too smart for the casual reader.
I think sometimes it is tempting to not think very closely about art and the message any artist might be trying to convey. There is a temptation to think that things are best enjoyed peripherally. Why should something have to make you think? Why can't it be enjoyed on it's surface level? Well, I think my personal need to examine stories stems from a feeling of alien-nation-hood. That is to say I feel like an alien, like I'm from another world. I often don't understand you all, but I want to. You are all, after all, quite fascinating. I think examining literature is a way to understand human nature, not the human nature that they want you to understand, but the real human nature: where the rubber meets the road. Ol Nate and I, we're like two sides of the same coin. I am afraid of humanity because I don't understand, so it seems like a wild unpredictable animal; Nate is afraid because he understands you all too well. He know what you're capable of.
Nate does not believe you can think for yourself; he has no faith whatever in society as a whole. To him, you all are lazy dangerous people, but at least he feels like he can use your best fault against you, and make you feel the way he wants you to feel. (I want to say I don't feel this way, in general, but we were talking about Nate.) The problem comes when you all refuse to look beyond the surface story. Nate sees this as inconceivable (I keep telling him I don't think he is using that word correctly in that context.)
The House of Seven Gables does the same thing as The Scarlet Letter, but instead of of ill fated Hester and Rev. Dimsdale going to a fate that Nate thinks they don't deserve, it is a monster hidden inside all societies tropes for beauty and desirability. Penelope. I was looking at my notes (I write them in the book as I read) from the last time I read 7 Gables, here is what I said about Phoebe: GOD enough about Phoebe. Phoebe is a house and Clifford want to come inside her... I get it. Phoebe is just so perfect isn't she? She whisks into 7 Gables, re-arranges the furniture, puts a few violets in a vase and Hey Presto! All the Pynchon's problems are on their way to being solved -- as long as we pay attention-- and follow orders. Judge Pynchon has to wait until Phoebe has left to go home visiting her family before he can enter 7 gables, and even then it finally kills him.
Holgrave is perhaps one of the most appealing men Nate has ever written. His friends are revolutionaries and freethinkers. He practices mesmerism, and is currently making his money taking daguerreotypes (photographs) of people and studying how sunlight brings forward the truth in them. For a 19th century man Holgrave is pretty fantastic. He is an artist, a free-thinker, and a mystic, and he gives it all up to marry Phoebe, who “can't stand a mystery”. The right kinda woman can really suck the wizard out of a man.
In Phoebe, Nate has created his most destructive terrifying monster yet. He describes exactly how psychological death can (and usually does ) come in the most appealing form. I could imagine Holgrave, 5 years down the road, wistfully watching as the parade of abolitionists, comeouters, community men, poets and artists march by his door. He used to be an artist, he used to contact spirits. How he would love to join his voice to the singing throng, but Phoebe does not appreciate that kind of behavior. Those are unsavory types. She could not stomach them in her life. Scarey... Nate's got horror down, that's for sure. His monsters at ten times more terrifying than his almost contemporary H.P. Lovecraft's.
The House of Seven Gables does the same thing as The Scarlet Letter, but instead of of ill fated Hester and Rev. Dimsdale going to a fate that Nate thinks they don't deserve, it is a monster hidden inside all societies tropes for beauty and desirability. Penelope. I was looking at my notes (I write them in the book as I read) from the last time I read 7 Gables, here is what I said about Phoebe: GOD enough about Phoebe. Phoebe is a house and Clifford want to come inside her... I get it. Phoebe is just so perfect isn't she? She whisks into 7 Gables, re-arranges the furniture, puts a few violets in a vase and Hey Presto! All the Pynchon's problems are on their way to being solved -- as long as we pay attention-- and follow orders. Judge Pynchon has to wait until Phoebe has left to go home visiting her family before he can enter 7 gables, and even then it finally kills him.
Holgrave is perhaps one of the most appealing men Nate has ever written. His friends are revolutionaries and freethinkers. He practices mesmerism, and is currently making his money taking daguerreotypes (photographs) of people and studying how sunlight brings forward the truth in them. For a 19th century man Holgrave is pretty fantastic. He is an artist, a free-thinker, and a mystic, and he gives it all up to marry Phoebe, who “can't stand a mystery”. The right kinda woman can really suck the wizard out of a man.
In Phoebe, Nate has created his most destructive terrifying monster yet. He describes exactly how psychological death can (and usually does ) come in the most appealing form. I could imagine Holgrave, 5 years down the road, wistfully watching as the parade of abolitionists, comeouters, community men, poets and artists march by his door. He used to be an artist, he used to contact spirits. How he would love to join his voice to the singing throng, but Phoebe does not appreciate that kind of behavior. Those are unsavory types. She could not stomach them in her life. Scarey... Nate's got horror down, that's for sure. His monsters at ten times more terrifying than his almost contemporary H.P. Lovecraft's.
Probably a picture of Cthulhu, although, if your not insane... it might not be accurate.
H.P. Lovecraft (if you have no heard of him) wrote horror that expressed man's inability to comprehend the entire scope of his world. To comprehend the world as it was would drive a mortal mind insane. Lovecraft imagined (or so we are reassured, although it is a matter of debate) the world that we perceive as a hollow crust barely containing: elder gods whose names have been forgotten for eons, blurred lines between mankind and his animal nature, and intelligences so vast that our mind could not comprehend them. His fiction is full of howling voids, alien dimensions, and protagonists that will be forever scared by what they have experienced, but for me Hawthorne's Phoebe will always hold more horror than anything Lovecraft could imagine. Phoebe, in a field of wildflowers, would be diligently weeding with no idea or desire to know which were the flowers or which were the weeds.
Also probably Cthulhu, but again...
While Lovecraft's unholy god's can only be unleashed when the stars are right, and can be banished from the world of sanity and daylight, Nate's monster's are sitting next to you at the DMV, they are making cookies for the church bake sale, they are picketing gay soldiers funerals and bombing abortion clinics, all in the guise of pleasant gentile femininity: unimpeachable, attractive, pillars of society.
So if your not a fan of horror, you can keep reading Nathaniel Hawthorn's stories on their surface, and never realize what he really wants you to see, or as I prefer (on this beautiful October day) you can revel in the horror of soccer moms as depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables.
Having read The Scarlet Letter for my personal requisite 30 pages before deciding not to finish, I can't truthfully respond. But I do remember the class discussions, and none of them likened it to a horror novel. This is the kind of unique perception that makes an analytical essay enjoyable, and works in the favor of anti-prompt people like me. On the essay itself, I think it would have been neater and more focused if the whole thing were full of comparisons between Lovecraft's works and Seven Gables, but maybe that would be too literary a move.
ReplyDelete(Also, it's spelled Cthulu.)
I read The Scarlet Letter quite a while ago in high school, and though it certainly wasn't my favorite book, I can see what you're getting at with Hawthorn here. Subtle, real life horror can be the worst (or best) there is. Also your title is pretty hilarious, but if people don't know who Cthulu is then they won't get the reference.
ReplyDeleteTiffany, you are right I should use the spelling from the Lovecraft stories and not the spelling from the texts to which Lovecraft refers to in his "stories". Which don't exist. Your right, of course there is no other way to spell Cthulu, of course your right... I wont be responsible.... they can't blame it on me...it's the stars... the stars... stars...
ReplyDeleteI like the way you address the audience as both yourself and Nate. However, it felt like the two of you were scolding me, which is fine, because I had a very strange reading of The Scarlet Letter myself, and I didn't particularly care for "7 Gables" either.
ReplyDeleteIm a "HUGE" Lovecraft fan and appreciate all the attention you gave him in an essay about Hawthorne (especially the funny title!). I was trying to remember the name of that short story Hawthorne wrote about the man walking through the woods with devil and he ends up at a witches sabbath, or something. Always liked that one, never read about the scarlet letter but talked about extensively in classes.
ReplyDelete