University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The Paganism Of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The Paganism Of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Content T h is d is s e r ta tio n h a s b e e n 62— 3718 m ic r o film e d e x a c tly a s r e c e iv e d B L Y T H , M arion D a lr y m p le , 1910— TH E PAG ANISM O F N A T H A N IE L H AW THORNE. U n iv e r s ity o f Sou th ern C a lifo r n ia P h .D ., 1962 L an guage and L ite r a tu r e , m o d ern U niversity M icrofilms, Inc., A nn Arbor, M ichigan Co'nyri^ht by T'arion Dalrymple Blvth 1962 THE PAGANISM OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE by Marion Dalrymple Blyth A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) January 1962 UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA GRADUATE SC H O O L U NIVERSITY PARK LOS A N G ELES 7. C A L IFO R N IA This dissertation, ‘ written by MIRION DAUEYMPLB -BLYTH under the direction of h**...Dissertation C om mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y Dean DISSERTATION COMMITTEE TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. THE PAGANISM OF HAWTHORNE ........... 1 II. HAWTHORNE'S USE OF THE CLASSIC MYTHS . . 63 III. THE MARBLE FAUN .................... 112 IV. HAWTHORNE'S TREATMENT OF WITCHES .... 158 V. "MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX," "YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN," AND THE WITCHES' SABBATH ........................ 202 VI. THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE: NEW ENGLAND GBTTERDAMMERUNG ................. 255 VII. HAWTHORNE'S TREATMENT OF THE MAGI ... 298 VIII. CONCLUSION..................... 332 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................ 340 ill CHAPTER I THE PAGANISM OF HAWTHORNE The paganism of Hawthorne was an essential part of his personality, and it is an important aspect of his art. It can be perceived in much of his work in one or the other of its two chief guises--the myths of earlier ages, descended through classical times, and the evil manifesta tion of these myths as they were transformed in the centu ries when witchcraft was persecuted. Hawthorne shows a great sympathy for the beautiful manifestations of the old myths, of which he seems to have had an intuitive under standing. His love of nature as well as of the literature and art through which the myths have become familiar to modern man led him to a glorification of the period of history in which the myths were created. On the other hand, his Puritanism, which resulted from a side of his nature as well as from his environment, caused him to value the austere, world-denying spirituality of the Puritans, although there were aspects of Puritanism that he deplored. The two views of the world appear in his works, first one predominating, then the other, and some times they come into conflict. He made much artistic use of the two forces, as well as of the conflict that some times broke out between them. He was able to make an imaginative identification with the pagan and his joy of life, and also with the Puritan's denial of worldly pleasures and his effort to escape the contaminating influence of his animality. Hawthorne's paganism is based not only on his love of nature and his feeling of close kinship with earth, but also on a somewhat unrealistic view of the life of early man. He seems to have accepted a belief in a kind of Golden Age in which man lived in a joyous innocence and harmony with nature. He often mentions the Golden Age as if there actually had been such a time as that which Ovid describes in Book I of the Metamorphoses --the first mil lennium, when Saturn ruled, when there was no war, and when the earth freely produced sustenance for man in a perpetual summer. The falling away from this happy con dition was, of course, deplorable; but Hawthorne does not consistently deplore the loss of a Golden Age, because he also appreciates the higher spirituality of Christianity, and he views the history of man as a growth or a progress 3 to a higher condition. These two views, contradictory as they are, sometimes appear together in one of Hawthorne's works, and produce an ambiguity. Much has been written about Hawthorne's Puritanism and of his analyses of the workings of the Calvinistic conscience, but the pagan side of his nature and of his art has been neglected. This study is intended, not to controvert what has been said by previous writers who have stressed other aspects of Hawthorne's temperament and art, but to bring into sharp focus an aspect that has had little attention. A statement of the thought that will be developed in this paper comes from Sweden: To my mind, the definition of Hawthorne's relation to the Puritan inheritance given by the Swedish essayist Klara Johansson and, as she states, first formed by John Macy, penetrates to the core of the matter when she says that "Hawthorne is a Puritan heir only col laterally with his artistic exertions which are intrinsically heathen" and that the Puritan strain in him is far from the most important feature of his work. John Macy, in his book The Spirit of American Literature, contends that Puritanism is destructive to art. His essay on Hawthorne treats Hawthorne as an artist who, although ^Jane Lundblad, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Tradition of Gothic Romance," The American Institute in the Univer sity of Upsala. IV (Upsala, 1946), 10-11. he writes at times about Puritan subjects, nevertheless presents his material from a pagan point of view. Macy states that Hawthorne represents . . . not the Puritan spirit, but the spirit of beauty everlastingly hostile or indifferent to the crabbed austerities and the soul-killing morbidities of Puritan ethics. Neither the philosophic library of Emerson nor the polyglot anthology of Longfellow announces so assuredly as the frail art of Hawthorne that civiliza tion has dawned upon the Calvinistic barbarism of our colonial ancestors.^ The order in which Hawthorne's works will be con sidered will not be the order in which they were composed. Some of his writings are not pertinent, and those that are will be taken up in the order in which they exemplify various periods of paganism, from earliest to latest. Chapter I is concerned with the transformation of the pagan, pre-Christian beliefs of earlier peoples into the witchcraft of later centuries. This chapter discusses some of the places where Hawthorne specifically has this transformation brought to his attention by his favorite authors. His natural propensity for pagan subjects and his sympathetic, even enthusiastic, treatment of them are considered. "The Maypole of Merry Mount" is discussed at ^(Garden City, New York, 1913), p. 94. length, because here the last manifestation in Western Christendom of paganism as a beautiful expression of harmony with nature is sympathetically presented, and here too the opposing force of Christian enmity, which views paganism as an abomination, is plainly brought out. Good and bad aspects of paganism are apparent in the story, which is discussed first because it has elements that go back into the remotest past, and Hawthorne's intuitive understanding of the meaning of the celebration he describes here is significant of an important side of his mind and art. Chapter II takes up Hawthorne's treatment of the classic myths he retold for children, as well as the way in which themes from the myths are treated in a number of his other works. Some of the important aspects of his thought may be discerned in his use of mythic mate rial. Chapter III deals with the classic myths as Haw thorne used them in The Marble Faun, for Donatello is a sylvan deity from the classic myths alive again in the nineteenth century instead of in the Golden Age. In his conflict with the evil Capuchin, whom he kills, Donatello is forced to accept the responsibility that goes with an understanding of evil. Here one sees Hawthorne's regret for the loss of a Golden Age as well as his acknowledgment of a higher spiritual existence. In Chapter IV the Witches' Sabbath is discussed as a suppressed and evil variation of pagan celebrations. The devil is the leader of the festivities. The stories "ty Kinsman, Major Molineux" and "Young Goodman Brown" are seen to be initia tion myths of a kind, the initiation taking place during a New England version of a Witches' Sabbath. In each story the young man discovers that the devil is lord of this world. The paganism presented here is debased. Hawthorne enters into the Puritan view of the world, but he is critical of the clergy, who attend the satanic orgy with the rest of mankind. Chapter V, in considering Hawthorne's treatment of witchcraft, connects the concept of the witch with the concept of women as goddesses and nature symbols. The position of women, an important sub ject in the nineteenth century, when women were attempting to gain, or to regain, status, is analyzed chiefly in relation to "The Hollow of Three Hills," "Feathertop," The Scarlet Letter, and Septiroius Felton. Chapter VI is a reading of The Blithedale Romance as a New England myth. Although based on the actual community of Brook Farm, the Blithedale cf the romance is treated by Hawthorne not as a Fourierist community exemplifying new socialistic theories, but rather as an attempt to restore the Golden Age In an age of steel. The expressions "Golden Age" and "Arcadia" are used frequently, and Zenobia, Priscilla, Hollingworth, and Hestervelt are characters with strong resemblances to mythic archetypes. Chapter VII is about Hawthorne's magi, as they are called here; the term includes his scientist- alchemist-wizards, all of whom have characteristics of the magicians of ancient religions. Here are included Dr. Heidegger, Rappaccini, Aylmer, Ethan Brand, Roger Chilling- worth, Maule-Holgrave, Septimius Felton, Dr. Grimshawe, and Dr. Dolliver, with the kind of experimentation that characterizes them all. The search for an elixir of life, the subject for one of the oldest known myths, occupied Hawthorne for years, and is handled in his tales and romances in terms, not of science, but of magic. In Hawthorne's day there was a resurgence of interest in occult "science." To what extent Hawthorne is personally involved in his creations, to what degree he reveals his own thoughts and feelings, it is difficult to determine. He had great reverence for the inviolability of the human spirit, believing it a sacrilege to reveal too much of the secret life of the individual. In the introduction to his second 8 book of tales he Indicates that he thought it right for an author to preserve his own secret life and keep it hidden from his readers: So far as 1 am a man of really individual attributes I veil m^ face; nor am I nor have 1 ever been, one of those supremely hospitable people who serve up their own hearts, delicately fried, with brain sauce, as a tidbit for their beloved public. His reticence about voicing his personal convictions, and the fact that he found no organized body of religious or philosophical thought to which he could subscribe, make it difficult to attempt to discover where he stood with respect to religious and philosophical ideas. In fact, it is only by tracing the most prevalent themes of such a writer and considering the method of treatment and the prevailing tone that one can discover, if indeed it can be discovered, "the figure in the carpet." Enigmatic as Hawthorne may be, both as personality and as artist, he can be perceived and understood to some extent by the leading motifs that appear in most of his works; and one of these is what will be called here 3The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston, Massachusetts, 1900), IV, 44. Old Manse Edition in 22 vols. Hereafter cited as Works; all references, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition. 9 paganism, or the Old Religion, the pre-Christian beliefs of Europe, embracing the classic myths. Manifestations of these beliefs persisted, sometimes transmuted or debased, in the Christian era. The great frequency with which Hawthorne makes use of such materials is very significant. His treatment of them has great variety, because sometimes the Old Religion embodies what is good, sometimes it symbolizes evil. It will be shown that one cause of the ambiguity that has been complained of in his work comes in part from his love of essentially pagan attitudes which were in conflict with his Puritanical conscience. The art of Hawthorne has close ties with the pagan attitude toward the world since, as he points out in the prefaces to The House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun, he is a writer of romance. The distinction between the novel and the romance, very clearly maintained in English and American literature, is of interest here because the lineage of the romance is ultimately pagan: The novel is realistic; the romance is poetic or epic: we should now call it "mythic.1 1 Mrs. Radcliffe, Sir Walter Scott, Hawthorne are writers of "romance." Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, George Gissing are novelists. The two types, which are polar, indicate the double descent of prose narrative: the novel develops from the lineage of non-fictitious narrative forms. . . . The romance, on the other hand, the continuator of 10 the epic and the mediaeval romance, may neglect verisimilitude of detail (the reproduction of individuated speech in dialogue, for example), addressing itself to a higher reality, a deeper psychology.^ The word "mythic" applies more significantly to Hawthorne than to Mrs. Radcllffe or to Walter Scott since, as will be shown, he makes much use of myths, in the traditional sense of the word, and also he has a deeper concern for psychological and moral meanings which he often develops in connection with myth. In the preface to The Yemassee (1835) William Gilmore Simms distinguishes between the novel and the romance, claiming that the romance written in his day was a con temporary equivalent of the ancient epic. Simms sees the romance as more poetic than the novel, and of higher origin. Hawthorne, over fifteen years later, in the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, makes the same distinction between the two forms of narrative, and claims, as a writer of romance, a right to employ the marvelous, which is a characteristic of the epic. ^Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York, 1942), pp. 205-206. 11 It is not only in his artistic creation that a tend ency toward a pagan view of the world is to be found, for there are evidences that Hawthorne's view of himself and his attitude toward the world have pagan elements. He appropriated to himself something of the marvelous when he adopted the pseudonym of Oberon in his correspondence with his friend of college days, Horatio Bridge, and used this name again in published work. The name of the elf- king of supernatural powers was certainly familiar to him through his reading of Shakespeare, but it may also have been suggested to him by the Oberon of Christoph Martin Wieland, the popular romantic epic poem praised by Goethe, Herder, and other German writers. Though Hawthorne never achieved a proficiency in reading German, he may have read this poem, originally published in 1780, in an English translation by William Sotheby, published in America in 1810. Wieland's sources are the French chanson de geste. Huon de Bordeaux, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Wieland1s work Oberon is a beautiful dwarf with super natural powers, able to perform prodigious acts to aid those whom he favors or to confound those who displease him. He is the deus ex machina who appears when summoned by a magical ivory horn. In "The Devil in Manuscript" 12 the writer, named Oberon, bums his writings, as Hawthorne did in reality bum his early stories. Of Hawthorne's connection with the name his first biographer says, . his classmates were so impressed with his masculine beauty, and perhaps with a sense of occult power in him, that they nicknamed him Oberon." However, Horatio Bridge, his classmate at Bowdoin College and life-long friend, corrects this impression: In a letter of Miss Peabody, quoted by Mr. Conway, it is stated that "his classmates called Hawthorne 'Oberon the Fairy* on account of his beauty, and because he improvised tales." It seems a pity to spoil so poetic a fancy; but, if truthful narrative is required, the cold facts are these: In reality the pseudonym of "Oberon" was not given him by his classmates or by anyone else while in col lege, but was assumed by him at a later date and in this wise. Soon after graduation we agreed to cor respond regularly at stated periods, and we selected new signatures for our letters. Hawthorne chose that of "Oberon" (which he afterwards used for some of his magazine articles), while I took the more prosaic one of "Edward."6 Oberon is a variant of Alberich. king of the elves i r . pagan Teutonic legends. Hawthorne's choice of the name was ^George Parsons Lathrop, Nathaniel Hawthorne (Boston, 1876), p. 464. ^Horatio Bridge, Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1893), p. 49. 13 probably not wholly Ironical, if, Indeed, It was ironical at all. At a much later time, in Our Old Home. Hawthorne wrote, ". . .my native propensities were towards Fairy Land. . ." (XI, 176). The connection of "fairy land" and the old paganism of Europe will be discussed at more length later. Another connection with pagan nature worship existed in the very name of Hawthorne. His daughter, Rose Haw thorne Lathrop, said, "The bush and the family name were always the same thing for us children."^ This relationship was not one that occurred to the children spontaneously, but that must have been suggested by their parents. The hawthorn has many legends and ceremonial usages connected with primitive religion. It is, of course, the white thorn, or May, as it is called in England, gathered in celebration of May Day from very early times. The flower ing shrub was regarded as an emblem of hope. Branches were said to have been carried in the wedding processions of ancient Greece, and were used to decorate the altars of Hymen. It is believed in Great Britain and Ireland that ^Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 1897), p. 303. 14 tearing up a hawthorn will bring bad luck.® In Germany and Q Scotland it was used to prognosticate weather. There are numerous references to it in the English literature Haw thorne was familiar with. The identity of the plant with his name may have been remarked upon to him so frequently that he avoided referring to it himself. His fiancee's family thought of the connection. "Mrs. Peabody planted a hawthorn bush in her garden with some ceremony. She struck her standard.1 1 ^ This was at the time when the women of the Peabody family were making overtures to the Hawthornes, and the planting of the bush seems almost like an act of mimetic magic. Like the spelling of the family name, the name of the shrub underwent many changes, and Hawthorne was actually restoring an older spelling when he changed his name from Hathorne. Self-consciousness result ing from identifying with the shrub probably led him to avoid mention of his name and the shrub together, as may g Encyclopaedia Britannica. 11th ed. (New York, 1910), XIII, 101-102. ^T. F. Thiselton Dyer, The Folklore of Plants (New York, 1889), p. 118. ^Edward Mather, Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1940), p. 100. 15 be seen in his reference, in The Blithedale Romance, to Goldsmith's "Deserted Village": ". . .we tired laborers sat looking on, like Goldsmith's old folks under the vil lage thorn tree, while the young folks were at their sports" (VIII, 73). Goldsmith's lines are, "The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade/ For talking age and whisp'ring lovers made" (lines 13-14). Hawthorne's interest in the marvelous was evident in his earliest available writings. In a little newspaper he wrote in 1820, under "Domestic News" he writes about a sea serpent: ... he seems to possess a strange and we think rather unusual faculty of appearing in different shapes to different eyes, so that where one person sees a shark, another beholds a nameless dragon. (G. P. Lathrop, p. 102) This passage shows that, even at the age of sixteen, he had developed his characteristic skepticism and irony as well as, at the same time, an understanding of the process by which myth and legend are created. Lathrop accepts as genuine the excerpts from Hawthorne's lost early journal in which typical attitudes are discernible--". . . very significant too, is the dash of the supernatural and his tone concerning it" (p. 100). The same biographer received from Hawthorne's sister Elizabeth the only 16 information available about "Seven Tales of Native Land," which Hawthorne burned in a fit of despair over his failure to get them published. Some of the stories dealt with witchcraft. A more than ordinary interest in divination, a promi nent aspect of pagan religious practice, and one forbidden in Christian times in many places, is apparent in an account of Hawthorne's visits to the gypsy of Brunswick. Sophia Hawthorne knew of these visits, and she reminded Bridge in a letter written in 1865, after Hawthorne's death, about the old woman. Bridge writes of the days when he and Hawthorne were students at Bowdoin and spent their leisure time in walks about Brunswick, Maine: These rambles sometimes ended at the unpainted cottage of an old fortune-teller who, from the tea-leaves in a cracked cup or from a soiled pack of cards, evoked our respective destinies. She always gave us brilliant futures, in which the most attractive of the promised gifts were abundance of gold and great wealth of wives. Lovely beings these wives of destiny were sure to be, some of whom the old crone prophesied would be "dark-complected" and others "light-complected," but all surpassingly beautiful. These blessings, and more, she predicted for so small a silver coin that, though we were her best patrons, our modest stock of pocket- money was not inconveniently diminished by her fees. ... A few years since I revisited the spot where the sibyl once had lived, but, alas! only to find that her house was gone, and that a railway-track had usurped its former site. (Bridge, pp. 14-15) 17 A visit to a fortune teller is not exceptional, but it is clear from this account that Hawthorne went many times, with what attitude one can only surmise, but very likely with a real desire to penetrate the veil of the future and to make out to what extent the old woman believed in her own power. Bridge's reference to her as a sibyl suggests the timeless paganism of her function. Melville, in expressing his enthusiasm over Haw- thorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, said, "His wild witch voice rings through me." Again, to describe his sensations on finishing the book, he said, "When the spell was over, this wizard dismissed me."^ It is not surprising that Melville used these figures of speech in connection with Hawthorne, for there is in most of Hawthorne's works very frequent reference to ancient beliefs that go far down into what Thomas Mann called "the bottomless well of the past." Hawthorne's references to divination, curses and spells, spirits, witches, and wizards are innumerable. The House of the Seven Gables is about a witch's curse. In The Blithedale Romance a veiled lady, said to be exhibited by ^■^Jay Leyda, ed., The Portable Melville (New York, 1952), pp. 400, 402-3. 18 a wizard, gives a strange and sibylline performance. The Marble Faun reveals a concern for mythical belief. In many of the tales also one finds the same kind of themes. Even though, in some instances, Hawthorne uses these ele ments in allegory, the continuing recurrence of such items betrays a great interest, and gives an insight into his habitual way of comprehending experience. His use of the Greek myths, which he so lovingly retold, is part of this prepossession. Hawthorne was well acquainted with English literature in which myths and the supernatural are extensively used. Shakespeare and Milton, very familiar to him since child hood, make extensive use of the myths as well as of the supernatural creatures of English folklore who are in many cases descendants of older mythic beings. Scott, another of Hawthorne's favorite authors, in his study of witchcraft and demonology, makes the connection between folklore, witchcraft, and the older paganism very explic itly. Hawthorne's awareness of the great antiquity of pagan concepts is apparent in his tracing back the ancestry of Donatello, his nineteenth century faun, to the Pelasgic race of prehistoric times. Here a nature deity, a horned god, goes back as far as Hawthorne's knowledge extends. 19 He could not have known what later discoveries have revealed about the beliefs of early man In Europe; but his Intuition led him to an understanding of the continuity of pagan concepts, of the old pagan remnants surviving In witchcraft. In Italy to this day witchcraft Is called "la vecchla rellglone." Archeology reveals more and more knowledge of this Old Religion, as in the prehistoric drawing of the homed god on the walls of the Caverne des Trois Freres in Ariege, drawn in the late Paleolithic Period. The drawing shows a man clothed in the skin of a stag and wearing the stag's antlers. This example of primitive art is accepted as a representation of the horned god of the Old Religion, which was replaced by Christianity and Islam in Europe and North Africa. There were horned gods in Babylonia and Assyria also. When Alexander the Great "assumed the god" he wore horns, as did many of the gods of Egypt. The horned god is found throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The Minotaur of Crete and Pan among the Greeks are examples. The horned god of the Gauls was called by the Romans Cernunnos, which in England was Heme, or Old Hornie, as he became known colloquially. Many representations of the horned god exist, showing him as a man with the horns of a ram, goat, or stag. As Robin 20 Goodfellow in England he is sometimes shown as homed and cloven-hoofed, carrying a broom, and surrounded by a band, 12 usually twelve in number. In the Bronze Age the cult of the homed god was well established over all of Europe. Among the people of the Iron Age he retained his position as a high god. The introduction of Christianity was, of course, a great blow to the primitive nature religion that the homed god repre sented, but Christianity did not at once and thoroughly eclipse previous beliefs. Lack of communication, unsettled government, and a reluctance to part with established custom all tended to prolong the practice of pagan cere monies and to extend the life of the Old Religion. Heathen beliefs lasted longest among the illiterate and those in remote communities. In England waves of invasion by the pagan Scandinavians reinforced what remained of the worship of Teutonic deities. Except for classical literature and the Northern sagas, records of the old beliefs were made by Christian commenta tors, to whom the Old Religion was an abomination to be ^Margaret Alice Murray, The God of the Witches (London, n.d.). Several writers have drawn on this work for the explanation of the homed god of the West. 21 stamped out by all means. Most of the evidence of this religion except drawings, funereal remains, carvings, and artifacts come from Christian sources, highly colored by the writers' pious zeal, and much work remains to be done in separating facts from prejudices. In the struggle between Christianity and paganism, as in many similar struggles between two beliefs, the one that conquered relegated the god of the vanquished religion to the posi tion of devil. It is obvious from the innumerable por trayals of the devil of Christianity that he bears a close resemblance to the Homed God of the Old Religion. He has the horns and the cloven hoof of Pan, the Minotaur, Cernunnos, the satyrs, and the later fauns--the deities of pre-existing beliefs. He took on in his transformation to spirit of evil in the Christian religion the character of one whose chief concern it was to tempt humanity to sin. In the more primitive religions the god or gods are responsible for all created things, both good and evil. It is only in more advanced and sophisticated religion that 13 God is good, and a separate force produces evil. In the ^ The God of the Witches, p. 14: "The idea of dividing the Power Beyond into two, one good and one evil, belongs to an advanced and sophisticated religion. The monotheism 22 change in status of the horned god to that of the devil of Christianity there is a resemblance to the change in the fallen angels in the account used in Paradise Lost; as the angels became demons, so the horned god lost all his good attributes in the transformation to devil. The transformation of old gods and fallen angels into demons is treated extensively in Milton's works, which Hawthorne admired and which he read frequently. In Para dise Lost. Book I, Milton lists the chief followers of Lucifer in his rebellion, and although some were fallen angels and then demons and nothing more, the leading members of the hosts of hell were later to become the gods of paganism, "the Idols known afterwards in Canaan and the Countries adjoyning. "The prime in order and in might" (Paradise Lost, I, 506) were the false gods mentioned in the Bible, other Semitic deities, and the gods of Egypt. Even Beelzebub, Satan's chief lieutenant, takes his name from Ba'alzebub. god of insects, probably from the flies of early religions is very marked, each little settlement or group of settlements having its own deity." ^ The Student's Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New York, 1931), p. 159. 23 that were attracted to the sacrifices. Baal was the name of a number of Semitic deities, among which was the Phoenician sun god. The idea that the pagan gods were demons was suggested in part by the Bible. The Vulgate translates Psalm xcvi, 5, "Omnes dei gentium daemonia." Paul says in I Corin thians, x, 20, that the Gentiles sacrifice to devils. The historian H. C. Lea points out the consequences of this line of thinking: Regarding the pagan gods not as mere idols or empty myths, but as demons who had succeeded in imposing themselves on men as deities, they were naturally led to magnify to the utmost the powers of evil angels, and this accounts for the attention devoted to them by the early Fathers. . . . Already we here find recognized the extended knowledge of demons which St. Augustin emphasized and Aquinas taught. Milton dutifully places the gods of Greece and Rome in the infernal regions along with other pagan deities, but his treatment of them is less severe than his treatment of other heathen gods. In "Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity," which was read aloud in the Hawthorne home every Christmas (Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 305) Milton tells first of the silencing of the oracle of Apollo's shrine, I^h. c. Lea, Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft (New York, 1957), p. 43. 24 then of the departure of the nymphs, the Lars and Lemures, Peor, Baalim, Ashtaroth, Moloch, Osiris, Isis, and others, who become the "damned crew" who "flock to th' infernall jail." The Advent is the signal for the false gods to depart and to end their diabolical work of leading men to worship them. Walter Scott, in a work with which Haw thorne was familiar, quotes Milton's poem at length and comments on it: The idea of identifying the pagan deities, especially the most distinguished of them, with the manifestation of demoniac power, and concluding that the descent of our Saviour struck them with silence, so nobly expressed in the poetry of Milton, is not certainly to be lightly rejected.16 In the "Hymn," as in Paradise Lost. Milton shows his parti ality for the Greek and Roman gods so familiar to him in the literature of classical antiquity. He mentions none of them specifically except Apollo. Milton's kindly atti tude toward the Greek and Roman deities is evident in the numerous figures of speech which are used for descriptive purposes in Paradise Lost. Although he explains that their Letters on Deroonology and Witchcraft (London, 1887), first published 1831, p. 63. Withdrawn from the Salem Athenaeum Library in Hawthorne's name October 4, 1837, according to Marion L. Kesselring, "Hawthorne's Reading," Bulletin of the New York Public Library. Vol. 53, No. 2., February, 1929, p. 55. 25 legends appeared after the action narrated in Paradise Lost. Milton sometimes speaks of them as if they were anterior to Adam and Eve, and as if they were the proto types of whatever is being described. For example, in a description of Eve, To Pales. or Pomona. thus adorad, Likeliest she seemd, Pomona when she fled Vertumnus. or to Ceres in her Prime Yet Virgin of Proserpina from Jove. (IX, 393-96) A great many examples might be cited of this kind of description, which likens the personae and the scenery to classical deities and their haunts as if the events of the classic myths were previous to the events of Paradise Lost. and were, somehow, archetypal. It will be seen that Haw thorne makes similar free use of the Graeco-Roman mythol ogy , equating, for instance, Eden, Arcadia, and the Golden Age in several important works. The relationship of god and devil and sometimes the confusion of god and devil might be observed among many peoples of the world. Etymology gives a clue to this situ ation in the case of Beelzebub, and in a curious passage in George Borrow's Lavengro (1850), which, Hawthorne told Duyckinck, "filled up a week of happy evenings" one winter 26 in Lenox.The young Englishman and his gypsy friend are discussing the gypsy language, and Jasper Petulengro says: "1 call God Duvel, brother," "It sounds very like Devil." "It doth, brother, it doth." "And what do you call divine, I mean godly?" "Oh! I call that duvelskoe," "I am thinking of something, Jasper." "What are you thinking of brother?" "Would it not be a rum thing if divine and devilish were originally one and the same word?" "It would, brother, it would--"18 The identification of the sylvan deities with the fallen angels is apparent in popular images of the devil, although in the minds of the people the transformation was probably not taken into account. In a story cited by George Lyman Kittredge, taken from the writings of Walter Map in the twelfth century, a rich young baron made a pact with "a huge man" who claimed to be one of the angels who fell with Lucifer. He said that he and his associates were permitted by a merciful God to frequent waste places as well as places of habitation, and that in olden times people called them semideos or semideas, the sylvan deities known as the 17Randall Stewart, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography (New Haven, 1948), p. 105. ^Everyman's Library (London, 1906), p. 112. 27 19 dryads, oreads, nymphs, naiads, fauns and satyrs. There Is an abundance of evidence that the old gods, In one guise or another, persisted In the popular mind for a very long time. Walter Scott says of the Christian who remembered the old deities, "... though he must not worship Pan or Ceres as gods, he was at liberty to fear them in their new capacity of fiends" (p. 82). Scott says further, concern ing the persistence of some aspects of heathenism: Thus, though the thrones of Jupiter and the superior deities of the heathen Pantheon were totally overthrown and broken to pieces, fragments of their worship and many of their rites survived the conver sion to Christianity--nay, are in existence even at this late and enlightened period, although those by whom they are practised have not preserved the least memory of their original purpose, (p. 83) The pre-Christian deities of the Mediterranean world have, in many cases, very ancient histories, and aspects that changed from time to time. Nations borrowed gods from one another, or borrowed aspects or names of certain gods whose origins go far into the past, where the lack of written records makes the facts difficult to ascertain. Forces of nature in various manifestations are the explana tion of many of the gods, whose character underwent 1 Q Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1929), p. 241. 28 evolutionary changes as people grew more civilized and sophisticated. One of the earliest manifestations of religion, according to the evidence of archaeology, is the cult of the mother goddess. Innumerable examples of figures of the mother goddess are found from paleolithic times in a vast territory extending from Western Europe to Asia, and including Northern Africa. According to E. 0. James: Whether or not the Mother-goddess was the earliest manifestation of the concept of the Deity, her symbolism unquestionably has been the most persistent feature in the archaeological record of the ancient world. ® The great number of remaining images indicates the great antiquity and long duration of the cult of the Mother- goddess. Concerned with fertility of plants, animals, and human beings, this cult became less Important as plant and animal food became more abundant and as the food supply became more subject to human control. According to some anthropologists, women almost certainly discovered or invented agriculture, so that, in addition to being the givers of human life, they were responsible for the pro duction of an important addition to the food supply. In 20The Cult of the Mother Goddess (New York, 1959), p. 1L 29 early societies men were responsible for hunting and tending the flocks, and also for warfare, which became a more specialized kind of activity as societies became larger and more wealthy: The mother goddess became unimportant in those communities that acquired war-gods. . . . The emergence of war-gods marks the coming of a new epoch, of the subjection of women, of pastoral life, and so forth, and the disappearance of the mother goddess is not the least significant feature of the new order. This author speaks of the old, comparatively peaceful way of life in the era when women were on a basis of equality with men, and, indeed, ranked above them in matrilineal societies. Because women had little value in war, they declined in importance. Since peace is an important feature of the Golden Age, there may have been memories of a time before organized warfare was invented: Hesiod speaks of the days when peace reigned over the earth, of the Golden Age. It has long been cus tomary to regard this as a pious fiction, as the result of a tendency to idealize the past. But there can be no doubt that the story of Hesiod has a substantial basis in fact. It can be shown, beyond doubt, that the earliest civilizations of the earth were far more peaceful than those that followed. (Perry, pp. 112-113) 21W. J. Perry, The Origin of Magic and Religion (New York, 1923), p. 124. 30 There is a possibility, then, of a real "Golden Age," how ever much legend altered its reality. In this period before the invention of war, there was no great value placed on skill in fighting, and women did not occupy the lowly status later assigned to them. Hawthorne's concern with the proper, "natural," role of women, and his many references to the Golden Age, will be shown to be related to each other, since he seems to have some intuitive under standing of the mother-goddess archetype in various embodi ments, as will be seen in a discussion of his works. Professor James traces the development of the mother- goddess concept from paleolithic times through the neo lithic period, then to the later cultus in Mesopotamia and Egypt, Palestine, Iran, India, and Crete; he takes up the goddesses of the Greek Pantheon, the Magna Mater of the Graeco-Roman world, the Mater Ecclesia, and the Madonna, all of which bear some relationship to each other. Many of the goddesses of the Mediterranean region were so similar that they were really the same goddess under dif ferent names. In the Roman world the gods of conquered peoples were sometimes brought to Rome and worshiped, becoming popular if they proved efficacious, that is to say if a good harvest or a victory in war followed closely 31 upon the arrival of the gods in Rome. Some of the gods and goddesses were syncretistlc, made up of elements of foreign cults. They were amalgamated deities. Hawthorne, like the ancient Romans, took freely whatever appealed to him from the older pantheon, adding and recreating at will. The literature of Greece and Rome, permeated with pagan religion, was well known to Hawthorne from an early age: Benjamin Oliver has to get him ready for a college which required candidates for admission "to write Latin grammatically, and to be well versed in Geogra phy, in Walsh's Arithmetic, Cicero's Select Orations, the Bucolics, Georgies, and the Aeneld of Virgil, Sallust, the Greek Testament, and the Collectanea Graeca Minora."22 Hawthorne went on to more advanced studies in classical literature at Bowdoin College, and retained his knowledge of Greek and Latin to the last years of his life, as one sees from the testimony of his son, who was seventeen years old when his father died: . . . Hawthorne and his wife had themselves borne the chief part in the instruction of their children hitherto. The former had grounded his son carefully in Latin, and had introduced him to Greek,--his own ^Mark Van Doren, Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1949), pp. 16-17. 32 acquaintance with these languages being sound, if not critical. Classical literature is still the great source of informa tion about Greek and Roman beliefs. Hawthorne's imagina tive reading of this material gave him a deep understanding of some aspects of such beliefs, which archeological dis coveries, anthropological studies, and psychology have clarified somewhat since his day. The syncretistic mother goddess whose fertility cult was so extensive and enduring became powerful in great temples of the ancient world. Whatever her name might have been in a particular locality, she had attributes that showed that in reality she was the same force worshiped under different names in different places. The Metamor phoses of Apuleius, better known as The Golden Ass.is an excellent source of information about one of these syncre tistic deities in whom many others are manifested, because Apuleius was not only a writer and a lawyer who brilliantly defended himself when he was charged with sorcery, but he also became a priest, initiated into the secret rites of a pagan temple. He writes reverently of all that he was Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (London, 1885), II, 266. 33 permitted to divulge about the sacred mysteries celebrated in Carthage in the second century. His hero, Lucius, suffers long under enchantment in the form of an ass, but after his devout prayer as a full moon rose from the sea, the goddess appears to him in a dream, saying: "You see me here, Lucius, in answer to your prayer. 1 am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestion of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated with all manner of different rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me. The primeval Phrygians call me Pesslnuntica, Mother of the gods; the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropian Artemis; for the islanders of Cyprus I am Paphian Aphrodite; for the archers of Crete I am Dictynna; for the trilingual Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine; for the Eleusinians their ancient Mother of the Corn." "Some know me as Juno, some as Bellona of the Battles; others as Hecate, others again as Rhamnubia, but both races of Aethopians, whose lands the morning sun first shines upon, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning and worship me with ceremonies proper to my godhead, call me by my true name, namely, Queen Isis. I have come in pity of your plight, 1 have come to favour and aid you. Weep no more, lament no longer; the hour of deliverance, shone over by my watchful light, is at hand[ ’ 24 24 The Golden Ass of Apuleius. tr. Robert Graves (New York, 1952), pp. 238-9. 34 The elements that make up this goddess are the moon, her "watchful light," and the fertility aspect represented by the Mother of the Corn. There is Diana in her three mani festations, Selene, the moon; Diana, the earthly huntress; and Hecate, the chthonic, or underworld, personage con nected with death and with evil magic. She is the Diana of the crossroads, the goddess of the dark of the moon. By the second century the all-purpose goddess had gathered poetic, religious, and artistic elements from many places and ages, but she is recognizable as the mother-goddess, universal Nature personified as a woman, and she is a con cept that seemed to answer some general human need. Haw thorne's use of this concept will be discussed at length in connection with his works, but one strangely pagan prayer might be mentioned here--the cry of Ethan Brand when he realizes that he has violated a sacred law of Nature: "0 Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall never be resolved!" (Ill, 137). In Hawthorne's works Mother Earth or Mother Nature is not a dead metaphor, but is an expres sion of pagan feeling in fervent and reverent language. One of the earliest and clearest expressions of his feeling is observable in a story, taken up first here 35 because the matter Is so clearly stated, and also because the conflict between pagan and Christian views is sharply defined. The remnants of belief in a horned god, a nature deity still uncontaminated with evil, is evident here, and also the mother goddess in a beautiful and innocent guise. In "The Maypole of Merry Mount" (1836) the conflict between paganism and Christianity comes to a climax of physical violence. Though he takes refuge behind allegory, Haw thorne presents with lively sympathy a pagan celebration, the roots of which are in remotest antiquity, as taking place on American soil. The story begins with a descrip tion of a gay event, an out-door celebration in which the inhabitants of an English settlement in Massachusetts gather around a Maypole. The celebrants are wearing gay costumes with flowers and ribbons, or are disguised with animal skins and horns or with grotesque masques. The group are hand in hand in a ring around the Maypole. They encircle the Lord and Lady of the May, two beautiful young people who are being married by an Anglican clergyman. The priest is wearing conventional vestments, but in addition he is adorned with "pagan" flowers, and he wears a garland of vine leaves. The Lord and Lady of the May have Old English names--Edgar and Edith--that link them with the 36 far-off past. Hawthorne takes his description of the revelry at Merry Mount from Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, as he says in an introductory note. As the revelry proceeds, dour Puritans watch from the forest, enraged at what they consider devil worship. As the day darkens, Governor Endicott leads the band of Puritans to attack the revelers and take them into custody, threatening cruel punishments, particularly to the priest who misled his followers. Endicott strikes down the May pole, but he relents somewhat in his treatment of the Lord and Lady of the May, in whom he discerns some good qualities. Hawthorne refers to this story as a slight sketch, and he brings out an allegorical meaning. He may have feared that the public would consider him too pagan in his attitude had he not qualified the enthusiasm he shows for the nature festival so brightly pictured in this story. This is one way he has of "veiling his face," as he states in the preface to Mosses from an Old Manse it was his custom to do. His own attitude must be looked for in the working out of the story and the tone he takes. The story begins: 37 Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the banner staff of that gay colony! They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's rugged hills, and scatter flower seeds throughout the soil. (I, 64) The Merry Mount settlement is symbolized throughout by sun shine and flowers, while iron and darkness are symbols of the Puritan invaders. It is conventional in art to asso ciate light with good and darkness with evil; but in this story the paganism of Merry Mount is light, and the Christianity of Endicott's Puritan band brings darkness. The conflict between the two forces is stated early in the first paragraph: "Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire" (I, 64). The happiest phases of nature show themselves at Merry Mount, where both wild and cultivated flowers are abundant and beautiful in an American version of the Golden Age. "0, people of the Golden Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise flowers!" (p. 65). The Maypole here is a pine tree decorated with ribbons and flowers, as well as with birch boughs and leaves from other trees and shrubs. Hawthorne, although he speaks of the celebration in this story as an occasion of mirth and jollity, nevertheless recognizes the Maypole as an object of worship. He calls it the "venerated Maypole" (p. 67). "Votaries of the Maypole" the minister calls the participants, who "danced round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner staff of Merry Mount" (p. 73). Hawthorne recognizes the Maypole as a focal point of a religion, as do the Puritans who attack ferociously before the festivities are concluded. Haw thorne has a kind of intuitive understanding of the primi tive nature religion that Frazer was to find so many examples of in his investigations that resulted in the writing of The Golden Bough. Frazer's monumental work has not been superseded as a source of information about pagan beliefs. On the subject of tree worship Frazer says "From the earliest times the worship of trees played an important part in the religious life of the European 2 5 peoples." The idea that trees were animated and that they had sensation led to a belief that the tree embodied the life-spirit. The belief persists to the present day: The primitive worship of trees survives on a wide scale in European popular usage. In spring or early summer or even on Midsummer Day, it was and still is in many parts of Europe the custom to go out to the woods, cut down a tree and bring it into the village, 2 5 James George Frazer and Theodor H. Gaster, The New Golden Bough (New York, 1959), p. 72. 39 where it is set up amid general rejoicings, (p. 80) The pine was often considered sacred--its use as a Christmas tree is probably connected with ancient prac tices --possibly because it is evergreen and is therefore a desirable life symbol. One investigator says: "The pine has been held in reverence by many races. In ancient 26 Greece it was sacred to Poseidon, Dionysos, and Zeus." A pine tree was cut and set up in the sanctuary of Cybele and Attis, where it was decorated with flowers.^ There are many similar instances on record. In the more primi tive ceremonies, part of the observance was often given to the self-mutilation of participants, or human sacrifice, sometimes of the suicide of the god by proxy, or of a priest. In Hawthorne's story there is no hint of these barbaric rituals, which were sometimes followed, as in the worship of Cybele and Attis, by the resurrection of the god, symbolizing the rebirth of vegetation in the spring. The resurrection, furnishing a hope or promise of immor tality, was hailed by a wild festival of rejoicing. In 7f% Frederich Thomas Elworthy, The Evil Eye (New York, 1958), p. 97. 27 The New Golden Bough, pp. 310-11. 40 Rome there was a carnival with holidays of this kind, one of them being a Festival of Joy called Hilaria. It is the joyous phase that is preserved in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," the sacrificial and sanguinary aspects of the celebration having been abandoned for centuries. Strutt's information is derived to a considerable degree from Puritan sources, for it seems that only those opposed to the activities would bother to write at length about what was so widely accepted. Strutt quotes from Philip Stubbs' Anatomie of Abuses. 1596: "Against Maie-Day, Whitsunday, or some other time of the year, every parish, towne, or village, assemble themselves, both men, women, and children; and either all together, or dividing themselves into companies, they goe some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountaines, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return, bringing with them birche boughes and branches of trees to deck their assemblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they bring from thence is the Maie-pole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus--they have twentie or fourtie yoake of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegaie of flowers tied to the tip of his homes, and these oxen drawe home their May- poale, their stinking idol rather, which they covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round with strings from the top to the bottome, and sometimes it was painted with variable colours, having two or three hundred men, women, and children following it with great devotion. And thus equipped it was reared with hand- kerchiefes and flagges streaming on the top, they strawe the ground round about it, they bind green boughs about it, they set up summer halles, bowers, and 41 arbours hard by, and then fall they to banquetting and feasting, to leaping and dauncing about it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolls.28 The Puritans objected to the Maypole pageant mainly on the ground that it was pagan, as indeed it was in its origin. Their anger was aroused because they regarded the tree as a "stinking idol." Strutt quotes another attack, from "The Pope's Kingdom" in Googe's Neogeorgus: Their feastes, and all their holydayes they keep throughout the yeare, Are full of vile idolatry, and heathen like appeare. I shew not here their daunces yet with filthy gestures mad, Nor other wanton sports that on the holydayes are had. In some place solenme sights and showes, and pageants faire are play'd, With sundry sorts of maskers brave, in straunge attire arrai'd. (p. lvii) To Puritans, the Papists' religion preserved a considerable element of heathenism, and so Catholicism and paganism were often attacked together. Hawthorne suggests the ancient origin of the celebra tion, though expressing himself negatively: It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from their classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all the persecuted did, in the 28 Joseph Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (London, 1855), pp. 352-3. 42 fresh woods of the West. There were Gothic monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. (I, 65-66) It is rather curious that persecuted paganism, as well as persecuted Puritanism, looked to the freedom of the American forest for safety. In the crowd around the Maypole at Merry Mount there is a young man wearing the head and antlers of a stag; the man portrayed by the cave artist of pre-historic France wore the same disguise. Strutt's book, which is copiously illustrated with simple drawings, has pictures of mummers wearing animal heads. The custom must have been followed without interruption for many thousands of years, and it is found even in the present century. Richard Lowes Thompson's book on the horned god of the West has a photo graph of a celebration of the Horn Dance at Abbots Bromley, in which several participants wear the horns of a deer. There is a hobby-horse rider called Robin Hood, together JQ with a Maid Marion. 7 A fool wears bells. In the group shown in this photograph there are individuals very similar to the participants mentioned and illustrated by Strutt, 29 The History of the Devil, the Horned God of the West (New York, 1929), p. 168. "In Maid Marion, or 'Moll,' we might see the 'Reine du Sabat,' or even that vaguer Dianic queen of elphin." 43 and taken over in "The Maypole of Merry Mount." Thompson explains the original meaning of this dance: And behind this lies the still older symbolism, the oldest play in the world, of men disguised as wild food animals which in mimetic magic the hunter, with his bow and arrow, pretends to slay. (p. 168) The primitive ritual, performed in the prayerful hope of a good supply of game, had lost some of its original meaning in Roman times, for, according to Strutt, part of the amusement in the Saturnalia consisted of a performance in which actors in the skins of animals, imitating either wild or domestic beasts, diverted the public (p. 250). In Christian times the practice continued, though opposed by the clergy, down to recent years. Margaret Murray quotes the dictum of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury (668-690) regarding one who goes about as a stag or bull; that is, making himself into a wild animal and dressing in the skin of a herd animal, and putting on the heads of beasts; those who in such wise transform themselves into the appearance of a wild animal, penance for three years because this is devilish.-** Hawthorne mentions men wearing the head of a goat, a wolf, or a bear. A real bear, trained to dance with people, is also present. One character found in the art 30 The God of the Witches, p. 22. 44 and literature of the Middle Ages, but who is descended from the therianthropic fauns and satyrs of earlier times, appears at Merry Mount also: "Here might be seen the Salvage Man, well known in heraldry, hairy as a baboon, and girdled with green leaves" (I, 66). Strutt's drawing of the savage man, sometimes called "woodhouse," "wode- house," or "woodwose," shows a man bearded and covered with hair, clad only in a girdle of leaves, with a head covering of leaves. Strutt says that Bishop Percy supposed this figure to be a representation of Robin Goodfellow. The savage man, or wild man, appears frequently in the older art and literature of almost all the countries of Europe. Paintings, sculpture--even figures on cathedrals--tapes- tries, woodcuts, engravings, and illuminations of manu scripts show many examples of the concept of the savage or wild man and the activities associated with him. The origin of the wild man may be assumed to be in Roman mythology and its antecedents: It is sure, at any rate, that the widespread distribution of these rituals--over the Balkans, Greece, Asia Minor, North Africa, Gaul, and southern Germany--is a key to their origin and age, for it cannot be a matter of chance that their geographic 45 dispersion should coincide as it does with the limits of the Roman Empire. In the writings of early fathers of the Church are found evidences of the wild man, and it is largely in works that prohibit such maskings that knowledge of the custom is preserved. A type of the wild or savage man well known to Hawthorne was Spenser's Satyrane (Faerie Queene. Book I, Canto 6) who was the son of a satyr and a lady. In Boccaccio's Decameron. Day IV, Novel II, a man, smeared with honey and covered with down, is led into public view and, tormented by wasps and bees, is unmasked as a sinner. Edgar Allan Poe's story "Hop-Frog, or, the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs," tells of smearing men with tar and cover ing them with flax as part of a court entertainment. There is an obvious effort in such mummeries to imitate the satyrs of mythology. That Hawthorne had the wild man in mind for a long time may be seen in the reference in The Blithedale Romance, written some sixteen years after "The Maypole of Merry Mount" was published. Of Westervelt's sudden appearance, like that of an apparition, Hawthorne, or Coverdale, writes: •^Richard Bemheimer, The Wild Man in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1952), p. 74. 46 . . . and certainly, a less appropriate one (taking into view the dim woodland solitude about us) than if the salvage man of antiquity, hirsute and cinctured with a leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket. (VIII, 128) The tar and feathers orgy of Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" may be related to this centuries-old mum mery. In the wild man of the Middle Ages there may have been an attempt to defy the church authorities by returning to Nature: But wildness embodied not only a task but a temptation, to which one exposed oneself by plunging into the great wild unknown. No wonder that, before the Middle Ages were out, it became fashionable to identify oneself with savage things, to slip into the wild man's garb, and thus to repudiate that very principle of hieratic order on which medieval society was founded.^2 The temptation to defy the established order of the theo cratic Puritans may have made the veneration of the Maypole at Merry Mount more interesting and exciting than it would otherwise have been. There can be no doubt that, at the historical Merry Mount, the followers of Thomas Morton ■a o enjoyed defying and exasperating their Puritan neighbors. 32 Bemheimer, p. 20. 33 The bacchanalian tone of Morton's New English Canaan indicates a gay paganism scornful of the Puritans and of their captain, Miles Standish, referred to as "Captain Shrimp." 47 The events taking place in "The Maypole of Merry Mount" are connected with the observance of Midsummer Day, a day noted in the remotest times because of the summer solstice, according to an old reckoning, the sun being of great superstitious value to primitive peoples. The modern name of this holiday, Saint John's Day, is a Christian veneer applied to an old pagan festival that continued to have great popular appeal. Strutt explains that the May pole was "venerated" on this day, though the day is June 24, possibly because the cold weather sometimes prevailing around the first of May made it impracticable to celebrate at that time, there being a dearth of flowers. In any event, in Hawthorne's story the Maypole is being worshiped on Midsummer's Day, or the feast of St. John the Baptist. Hawthorne adorns the Lord of the May according to the suggestions he got from Strutt's quotation from Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, where a citizen says: Let Ralph come out on May-day in the morning, and speak upon a conduit, with all his scarfs about him, and his feathers, and his rings, and his knacks, as Lord of the May. Ralph begins his speech: "With gilded staff and crossed scarf the May Lord here I stand" (Strutt, p. 353). 48 Hawthorne describes the Lord of the May as "a youth in glistering apparel, with a scarf of the rainbow pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded staff. . ." (p. 67). The Lady of the May is similarly appareled. Both wear garlands of roses on their heads, and flowers are strewn "round their feet, or had sprung up spontaneously there." The Lady of the May is identified with the pagan goddess Flora in a pamphlet "Funebria Florae or the Down fall of the May Gaines," by Thomas Hall, B. D., pastor of King's Norton. Flora infuriates this clergyman, who pours out invectives: "Flora, hold up thy hand; thou are here indited by the name of Flora, of the city of Rome, in the county of Babylon, for that thou, contrary to the peace of our sovereign lord, his crown and dignity, hast brought in a pack of practical fanaticks; viz. . . . swash bucklers, maidmarrions, morrice dancers, maskers, mummers, May-pole stealers, health-drinkers, gamesters, lewd men, light women, contemners of magistrates, . . . disobedient to parents, mispenders of time, and abusers of the creature, &c." (Strutt, p. lviii) Flora, Roman goddess of spring-time and flowers, is asso ciated here by the reformer with all the base creatures that come into his mind. Flora's festival, April 28 to May 3, was ordered by the Sibylline books. In England the Maypole was consecrated to the Goddess of Flowers, and 49 it sometimes stood all year in the village without any violation. The custom was undoubtedly a relic of the observances in honor of Flora. The Lady of the May was, and is, in some places, the descendant of the goddesses of fertility, Ceres, the mother of the corn, and many others, whose aid earlier peoples invoked in ceremonies and cele brations. Shorn of the sacredness of the older embodiments^ she nevertheless symbolizes the fertile earth Itself, and Hawthorne retains a touch of the ancient veneration for the power of the goddess when he suggests that flowers sprang up under her feet. At Merry Mount all the hereditary pastimes of Old England were preserved (p. 72). The King of Christmas and the Lord of Misrule, characters handed down from the Roman Saturnalia, ruled, or misruled, in mid-winter, though Strutt claims that the Lord of Misrule sometimes presided over summer sports also. The legends surrounding Christmas as a Christian holy day suggest no such characters as the King of Christinas, and since they existed in England and nowhere else, it is probable that some pagan customs con tinued on the island after they were discontinued elsewhere. The people of Merry Mount celebrated the changing seasons, and worshiped the Maypole all year. Hawthorne is 50 enthusiastic in his description of this worship as a true nature religion: Spring decked the hallowed emblem with young blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought roses of the deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the forest; Autumn enriched it with that red and yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower; and Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles, till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor, (pp. 72- 73) The Puritans are discussed in the paragraph following the glowing account of the Maypole, and are a complete con trast to the inhabitants of Merry Mount. "Unfortunately" is Hawthorne's word of transition to the passage dealing with the Puritans: Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than these Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the corn field till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the strag gling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole, (pp. 73-74) 51 There is nothing ironical in the passage--everything said about Puritan customs is literally true, and stated with even greater emphasis and with grimmer details in other passages in Hawthorne's works. Hawthorne's portrayal of Puritan life as dismal and cruel is consistent. In The Scarlet Letter. Chapter XXI, "The New England Holiday," he says that the first settlers retained traces of the "sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch" (VI, 334), which he writes of at some length, and in appreciative terms. He adds a general comment on the influence of American Puri tanism: Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety. (VI, 337) Of the participants in the Election Day festivities so important in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne comments, ". . . they appeared scarcely more grave than most other com munities at a period of general affliction." There is in such remarks on the Puritan way of life no note of approval. With whatever criticism he makes about the frivolity of Merry Mount, the beauty of life there is shown forth in much more favorable light than is 52 the life of the Puritans. Such regretful expressions as "unfortunately" and "alas!" accompany his transitions to the portion of the narrative dealing with the Puritans. He refers to real Puritans as he read about them in the annals of New England. His story is, of course, based on an actual incident, but Hawthorne is somewhat romantic in his treatment of the real inhabitants of Merry Mount. Thomas Morton, "Mine Host," as he styled himself, was an adventurer who sold liquor and guns to the Indians. He was well aware of the attitude of his neighbors: The setting up of this May-Pole [May Day, 1627] was a lamentable spectacle to the precise Separatists: that lived at New Plimmouth. They termed it an Idoll; yea, they called it the Calf of Horeb; and stood at a defiance with the place . . . threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount.^ While Hawthorne’s story is based on actuality, he does not dwell on the wickedness of the people of Merry Mount as the "precise Separatists" do. When he comes to the marriage of the Lord and Lady of the May, he is speaking of a real marriage. The marriage has its counterparts in pagan religions with the divine nuptials of nature deities. Dionysus annually married a ■^Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637), p. 134. 53 queen, the marriage of Zeus and Hera was enacted at annual festivals, and similar events are to be found in Scandi navian mythology. But in "The Maypole of Merry Mount" the ceremony is performed in earnest by a Christian priest, a clerk of Oxford, though he is decked in "pagan" flowers. The Lord and Lady of the May, whose reign was to terminate with the celebration, were truly partners in "the dance of life" (p. 69). The flower-bedecked minister is called the Comu8 of the gathering, but no evil is attributed to him; flowers are not regarded as evil by any but extreme Puritans. As for the wickedness of the proceedings, "merry minstrelsy" is customary at Christian weddings in many countries of Western Europe. The gathering appeared like the crew of Comus because of their disguises, not because of their evil deeds or intentions. They perform no abhorred rites to Hecate In their obscured haunts of inmost bowres. (Comus, 534-535) It is only in appearance that they resemble the group that Comus leads--"a rout of Monsters headed like sundry sorts of wilde Beasts, but otherwise like Men and Women, their Apparel glistering, they com in making a riotous and 54 *1 c unruly noise. . . The priest here is referred to in The Scarlet Letter as a kind of vegetation spirit, but again no evil is attached to his character: There were a few rosebushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that haIf-mythological personage, who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull. (VI, 151) He was, apparently, a clerical Johnny Appleseed, and seems to have borne a resemblance to a contemporary Anglican clergyman, the poet Robert Herrick, who recommended that Corinna go a-Maying, and who sang of "Maypoles, hockcarts, wassails, wakes" more than of heaven, though he hoped "to have it after all." One historian considers Blackstone a very appealing character: A lover at once of peace, of books, and of freedom, there is something singularly attractive in his little known personality. He called his new home "Study Hill," and there in his orchard grew the first "yellow sweetlings" ever known, which, later, when he occa sionally preached to the newcomers he handed around "to encourage his younger hearers."^6 35 The Student*s Milton, p. 48. 36james Truslow Adams, The Founding of New England (Boston, 1926), p. 184. 55 The DAB says of him that he was a studious recluse who brought into his wilderness home a library of 186 volumes. He left England because of his disapproval of the "Lord Bishops," but the "Lord Brethren," as he called the Puri tans, were no more acceptable to him. He was the first settler to live where Boston now stands. John Lothrop Motley devotes a chapter to him entitled "The Solitary of Shawmut" in his novel Merry-Mount: A Romance of the Massachusetts Colony. Blackstone studied botany and mineralogy, and Motley mentions his appreciation of pagan writers and their mythic subjects: In every tangled thicket lurk the leaping satyrs, through all the forest floats the rustic music of the hairy Pan, from every ancient oak or drooping elm starts forth a green-robed Dryad. This is almost all that is known of the real personality Hawthorne injected into the incident at Merry Mount. Blackstone apparently did not need to be romanticized, but was already a "half-mythological" character appropriate for the use of the romancer. When Endicott and his armed band of Puritans interrupt the celebration at Merry Mount, Hawthorne says, "Alas! we have delayed too long and must darken our tale too (Boston, 1849), I, 87. 56 suddenly" (p. 75). Darkness, gloom, cruel punishments, accompany the Puritans. That a religious struggle is intended here is evident in the angry words of Endicott to Blackstone: "Stand off, priest of Baal!" said he, with a grim frown, and laying no reverent hand upon the surplice. "I know thee, Blackstone! Thou art the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity, and to give example of it in thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would defile it! And first, for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of thy worship!" (p. 77) Endicott threatens the crowd with whipping, branding, and cropping of ears. The priest is to be tried by a court, for "woe to the wretch that troubleth our religion!" The dancing bear is shot, because Endicott suspects that there is witchcraft in him. Cruel bigotry is a characteristic of the historical Endicott, and Hawthorne, in "The Gentle Boy" and other works,shows that he has no sympathy for this side of the Puritan character. But Hawthorne has it in this story that even Endicott finds something to be valued in the Lord and Lady of the May, the last exponents in the modern world of the once-glorified nature deities worshiped from immemorial times. In an incident in which Hawthorne suggests a reconciliation of pagan and Puritan views, Endicott says he sees qualities in the May Queen that "may fit her to become a mother in our Israel." He even handles the abominated flowers, as if in some acknowl edgment of man's reliance on things of earth: And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock foundation of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole, and threw it, with his own gauntleted hand, over the heads of the Lord and Lady of the May. (p. 82) In this act there is a hint of a tolerance for the better aspects of paganism, a suggestion that there was, in the spontaneous, natural impulses of roan something of good that even Puritan spirituality could accept and make use o The Lord and Lady of the May are truly devoted to each other and are willing to undergo punishment and even death for each other's sake. They embody the notion of the good pagan that Hawthorne was to express more fully in his treatment of the classic myths, in The Marble Faun, and elsewhere. "The Maypole of Merry Mount" exemplifies two of Haw thorne's persistent ambivalences. One is that paganism often embodies much that is good and even more that is beautiful, and that, while Christianity is a higher spiritual state, it is often associated with cruelty and the enjoyment of cruelty, accompanied by darkness and an 58 unnecessary war against joy and beauty. The other is that roan is in some respects less than he once was, that he has lost some primitive, wholesome, beautiful sympathy with nature characteristic of a Golden Age that existed some time in the dim past, and at the same time he is progres sing in some evolutionary process toward a state of being that, for all it lacks, offers something that might be considered higher. Both of these ideas are to be found abundantly expressed in nineteenth century literature. The romantic idea, largely stemming from Rousseau, that man is born free and good, but is depraved by civilization, is one important strain of nineteenth century thought. The other is the evolutionary hypothesis, in ferment generally even before Darwin published the idea that man is progres sing to a higher condition. To some extent Hawthorne undoubtedly derived these conflicting ideas from contem porary literature and from his associates, but he also found them in the classical literature he studied in his youth, and which he used as sources for his classic myths as they appear in The Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales. Richard Bernheimer mentions the two diametrically opposite views as they appear in classical literature: 59 Thus Juvenal, Ovid, and Virgil supplement each other in describing man's hard but hearty life in the period which we may describe in modem times as the Stone Age; and it will be noted that amongr the writers quoted there are the two Roman poets most generally revered, cited, and commented upon throughout the Middle Ages, so that no notion bearing their august names could have a chance to be forgotten. The popularity of Ovid and Virgil continued to be high down to modern times, and Hawthorne, a good Latinist, could not have failed to be well acquainted with them. Their "romanticizing" of the Golden Age did not, however, go unopposed even in their own day, and Hawthorne may have derived not only the glorification of primitivism but also an opposite view from classical sources. Horace and Pliny, sometimes even Ovid himself, tended to react against a glorification of primitivism (Bernheimer, p. 105). Nineteenth century romanticism, and classical "romanticism," if such a phrase is permissible, probably tended to intensify the close identification with nature that Hawthorne developed as a boy, when he wandered in the all-but-primeval wilderness of Maine. He glorified nature and the myths connected with its worship. His Puritanism, on the other hand, deeply ingrained in his nature, opposed IQ The Wild Man in the Middle Ages, p. 105. 60 this tendency, and the two forces cane into conflict, as they do in "The Maypole of Merry Mount." In this story the pagan view of life is presented with undeniable sympathy and enthusiasm. As a recent student of Hawthorne says, IQ "Without question his sympathies are with Merry Mount." In this early story Hawthorne clearly displays the pagan sympathies that were to be manifested in his most important works--in some of the tales, in The Scarlet Letter, in The Blithedale Romance, and with undiminished and unmistakable enthusiasm in his last published romance, The Marble Faun. "The Maypole of Merry Mount" shows Haw thorne's intuitive feeling for a mythic response to Nature that earlier peoples expressed in their worship of a homed god and their mother goddesses, symbolizing the fruitful ness of the earth. Hawthorne's attitude implies a loving trust in earth and its creatures, and suggests an instinc tive goodness in unreflecting human nature. There is some romanticizing in his treatment of a Golden Age. In "The Maypole of Merry Mount" he expresses his characteristic regret that such a time has passed away. He treats his h. Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark (Norman, Oklahoma, 1952), p. 64. 61 source material in such a way as to purify and refine the actuality--the historic events were probably not so inno cent as Hawthorne pictures them. William Bradford calls Morton a lord of misrule, mentions immoral conduct with Indian women, and is shocked at the pagan practices--"as if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye madd Bacchinalians. As Hawthorne describes the felicities of Arcadian existence he is quite carried away; but it will be seen that before he finishes a work he is always brought back by the pull of Puritan conscience, by the undeniable fact that the development of civilization has been destructive to simple "natural" existence, and to some extent by expediency, for the mid-nineteenth century was not the time to publish unqualified praise of paganism, however purified and refined the expression of it might be. His use of pagan material is original, freely adapted to his artistic purpose in accordance with his own character and personality. His method is clearly discernible in "The ^°Historv of Plimouth Plantation (Boston, 1898), pp. 285-286. Maypole of Merry Mount," and is plainly to be seen in his retelling of the classic myths, which he adapted in his original way long after "The Maypole of Merry Mount" was published. Here again his deep sympathy with a mythic view of nature aids in the creation of original works of art. The classic myths came to him expressed in art forms, but he felt free to recreate them, as he utilized the pagan material of the story of Merry Mount, to make new art, American, of his own time, and of his own personality. CHAPTER II HAWTHORNE'S USE OF THE CLASSIC MYTHS Hawthorne's selection of the story of Merry Mount is closely related to his interest in the classic myths, which he re-created in his own style, making them American and yet retaining the element of strangeness and wonder that made them attractive to innumerable writers of Western Europe and America. In the Lord and Lady of the May there remain the vestiges of very early nature deities, but the variants created by the Greeks and Romans from these earlier forms left their influence also. The Puritans saw the May Queen as Flora, a pagan abomination, and viewed the May festival as a Roman orgy, or as bacchanalian mad ness. Hawthorne's paganism, tempered by his Puritan back ground, is very clear in his treatment of the classic myths. It will be seen also that the classic myths fur nished him with themes that he developed and re-created in various and sometimes very subtle ways in his most impor tant works. He does not, as so many writers have done, use the myths merely as embellishments; they are 63 64 revitalized and transmuted into a highly personal kind of art, Hawthorne's own, American, and more specifically, of New England. In A Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales he retells the myths for their entertainment value, but he also uses them for the purpose of making palatable homilies on such sub jects as the folly of greed, in the story of Midas, and the importance of hospitality in "The Miraculous Pitcher." Where the story as a whole is not of a homiletic nature, he misses no opportunity to point a moral, as for example in the story of the Minotaur: Ah, the bull-headed villain! And 0, my good little people, you will perhaps see, one of these days, as I do now, that every human being who suffers anything evil to get into his nature, or to remain there, is a kind of Minotaur, an enemy of his fellow creatures, and separated from all good companionship, as this poor monster was. (XIII, 281-2) In "The Chimaera" he advises the children: "Perhaps, after all, the best way to fight a Chimaera is by getting as close to it as you can" (XIII, 224). The association of Puritan and pagan in Hawthorne is nowhere more clearly to be seen than in these stories, where the pagan myths are used for sermonizing. Mark Van Doren said, "Hawthorne's devotion to the classical myths, which was deeper than his prefaces pretended, was natural in a man whose imagination had made itself so much at home in the regions of legend and morality."*- Speaking of his retelling of the myths, Haw thorne says in a letter to Stoddard that he purified the stories of gross elements, and "re-created them as good as new, or better. ... I never did anything else so well as these old baby stories." In spite of the ironical touch characteristic of Hawthorne's references to his own work, it is clear in this letter to Stoddard, written March 16, 1853, as well as in the prefaces to Tanglewood Tales and A Wonder-Book« that he was seriously involved in his project. He considered writing for children a sacred trust. The statement that he "never did anything else so well" was written after his tales and sketches as well as three of his four novels had been published. The stories are carefully selected from the ancient material; there are no harrowing tales like the story of Niobe or Marsyas, nor, of course, accounts of the phi landering Zeus. The stories are written with a design to ^Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1949), p. 183. o Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (London, 1885), I, 462. 66 delight and instruct. Although limiting himself to material suitable for children, Hawthorne nevertheless had much to select from, and a consideration of the main themes chosen for his mythic tales reveals some motifs that appear in other works in various manifestations. Cuff’s study of Hawthorne’s use of classical mythology is of interest because it shows how pervasive this material is throughout all of his work.^ While Cuff's analysis does not under take to give the exact source of Hawthorne's material, for Hawthorne may have, in some cases at least, derived myths from translations or adaptations, it lists the instances and gives the original sources for particular items from the mythology. Cuff has discovered that from Fanshawe (1828) to The Dolliver Romance (1863-4) every work of Hawthorne's except "Alice Doane's Appeal" contains at least one reference to classical mythology. There are more of such references in Tanglewood Tales (1853) and in A Wonder-Book (1851) than 3 Roger Penn Cuff, "A Study of the Classical Jfythology in Hawthorne's Writings," an unpublished doctoral disserta tion, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee, August, 1936. All the information given here concerning the frequency of the appearance of items from the classical mythology is taken from Cuff's study. 67 in any of the others, as might, of course, be expected. Tanglewood Tales has 146 references, A Wonder-Book 80, Mosses from an Old Manse 79, the notebooks 68, and The Marble Faun 44. These five books range in time from 1842 to 1860. Arithmetical computation shows the predominance of the classical myths over other kinds of myths, for Cuff finds that Hawthorne uses 312 subjects from classical mythology as compared with eight from non-classical sources (p. 296). Hawthorne's creative treatment of this material is apparent in Cuff's findings" . . . of the 312 entries in the list of subjects from classical mythology made use of by Hawthorne 215 show a treatment involving a contribution, great or small, modifying the classical content, (p. 303) Cuff presents an alphabetically arranged list of the subjects from classical mythology that he finds in Haw thorne, and it is of interest to note some of the more important of these items. The Golden Age is referred to in Twice-Told Tales. Tanglewood Tales, The Marble Faun, and Our Old Home. Arcadia, which Hawthorne often refers to in conjunction with the Golden Age, is mentioned much more frequently. There are many instances of the use of this word in The Blithedale Romance. Our Old Home, and The Marble Faun. There are many references to Earth, and 68 Cuff finds Hawthorne using the appellatives grandmother. child, and mother in this connection, as well as the epithets great. old, affectionate, simple, good, kind, poor. and innocent. Very similar is Hawthorne's treatment of Nature, personified as mother. handmaiden. playfellow, and enemy. Epithets for Nature are great. creative, wild. cleanly, heathen. strict. loving, proud, careful. pleased, naked. petrified, genial, bountiful. beneficent. vegetable. primeval. and kind. There are thirty-eight references to Jupiter, thirteen to the Fates, and twelve to Destiny. The Golden Age is re-created in several different ways in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun, as well as in the retold myths. To what extent and in what way Hawthorne might have believed in the reality of such a time is a matter of conjecture, but his enthusiastic and glowing representa tions indicate a possible belief in its actuality. The introduction to Tanglewood Tales mentions the Golden Age as the time when the myths were first told, when evil did not exist, "and sorrow, misfortune, crime, were mere shadows which the mind fancifully created for itself, as a shelter against too sunny realities" (XIII, 241). Though It is the young narrator and not Hawthorne who professes 69 this view, the treatment of the subject in several works indicates that the young man speaks to some extent for Hawthorne himself. In A Wonder-Book the young narrator defends his version of the myths against the attacks of a classical scholar, who claims that the stories as retold are not classical, but Gothic. The scholar's veneration for the classic material inhibits him from developing the myths imaginatively. The young man's defense of his own free adaptations may be taken to be Hawthorne's own view: . . . if you would only bring your mind into such relation with these fables as is necessary in order to remodel them, you would see at once that an old Greek had no more exclusive right to them than a modern Yankee has. They are the common property of the world, and of all time. The ancient poets remodelled them at pleasure, and held them plastic in their hands; and why should they not be plastic in my hands as well? (XIII, 152-153) He calls the classic myths the birthright of the human race. Hawthorne knew from his study of the classical authors that they borrowed material from one another, sometimes reaching over many centuries to take a myth and re-create it for a new purpose; and his intuition and understanding made him feel what archaeology and other branches of learning have since his day made more tangibly evident, that these myths are indeed "immemorial," that 70 the Greeks themselves sometimes got them from other peoples, and that the essence of many of them goes back so far into the past that it is impossible to find the begin' nings. The young narrator is stating what Hawthorne actually put into practice in the remodeling of the stories from classic mythology, and also in his adaptation of themes from this source that appear in much of his other work. Why the western world has turned to the classic myths through the ages may be explained partly on the basis of their universality and beauty, and partly because they have been embodied in literature, sculpture, and other art forms that have become familiar everywhere. In The Marble Faun Hawthorne observes that the medieval period seems more remote than the Augustan Age: The reason may be, that the old Roman literature survives, and creates for us an intimacy with the classic ages, which we have no means of forming with the subsequent ones. (IX, 228) An unusual but Interesting explanation is suggested by Robinson Jeffers, a twentieth century adapter of classic myths: We turn to the classic stories, I suppose, as to Greek sculpture, for a more ideal and also more normal beauty, because the myths of our own race were never 71 developed, and have been alienated from us.^ Whether or not the Introduction of Christianity into Northern Europe interrupted the development of the native myths can only be conjectured. Perhaps they might have developed into forms of greater beauty and suggestiveness; on the other hand, it may be that they had already reached the best fulfillment of their possibilities. Some scholars feel that climatic differences alone made anything com parable to the Greek myths impossible to the Teutonic peoples--the cold northern winters made life so difficult that the fancy was somewhat inhibited by the grim struggle. Also, the geography of the Mediterranean region facilitated an interchange of creative ideas; nowhere else in the world is there a region that has been so favorable to an inter play of cultural developments. To the writers of the Christian lands of the West the classic myths were regarded as, of course, heathen, and were used more often as adornments than as subjects for complete works. Haw thorne was unusual in the extent to which he absorbed the 4 S. S. Alberts, A Bibliography of the Works of R. Jeffers (New York, 1933), p. 27. (In a letter to Alberts, May 13, 1929.) 72 myths, and in the plasticity with which he used them in a number of his works. In his two books of classic myths, the stories are narrated in a frame, a running account of a student who tells the stories to children. The background is the beautiful scenery of the Berkshires, the solid New England mountains furnishing an actuality behind the marvelous tales. George Woodberry says of the frame that it is a background of rural pictures of the Berkshire year, exquisitely beautiful, like little fresco squares of the seasons on which the childish groups are relieved, as it might be in Italian painting. The seasonal changes of the Berkshires are most suitably associated with the myths, which are very close at times to nature in its various aspects. Hawthorne uses ficti tious names for the children to whom the stories are told-- such names as Primrose, Periwinkle, Cowslip, Squash-Blossom, and so on, although, as he says, . . such titles might better suit a group of fairies than a company of earthly children" (XIII, 3). Possibly the names were suggested by those of Shakespeare's fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream--Pease-Blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-Seed. ^Hawthorne. How to Know Him (Indianapolis, 1918), p. 71. 73 There is perhaps a suggestion here of the connection between the old mythology and the fairies and elves of later legend. The name of Titania in this play is a variant of Diana. It is in this work also that Hawthorne may have found his pen name of Oberon. The pleasure Hawthorne took in writing the stories is evident in the style, easy and informal, as if he meant the stories to be read aloud to children. His letters and journals, as well as information from his wife and others who knew him well, indicate that he was interested in reading to his own children, and that he was an intel ligent observer of child behavior. He is sincere in his effort to write well for children, even though his style is light and his tone more often humorous than in most of his other works. Selecting the stories for children, he satisfied the demands of his conscience with the respecta bility of his material, and he consequently could proceed with a certain freedom, which the reader can sense in the style. He was able to indulge both the pagan and the Puritanical sides of his nature as well as his creative imagination. The face of Hawthorne is therefore to be seen in these stories more plainly than in some of his other works, where he is veiled. 74 Hawthorne's treatment of the great goddess of Eleusis, Demeter, mother of the corn, as she appears in his story "The Pomegranate Seeds," is important to an understanding of his attitude to Nature seen as a woman. Hawthorne's Ceres is one of his fertility goddesses, of whom the May Queen of Merry Mount is an example. She is Earth personi fied as a mother. Hawthorne makes many references to her, sometimes in subtle ways. She is usually beneficent, but sometimes evil. Some of his many references to her appear in autobiographical passages, as in his account of life at the old Manse: It is as if the original relation between man and Nature were restored in my case, and as if I were to look exclusively to her for the support of my Eve and myself. . . . (XVIII, 380) He refers to her as "the bountiful Mother." He is like primitive man, dependent upon the earth, which he personi fies in a mythopoeic way. Referring to man in the ages of myth, Jane Harrison writes, "It is mainly because she feeds him that he learns to think of Earth as the Mother."^ Hawthorne goes back to this "original relation" in his story of "The Pomegranate Seeds." The story has its ^Themis (Cambridge, 1912), p. 166. 75 counterpart in the myths of many parts of the world, myths that account for the alternating seasons of barrenness and productivity of the earth. Ceres, deprived of her daughter Proserpina, who was kidnaped by the king of the lower world, refuses to supply the fruits of the earth until her child is restored to her. She cannot continue with her usual labors because of her sorrow, not from any malefic intent toward man. Ceres and her works are pictured as good and beautiful. Hawthorne's description of the under ground palace of Pluto is lavish with gems and gold, his symbols in other works of evil associations--Westervelt's gem, Jaffrey Pyncheon's gold-headed cane, the Great Car buncle, Zenobia's diamonds, the gold of Midas, are all reminders of the lower regions from whence they came. Ceres, searching for her child, comes upon field and forest deities such as the fauns with hairy ears, horns, and the hind legs of goats. This representation of fauns is not the one Hawthorne was to use in The Marble Faun, where the faun of Praxiteles has not so much of the theriomorphic, the beast-like, element. These fauns are frolicsome and innocent beings, whereas the satyrs, mentioned in the same paragraph of "The Pomegranate Seeds," are ugly and unkind. The distinction between fauns and 76 satyrs is carried forward in The Marble Faun, and is there fore worth noting. Pan also appears in this story, and is of the good type of woodland creature, a faun, not a satyr, who sympathizes with Mother Ceres. Like some of the revelers at Merry Mount, he is horned. In the story of Ceres, the Earth Mother, sorrowing for her child, stops in her search to take care of the sickly child of King Celeus, Prince Demophoon. In this episode Hawthorne brings out one of his recurring themes-- eternal earthly existence. The goddess intends to confer earthly immortality upon the child by placing him in the hot coals, but she is interrupted by the child's mother, who, not recognizing the divinity of Ceres, is terrified by the procedure. The goddess reprimands the worried mother: Had you left him to my care, he would have grown up like a child of celestial birth, endowed with super human strength and intelligence, and would have lived forever. And the goddess adds a Puritanical, sermonizing note: Do you imagine that earthly children are to become immortal without being tempered to it in the fiercest heat of the fire? (XIII, 445) Jane Harrison mentions this myth as an ancient initiation rite which, in weakened form, lasted on to classical times, 77 . . as a ceremony of running around a fire, performed when a child was a few days old."^ The child was supposed to gain strength from the fire. The idea of earthly immortality is found in the oldest known myths, and in all of the stories on this theme, immortality is, of course, lost, as it is in Gilgamesh. where the flower of immortality is snatched away from the hero. Hawthorne had an enduring interest in the idea of earthly immortality and perpetual youth, as may be seen in "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (1837), and in Septimius Felton, Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, and The Dolliver Romance, the unfinished works of his last years. In "The Pomegranate Seeds" it is the Earth Mother who would have conferred perpetual life, as the real mother gives earthly life. This pagan conception of the mother-goddess, the Bona Dea of beneficent inclinations, was often vividly present to Hawthorne's imagination. Less often, but fre quently nevertheless, the personification of evil as a woman of preternatural powers is to be found in his works. In this same story of "The Pomegranate Seeds" Hecate appears, adorned with a wreath of snakes. She represents ^Themis. p. 34. 78 the dark side of nature, the melancholy aspect of life. She dwells in a cave, and so is connected with the under world of Pluto. She is the dark aspect of Selene and Diana, and became known as the leader of witches in later centuries. The witches of classical myths, Medea and Circe, receive extended treatment from Hawthorne. Medea is a killing witch in "The Minotaur," though Hawthorne mentions how she was able to restore youth to the aged, by a very disagreeable procedure. In this restoration she resembles Mother Ceres and her ability to confer eternal earthly life. Medea is important in "The Golden Fleece," which tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts up to the point of obtaining the Golden Fleece and beginning the journey back to Iolchos. She is capricious, being helpful or wicked at will. Medea has characteristics that cause her to resemble feminine characters in three of Hawthorne's romances. Two of these characters are considered by some critics to be his most vividly realized creations. Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam are all, like Medea, very beautiful women, dark, with strong personalities and brilliant intelligence. The characters in the romances, while not evil, like Medea, are tainted by some evil association. This type of woman 79 interested Hawthorne during the ten-year period extending from 1850, when The Scarlet Letter was written, to 1860, when The Marble Faun was completed, and it is very likely that she had been present to his imagination before that time. Medea exemplifies the type on the level of the marvelous, but her resemblance to the other three feminine characters is obvious. Jason is struck with the "wonderful intelligence" in Medea's face (XIII, 496). Later, Her black eyes shone upon him with such a keen intel ligence, that he felt as if there were a serpent peeping out of them; and although she had done him so much service only the night before, he was by no means very certain that she would not do him an equally great mischief before sunset. These enchant resses, you must know, are never to be depended upon. (p. 509) Her undependability is related to the more subtle ambiva lences of character in Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam. These three women have mythic attributes of the earth mother as well as a resemblance to Medea. In his creation of this type Hawthorne shows a very unusual preoccupation with the idea of woman as of great importance and as a vital force. Such a view is pagan, for it is only in pagan religions that women were goddesses who were worshiped as equals of their male counterparts. Hawthorne's treatment of the witches of later times will be seen to be related 80 to this pagan attitude. His classic myths give a clue not only to his interest in the mother-goddess, but also to his concept of a divine All-Father. Julian Hawthorne said of his father, "He never discussed religion in set terms, either in his writ- Q ings or in talk." By "in set terms" he probably meant in terms of dogmatic commitment, for Hawthorne talks frequently about religion in general terms. The only way in which a reader can come to some understanding of Hawthorne's own position on religious matters is to observe the references to religious subjects and to notice the tone, and the way the religion is shown forth in creative terms. In "The Miraculous Pitcher" the conception of Zeus is that of a divine All-Father presented in a way that was probably calculated to inspire reverence in children. It is an interesting manifestation of the Providence which he also mentions in the same story. The unnamed Zeus has truly sublime qualities as well as unlimited power, and may be close to Hawthorne's own concept of Omnipotence in some respects. The Greek concept of the Panhellenic god found Q Edith Garrigues Hawthorne, ed., The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne (New York, 1938), p. 15. 81 its most famous artistic expression in the chryselephantine statue made at Olympia by Phidias (c. 438 B.C.). Although the statue has been lost, descriptions have come down to modern readers. "He was bearded, and his hair was wreathed with a branch of olive. Many have borne witness to the impression which the serene aspect of this manifest divin- 9 ity always produced upon the heart of the beholder." It is said to have been the noblest conception of the Greek ideal of godhead. The idea has come through a long evolu tion from its beginnings as a nature deity, whose thunder bolts were retained in later accounts, and who was possibly in earlier times theriomorphic, since the stories of Europa and the bull, and Leda and the swan, are among the best-known of the Greek myths. The concept of Zeus became more refined with the passage of time. The Zeus of "The Miraculous Pitcher" has, even in the guise of the ragged traveler, god-like attributes. He appears very tall, and has dark, heavy curls. He speaks with a deep voice, and thunder rolls when he shakes his head. He is very stem when considering the meanness of the inhospitable villagers, but benign to the kindly old Philemon and Baucis. He was ^J.A. Bury, A History of Greece (New York, 1937), p.358. 82 a god of justice and a protector of travelers. The concept of the All-Father here is the highest Greek ideal with some Christian overtones. When Philemon asks Mercury his com panion's name, Mercury, whom Hawthorne always calls "Quicksilver," replies, "You must ask the thunder to tell it you!" (p. 170) Thunder is commonly associated with Zeus, but the phenomenon itself is so impressive that even Christians have felt that it is a weapon of the Almighty. In Paradise Lost Milton has Lucifer complain that he lost the struggle because the Almighty was armed with thunder: He with his thunder. (I, 93) And what should I be, all but less than He Whom thunder hath made greater? (I, 256-7) Hawthorne, regarding seriously his responsibility toward children, is obviously in earnest in this presenta tion of the unnamed god. The stranger had much beneficence in his visage. But, undoubtedly, here was the grandest figure that ever sat so humbly beside a cottage door. When the stranger conversed, it was with gravity, and in such a way that Philemon felt irresistibly moved to tell him everything which he had most at heart. (XIII, 170) But the Zeus of the story is also a punishing god, for he sends a flood to engulf the unworthy neighbors who assaulted strangers when they were in need of hospitality. This part of the story is one of many flood myths, like 83 the story of Noah, in which a few people escape a general punishment. As in Hawthorne's apparent source, Ovid's Metamorphose8. the gods reveal themselves and reward the kindly old couple by making them priests of a beautiful temple, and by leaving the miraculous pitcher in their charge. In Ovid it inexhaustibly pours out wine, but in Hawthorne's version, milk, since the story is for children. This story illustrates the way in which Hawthorne took a pagan concept and treated it with such seriousness as to give the impression that he could accept it as a valid expression of the idea of a divine being, powerful, just, stern, but beneficent. The plasticity of his han dling of the Zeus theme can be seen most subtly in The House of the Seven Gables, a novel in which it is easy to find several mythic references. Jaffrey Pyncheon has been called . .a localized image of the terrifying father Zeus."^® Here the idea of power is stressed, and the power has something evil in it. In his use of pagan materials, Hawthorne does not consistently associate paganism with goodness. Jaffrey Pyncheon as a manifesta tion of Zeus is destructive, emphasizing power, wealth, R. Von Abele, Death of the Artist (London, 1955), p. 64. ✓ 84 and sex. "And if Jaffrey is Zeus (therefore also Jehovah), Clifford, the epicene child-man, is what Hawthorne calls him: 'a thunder-smitten Adam'" (p. 64). Judge Pyncheon owns a famous bull, which may suggest Zeus; thunder is mentioned in connection with Jaffrey several times: Haw thorne likens the expression of the Judge when crossed to a thunder cloud (VII, 170). When the Judge prevents Phoebe from announcing him, "'No, no, Miss Phoebe!' said Judge Pyncheon in a voice as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as the cloud whence it issues" (p. 182). But the benignity of the Pyncheon Zeus is false and destructive. Phoebe "found herself quite overpowered by the sultry dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence. . ." (p. 172). And further: "... let him smile with what sultriness he would, he could much sooner turn grapes purple, or pumpkins yellow, than melt the iron-branded impression out of the beholder's memory" (p. 187). On this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of Judge Pyncheon's kindly aspect, that (such, at least, was the rumor about town) an extra passage of the water-carts was found essential, in order to lay the dust occasioned by so much extra sunshine! (p. 188) All of these references to Jaffrey Pyncheon are in mythic terms. 85 In "The Golden Fleece," conmunication with Zeus as a beneficent All-Father Is mentioned when Jason goes to consult the Oak of Dodona, the divine tree that spoke for the god through its rustling leaves. Here the sound of the leaves rises in intensity until audible words are formed, and Jason gets a reply that guides him in his actions. The god gives an oracular response concerning the future. A bough of this oak is carved as a figurehead for the ship Argo, and it continues to advise the Argonauts from time to time. The worship of trees is of great antiquity, and Dodona was a very old shrine. The connec tion of the oak and the god is part of vegetation mythology. This prophetic tree of Dodona is probably in Hawthorne's mind when he writes in The House of the Seven Gables, "The Pyncheon Elm, . . . whispered unintelligible prophesies" (467). In his handling of the Zeus theme, Hawthorne is mythopoeic, in both "The Miraculous Pitcher" and in The House of the Seven Gables. In the story for children Hawthorne emphasizes the beneficent aspects, though the punishment of evil-doers is also mentioned, while in the novel the grim features are presented. One sees in the treatment of Zeus, sometimes as good, and sometimes as 86 evil, that Hawthorne considers the myths as plastic and variable. There is no simple dichotomy for him between Christian and pagan, spirit and matter, good and evil. Aniroality itself is not a simple thing. It has horrible Manifestations in the Chiroaera, the Minotaur, the Harpies, Medusa of the snaky locks, and other dangerous monsters man needs to destroy. When Circe turns men into those beasts they most closely resemble in character, Hawthorne has her bring out the worst animality of the wolves, lions, foxes, and swine. The other side of animal existence, a simple, innocent enjoyment of nature and of earthly being, he has great sympathy for, as he shows in his portrayal of Donatello in The Marble Faun. Field and forest deities like the fauns and satyrs, naiads and nymphs appear in Hawthorne's works frequently, and are lesser and more particularized personifications of nature than the Earth Mother and the All-Father. The lesser divinities are confined to definite localities, and are tutelary spirits of fountains, wells, and rivers in some cases. Hawthorne's characteristic way of regarding these personifications is apparent in an early sketch, "The Vision of the Fountain," in which there is a being referred to as a water nymph, a fairy, a woodland goddess, or 87 "ghost of some forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love" (I, 290). Though there is a naturalistic explana tion for the appearance of this vision, the sketch depicts her mainly in mythic terms. Another example of Hawthorne's way of regarding such nature spirits is found in his first novel, Fanshawe, where a small spring and rivulet is described with the comment: "Alas that the Naiades have lost their old authority! for what a deity of tiny loveli ness must once have presided here!" (XVI, 152). In a later work he uses one of these deities in a symbolic way in which the pagan past is referred to as something desirable that has been lost. In "Rappaccini's Daughter" an ancient fountain sculptured in Roman times stands in the garden. The statue of Vertumnus, divinity of gardens and orchards, is in ruined condition, symbolizing the garden of Rap pacc ini, where death, not the wholesome fruit of the earth, is cultivated. A well is significant in The House of the Seven Gables, and the magical power of a Roman fountain is invoked in The Marble Faun. When Hawthorne visited William Wetmore Story's residence, a villa in Siena, he was interested in the well that reverberated when Story spoke into it, 88 as if a spirit dwelt within there, and (unlike spirits that speak through mediums) sent him back responses even profounder and more melodious than the tones that awakened them. Such a responsive well as this might have been taken for an oracle in old days. (XXII, 261) He shows here an awareness of pagan beliefs and a desire to understand how they were originated. The spirits of wells, springs, and fountains have been prominent in classical folklore, and have persisted in the popular imagination until the present day, if only in the form of wishing wells. Hawthorne writes of one very homely New England example in "A Rill from the Town Pump,” which, like many a New Englander, talks through its nose; it is a kind of genius loci. The Concord River, close to Haw thorne's home when he lived in the Old Manse and later at the Wayside, he also regarded with pagan reverence for springs and rivers. He personifies it in the pagan way: "This dull river has a deep religion of its own" (XVIII, 366). In the winter "Large cakes and masses of ice came floating down the current, which, though not very violent, hurried along at a much swifter pace than the ordinary one of our sluggish river-god" (XVIII, 431). To be sure, there has been a copious use of references to nature deities in the literature of Europe and America 89 through the centuries; but Hawthorne is exceptional in the originality with which he makes use of the material, and in the life he gives to the conceptions. The reference to Vertumnus, for example, has an important meaning in "Rappaccini's Daughter"; it is not brought in merely for ornament. In "The Vision of the Fountain" and in his description of the well in Siena he suggests the origins of myths, placing himself imaginatively back in the pagan ages. He brings this pagan approach to his New England surroundings in his way of speaking of the town pump and of the Concord River. Another pagan interest that concerned Hawthorne both as man and as artist was divination. His many visits to the gypsy of Brunswick when he was a college student indi cate his desire to foretell the future. Divination has persisted to the present age in spite of Christian opposi tion. Hawthorne uses divination in two of his novels and in some stories, and he himself seems to have had a more than usual interest in methods of foreseeing events. In The House of the Seven Gables a wizard prophesies the doom of the Pyncheons. In The Blithedale Romance one of the characters is publicly exhibited as a sibyl. One form of divination, the use of magic mirrors, is referred to 90 several times. In referring to the old newspapers he dis covered In the Old Manse, he says, "It was as If I had found bits of magic looking glass among the books, with the Images of a vanished century In them" (IV, 26). This Is a recalling of the past Instead of foreseeing the future, but the Idea of magic mirrors Is clear. Mirrors were used for magic purposes In the classical ages and in subsequent centuries: Pausanias asserts that in a temple of Ceres he saw a spring which was consulted by means of a mirror. . . . Pythagoras too had a magic mirror, which he held up to the moon before reading the future in it; in this he was imitating the Thessalian sorcerers, who had employed the method from the remotest antiq uity. Magic mirrors are mentioned by Spartianus, Apuleius, Pausanias, and St. Augustine. Hawthorne himself made a trial of this method when he was in France, and saw in the Louvre ... a dressing-glass, most richly set with precious stones, which formerly stood on the toilet-table of Catherine de' Medici, and in which I saw my own face where hers had been. (XXI, 140) This glass was a famous magic mirror. Hawthorne's interest in looking into it may have been caused by skeptical curi osity as to its powers. Had it been operating according ^Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft and Alchemy (Chicago, 1958), p. 304. 91 to superstitious belief, he might indeed have seen Cather ine de' Medici's image along with his own. "Catherine de' Medici had a magic mirror in which she saw everything that happened in France and what the future held in store for her."^ She was considered a sorceress, and her talisman, showing her as Venus, still exists. The sketch "Monsieur du Miroir," published in 1837, is a whimsical treatment of the notion of a magical mirror. The image is treated as if it were a being of supernatural powers. The image seems to take on a life of its own. Hawthorne speculates upon the fate of Monsieur du Miroir after the author's death: Will he have the fortitude, with my other friends, to take a last look at my pale countenance? Will he walk foremost in the funeral train? Will he come often and haunt around my grave, and weed away the nettles, and plant flowers amid the verdure, and scrape the moss out of the letters of my burial stone? (IV, 232) Hawthorne's tone becomes more serious when he asks the image for guidance, as the ancients might have turned to an orac le: Speak! Listen! A few words, perhaps, might satisfy the feverish yearning of my soul for some master ^Grillot de Givry, pp. 305-6. 92 thought that should guide me through this labyrinth of life, teaching wherefore I was bora, and how to do my task on earth, and what is death. (IV, 237) The tone here is earnest, as if Hawthorne himself is involved. The word "labyrinth" in this connection is revealing, as Hawthorne was to write the story of the Minotaur, and he is likening himself, or the "I" of the story, to Theseus in the maze. A Christian would not go to such an image as that in the mirror of Hawthorne1s sketch for guidance and for answers to the great questions of birth and death. This passage reveals a sad feeling of helplessness and a desire for a "master thought" inacces sible to him. The reader is justified in wondering, at least, whether the veil has not slipped here. This passage is in the mood of the pagan "Rubaiyat." This is not to say that the pagan mood is constantly with him, or that he rejects Christian attitudes and symbols; the truth is that he turns to pagan concepts frequently, and sometimes joins them and even equates them with Christian ideas. In "The Virtuoso's Collection" (1842), some of the curiosities on display in a fantastic museum are an hourglass containing the sands of the Sibyl, her books that Tarquin finally purchased, the skull of Polyphemus, Medea's caldron, Pandora's box, Cerberus, 93 Minerva's owl, the vulture of Prometheus, the geese that saved Rome, the ears of Midas, the shield of Achilles, Circe's bowl, oracular gas from Delphos, the shirt of Nessus, and others. The golden bough is also mentioned: ... a sprig of yellow leaves that resembled the foliage of a frostbitten elm, but was duly authenti cated as a portion of the golden branch by which Aeneas gained admittance to the realm of Pluto. (V, 343) This idea of the golden elm appears in The House of the Seven Gables, where the Pyncheon elm is called "the golden branch that gained Aeneas and the Sibyl admittance to Hades" (VII, 413). Judge Pyncheon is said to be as rich as if he had been "touching the twigs of the Pyncheon Elm, and Midas-like, transmuting them to gold" (p. 79). In "The Virtuoso's Collection," the manager of the exhibit is a rather diabolical character, and the entrance to his hall is adorned with Ivory leaves of the gateway to hell in the Aeneid. Hawthorne freely joins with these pagan items various Christian relics, as he uses the words Eden and Arcadia interchangeably on occasion. A curious blend of classic myth, Celtic myth, and Christian belief is made in the description of the chickens in The House of the Seven Gables: "They were a species of tutelary sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently from 94 most other guardian angels" (VII, 128). A theme from the classic myths that Hawthorne found rich in possibilities for his art was that of metamorpho sis. He uses it literally or figuratively in various works. He uses it sometimes with simple, surface meaning, sometimes with deeper implications. He uses the theme in a straightforward retelling of myth in "The Gorgon's Head." The hero Perseus takes the head of Medusa to the court of King Polydectes and turns all beholders into stone. There is a considerable element of magic in this story. The hero has the help of Mercury (Quicksilver) and his sister, Minerva, as well as a magic sword, shield, helmet of darkness, and a pouch. Invisible and flying, aided by his mirror shield, he cuts off the monstrQus head and drops it into his pouch. The malign power of Medusa is similar to the power of the Evil Eye, feared even today in many parts of the world, and the Gorgoneion became an amulet used to ward off the Evil Eye. In the Iliad. Book V, the Gorgon's head is on the aegis of Zeus: Whether looked at as the emblem of a hideous fable or simply as a mask, the Gorgoneion has in all ages been reputed one of the most efficacious of amulets. . . . It may be the universality of the belief in the Medusa'8 power that led to masks becoming such 95 15 favourites as protectors. J Hawthorne mentions the evil eye in The House of the Seven Gables. written in 1851, the same year in which he wrote "The Gorgon's Head." The baleful effect of Maule's glance is mentioned: ". . .it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable faculty of blighting corn, and drying children into mummies with the heartburn" (VII, 275). The effect is similar to the effect of the head of Medusa. The story of the Medusa as but an incident in the early belief in the evil eye, should be carefully studied by any who are interested in the subject. After using it effectually in the turning of his enemy Polydectes into stone, Perseus presented the terrible head to Pallas, the Athenian goddess, who placed it in her aegis, and in nearly all her statues, and those of her Roman counterpart Minerva, she bears this notable mask as an amulet. (Elworthy, p. 166) The gorgons of Hawthorne are at once ugly and beautiful. Of the face of Medusa, Hawthorne says, "It was the fiercest and most horrible face that ever was seen or imagined, and yet with a strange, fearful, and savage kind of beauty in it" (XIII, 36). Renaissance artists depicted Medusa as beautiful. In this story the beautiful and horrible are ^Frederich Elworthy, The Evil Eye (New York, 1958), p. 158. 96 combined, as well as the maleficent and beneficent, since the dreadful head is the means of ridding the country of a wicked king. Here is ambiguity of good and evil, beauty and ugliness. Hawthorne uses another transformation myth in the story of Midas, "The Golden Touch." He adds freely to the story of Ovid, his apparent source. The Metamorphoses. Book XI, does not mention Marygold, daughter of Midas, apparently invented by Hawthorne, who changed the tone of the tale to suit New England children. The child is turned to gold at her father's touch, and is restored by the intervention of a god. The metamorphosis here is used by Hawthorne to teach a lesson. The myth of metamorphosis into stone, as in "The Gorgon's Head," is used in other stories of Hawthorne's. In "Ethan Brand" the earth, Mother Earth, as Ethan Brand calls her, cannot take him back because he has cut himself off from humanity. His lack of sympathy and misuse of his intellectual powers alienated him from nature, and when he dies he, like the stony marble, is converted into lime in the kiln. The similarity to the Perseus myth is apparent in the metamorphosis that takes place when the hero displays the head of Medusa to the wicked court of 97 King Polydectes. Hawthorne does not say simply that they turned to stone; "they whitened into marble" (XIII, 44). Ethan Brand flings himself into the burning marble of the kiln and his remains are indistinguishable from lime that remained. "The Man of Adamant" is another tuming-to-stone myth wherein a man cuts himself off from human nature. A naturalistic explanation is given, and the story is a parable, like "Ethan Brand," but there is a real change into stone here, as in the story of Perseus and Medusa. One sees the reverse of this process, something similar to the Pygmalion myth, in The Marble Faun, where the statue comes to life as Donatello, in "Drowne's Wooden Image," in "The Snow Image," and in "The Great Stone Face." In "The Three Golden Apples"- the giant Atlas turns into the mountains that bear his name. Hawthorne shows, in stories about images that come to life, something of the feeling of primitive man for the supernatural power of images, and of the identification of the thing represented with the image made from it. Related to this identification is the idea of the close similarity between the creation of art and the creation of life, a notion commonly found in the folklore of many parts of the world. One Promethean myth tells that the Titan 98 created man out of clay that he kneaded with water. The idea of creation of man from a stone image is widespread: In Egypt and Sumer the notion of the creation and procreation of human beings was composite, several independent elements having been incorporated one after the other to produce the final result. Apart from birth in the ordinary way, the creative crafts of the potter and the sculptor helped to frame the ideas of the earliest civilized men with regard to these topics . . . the craft of the sculptor, regarded by the Egyptians as essentially creative, gave rise to the idea of the creation of men out of stone images. Perry finds the same myth in the Celebes. In his native Salem, Hawthorne observed the making of images that had, even in an enlightened age, some super stitious power. Although made for ornamental purposes, the prow of a ship had a certain talismanic value to sailors, whose occupation, dependent upon caprices of weather, made them superstitious. In "The Golden Fleece" the prow of the Argo is carved from the oak of Dodona. When the wood carver began his work, he found that his hand was guided by some unseen power, and by a skill beyond his own, and that his tools shaped out an image which he never dreamed of. When the work was finished, it turned out to be the figure of a beautiful woman with a helmet on her head, from beneath which the long ringlets fell down ^■^W. J. Perry, Origin of Myth and Religion (New York, 1923), p. 134. 99 upon her shoulders. On Che left arm was a shield, and In Its centre appeared a lifelike representation of the head of Medusa with the snaky locks. (XXII, 478) The figurehead is the daughter of the oak, Pallas Athena, child of Zeus, and is therefore able to guide the ship, as the oak itself gave advice in answer to questions. When Hawthorne wrote "Drowne's Wooden Image" he referred to a supernatural power in the tree from which the wood was taken, just as there was special potency in the wood from the oak of Dodona: It seemed as if a hamadryad of the oak had sheltered herself within the heart of her native tree, and it was only necessary to remove the strange shapelessness that had encrusted her, and reveal the grace and loveliness of a divinity. (V, 93) Like the maker of the prow of the Argo. Drowne worked with inspiration, as if some power were working through him on the divine material. It seemed as if "a well-spring of inward wisdom" were operating. This carving is different from all his other work because of the element of inspira tion that is present. That there is "something preter natural" about the image is apparent to the townspeople who come to see the remarkable creation. They "felt impelled to remove their hats" reverently (p. 99). The famous artist Copley comes to see it and calls her a fairy 100 queen. "Here Is the divine, the life-giving touch," he says (p. 95). Copley calls Drowne a Pygmalion (p. 96). The image appears to come to life as in the case of Pygmalion's statue, when a young woman appears on the streets of Boston looking exactly, even to such details as the flowers of her hat and the ring on her finger, like Drowne's figurehead. The people say, "Drowne's wooden image has come to life!" (p. 103). Some of the older Puritans begin to fear that Drowne's image has something evil about it, and say that the carver has sold himself to the devil. But the aged, whose recollections dated as far back as witch times, shook their heads, and hinted that our forefathers would have thought it a pious deed to burn the daughter of the oak with fire. (V, 105) Here is the conflict between paganism and Puritanism that is seen in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," the Puritans impelled in spite of themselves to acknowledge something of the preternatural, and yet fearful of pagan wickedness. The young lady is, like Hawthorne's other very beautiful women, of the dark Mediterranean type that seems to be his notion of the highest perfection of female beauty. Her flowers suggest the idea of ancient fertility goddesses, and her jewels give an impression of the richness of the 101 earth. The concept is pagan. The idea of artistic inspiration is under discussion in this story, but it is handled in terms of magic, of pagan pretematuralism. "The Snow Image" (1850) is another instance of the creation of an image that comes to life. It is a kind of fairy tale in which the snow image, created by innocent children who desire another companion to play with, takes on brief life because of their simple faith that it will do so. The mother fancies it an angel who has spared a few hours of its immortality to play with her children, and she is not astonished that an angel would be attracted to them. The earth-bound father destroys the snow-child by his matter-of-fact insistence upon food and warmth. The point of the story seems to be that wise, good, practical men are sometimes impervious to miracles, "And, should some phenomenon of nature or Providence transcend their system, they will not recognize it, even if it come to pass under their very noses" (III, 28). This story is an etherealized version of the Pygmalion myth. In "The Chimaera" matter-of-fact people have the same attitude toward the winged horse as the father has toward the snow image. In "The Great Stone Face" the image, created by nature and representing high and noble qualities, even tually takes on life in the person of Ernest. The process in this story has something of a naturalistic explanation-- the boy unconsciously becomes like the image through imitation; but basically the situation is that of a stone image coming to life. The stone face has elements of the supernatural, and Hawthorne suggests that it has been regarded as an idol. A feeling of worshipful admiration is general among the people, who anticipate the coming of one who will be like the Great Stone Face. The legend had been handed down among the white settlers, who took it from the Indians. There is something here of the primitive worship of stones--the menhirs, cromlechs, and dolmens, the purposes of which are still not entirely understood, but which are in some primitive way religious. The father less boy of "The Great Stone Face" is like Hawthorne him self, who had no father after he was four years old. Ernest sees in the image a benevolent paternalism that is operative over the valley. The face is a symbol of an All-Father in whose image he is being created by contem plation and worship: It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble, and the 103 expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. (Ill, 31) Refined as the treatment of the image is, there is a very primitive touch, the suggestion that it is a kind of fertility god: According to the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sun shine. (Ill, 31) Beneficence and grandeur are combined in the aspect of the Face. At the time of the apotheosis of Ernest the resem blance of the man and the image becomes clear to all: At a distance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the golden light of the setting sun, appeared the Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it, like the white hairs around the brow of Ernest. Its look of grand beneficence seemed to embrace the world. At that moment, in sympathy with a thought which he was about to utter, the face of Ernest assumed a grandeur of expression, so imbued with benevolence, that the poet, by an irresistible impulse, threw his arms aloft, and shouted,-- "Behold! Behold! Ernest is himself the likeness of the Great Stone Face! (Ill, 61) This story is told as if it were a legend that has no con nection with actuality, although Daniel Webster is believed to be the orator who appears as one of the "pretenders" the people mistake temporarily for the Great Stone Face. The pagan and mythic elements, though treated with great 104 refinement and idealization, are clearly related to the classic myths Hawthorne dealt with. The idea of metamorphosis was used in Hawthorne's works with much variety and originality, sometimes for purely artistic purposes, sometimes in allegory, but always recognizable as the theme he obtained from the classic myths. The pagan concept of the power of fate was another theme that Hawthorne found useful for his art, and it was one that he also felt deeply and disturbingly in his own life. From an early age he was aware of the fates personified as three old women, Clotho, who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, Disposer of Lots, controller of Destiny; and the terrible Atropos, whose dreaded shears cut the vital thread. He experienced the feeling of depression that comes from a view of their absolute indifference to human welfare. His gloom at the thought of this concept of fate, capriciously dealing out good or bad fortune, is expressed in a passage he wrote upon seeing the original of Michaelangelo's much-copied work: Michel Angelo's Fates are three very grim and pitiless old women, who respectively spin, hold, and cut the thread of human destiny, all in a mood of sombre gloom, but with no more sympathy than if they had nothing to do with us. I remember seeing an etching of this when I was a child, and being struck, even 105 then, with the terrible, stern, passionless severity, neither loving us nor hating us, that characterizes these ugly old women. If they were angry, or had the least spite against humankind, it would render them the more tolerable. They are a great work, containing and representing the very idea that makes a belief in fate such a cold torture to the human soul. God give me the sure belief in his Providence! (XXII, 78) The last sentence here has been interpreted as meaning that he had only a wavering and intermittent hold on such a belief. The fates are present to his mind again in The Marble Faun when he likens the peasant women, spinning as they tended sheep, to the Parcae. For all the gloom attending this theme, he could be light-hearted in his treatment of it in an early story, "The Seven Vagabonds," published in 1833. Pure chance gathered together a group that included two foreign performers, a scholar, a Penobscot Indian, a showman, a fortune-teller, and the writer. The chance event of a shower causes them to take refuge in the showman's wagon, and they resolve to travel together to a camp meeting in Stamford; but a Methodist preacher happens to come that way, and they ask him for news. "'Good people,' answered he, 'the camp meeting is broke up"' (II, 184). The group then disperses, never to meet again. "Fate was summoning a parliament of these free spirits; unconscious of the 106 impulse which directed them to a common centre, they had come hither from far and near" (II, 178). The writer, who is very like Hawthorne himself, has his fortune told in a vain effort to forestall fate. "I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity" (II, 171). The fortune-teller uses cards to read "a page in his book of fate." "The Ambitious Guest," published in 1835, beautifully exemplifies the tragic caprice of fate, that sweeps away Man's hopes and ambitions. The ambitious young stranger approached the home in the remote pass in the mountains: When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs. (II, 123) There are other ironic adumbrations in the story. When a stone rumbled down the mountainside, the father of the family says that, though the mountain threatens, they are safe, because they have prepared ". . .a sure place of refuge hard by. . . ." The family could no more escape its doom than could the characters of Greek myths who attempted to evade the fulfillment of evil prophecies. Hawthorne mentions a "prophetic sympathy" between the guest and his hosts. "Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth?" (II, 125). The young 107 man ironically says, ". . . I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny." A means of escape is available to the family as a wagon comes by, but they have no reason, just then, to go away in it. Simply by remaining around their fire they would have been spared; but when the mountain threatens, they rush away to their doom. This story shows no sure faith in Providence, but rather an acknowledgment of the power which the mythopoeism of Greece embodied in the three grim old women Hawthorne was impressed with from childhood. It was their indifference that made them a "cold torture to the human soul," for, as Hardy says in his poem "Hap," These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain. "The Seven Vagabonds," "The Ambitious Guest," and "The Threefold Destiny" (1838), are chiefly concerned with the inexorability of fate, but the idea is apparent in other works also. Coverdale, in The Blithedale Romance, calls destiny "the most skillful of stage managers," which, in addition to contriving the scenes, brings in an observer like himself, whose function is like "that of a Chorus in a classic play" (VIII, 136). In The Marble Faun the sinister monk says to Miriam, . . it is not your 108 fate to die. . . We have a destiny which we must needs fulfil together" (IX, 127). She, too, feels that "fatal chance" is operating. The monk says again, Our fates cross and are entangled. The threads are twisted into a strong cord, which is dragging us to an evil doom. (p. 128) . . . Yet we met once, in the bowels of the earth; and, were we to part now, our fates would fling us together again in a desert, on a mountain-top, or in whatever spot seemed safest, (p. 130) Roger Chillingworth, in The Scarlet Letter, says to Hester, "'It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may!'" (VI, 250). From these instances it is evident that Hawthorne felt deeply the pagan concept of fate, and made use of it in artistic creation. Cuff's actual count shows the frequency with which Hawthorne makes use of the classic myths. The instances selected here show the method of retelling the myths in an original way, and also of adapting themes that he used freely in other works. The treatment is sometimes light and humorous, but sometimes it is deeply serious, as if Hawthorne himself is personally involved. Certainly his mind was occupied with mythic material much of the time. Julian Hawthorne tells of an incident in Lenox. The actress Fanny Kemble took him riding on her black horse; as she returned him to his father she said, "Take your 109 boy, Julian the ApostateThere are many names for a boy besides that of Julian, the apostate emperor who attempted to restore the worship of the pagan gods. It is absurd to imagine that Hawthorne was not aware of the sig nificance of the name. In selecting this name for his only son, he may have been indicating some sympathy with the program of the Roman who tried to turn back the clock and preserve the old deities banished by Constantine. The expression "good pagan" is unusual in Christian writing, and the way in which Hawthorne uses it in the following passage from "The Procession of Life" (1843), is illumi nating because it seems to make a plea for tolerance of pagan belief, and, indeed, for tolerance in general, as if pagans and Christians of various persuasions might all have access to some essential truth: Zach sect surrounds its own righteousness with a hedge of thorns. It is difficult for the good Christian to acknowledge the good Pagan; almost impossible for the good Orthodox to grasp the hand of the good Unitarian, leaving to their Creator to settle the matters in dispute, and giving their mutual efforts strongly and trustingly to whatever right thing is too evident to be mistaken. . . . Moreover, powerful Truth, being the rich grape juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating quality, when imbibed by any save a ^Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. I, 363. 110 powerful Intellect, and often, as it were, Impels the quaffer to quarrel In his cups. For such reasons, strange to say, It Is harder to contrive a friendly arrangement of these brethren of love and righteous ness . . . than to unite even the wicked. . . . The fact Is too preposterous for tears, too lugubrious for laughter. . . . How many who have deemed themselves antagonists will smile hereafter, when they look back upon the world's wide harvest field, and perceive that, In unconscious brotherhood, they were helping to bind the selfsame sheaf! (IV, 303-5) This Is an unusually straightforward statement of Haw thorne's views. Usually he leaves the reader with the task of finding out from the artistic creation of the author what his point of view is. Righteousness and love seem to be of greater importance, in this passage, than any orthodoxy. They seem to be as universal as Nature, and the good Pagan appears to possess these virtues. It is significant that the good Pagan and the good Christian are mentioned as of equal importance in "the free-masonry of mutual goodness" (p. 303). In the classic myths Haw thorne found moral lessons which he pointed up in his retelling of the myths. Hawthorne, in his free adaptation of the classic myths, becomes himself something of a myth-maker. Some of his most important themes come from the classic myths, and it will be seen in subsequent chapters how some of them are transmuted in very original ways, but are still Ill plainly recognizable, in his greatest work. The theme of the Earth Mother, treated directly in "The Pomegranate Seeds," is of great importance. The All-Father, seen in "The Miraculous Pitcher," is more seldom treated, for reasons that will be explained later. The idea of meta morphosis furnishes the theme of many stories, and the pagan idea of the action of fate is deeply ingrained in his thinking. The idea of the Golden Age is also an often recurring pagan concept, developed at length in two of his romances, The Marble Faun and The Blithedale Romance. CHAPTER III THE MARBLE FAUN The Marble Faun Is the longest work in which Haw thorne sustains the treatment of a motif directly from the classic myths. He says of this romance, "But, in fact, if I have written anything well, it should be this Romance; for I have never thought or felt more deeply, or taken more pains."'*' Itwas begun in 1859, five years before his death, and may be taken, since it is the product of his last years, to be something of an expression of long- considered views and attitudes which had become habitual and ingrained in his mind. Regarded in the light of the whole corpus, it is seen to have certain motifs and con cerns that run throughout the tales and other novels, the same characteristic symbols, and the same unresolved con flict between what may be called the pagan and Christian world views. Like the early "Maypole of Merry Mount," ^"Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher (Boston, 1913), p. 238. 112 113 it is an unusual literary expression of this conflict in that the opposing forces are very clearly expressed. The story opens in the sculpture gallery of the Capitol in Rome, where the four main characters of the romance, three of them professional artists, have come to see famous statues of classical antiquity. In the gallery they see the Antinous, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno, all "still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life" (IX, 2). Another statue, of a child, Hawthorne mentions as symbolic of the human soul, able to choose between innocence and evil, the dove and the serpent, conventional symbols that he employs throughout the book. Here in the first paragraph the theme of the contrast between Christianity and paganism, and the strug gle between innocence and evil, are mentioned; but no one- to-one correspondence of paganism with evil and innocence with Christianity is suggested. Hawthorne continues with a description of Rome as seen from one of the windows, the ancient city with its "three-fold antiquity," Etruscan, Roman, and Christian; a city where the solidity of the ruined buildings and art works impresses the visitor with the feeling of the tangible reality of the past. In this setting, in the 114 presence of three-dimensional representations of pagan gods, the three young artists are struck with the strong resemblance of their Italian friend to the Faun of Praxiteles. They ask him to stand in the attitude of the statue. The resemblance is remarkable. The Faun is central to the book, as the name of the romance indicates. Donatello becomes a living counterpart of Praxiteles' Faun, which is a refined conception of the ancient sylvan deity, without the hoofs, the goats' legs, and the horns of some "coarser representations" (IX, 9) of this class of mythical beings. Hawthorne was very much impressed with this exquisite work of art, representing, as he says, a combination of human and animal life with an element of divinity (XXI, 327). In the story "The Pomegranate Seeds" Hawthorne men tions fauns, satyrs and Pan together. Pan is like the fauns, but not like the satyrs, who have something crude and unsympathetic about them. In the well-known mythology of Thomas Bullfinch, a Boston contemporary of Hawthorne's, these deities are described as Hawthorne describes Donatello--they are impersonations of nature: Pan, the god of woods and fields, of flocks and shepherds, dwelt in grottos, wandered on the mountains 115 and in valleys, and amused himself with the chase or in leading the dances of the nymphs. . . . Since the name of the god signifies all. Pan came to be considered a symbol of the universe and personification of nature; and later still he was regarded as a representa tive of all the gods and of heathenism itself. Various names for the woodland divinities have been used inter changeably, and they represent the same basic concepts: Sylvanus and Faunus were Latin divinities, whose characteristics are so nearly the same as those of Pan that we may safely consider them as the same personage under different names, (p. 136) Milton, whom Hawthorne knew well, uses these conceptions as if they are very similar, if not identical, to each other: Universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance Led on the eternal spring. (Paradise Lost, IV, 266-8) and In shadier bower More sacred or sequestered, though but feigned, Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor nymph Nor Faunus haunted. (Paradise Lost.3V. 705-8) ^Thomas Bullfinch, Bullfinch's Mythology (New York, n.d.), p. 136. 116 Hawthorne's Donatello Is a faun, and In some places In the romance he is associated, or even identified, with Pan or with Bacchus. He represents the genial and innocent aspect of paganism which Hawthorne associated with the Golden Age. Hawthorne is chary of committing himself to expres sing a literal belief in the Golden Age. He seems at times to regard it as an ideal, a dream, and at other times as a reality from which the human race has declined. When, after his description of the faun and the Golden Age of which it is symbolic, he is somewhat carried away by the charm of the statue, which, he claims, was made by a man who was a sculptor and also a poet, he says: And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but rather a poet's reminiscence of a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear. (IX, 10) Chapter II, "The Faun," continues the identification of Donatello and the Faun, leaving in doubt the similarity of the pointed ears, for Donatello's hair covers his ears and he refuses to satisfy his friends' curiosity. His race has always been sensitive about their ears, he explains. Hawthorne then presents a fanciful scene in which the statues come to life, join hands with Donatello, and dance to Apollo's music. After the innocent gaiety 117 of this scene, the friends descend the stairs, and the mood changes. Donatello becomes angry at the presence of a sinister character who Is the personification of the evil principle. The next chapter, "Subterranean Reminiscences," takes the reader back to the time of the first encounter with this mysterious being, whose pervasive evil dissipates the innocent enchantment of happy paganism. The young people had gone with a guide into the labyrinthine Catacombs of St. Calixtus, a journey "reminiscent" of the visit of Dante and Virgil to the underworld. The catacombs are filled with skulls, bones, and ruined graves--such items as, Hawthorne says, the Gothic mind enjoys contemplating as reminders of death. The place is loathsome to Donatello, who longs to go up into the sunshine, with which Hawthorne customarily associates Golden Age beings, but he stays for the sake of Miriam. The catacombs are symbolic of the medieval concept of hell as the dwelling place of the evil principle; they are also, on the level of historical fact, the burial grounds of early Christians, and the place where they fled for refuge from persecution. The place is said to be haunted by a specter of a pagan who betrayed those who took refuge from persecution. After the guide tells 118 this story to the party of visitors, they see one whom they imaginatively identify with the specter. He is a man clad in a cloak, and goat-skin breeches that give him the appearance of a satyr. In the catacombs the suggestion of the satyr brings out the medieval conception of the devil, which was derived from the old sylvan deities. Miriam becomes separated from her companions, thus causing them considerable alarm because of the danger that a visitor might become hopelessly lost in the enormous, macabre labyrinth. She reappears with the wild satyr-like man they all think of as the specter of the Catacomb. He dogs her footsteps from that time on, and the other char acters gradually learn of his former association with her. He is called a phantom, a man-demon, the heathen Memmius, possibly a robber, an assassin, or a lunatic. He becomes, for the story, the personification of evil, and the ambigu ous background of evil heathenism and modern crime are combined to form a Satanic creation. Donatello, the innocent pagan, instinctively conceives an intense hatred for him which resembled not so much a human dislike or hatred, as one of those instinctive, unreasoning antipathies which the lower animals sometimes display, and which generally prove more trustworthy than the acutest insight into character. (IX, 45) 119 Hawthorne shows here a characteristic attitude toward intelligence, which he rates lower than spiritual under standing, and in this instance, lower than instinctive understanding. Donatello's simplicity is stressed many times. Miriam, whom he loves, has a highly intelligent and cul tivated mind, and therefore is aware of the absence of sophisticated intelligence in Donatello. In spite of the great difference in their mental endowment and education, they are attracted to each other. The necessary changes having been made, there is discernible here some similarity to the history of Margaret Fuller and her husband, Marchese Giovanni Ossoli. According to an American sculp tor who told Hawthorne about Margaret Fuller’s last years, Ossoli was a simple, uncultivated man, who could not have understood Margaret. He was, like Donatello, the Count of Monte Beni, of an ancient noble Italian family, and, according to the sculptor, he was, like Donatello again, a very handsome man. Though the Ossolis' tragic deaths occurred in 1850, their history is mentioned at some length in Hawthorne's journal that immediately antedates The Marble Faun (1860), probably because of their Italian connection. 120 The first part of The Marble Faun deals with the attraction Miriam and Donatello have for each other, and with a poetic evocation of the imaginary, or, as the case may be, real Golden Age of innocent closeness to nature. Except for the intrusion of the evil spirit, this is the atmosphere that prevails for most of the first part of the story. The first biographer of Hawthorne, George Parsons Lathrop, says, Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of Caliban, Puck, and Ariel.^ Puck is Robin Goodfellow, an English sylvan sprite with supernatural powers, who may be a descendant of the Roman Sylvanus or of some other rural deity imported during the centuries of Roman rule in England. Altars dedicated to such beings, one inscribed "Diie Campestribus," have been found even in Scotland. The more modern fairies "probably derive some of their attributes from their classic prede cessors."^ Donatello is a creation of that Hawthorne who once called himself "Oberon" and "Monsieur de L'Aubepine." ^A Study of Hawthorne (Boston, 1876), p. 255. S/alter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (London, 1887), p. 101. 121 George Woodberry speaks of Che unreal quality of the care-free primitive world in which the faun-like nature of Donatello had its birth and being. . . . It is all an invention of Hawthorne's brain, drawn from the Golden Age, and memories of Tanglewood, and the vision of Italy. Its unreality is its charm.^ And yet the care-free Donatello walks through an actual Italy, vividly presented with its shops and smells and fountains. He finds his nymph and they dance together in the Borghese Gardens as in the groves of Arcadia. Miriam, sophisticated as she is, and burdened by an unnamed trouble, for the time being enters into Donatello's mood, and dances to the music of vagrant musicians. A crowd, made up of French, German, and English tourists, a Swiss guard, a shaggy man in goat-skin breeches, peasants, and modern Romans join in the dance. This scene is symbolic of a revival of the Golden Age, with all the world dancing with the great god Pan: Here, as it seemed, had the Golden Age come back again within the precincts of this sunny glade, thawing mankind out of their cold formalities, releasing them from irksome restraint, mingling them together in such childlike gayety that new flowers (of which the old bosom of the earth is full) sprang up beneath their footsteps. (IX, 118) ^Hawthorne, How to Know Him (Indianapolis, 1918), p. 193. 122 This springing up of flowers is a fancy that appears also in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," written in Hawthorne's young manhood in Salem. Kenyon, speaking of the Faun, says to Hilda, "Great Pan is not dead, then, after all" (IX, 140). Mrs. Brown ing's poem "The Dead Pan," published in 1844, has as a refrain to every stanza, "Great Pan is dead," or some similar statement. She wrote her lyric to controvert Schiller's lament, in "Die Gotter Griechenlandsbased on a legend in Plutarch's De Oraculorum Defectu, that Great Pan and the other gods are no more. To her the Christian dispensation is the beautiful truth that puts "mythic fancies" out of consideration. She is being perhaps too literal in her interpretation of myths for a poet of the nineteenth century. Hawthorne is really more poetic in his romance. Her often-repeated refrain "Pan is dead" may have been something of a challenge to Haw thorne to make Pan live again, if briefly, in modern Italy. The fact that the name Kenyon is given to one of the four main characters strengthens this supposition, because John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's cousin, was the author of the paraphrase of Schiller's poem that first turned Mrs. Browning's thoughts in this direction. She dedicated 123 "The Dead Pan" to John Kenyon. In his sympathetic treatment of Hilda's spirituality Hawthorne shows, to be sure, an appreciation of the higher levels of spiritual life that Mrs. Browning values; but the uncorrupted, unreflecting, joyous response to nature is for Hawthorne a beautiful and good thing also, with something of a sacred quality. Hawthorne's attitude toward the myths is not exactly that of the ancient peoples who actually believed in and worshiped the classical divinities. It is perhaps impos sible to imagine and to re-create the life of those times; the efforts to do so all reflect the age in which they were made. Hawthorne had no wish to be realistic about his re-creation of myth, claiming, as he does in his prefaces, a certain latitude and freedom in the treatment of his material. His attitude is ambivalent. Several writers have spoken of his divided personality, one half of which is poetic and fanciful, and the other skeptical and ironic: It is as if two brothers, one a dreamer, and one a well-developed intellectual, but slightly stoical and shrewd American, dealing exclusively in conraon- sense, had gone abroad together, agreeing to write 124 their opinions in the same book and in a style of perfect homogeneity. Henry James calls Hawthorne "a sceptic and a dreamer."^ Hawthorne tends to avoid committing himself to a realistic, literal belief in mythic events and personalities, although he suggests that there could and might have been reality behind them. In the scene in the Borghese Gardens where Donatello as Pan has all the world dancing in innocent forgetfulness of the "cold formalities" of the Iron Age, the spell of Arcadian joy is broken by the appearance of Miriam's model, the specter of the Catacombs. Miriam bids Dona tello to leave, saying, "Your hour is past; his hour has come" (IX, 121). The evil spirit and Miriam's thralldom to him become the theme from this point until Donatello commits his crime. The model seemed to be "dragging the beautiful Miriam through the streets of Rome, fettered and shackled more cruelly than any captive queen of yore fol lowing an emperor's triumph" (p. 147). Here the author seems to have behind his figure of speech the idea of the ^Lathrop, p. 249. ^Nathaniel Hawthorne (London, 1879), p. 9. 125 triumphal procession of Aurelian In which Zenobia, the beautiful pagan queen whose history influenced the creation of an important character in The Blithedale Romance, was publicly humiliated. That the historical Zenobia is the prototype, or, to use the term more widely used by "myth critics," the archetype, of Miriam, Hester, and Zenobia, is a possibility that will be explored later. Hawthorne's tendency to retain certain symbols and images is seen also in Miriam's reference to her secret--"It is no precious pearl ..." says she, "but my dark-red carbuncle--red as blood" (P. 179). Gems from the underground palace of Dis are often emblematic of evil association in Hawthorne's works. Miriam attempts to exorcise the demon who shadows her in a scene at the Fountain of Trevi, where she, sprinkling water in his face and invoking all the saints, bids him to depart and leave her free. But the exorcism, bystanders say, cannot be effective unless holy water is used. The polarity of good and evil in this romance is not a simple matter to establish. There is much good in Dona tello, though Hawthorne does not consider his innate and unreflective goodness as the highest type. Miriam has noble qualities that have escaped the taint of the evil 126 with which she had unfortunately been associated, but she lacks the high spiritual purity of Hilda. The model, the very embodiment of evil, is a monk who, in the scene in the Coliseum, does penance on his knees, causing one member of the party to say, "He is evidently a good Catholic, however. After all, I fear we cannot identify him with the ancient pagan who haunts the catacombs." And another replies, "The doctors of the Propaganda may have converted him. . . . They have had fifteen hundred years to perform the task" (P. 220). Hawthorne's purpose in converting the satyr-pagan-demon into a monk suggests the existence of evil elements in places often considered sacred. There is a confusion here of the Good and Bad Sacred, as there is in Hawthorne's treatment of his own Puritan ancestors when he writes of the persecutions of Quakers and witches, and of the character of Cotton Mather. Hawthorne is always mindful of the historical past of Italy and the changing religious and moral factors brought by the passage of time. On one level of meaning, the story presents Donatello as the embodiment of Etruscan paganism; the model combines the worst features of decadent Rome and the Middle Ages; Miriam, with her international background and high intellectual cultivation, suggests the 127 Renaissance; while Kenyon the skeptic typifies the Age of Reason and Hilda stands for the best elements of Puritan ism, some of which were discernible in the character and doctrine of the Transcendentalists. The passage of time and the changing views of justice and crime are brought into the story just before the climax. Donatello and Miriam, at the top of the Tarpeian Rock, discuss the punishments of traitors in ancient Rome. The statue of Marcus Aurelius, which they have recently visited, is the symbol of the best that old Rome had to offer the world. They speak of the crude, quick execution of justice in Rome in days when traitors were flung from the rock. This talk is a prelude to crime, for suddenly and with only a few seconds premeditation Donatello hurls the monk to his death. There is a rightness in the deed, as there is in the matricide of Orestes, and in the crime of Beatrice Cenci; but there is also a violation of civil and religious law in all three of these crimes that must be expiated. The act was, in spite of extenuating cir cumstances, a sin and a crime. In choosing the monk as the embodiment of the evil principle, Hawthorne expresses his constitutional dislike of monks, which is shown in his notebook in such an entry 128 as, "We passed a monk and a soldier, the two curses of Italy, each In his way" (XXI, 406). He also records that William Story, the sculptor and writer, told him that Italians all believe in the Evil Eye, which is a malignant power very common in monks: The evil influence is supposed not to be in the will of the possessor of the evil eye; on the contrary, the persons to whom he wishes well are the very ones to suffer by it. It is oftener found in monks than in any other class of people; and on meeting a monk, and encountering his eye, an Italian usually makes a defensive sign by putting both hands behind him, with the forefingers and little fingers extended, although it is a controverted point whether it be not more efficacious to extend the hand with its outspread fingers toward the suspected person. It is considered an evil omen to meet a monk on first going out for the day. The evil eye may be classified with the phenomena of mesmerism. The Italians, especially the Neapolitans, very generally wear amulets. Pio Nono, perhaps as being the chief of all monks and other religious people, is supposed to have an evil eye of tenfold malignancy. (XXII, 184-185) Hawthorne then tells about the tragic effect of the Pope's benign glance on an Englishman, and records his own experi ment in warding off evil: I walked into town with Julian this morning, and, meeting a monk in the Via Fomace, I thought it no more than reasonable, as the good father fixed his eyes on me, to provide against the worst by putting both hands behind me, with forefingers and little fingers stuck out. (185-186) It is difficult to know in precisely what spirit Hawthorne made this sign of exorcism--possibly in ironical fun, or 129 possibly entering, for the time being, into the spirit of superstition of the time and place. In another part of the notebook he tells of seeing the Pope and of being favorably impressed with him. These changes of attitude are typical of Hawthorne, and his readers find him pagan or Puritan, according to his mood, and find, too, that his inability to reconcile his various attitudes and opinions in one orderly system does not cause him any deep concern. The sign he makes here, with the forefingers and little fingers extended, makes the hand seem to have horns. This sign might first have been used against monks in the early days of Christianity as a state religion, when conversions were often made from motives of expediency or fear rather than of true conviction; the reluctant convert may have made behind his back a sign of placation to the gods of his fathers. Story found that horns were regarded as powerful amulets from very ancient times, and the use of horns to ward off evil is prevalent even today in some parts of the world. The gesture, the mano cornuta. probably goes back to the most primitive religion of western Europe, the worship of the homed god. 130 Belief in the evil eye was all but universal. Numer ous references to it are found in classical writers of various periods. Deuteronomy 28:54 mentions the involun tary possession of the evil eye as a curse for disobedi ence. In many parts of the world it is feared to this day. Hawthorne's mention of the evil eye of Maule in The House of the Seven Gables connects the belief with New England, and his conversations with Story in Italy gave him more knowledge of this subject, for Story was something of an authority. He published a chapter on the evil eye in his Roba di Roma, which first appeared in two volumes. The material was omitted from the one-volume edition, and was included in a later book, Castle St. Angelo and the Evil Eye. At the time of Hawthorne's meetings with Story, the latter may have already collected much of his information, which he took from many rare sources. He probably found an interested listener in Hawthorne, who made use of Story's statue of Cleopatra in The Marble Faun. Story says of amulets, "... the head of a bull or goat with its horns, a single horn, the horned moon, are among the best of Q charms. The horn has always had a mystical meaning." ^Castle St. Angelo and the Evil Eye (London, 1877), p. 219. 131 Hawthorne does not specifically mention the evil eye in connection with the monk in The Marble Faun, possibly considering the superstition too crude and vulgar for his artistic purpose. That it is at the back of his mind is, nevertheless, indicated by several references to the half- shut eyes of the dead monk. Miriam is brave, even bold, in the cemetery of the Capuccini, which is like another descent into hell, the underground visit to the dead. She symbolically returns the evil being where she found him. She is in a nervously excited state, feeling triumphant in escaping from her tormentor. But the eyes of the Capuchin, though not referred to as having the spell of the evil eye, cast reproachful glances at her. "The eyelids were but partially drawn down, and showed the eye balls beneath" (IX, 260). Hawthorne mentions the eyes several times: "The dead face of the monk, gazing at them beneath its half-closed eyelids" (p. 261); ". . . the severe reproachful glance that seemed to come from between those half-closed lids" (p. 265); "the look of accusation that he threw from between his half-closed eyelids" (p. 266). Miriam, challenged by this horrible look, refuses to be intimidated, and she says, "'No; thou shalt not scowl me down!'" (p. 266). 132 It was the "fascination*' of Miriam's gaze that had impelled Donatello to murder; she says, '"And my eyes bade you do it.'" Hilda confirms this matter when she recounts what she saw when she returned to speak to Miriam and was an unseen witness to the murder: "*A look passed from your eyes to Donatello*s--a look ... a look of hatred, tri umph, vengeance, and, as it were, joy at some unhoped-for relief'" (p. 291). Hilda makes it clear to Miriam that her glance incited Donatello to the crime. Miriam had not known for certain that this was so. "'Ah! Donatello was right, then,' murmured Miriam, who shook throughout all her frame. 'My eyes bade him do it!'" (p. 291). This scene can be explained on a naturalistic level, but the implication of the preternatural, to use a favorite expression of Hawthorne's, is to be considered also. The subject of fascination and the evil eye will be considered later in connection with hypnotism, important in several of Hawthorne's works. The crime of Donatello, inspired by Miriam, is the climax of the book, the end of the Faun as an innocent creature of nature and the beginning of his understanding of the burden of sin. The meaning of this transformation is much discussed by Hawthorne's critics, and a great deal has been made of the event as representing the fall of man, a change from a state of primal innocence to a knowl edge of sin, as in the fall of Adam. Although a brief chapter is entitled "The Faun's Transformation," Hawthorne did not want the book to be called Transformation. as the English publishers insisted upon calling it. To call the book by that name might have been to place too much empha sis upon the change, whereas the title The Marble Faun, which Hawthorne preferred, brings out the paganism of the central figure. The second title that stands with Haw thorne's approval is The Romance of Monte Beni, in which the home of Donatello's ancestors, whose history and legend extend back into Etruscan times and beyond, is made promi nent, not, surely, without some intention on the author's part. The Faun's coming to grief in modern Rome is unlike Adam's fall, which resulted from disobedience. The Faun is defeated by history, as were the celebrants at Merry Mount. This is not the entire story, but it is an impor tant aspect of it. The Faun is out of his proper time, and his failure is like that of the hopeful experimenters of Blithedale, which will be discussed later, because the restoration of a Golden Age of primitive innocence is impossible in modem times. The march of history is 134 against those who would restore the lost simplicity and grace of the times when man lived in unreflecting closeness to nature. In an article entitled ’ ’ The Jfyth and the Powerhouse" Philip Rahv points out the immutability of myth as con trasted with the constant flux of history that changes with customs and tradition. He contends that the mytho mania of the present age tends to discount or ignore history. Such a complaint could not be lodged with Haw thorne, who is always mindful of the changes brought about by the inexorable progression of events. In the "trans formation" of the Faun, the change from a mythical to an ethical attitude may be seen. Rahv cites the objection Socrates had to myths, that they did not advance self- knowledge : Even if instructive in some things, the one thing they cannot impart is ethical enlightenment: the question of good and evil is beyond myth and becomes crucial with the emergence of the individual, to whom alone is given the capacity at once to assent to the gift of self-knowledge and to undergo its ordeal. Self-knowledge and the awareness of sin come to Donatello through his crime and his contact with the monk. ^Partisan Review,November-December, 1953. V. XX No. 6, pp. 635-648. 135 Several elements need to be considered here if all of the author's intention is to be grasped. In the charnel house of the Middle Ages, symbolized by the Catacombs of Calixtus and the cemetery of the Capuccini, a historical period with its inevitable but disagreeable lesson is made clear to Donatello. Hawthorne sees history as a progress of mankind from a lower to a higher state of development, but the melioration is not rapid, and it is attended with some unfortunate losses, like that of the innocence of the Faun. In The House of the Seven Gables Hawthorne allows to issue from the unbalanced mind of poor Clifford his most cheerful view of the "rising spiral" of human progress, but it is very likely that this view is but an ironically placed overstatement of Hawthorne's own Weltanschauung. After the murder Donatello returns to his ancient home, Monte Beni, a name implying something good, even sacred. He finds himself out of sympathy with the place and its inhabitants, who observe the old folkways uncor rupted or unimproved by progress. He wishes to do penance for his crime and contemplates becoming a monk, but Kenyon, whom many critics consider close to Hawthorne in point of 136 view*- ® strongly advises him not to smother his "new germ of a higher life in a monkish cell!" (IX, 78). His ordeal is spoken of as raising him to a higher level of existence. This view is similar to that expressed in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," where the historical fact of the victory of Puritan religion and ethics is accepted as a step upward in the development of man as planned by Providence. The following is found in the sketch "Main Street": Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank Him not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages. (Ill, 90) In "The Maypole of Merry Mount" and in The Marble Faun gloom is the result of the change. The plan of Providence involves no rapid changes, and cannot be influenced by human effort, as one sees in Hawthorne's attitude toward the reforming zeal that motivated so many of his compa triots. He takes occasion to refer to them in The Marble Faun. saying that the Italians "cannot pride themselves, as our own more energetic benevolence is apt to do, upon ^Randall Stewart, American Notebooks (Hew Haven, 1932), p. xiii. "One may fairly conclude, therefore, that these three characters--the artist in 'Prophetic Pictures,' Coverdale, and Kenyon--are the closest approaches to self portraiture in Hawthorne's fiction." 137 sharing in the counsels of Providence and kindly helping out its otherwise impracticable designs!" (X, 80). This ironical comment indicates that he is at least momentarily forgetting the ferment of revolt that swept the continent, not excluding Italy, in 1848, and which found leaders whom the reforming Margaret Fuller recognized as kindred spirits. Her husband was associated with Mazzini, and she herself underwent hardships in the struggle for freedom. But Hawthorne takes the stand that Providence controls the unfolding of history. The Faun is a throw-back. In the necessity of adjusting to a new order the poor Faun finds himself improved, perhaps, but wretched. In the scenes at Monte Beni, the history of Donatello's family is shown to be the history of humanity in its various stages. Vineyard scenes occur in this chapter, and Hawthorne describes with much enthusiasm the Arcadian life of this place. An extraordinary wine called "Sunshine" is made at Monte Beni. Legend has it that Bacchus himself took part in the creation of it, and that the grapes grown here are unique. Kenyon gratefully refers to Donatello's imme diate forebears: "It does me good to think of them gladdening the hearts of men and women, with their wine of Sunshine, even in the Iron Age, as Pan and Bacchus . . . did 138 in the Golden one.” (X, 19) In the wine-making at Monte Beni, Bacchus might come back again, Kenyon suggests. "But, alas! where now would he find the Faun with whom we see him consorting in so many an antique group?" (X, 91). He repeats here, almost thirty years later, the "alas" of "The Maypole of Merry Mount" when the Puritans take control. Although darkness does set in, Donatello "improves." Kenyon says, "The germs of faculties that have heretofore slept are fast springing into activity. The world of thought is disclosing itself to his inward sight. He startles me, at times, with his perception of deep truths." (X, 101) Hawthorne's admiration for the "deep truths" making themselves available to Donatello's understanding does not prevent him from expressing deep regret for what Donatello has lost. There is a conflict here that is unresolved. It is as if Hawthorne maintains the position that mankind has struggled upward from a lower level, and at the same time there has been a falling away from a kind of Golden Age that in some ways was more beautiful, more blessed, than the life of later times. Speaking, not through Kenyon, but as the author, Hawthorne's comment is: The growth of a soul, which the sculptor half imagined that he had witnessed in his friend, seemed hardly worth the heavy price that it had cost, in the sacrifice 139 of those simple enjoyments that were gone forever. A creature of antique healthfulness had vanished from the earth; and, in his stead, there was only one other morbid and remorseful man, among millions that were cast in the same indistinguishable mould. (X, 257) Hawthorne seems rather impatient here with the neces sity of making Donatello a penitent. He may have felt con strained by the mores of his time to present him thus. He could not, as Norman Douglas did in South Wind (1920) present an act of deliberate murder as praiseworthy. In South Wind an Anglican bishop, like the innocent Hilda, sees an abominably evil character pushed over a precipice. In South Wind a woman commits the murder. She does it to protect herself, her husband, and her child; she suffers no remorse, no compunction, and the bishop comes to take the view that the murder of such an evil being was, upon the whole, a good thing. He rather admires the grit and enterprise of the woman who was able to act upon her basic, instinctive drive to protect her family. The south wind of the Mediterranean has its effect in, as it were, "paganizing" the bishop. Hawthorne, however, with his Puritan inheritance and his mid-Victorian environment, could not permit sin to go unpunished. 140 On one level of meaning, the progress of Donatello is that of Europe through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The evolutionary view of humanity is clearly expressed near the end of the story, and the note of regret for the "improved" condition is struck again: . . . human beings of Donatello's character, com pounded especially for happiness, have no longer any business on earth, or elsewhere. Life has grown so sadly serious, that such men must change their nature, or else perish, like the antediluvian creatures, that required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer-like atmosphere than our own. (X, 349) Characteristically, Hawthorne does not commit himself irrevocably to this view, but so many times he has sug gested this falling away from a beautiful state of instinc tive life, that the reader must conclude that he has a deep love and sympathy for what he conceived to be the life of pagan times. The explanation of Donatello's con dition just quoted is tempered by another suggestion of Kenyon's, that Donatello's sin has elevated him to greater mental and spiritual heights. Kenyon asks whether sin is necessary to human education. The pious Hilda is horrified at such a suggestion, and the skeptical Kenyon retracts, saying that he never did believe it. To her, the doctrine of the fortunate fall is damaging to ethical values and repugnant to the highest instincts of humanity. 141 In tracing the lineage of Donatello, Hawthorne traces his genealogy through the Middle Ages to the early days of Christiantity, and into the Roman period. Where written records leave off, tradition takes up the thread, which goes through the days of the republic and the times of the kings, to the days of "the sylvan life of Etruria, while Italy was yet guiltless of Rome" (X, 27). Not content with this antiquity, Hawthorne brings forth the legend that the family belonged to the Pelasgic race of prehistoric times, who peopled Grecian Arcadia. Donatello was a true exponent of his race, so close to nature in his sympathies that as a child he swam and climbed recklessly without injury, as Hawthorne himself had done when he wandered, free as an Indian, in the woods of Maine. Donatello is not feared by the wild creatures of the woods and is able to communicate with them in a way that is reminiscent of the myth of Melampus: How it was first taught me, I cannot tell; but there was a charm--a voice, a murmur, a kind of chant--by which I called the woodland inhabitants, the furry people, and the feathered people, in a language that they seemed to understand. (X, 49) Donatello loses this gift after his crime. He is crushed to learn that the wild things shun him. He does not seem to appreciate the higher intellectual and spiritual 142 understanding he has attained to compensate for his loss; and Hawthorne seems to be sympathetic with Donatello's feeling of being cut off from nature. In the discussion of Donatello's pedigree it is again suggested that the spirit of the age is at enmity with creatures of his kind. The world has no place for free and carelessly happy souls. Hawthorne makes Kenyon think along the following lines: No life now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the tiniest rivulet to turn. We all go wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right. . . . Nature, in beast, fowl, and tree, and earth, flood, and sky, is what it was of old; but sin, care, and self-consciousness have set the human portion of the world askew; and thus the simplest character is ever the soonest to go astray. (X, 38-9) The self-consciousness recommended by Socrates as a pre requisite to moral growth is regretted in this passage. The benefits derived from the awareness of sin do not seem, in many sections of the book, to counterbalance the loss of healthy animality that accompanies self-knowledge. Hawthorne is presenting a dilemma in this book, and he does not propose to solve it. The most beautiful and satisfying portions of the romance are those dealing with paganism and the art it inspired. His concern with sin and morality, here and in many of his other works, is of 143 Importance; his respect for spirituality and faith, as embodied in Hilda, in The Marble Faun, is undoubtedly sincere, and it was his intention to describe these ele ments as well as he could. However, as Roger Male says, "The incarnation of the Holy Spirit in the Dove is, as most readers have agreed, the most ineffective portion of the book."^ Hilda, with her white dress, her white curtains, and her white doves, seems to lack the substance of which con vincing art is made. She, paradoxically, is devoted to copying the works of great painters, whose art is a repre sentation of the physical world. In the notebooks Haw thorne often observes that the paintings of religious subjects, the madonna and child, for example, are fre quently not really spiritual in any sense, but are pictures of an earthly mother and baby. There are some that he regards as truly helpful to spiritual contemplation, but many that are simply paintings of a painter's wife or mistress. A favorite of Hilda's is Guido Renl's portrait of Beatrice Cenci, a girl involved in a horrible life, a monstrous crime, and a hideous death. Hawthorne has a ^^•Hawthorne's Tragic Vision (Austin, 1957), p. 172. 144 purpose in his reference to Beatrice, since her history is used to suggest the unspeakable story of Miriam's past, and also the complexity of her moral problem. Beatrice was enjoying a considerable vogue in the 1850's--as Leslie Fiedler puts the situation: The parricide becomes an object of veneration, and tourists (among them that good American abroad, Herman Melville) carry home as an icon Guido's picture of Beatrice Cenci, slayer of her father. Having dwelt at length from her own free choice and pref erence upon the dreadful story of Beatrice, Hilda should have been better prepared and fortified than she was for the crime of Donatello and Miriam. Hawthorne fails to make clear the nature and limitations of Hilda’s spirit uality, although he wishes the reader to regard her as the most admirable character in the book. Hawthorne is working with the dilemma of man as spirit living in a physical world and a physical body, and also with the dilemma of the artist whose material is the world and its beauty, which must be expressed in words, or in the medium of paint or bronze or marble. He acknowledges the claims of the physical world upon the ^ Love and Death in the American Novel (New York, 1960), p. xxx. 145 artist in a comment upon the work and personality of William Cullen Bryant, whom he met in Italy in 1858 at the Brownings': I take him to be one who cannot get closely home to his sorrow, nor feel it so sensibly as he gladly would; and in consequence of that deficiency, the world lacks substance to him. It is partly the result, perhaps, of his not having sufficiently cultivated his animal and emotional nature; his poetry shows it, and his personal intercourse-- though kindly--does not stir one's blood in the least. (XXII, 73) The substance of the world, then, is necessary to the poet, and there is a need for cultivating his animal nature if his poetry and his personality are not to have deficiencies. Much is said by teachers of religion about cultivating the spiritual side of one's nature, but the idea of cultivating the animal aspect is firmly repressed in the literature of the Christian era. The aspect of human nature that is symbolized by the Faun is of impor tance in the production of any art that would "stir one's blood." The chapters of The Marble Faun that deal with Hilda's problems after she has acquired knowledge of the crime of her friends, take up the spiritual side of humanity and the striving for what Hawthorne considers the highest and purest concepts available to mankind. Hilda's pure and 146 optimistic faith is something Hawthorne considers superior to the beauty of the pagan view of the universe, and also to the world of the intellect. The American Puritan girl is named for St. Hilda, abbess of Whitby, where the impor tant Synod of Whitby was held in this monastery in 664. Miriam says, "I should not wonder if the Catholics were to make a saint of you, like your namesake of old" (X, 70). Later Kenyon says, "You will still be St. Hilda, whatever church will canonize you" (p. 216). Hawthorne worked on this romance at Whitby for a while. Mrs. Hawthorne, whose cheerful spirituality her husband valued, is con sidered to be, at least to some extent, a model for Hilda. Hawthorne referred to his wife as a dove in his letters to her, and doves are associated with Hilda. Hawthorne's daughter Rose records, "’My Dove' was one of my father's names for my mother; he found her a seal with a dove upon it. She several times referred to this title with joy in talks with me."^ The chapters dealing with this character are perhaps less satisfactory than other parts of the romance because it is difficult to find a representation 1 1 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 1897), p. 137. 147 of pure spirituality in tangible symbols. The dove is very much overworked here, and is at the outset a conventional symbol. In the scene on the battlements at Monte Beni Kenyon tries to explain his exaltation of the moment to Donatello, and feels his limitations in being able to do so. The spectacle of heaven and earth that they are view ing must give its wordless message. Kenyon says, Only begin to read it, and you will find it inter preting itself without the aid of words. It is a great mistake to try to put our best thoughts into human language. When we ascend into the higher regions of emotion and spiritual enjoyment, they are only expressible by such grand hieroglyphics as these around us. (X, 65) The theme of paganism is resumed in the book with Kenyon's walk on the Campagna. Hawthorne goes back to antiquity, the tombs of the unknown dead on the Appian Way, the ancient battlements, the Claudian aqueduct, and other reminders of the remote past. A "buffalo-calf" follows Kenyon, cheering him with his sportive animal sociability. Kenyon thinks of the heifer that guided Cadmus, and he arrives at an excavation of an ancient villa where he dis covers a long-buried statue of Venus. As the sculptor uncovers the parts and places them where they should be: The beautiful Idea at once asserted its immortality, and converted that heap of forlorn fragments into a 148 whole, as perfect to the mind, If not to the eye, as when the new marble gleamed with snowy lustre. . . . Forgotten beauty had come back, as beautiful as ever; a goddess had risen from her long slumber, and was a goddess still. (X, 299-300) Miriam and Donatello reappear in this scene, for they have made the discovery also. Miriam discloses something of her background; she is of English parentage, on the mother's side, but with a vein, likewise, of Jewish blood; yet connected, through her father, with one of those few princely families of Southern Italy, which still retain wealth and influence, (p. 307) By giving her this mixed heritage, Hawthorne suggests her universality. Her connection with the Venus is not accidental, for she is an embodiment of womanhood with something of the divine also. The notebooks give a further insight into Hawthorne's thoughts on Venus as the embodiment of divine womanhood, for he made several pil grimages to the statue of the Venus de* Medici: She is very beautiful, very satisfactory; and has a fresh and new charm about her unreached by any cast or copy. ... 1 felt a tenderness for her; an affection, not as if she were one woman, but all womanhood in one. Her modest attitude, which, before I saw her, I had not liked, deeming that it might be an artificial shame, is partly what unmakes her as the heathen goddess, and softens her into woman. . . . Her face is so beautiful and intellectual, that it is not dazzled out of sight by her form. (XXII, 65-66) 149 On another visit he said, "She is a miracle. The sculptor must have wrought religiously, and have felt that something far beyond his own skill was working through his hands" (XXXI, 80-81). This is the attitude seen in the early story, "Drowne's Wooden Image." He applies to her the word "divine," a word he applies indiscriminately to pagan and Christian subjects. The two-thousand-year-old goddess, Miriam, Donatello, and the buffalo-calf are with Kenyon in the ruined villa in a kind of mythic association--the horned beast, the beautifully sculptured manifestion of a force of nature, the Faun and the Nymph, with the artist whose inquiring mind tries to understand them all. To-day, Donatello was the sylvan Faun; to-day, Miriam was his fit companion, a Nymph of grove or fountain; to-morrow,--a remorseful roan and woman, linked by a marriage-bond of crime,--they would set forth towards an inevitable goal. (X, 315) A pagan tone typifies the carnival in which Miriam and Donatello try to make merry for the last time before they take leave of Arcadian joys and give themselves up to the expiation of crime. Hawthorne discusses the antiq uity of some of the humorous masks and costumes, several of which had been used for a hundred generations and represented, therefore, a timeless expression of revelry 150 and mirth. Some people wore animal masks and horns, as in "The Maypole of Merry Mount." Hawthorne's notebooks show that he came to enjoy the carnival, which gave him a feeling of participation in a social activity without the obligation imposed by more formal gatherings. Kenyon sees his two friends, dressed as Italian peasants, sadly taking part as best they can under the circumstances in a festival that contained the elements of pre-historic nature celebrations. The carnival was "the pastime and the earnest of a more innocent and homelier age" (X, 322). On March 29, 1860, John Lothrop Motley sent a letter to Hawthorne expressing his appreciation of The Marble Faun. Of the carnival episode he writes, "The way in which the two victims dance through the Carnival on the last day is very striking. It Is like a Greek tragedy in its effect, without being in the least Greek.It is possibly the trace of ancient ritual recognizable in the Greek tragedies that connects this carnival scene with the pagan writings in Motley's mind. The last meeting of Kenyon and Hilda with Miriam takes place significantly in the Pantheon, the heathen ^George Parsons Lathrop, p. 263. 151 temple taken over by Christian worship. A cat sleeping on the altar reminds Kenyon of the worship of cats in ancient Egypt, and thus an element of still older paganism is brought in. Hawthorne may be suggesting by this scene that those elements in human nature that paganism took cognizance of and even held sacred are enduring and impor tant, and require some re-evaluation in modem times. Roy R. Male says that Hawthorne "formed his own religion." In The Scarlet Letter Dimroesdale is in the church while Hester remains outside of it; and in The Marble Faun the only religious edifice large enough to hold the char acters at the end is the Pantheon. Hawthorne's position, to use R. W. B. Lewis's phrase, was "an offbeat traditionalism."^ Hawthorne does indeed seem to draw from different religious traditions whatever appeals to him. Hilda finally makes her compromise with the life of earth by coming down from her dove-tower to marry Kenyon. She is given a beautiful symbol of the ancient earthliness to which mankind is bound in the form of a bridal gift from Miriam--an Etruscan bracelet with seven gems, each from a different sepulcher. The jewels, originating in the ^ Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision, p. 176-7. 152 underground ruled by Dis, and restored there In the tombs of kings, where they lay for many centuries, are rich reminders of continuity as well as of death. Many readers have seen in The Marble Faun the story of the fall of man, and the theory of the fortunate fall which enabled man to understand good because he had learned evil. This is not the only explanation of the events of the story, and is expressly rejected by Hilda. Kenyon keeps to the dilemma of the explanation of evil, and comes to no definite conclusion. Paradise Lost is sometimes explained as expounding the doctrine of the fortunate fall, but even in this work Milton says Happier, had it sufficed him to have known Good by itself, and Evil not at all. (XI, 88) Mrs. Hawthorne, whom Hilda resembles, once wrote to her mother about the absurdity of the prevalent idea that it is necessary to go through the fiery ordeal of sin to become wise and good. I think such an idea is blasphemy and the unpardonable sin. It is really abjuring God's voice within. ° While Hawthorne and his wife did not agree at all points on religious matters, Sophia wrote for both of them about 16 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 137. 153 their reading at the old Manse, December, 1842: "We dare to dislike Milton when he goes to heaven. We do not recognize God in his picture of Him" (p. 24). James Martineau, whom Hawthorne met in England and whom Sophia admired "as a divine" (Rose H. Lathrop, p. 258) voices the dilemma of the theological and philosophi cal problem of the origin of evil, to which Kenyon finds no solution, having, he says, no polestar to guide him: All the ingenuities of logic and of language leave it a mystery still; and it is better to stand within the darkness in the quietude of faith, than vainly to search for its margin in the restlessness of knowledge. And this is where Hilda and Kenyon seem to leave the prob lem, which is important to the book, Hilda with her hope and faith seeing "sunlight on the mountaintops." These are the last words of the book as first published. The pagan portion of The Marble Faun, or The Romance of Monte Beni, is the more successfully wrought, possibly because Hawthorne's sympathy was more deeply engaged, or possibly because the paganism of the classical ages was expressed in sculpture, architecture, and literature in ^J. Drummond, Life of James Martineau (New York, 1902), I, 103. 154 such a way as to make It appeal more to his imagination. The pagans of the Golden Age are spoken of repeatedly in a way that indicates his regret for something beautiful, and even sacred, that has been lost to humanity. Nature, he says, is as it was in pagan times, but humanity has changed. He presents the estate of Monte Beni with some reallsm--the peasants, the vineyards, the wine called "Sunshine,1 1 are created out of the author's experience at Montauto, near Florence, where he lived for some months. Much of the attitude toward the so-called Golden Age is, however, the product of the Romantic view that former ages were in some respects better and more beautiful than the present, and that childhood, and childhood of the race, had some virtue that is lacking to maturity. Wordsworth's "shades of the prison house" that darken the life of the growing individual have dimmed the life of the race also, Hawthorne suggests in this book. His idea of the life of antiquity is derived more from art than from history or anthropology. It would appear that he does not wish to consider such unpleasant aspects of the life of pagan times as the fact, for example, that the beautiful temples were, among other things, slaughter houses buzzing with flies attracted by the smell of blood and offal. 155 Romantic and Rousseauistic is the view that man is natu rally good, and that he can rely on his innate impulses to lead him correctly. In The Marble Faun Hawthorne pursued his Golden Age back to prehistoric times, avoiding the fact that pagans were sometimes far from being unreflective and unself-conscious: The notion of the pure soul imprisoned in a mate rial sensual body, and stained by the base appetites of the latter, was current amongst the Greeks for five centuries before Christ. Hence the antagonism between the soul and the "body," the "flesh," or the "world."18 There are many instances among pagans of great interest in mysticism, renunciation, purification of the soul, and asceticism. Hawthorne, however, does not take such con siderations into account, relying upon Ovid, Vergil, and Homer for his pictures of classical paganism. The historical view considered in The Marble Faun shows Hawthorne's constant awareness of the changes through which the human race has gone, and this is one of the aspects of it that should not be overlooked. Hawthorne tends to reject or overlook historical facts at will, but 18 William Graham Sumner, Folkways (New York, 1960, first printed 1906), p. 507. 156 he has a view of progress and development of humanity that was of much Interest at the time The Marble Faun was writ ten. The theory of evolution was formulated, and Darwin's Origin of Species was published in November, 1859, when The Marble Faun was nearly finished. The historians George Bancroft and John Lothrop Motley, with the latter of whom Hawthorne took walks in and around Rome in this same year, were interested in the notion of progress, as were other thinkers of the time: To be created at once in likeness to the Omnipotent and to a fantastic brute; to be compounded thus of the bestial and the angelic, alternately dragged upward and downward by conflicting forces, presses upon us the conviction even without divine revelation, that this world is a place of trial and of progress towards some higher sphere. ^ In The Marble Faun Donatello is not a fantastic brute, but a beautiful manifestation of animal life; nevertheless he finds the world "a place of trial and of progress." The idea of a rising spiral of progress, expressed by Clifford in The House of the Seven Gables occurred also to Motley: ^Chester Penn Higby and B. T. Schantz, John Lothrop Motley. Representative Selections (New York, 1939), p. 91. 157 “After all," Motley wrote Holmes in 1862, "it seems to be a law of Providence that progress should be by a spiral movement, so that when we seem most tortuous we may perhaps be going ahead." 0 Hawthorne vacillates between the idea of progress and spiritual improvement on the one hand, and on the other the Romantic view of a falling away from some superior state of being. The two polarities, one pulling toward the future and one toward the past, make for a confused point of view and cause an ambiguity in The Marble Faun. As in "The Maypole of Merry Mount" more enthusiastic treatment is given to the Golden Age and its representa tives, although Hawthorne felt obliged to go along with a leading concept of his day and to say something in favor of progress. 20 John Lothrop Motley, Selections, p. xlvi. CHAPTER IV HAWTHORNE’S TREATMENT OF WITCHES The historical fact of the defeat of paganism by Christianity, one of the themes of The Marble Faun, is related to Hawthorne's treatment of witchcraft, which was the only form paganism could take in the Christian centuries. There have always been witches, and Hawthorne showed his interest in the chief witches of classical antiquity by retelling the stories of Medea and Circe. He intended at one time to write an extended work on this subject, as a letter from Evert A. Duyckinck, October 2, 1845, indicates: "Mr. Willey's American series is athirst for the volume of Tales, and how stands the prospect for the 'History of Witchcraft' I whilom spoke of?"^ The project seems to have been abandoned because a thorough treatment, such as Hawthorne would have wanted to give the subject, demanded more time than he could afford to spend ^Horatio Bridge, Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1893), p. 106. 158 159 on it. The originality of his treatment of the subject in fiction has been remarked on by George Parsons Lathrop. Of Hawthorne's use of the supernatural in general he says: . . . only Scott and Hawthorne, besides George Sand, among modern novelists have used the supernatural with real skill and force; and Hawthorne has cer tainly infused it into his work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving Scotch romancer owned. Lathrop notes that Hawthorne was original in abandoning the historical view of witchcraft as a delusion and accepting the witch "as fact" in some of his works. Haw thorne sometimes identifies imaginatively with those who heard witches flying overhead to their nocturnal meetings. His attitude, made up of sympathy with certain pagan attitudes, and of a horror of the malefic characteristics traditionally associated with witchcraft, is interestingly ambivalent. Anyone who reflects upon the history of witchcraft might be inclined to wonder wh> so many women and so few men were regarded as witches. The whole question is bound up with the position of women throughout the ages, espe cially in those countries that contributed cultural and 2 A Study o f Hawthorne (Boston, 1876), p. 126. 160 religious elements to the beliefs of Renaissance Europe. There had been wizards and warlocks of great power--Merlin is a legendary example--but certainly there was a vast majority of women in the multitude, sometimes estimated at two million, of those tortured and killed for witch craft in the countries of Western Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Jules Michelet begins his book La Sorcifere: Sprenger said, before 1500: "We should speak of the Heresy of the Sorceresses, not of the Sorcerers; the latter are of small account." [His book is called, significantly, Malleus Maleficarum. not Maleficorum. ] So another writer under Louis XIII: "For one Sorcerer, ten thousand Sorceresses." A more conservative estimate comes from Spain: "There 4 are one hundred female witches to one male." Hawthorne, a native son of Salem, a town more noted for its witch trials of 1692 than for any other event except the birth of Hawthorne, was interested in witchcraft partly because of his descent from Judge Hathorne. Haw thorne felt that his family inherited the guilt, and the 3 Satanism and Witchcraft, tr. A. R. Allinson (New York, 1939). ^H. C. Lea, Materials toward a History of Witchcraft (New York, 1957), p. 413. 161 curses of the innocent, that resulted from the killing of supposed witches. Since most witches were women, the position of women in the social and religious scheme of things is of importance in considering witchcraft. The struggle for an improvement in the condition of women in Hawthorne's day is related to this problem, for women were attempting to regain status that they once had possessed in ancient times. Hawthorne's association with Margaret Fuller, so close at one time that she regarded him as a brother,^ tended to make him aware of the movement for women's rights. His sister-in-law, Elizabeth Peabody, was one of the "new" women, an enthusiastic reformer in many fields. It is very significant that Hawthorne, fatherless since the age of four, lived with his mother and two sisters until he married at the age of thirty- eight. For more than half his life, then, he was the only male in a household of women. Except for his college years and a short time in the Boston Custom House, he was away from them very little. There was not much society in their lives because the mother felt that her widowhood ^Mason Wade, Margaret Fuller. Whetstone of Genius (New York, 1940), p. 113. 162 required her to live In seclusion. She never had a meal with her own family until the baby Una visited her and charmed her into breaking her custom. Sophia Hawthorne wrote to her mother, "For the first time since my husband can remember, he dined with his mother!"** Elizabeth Peabody told her nephew Julian that it was the custom in Salem for widows to sequester themselves.^ Alone with the women of his family for almost four decades, Hawthorne naturally came to think of women as important. It is not surprising that his most vivid characters are women. His orientation was such that he came to think of Mother Earth and of nature as a mother with a concreteness unusual in modern writers. Mother Ceres, the goddess, and Mother Rigby, the witch in "Feathertop," are both life-givers. The Providence Hawthorne mentions is more impersonal and remote. The idea of a powerful and beneficent father is also remote--"The Great Stone Face" is about a fatherless 6 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 1897), p. 78. ^Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Circle (New York, 1903), p. 16. He writes, ". . . it was held to be good form, in that age and place, to observe such Hindoo rites after the death of a husband." boy, contemplating a distant ideal. But the mother, and the sisters, who were mother-surrogates in helping Haw thorne in various ways, were with him in close association hence he tended to regard woman as a natural force, and the concept of woman as goddess or witch had content for him. It has been said that the ideas of the fairy god mother and the witch of folklore both come from the real mother in different moods. Not only did Hawthorne come to an interest in witches because they were women in an unfortunate guise, but he had a strong feeling of inherited guilt toward witches because of his great-great-grandfather, the witch judge of Salem. Hawthorne was a student of the early history of New England, and he seems to have sensed in his own family the perpetuation of a curse, such as he writes of in The House of the Seven Gables. In addition to these factors, Hawthorne may have been aware of an etymological connection with witches, because of his name. As mentioned in Chapter I, the family was always aware of their name as the name of the shrub. The word nhag" meaning "witch" comes from the Anglo-Saxon "haegtesse," meaning "witch" also, but originally a woman of the enclosure which was formed by planting hedges of 164 hawthorn shrubs. The Anglo-Saxon word for hawthorn is "haegthorn" or "hagathom"; for hedge, "haga." Rose Haw thorne mentions that almost all the hedges she saw in England were made of hawthorn (p. 303). The word "witch" is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word "wicca," and is related to the words meaning "to see" and "to know." Throughout many centuries the witch has often been referred to as "the wise woman." In the early days of the race, women invented agriculture and developed the domestic skills while men, dependent upon inadequate weapons shaped with much labor, provided the main food supply by hunting and fishing. Women, being to some extent protected, had time in which to work out the beginnings of the arts and sciences. Desperate concern over the injuries and sicknesses of their husbands and children drove women to find remedies which were the beginnings of medicine, and to use charms to implement medication. The two methods of treatment are suggested in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night when Malvolio's supposed madness is spoken of as illness or demonic possession. Fabian says, "Carry his water to the wise-woman" (III, iv, 116). In the too-plentiful documents of witch trials, one of the words often used for witches is "sagae," 165 another word for wise women. Among the Teutonic peoples, from whom the English are mainly descended, the wise woman was held in high esteem. Scott says: Neither are those prophetesses to be forgotten, so much honoured among the German tribes, that, as we are assured by Tacitus, they rose to the highest rank in their councils, by their supposed super natural knowledge, and even obtained a share in the direction of their armies. ... It is undeniable that these Pythonesses were held in high respect while the pagan religion lasted; but for that very reason they became odious so soon as the tribe was converted to Christianity.® Ian Ferguson in his Philosophy of Witchcraft refers to the primitive woman and her struggle to understand and control Nature as the first stage in the development of the witch. The second stage is that which is well known to Western Europe because of the availability of the pagan myths, many of which grew out of the cult of the Mother-goddess. The important Eleusinian mysteries cele brating Demeter, "side by side with the matter-of-fact goddess of the Acropolis," are outgrowths of the primitive g Walter Scott, Deroonology and Witchcraft (London, 1887), pp. 87-88. (First published in 1831. Withdrawn in Hawthorne's name from the Salem Athenaeum Library October 4, 1837.) 166 9 attitude toward woman as fertility symbol. Ferguson attributes the "supremacy" (a dubious word In view of the horrors of witch trials) of witches over wizards in later times to the fact that the goddess of fertility was wor shiped in ceremonies usually presided over by priestesses. In places of worship the implements of the work in home and field became sacred symbols. The broom, distaff, and pitchfork, reverenced in early times, became in later days associated with witches and demons (p. 20). Although there is a vast amount of information on witches because of the records of their pseudo-legal trials in recent centuries, there are not many explanations of the belief in witchcraft nor of the evolution of the witch. Ian Ferguson sums up the transformation of woman from priestess to witch and gives some reasonable explana tions for the change: The dividing line between the priestess of the ancient pre-Christian faith and the lesser figure of the medieval witch was created partly by development of religious thought, but partly also by political and social upheaval. The formation of townships and more settled habit of life drove the wise woman more and more from the seat of government into the less conspicuous activities of her ancient calling. Her ^(New York, 1925), p. 18. 167 place In the temple was challenged by the priest, who broke down her monopoly of oracles, prophecies, and ritual, and made them his own. She was overcome, but maintained her place by her arts of healing and secret knowledge. Religion is a wide field, but the world is a broader place than the temple. The wise woman pursued a narrower and less innocent path. When science departed from her she developed the more sinister fragments of her lore. No longer allowed to concern herself with political ascendancy or estab lished religion or the official treatment of disease, she followed the line of least resistance as local practitioner and adviser of a profoundly credulous and superstitious peasantry. With the limitations of her sphere her functions remained traditional and static, partly ritualistic, partly curative, more and more reactionary and dependent upon the psychology of fear. (p. 26) Specialization was the enemy of the wise woman, the priestess, the sibyl. Soldiers and hunters were in charge of activities that had once engaged the entire male popu lation except for children and old men. Physicians, statesmen, farmers, priests, artists, and poets developed and monopolized phases of the wise woman's activities. Physicians and priests became competitors and later enemies. Had the Christian church taken the position that the gods of paganism were mere inventions, or personifications of natural forces, the idea that they had always possessed real power might have passed out of people's minds in due course; but when the church regarded the old gods as 168 demons, as Milton expresses the situation in his "Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," their supernatural power is acknowledged. The legend that on the morning of the Nativity, or else at the time of the Crucifixion, a voice was heard over the Aegean saying, "Great Pan is dead," is not compatible with the belief that Great Pan became Satan, and was not only alive, but was a demon of great power. If the old gods still lived in the guise of demons, their priestesses retained some of the power to communicate with them and to obtain their help. An additional element in the conception of woman as witch in Christian times is the account in Genesis of Eve's sur render to the wiles of Satan in the Garden of Eden. She was the first sinner, the prima peccatrix. It was through communication with Eve that Satan was able to cause Adam's fall. The witch of Christian times might be said, because all these elements contribute to her development, to be syncretistic. She retains some elements of her primitive status as healer, advisor, protector, and priestess--and actually, since she has access to supernatural powers, she has a trace of the goddess in her make-up. There is some good in these aspects of her character, since she has the power to benefit mankind. But it is overwhelmed 169 by her communication with demons. The medieval attitude toward things of this world tended to bring about suspicion of anyone who wished to control Nature, either by scientific or by magical means. Michelet discusses the antipathy toward Nature that is found in the writers of the Medieval Church: Was it simply a question of the termination of the ancient worship, the defeat of the old faith, the eclipse of time-honored religious forms? No! It was more than this. Consulting the earliest Christian monuments we find in every line the hope expressed, that Nature is to disappear and life die out--in a word, that the end of the world is at hand. (p. 17) Michelet, a historian of note, but a fervid anti-clerical and a writer given to a dithyrambic style, needs to be read with some caution; however, as George Saintsbury says in his article on Michelet in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Michelet never falsifies facts. He gathered a large fund of information while writing his historical works and is therefore a valuable source. On the attitude toward the physical world in the Middle Ages he says: The early Christians, as a whole and individually, in the past and in the future, hold Nature herself accursed. They condemn her as a whole and in every part, going so far as to see Evil incarnate, the Demon himself, in a flower. So, welcoroe--and the sooner the better--the angel-hosts that of old destroyed the Cities of the Plain. Let them destroy, fold away like a veil, the empty image of the world, 170 and at length deliver the saints from the long-drawn ordeal of temptation, (p. 18) The end of the world was expected from time to time during the Christian era. In Hawthorne's time the Miller- ites expected it on October 22, 1844. They dressed in white robes and stood on the tops of hills and houses. In "The Christmas Banquet" (published in the Democratic Review, January, 1844), Hawthorne refers to this expecta tion : A plain old man in black attracted much of the company's notice, on the supposition that he was no other than Father Miller, who, it seemed, had given himself up to despair at the tedious delay of the final conflagration. (V, 82-83) Such anticipations exalted the spiritual at the expense of the physical, the world to come at the expense of terres trial existence. The two attitudes in conflict here, the pagan and the Christian, were considered deeply by Haw thorne, as can be seen in many of his works. The enthusi asm of the Millerites for an extreme of the Christian expectation is discussed by Hawthorne in a sketch that appears in Mosses from an Old Manse. Father Miller’s anticipations are spoken of at some length, and give rise to conments that indicate Hawthorne's opposition to Miller^s views and the disapproving attitude toward Nature that 171 they presuppose. Hawthorne is seldom more explicit about his feelings concerning earthliness as against spirituality than in "The Hall of Fantasy" (published in The Pioneer. 1843): He led me to a distant part of the hall, where a crowd of deeply attentive, auditors were assembled round an elderly man of plain, honest, trustworthy aspect. With an earnestness that betokened the sincerest faith in his own doctrine, he announced that the destruction of the world was close at hand. "It is Father Miller himself!" exclaimed I. "No less a man," said my friend; "and observe how picturesque a contrast between his dogma and those of the reformers whom we have just glanced at. They look for the earthly perfection of mankind, and are forming schemes which imply that the immortal spirit will be connected with a physical nature for innumerable ages of futurity. On the other hand, here comes good Father Miller, and with one puff of his relentless theory scatters all their dreams like so many withered leaves upon the blast." (IV, 252-253) The "I" of the story comments that he can see no purpose to the creation of the world if it is to be destroyed summarily with its riddles still unsolved: "The poor old earth," murmured I. "She has faults enough, In all conscience, but I cannot bear to have her perish." "It is no great matter," said my friend. "The happiest of us has been weary of her many a time and oft." "I doubt it," answered I pertinaciously,--"The root of human nature strikes down deep into this earthly soil, and It is but reluctantly that we 172 submit to be transplanted, even for a higher cultiva tion in heaven." (p. 254) Again: "I really desired our old mother's prolonged existence for her own dear sake." (p. 255) And he speaks of the beauties of the earth that he would regret losing, even in paradise. His friend responds that he speaks "like the very spirit of earth, imbued with a scent of freshly turned soil." Of his mother earth he says: "I want her great, round, solid self to endure interminably, and still to be peopled with the kindly race of man, whom I uphold to be much better than he thinks himself." (p. 257) The "I" of this sketch is not a fictional character, and it is natural to assume that Hawthorne is voicing his own opinions here, though they may be opinions held in one of his moods. In "Young Goodman Brown" the world and its inhabitants are not so favorably mentioned. However, Hawthorne consistently refers to the earth as a mother, and the mood of the love of nature and the appreciation of earthly blessings is prevalent in much of his writing. How the belief in the imminent destruction of the world and of Nature, held by a universal church, would affect the wise woman, a practitioner of unorthodox 173 medicine end dealer in pagan spells and charms, is easy to comprehend. To appreciate the fullness of her condemnation one must compare the philosophy of witchcraft with the theology of Rome. These two show at their most extreme points the pagan love of the world and the Christian adoration of heaven, or the-sense of the material as against spiritual values. During the Middle Ages the greatest value was placed upon asceticism, monasticism, and celibacy, while ordinary family life was not highly regarded. It was at this time that the concept of the "modern" witch developed. The miserable condition of the serfs, the near-starvation, the plagues, the wars, contributed to the idea that the life of this world was, and was intended to be wretched: But the people cower in their wooden huts, half starved, half frozen, and wolves sniff at them through the chinks in the walls. The convent prays, and the castle sings: the cottage hungers, and groans, and dies.11 The famous Latin hymn which by 1285 was used in the service for the dead illustrates the feeling of the destruction of the world and the wrath to come: ^Ian Ferguson, The Philosophy of Witchcraft, p. 81. ^Hfinwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (London, 1885), p. 501. 174 Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sybilla. In this time of general misery among the lower orders, the witch was resorted to because she had medication, spells, and charms that might alleviate the intolerable miseries of the people. She had pain-killing drugs and some medica ments that are to be found today in every pharmacy. She was able to induce hallucinations. She sold love philtres and sometimes poisons, and was paid to predict the future and to work spells, so that she had a business that relieved her own poverty. The less harmful of her activ ities were carried on until Hawthorne's day. Hawthorne's concern for the condition of women, though he does not suggest remedies, is expressed in several of his works, and is related to the foregoing matters. In "The Christmas Banquet," The table was graced by two of the gentler sex-- one, a half-starved consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness by dark broodlngs over the wrongs of her sex, and its exclusion from a proper field of action. (V, 84) These two women bear a close resemblance to Priscilla and Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance. The sketch was 175 published in 1844, the novel eight years later; hence it can be seen that these two types of unhappy women had been considered by Hawthorne for a long time. Both these types--the woman suffering from poverty she could not relieve by legitimate exertions, and the woman of wasted abilities, might in earlier times have been driven to witchcraft. In The Blithedale Romance both Priscilla and Zenobia have characteristics that would have made them suspect in witchcraft days--Priscilla with her trances and "second sight," and Zenobia with her intellect and extraordinary beauty. In "P's Correspondence" (1845) a roan of disordered reason claims that Keats wrote a Paradise Regained in which Our race is on the eve of its final triumph. Man is within the last stride of perfection; Woman, redeemed from the thraldom against which our sibyl uplifts so powerful and so sad a remonstrance, stands equal by his side, or communes for herself with angels; .... (V, 187) "Our sibyl" is probably Margaret Fuller. Leslie Fiedler interprets these matters from a Freudian point of view, although he speaks of the restora tion of women to the honored position they once held in primitive times as being part of a change in religious 176 outlook that took place in the nineteenth century: The darker motive forces of the psyche refused any longer to accept the names and ranks by which they had been demeaned for almost two thousand years; once worshiped as "gods," they had been made demons by flat, but now they stirred again in discontent. Especially the Great Mother--cast down by the most patriarchal of all religions (to the Hebrews, she was Lilith, the bride of darkness), ambiguously redeemed as the Blessed Virgin and denied once more by a Hebraizing Protestantism--clamored to be honored once more. The very distinction between God and Devil, on which the psychic balance of Europe had for so long been staked, was threatened. 2 The downfall of goddesses as "darker motive forces of the psyche" and the attitude toward women as temptations to sin went together historically. In The Blithedale Romance. which will be discussed at length in Chapter VI when Coverdale sees that the gifted, beautiful, wealthy Zenobia is willing to subject herself humbly to Hollingsworth, he says: Women almost invariably behave thus. What does this fact mean? Is it their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of ages of compelled degradation? And, in either case, will it be possible ever to redeem them? (VIII, 176) One result of the degradation was the proliferation of witches. ^ Love and Death in the American Novel (New York, 1960), p. xxxl. Hawthorne's interest in witchcraft is shown in his early journal and in the stories, Seven Tales of My Native Land, which he burned, but which have been briefly described by his sister Elizabeth. "The Devil in Manu script" (1835) tells of an author named Oberon, one of Hawthorne's pen names, who burned his unpublished tales. Oberon speaks of "that conception in which I endeavored to embody the character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written records of witchcraft" (III, 240). The author is horrified at his manuscript which embodied "that dark idea." In an early story, "The Hollow of the Three Hills" (1830), a witch performs, with diabolical aid, a kind of divination of things at a distance. This woman is like the ancient sibyls in that her power comes from outside herself--she invokes the power and it works through her. She is a woman of supernatural powers as she became in the Middle Ages--the ugly witch associated with evil. The story is set in the hollow of three hills, a place that suggests the crossways where three roads meet, where Hecate-Diana performed evil magic in ancient times. In Hawthorne's story this very spot had in older times been the scene of the Witches' Sabbath, where the congregation 178 was baptized in the name of the spirit of evil. The old hag prays "a prayer that was not meant to be heard in heaven" (I, 273). The young woman who consults the hag desires news about her family, whom she has deserted. The witch makes it plain that the information will come from a supernatural source. "Not from my lips may'st thou hear these tidings" (I, 271). The hag's prayer is efficacious, and the young woman sees the plight of the parents she has deserted, the husband who lost his mind as a result of her unfaithfulness, and the child she neglected. The witch here is an agent of retribution, and appears wicked only in her communication with dia bolical powers and in her enjoyment of her work. In "Rappaccini's Daughter," published in 1844 under the title "Writing of Aubepine," Hawthorne creates another woman who belongs to the series that includes Medea, Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam. She is richly beautiful, the Mediterranean type Hawthorne likes to portray as intelligent, vivid, attractive, yet with some taint of evil. She is seen in the old garden where the statue of Vertumnus, a nature deity, crumbles to decay. She presides over an exotic and beautiful but poisonous flower. Her name is that of Dante's heroine, the Blessed One, but one cannot believe In her goodness because she has been impregnated with death. The girl appears good, but she is filled with the poisonous emanation of flowers with which her father experimented. The young man Giovanni is puzzled by the "witchery" surrounding her. La Belle Empoisonneuse finally dies of the antidote she hopes will make her like other mortals. The ambiguity surrounding her character can be seen in an anecdote concerning the writing of the story. When it was not yet finished, Haw thorne read it to his wife, who asked him how the story was to end. She wanted to know whether Beatrice would turn out to be a demon or an angel, and Hawthorne responded, "I have no idea!" (IV, xvi). Poisoning and witchcraft were commonly associated--"Venefica as a stock word for witch tells its own story," Kittredge points out (p. 137). Beatrice suggests the Roman goddess, Flora, in her asso ciation with the flowers and the garden, and she suggests the witchcraft of later times in the fatal aura that surrounds her. A witch who continually obtains power from infernal association is Mother Rigby in "Feathertop." This story was published in 1852, and therefore may be assumed to have been written about the time that Hawthorne was working on his retelling of the Greek myths. The tone is different from that in "The Hollow of the Three Hills," which is sadly serious. There is in "Feathertop" something of the humorous and genial tone Hawthorne adopted in Tangle- wood Tales and A Wonder-Book. Although the witch in this story does nothing evil in the course of the narrative, her pipe is lighted with hell-fire upon request, she is a regular communicant at the Witches' Sabbath, and the fiend is a frequent visitor at her home. The title "Mother" is by no means obligatory in speaking of a witch, and the appellation may have some significance in connec tion with the myths. Mother Ceres is spoken of in "The Pomegranate Seeds" in Tanglewood Tales; she is the mother of the com, a personification of nature and of earth. In witchcraft days there could be no such concept, but the witch, Mother Rigby, is a kind of debased counterpart. She keeps a corn patch, which she wishes to protect with a scarecrow. As she works on her puppet, she conceives the idea of endowing him with life. Here is another example of an image that comes to life, as in the case of the snow image, the great stone face, Drowne's wooden image, and the figure-head of the Argo, all mentioned in various stories of Hawthorne's. Mother Rigby has a 181 familiar who obeys her orders and maintains connections with the lower world. She makes her puppet of odds and ends of broken household articles, using a pumpkin for a head. She takes an affectionate interest in her creation, finally endowing him with life by letting him puff on her pipe, glowing with infernal coals. As he puffs, he comes to life, and greets his creator as "Mother." She Is pleased with him, and sends him forth into the world. In giving him life through fire, she resembles Mother Ceres in "The Pomegranate Seeds," for Ceres sought to give eternal life to Prince Demophoon by placing him in the coals. Though "Feathertop" is told in a rather facetious way, and Mother Rigby freely admits that she is a witch who can perform horrible marvels, there are elements in the story that connect it with the myth of Demeter. Mother Rigby is in a benign mood here, "dulcified" as she is by her pipe, and she uses her powers of creation in a harmless fashion. The treatment of the witch in "The Hollow of the Three Hills," of Beatrice Rappaccini, and of Mother Rigby differs in each case with Hawthorne's artistic purpose. Each story has its own tone. The first two in point of time are serious, while "Feathertop," in spite of 182 allegorical significance, is somewhat humorous. In all three, however, the woman of extraordinary powers is the important element in the story, and her power must be accepted for the purpose of the story. Hawthorne sometimes takes the point of view of the actual believer in witch** craft, even in brief references to the subject. In Fan- shawe (1828) there is an example: "Fifty years ago," thought Edward, "my sweet Ellen would have been deemed a witch for this trackless journey. Truly, I could wish I were a wizard, that I might bestride a broomstick, and follow her." (XVI, 128) In "Young Goodman Brown," as in "Feathertop" and "The Hollow of the Three Hills," witchcraft is treated from the standpoint of those involved in the belief in diabolical association as a reality. And in what is probably the most famous of all Hawthorne's works, The Scarlet Letter, witchcraft, in benign as well as in malignant guise, is part of the background. In The Yellow Ruff and The Scarlet Letter. Alfred S. Reid finds considerable evidence that Hawthorne had the celebrated Overbury murder case in mind when he was in the process of creating The Scarlet Letter. He mentions the case in the novel, and connects Chillingworth with the malignant wizard who was consulted for charms and spells. 183 Anne Turner, who was hanged for her complicity in the murder, is mentioned in connection with Mistress Hibbins, the witch of the novel. The famous Overbury murder arose from the fact that when Lady Frances fell in love with Robert Carr, she wanted to be free from her husband, the Earl of Essex. When Sir Charles Overbury opposed the marriage of Lady Frances and her lover, they conspired to have him imprisoned, and then did him to death by means of black magic, as they believed, and poison. The back ground of adultery and witchcraft in this famous case Reid believes to have influenced the novel. Hawthorne's mention of the case in the novel, which also has references to Dr. Forman and to Anne Turner and their magic art, is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence to support this view. Reid believes that Anne Turner may have influenced the creation of Mistress Hibbins as the fictional witch: Anne Turner is virtually a prototype of Mistress Hibbins. A witch, a trafficker in necromancy, an accessible go-between for persons desiring contact with quacks and pretenders to occult knowledge, a sorceress and a whore herself, and an especial friend to Lady Frances, with whom she had been brought up, Anne Turner became Lady Frances' personal agent in the latter's attempts to induce love in Carr and frigidity 184 13 In Essex. Although the fictional character of Mistress Hibbins may have been created partly from the personality of Anne Turner, there are some important differences between these two "witches." Anne Turner was of "faire visage, for outward behaviour comely" (p. 73). Mistress Hibbins was ill-natured and presumably old, for she was executed a few years after the action of the story, and since she was the governor's sister, it is not likely that she was young. Hawthorne's attitude toward her is that of a believer in witchcraft. The actual Mistress Hibbins, who was hanged for witchcraft in 1656, was a woman of disagreeable disposi tion, which became worse after some financial difficulties of her husband caused worry and discontent. She was censured by the church. Although her papers were examined, and the usual search for physical marks of diabolical association was perpetrated upon her person, nothing was found that substantiated charges of witchcraft. Neverthe less she was sentenced to death by Governor John Endlcott, ^ The Yellow Ruff and The Scarlet Letter (Gainesville, Florida, 1955), p. 73. who appears as the enemy of monarchical tyranny in Haw thorne's "Endicott and the Red Cross" and the destroyer of paganism in "The Maypole of Merry Mount." Her son came from England to assist her, but arrived too late. The Reverend Charles Upham says that she "seems to have been in reality a blameless victim of gossip."^ Some persons regarded her as a saint. Her will, dated a few days after she was sentenced, shows "a calm and serene spirit." She says in the codicil, fty desire is, that all my overseers would be pleased to show so much respect unto my dead corpse as to cause it to be decently interred, and, if it may be, near my late husband, (p. 426) The article in DAB, by James Truslow Adams, includes an explanation for the feeling against her: "The Rev. John Norton said that she was executed because she had 'more wit than her neighbors."' This last suggests the wise woman. If some considered her a saint, as Upham says, she may have given the impression of something preter natural in her personality, which, combined with the "wit and the crabbed disposition, caused her to be suspect in that time and place. ^ History of Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1867), I, 424 186 One critic, writing about The Scarlet Letter. calls Mistress Hibbins "the one inexcusable gaucherie of the book."^ However, if one considers that the romance has its antecedents in the pagan epic, with its use of the supernatural, the presence of Mistress Hibbins is not only understandable, but is of considerable use to the author in bringing out an aspect of the main character, Hester Prynne. Her recognition of Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale and her intuitive but certain knowledge of their visit to the forest, with its pagan and, for Puritans, demonic connections, is significant. Mistress Hibbins addresses Hester familiarly after Hester's visit to Governor Bellingham in Chapter X. "Wilt thou go with us tonight?" she asks, without any prelimi naries, as if Hester knew from experience what she referred to. "There will be a merry company in the forest; and I wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make one" (VI, 166). Hester shows no surprise at being addressed in this way. She calmly smiles and tells Mistress Hibbins to make her excuse to the Black Man, and tell him that she must remain with her *^R. R. Von Abele, Death of the Artist (London, 1955), p. 55. 187 child. The witch says, "We shall have thee there anon!" If Hester is not a witch, she is recognized as having an aptitude for witchcraft. Mistress Hibbins regards her as a promising recruit. The incident Hawthorne qualifies with the words ". . . it is averred ..." and the sug gestion that the interview was a "parable" (VI, 166). But the presence of Mistress Hibbins, as well as the mention of the Overbury case involving witchcraft, emphasizes the mythic nature of Hester, which has been suggested by various commentators. Lewis Mumford says: Hester need not forfeit her own existence to become the creative spirit itself, breaking away from the Puritanical bond, unsatisfied 9 * 1 union with Transcendentalism.x Mark Van Doren sees the larger implications of Hester's personality: "... Hester becomes a heroine, almost a goddess, into whom the character of every other woman in Hawthorne flows.The pagan goddess is suggested by Richard Chase: Hester Prynne, about whom there is something queenly, imperious, and barbaric, as well as fallible ly the temporary ^ The Golden Day (New York, 1926), p. 140. ^Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1949), p. 147. 188 and appealing and enduring, represents the eternal woman, perhaps, Indeed, the eternal human. The words "barbaric" and "eternal" imply a pagan manifesta tion of a force of nature. A rich earthliness is implicit in the description of Hester, who, like Zenobia, is tall and larger than the average woman. She is dark, with black eyes, like the eyes of Medea, and with abundant dark hair. The dignity of her deportment is dwelt upon. "She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic,--a taste for the gorgeously beautiful. . ." (VI, 118). Chapter XVIII is entitled "A Flood of Sun shine," and sunshine is commonly associated in Hawthorne's works with Arcadia and the Golden Age, as, for example, Sunshine is the name of the wine Bacchus himself was believed to have brought to Monte Beni in The Marble Faun. In the forest, which in pagan times was peopled by fauns, satyrs, numphs, dryads, and Pan himself, Hester and Dim- mesdale plan an escape from Puritan rule. She feels free from the restraint of Puritan teaching. Hawthorne does not condone her views, but he sympathizes with her, although she has become pagan: ^ The American Novel and Its Tradition (Garden City, N. Y., 1956), p. 77. 189 For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. (VI, 288-9) The seven-years-tortured Dimmesdale responds to her spell in the forest, and expresses himself strangely. "Do I feel joy again?" he cries. "Oh, Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained, and sorrow- blackened- -down upon these forest leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did we not find it sooner?" (VI, 292) The entire passage shows Nature sympathetic to this pair. Sunshine floods the forest as Hester shakes down her abundant hair. In two very familiar pagan classics, the streaming hair of the priestess or witch accompanies the working of a spell. In the Aeneid, Book IV Round about are altars, Where, with her hair unbound, the priestess calls On thrice a hundred gods, Erebus, Chaos, Hecate, queen of Hell, triple Diana.^ In Ovid's Metamorphoses. when Medea worked magic with the herbs "that did renew old Aeson," she moved about the *^Tr. Rolfe Humphries (New York, 1953), p. 105. 190 flaming altars "with streaming hair after the manner of 20 the Bacchantes." Hawthorne comments on the forest scene: Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! (VI, 294) D. H. Lawrence, enraged at Hester's magnificence, calls her a demon and a witch, the Magna Mater, Mary of the Bleeding Heart, Mater Adolerata, and Magdalen. He acknowledges in his curiously assorted epithets a syncre- tistic goddess-witch-saint in the character of Hester Prynne.^ Hester is able to support herself and her child because of her extraordinary skill in needlework in an age when all women had to sew. She was sought after to embroider the finest garments worn on ceremonial occasions. In the old myths, women with unusual skill, like Arachne, vie with the goddesses. Hester also has a garden, which keeps her in touch with earth. She ministers to the sick, 20 Tr. Frank Justus Miller (London, 1916), I, 361. 21 Studies in Classic American Literature (New York, 1953), pp. 98-99. 191 performing the ancient function of the wise woman. In speaking of her Sister of Mercy role, Lawrence says, "But it's a long time before she really takes anybody in. People keep on thinking her a witch, which she was" (p. 102). At one time she recognized in herself qualities that would make her a prophetess of a new religion--little Pearl prevented her, and also her sin and sorrow. Other wise, Hawthorne says, . . . she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Anne Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. (VI, 237) Anne Hutchinson interested Hawthorne sufficiently for him to write a brief biographical sketch. He pictures her as an extraordinary woman, of powerful mind and imagination. Like Hawthorne's Medea, Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam, she is dark. His attitude toward all these women is a blend of admiration and disapproval. Mrs. Hutchinson was an Antinomian who disquieted the peace of the church and engaged in disputations with the reverend clergy. Hawthorne pictures a scene where she holds forth: She stands loftily before her judges with a deter mined brow; and, unknown to herself, there is a flash of carnal pride half hidden in her eye, as she surveys the many learned and famous men whom her doctrines have put in fear. They question her; and her answers 192 are ready and acute: she reasons with them shrewdly, and brings Scripture In support of every argument. The deepest controversialists of that scholastic day find here a woman, whom all their trained and sharpened Intellects are Inadequate to foil. (XVII, 10) She claimed an "Indwelling of the Holy Ghost," and felt qualified to distinguish between true and false shepherds of the people. She is a type of woman for whom the more important Christian sects have no place. In accordance with the dictum of St. Paul, women are silent in the temple. In linking Hester Prynne with Mrs. Hutchinson, Hawthorne brings out, in addition to her other gifts, her intelligence and her unusual spiritual qualities. Some critics have found in Hester a discordant note of the theme of women's rights, popular in Hawthorne’s own day; but Hester belongs to the remote past as well as to the future, as is seen in the mythical elements of her personality. She becomes, at the end of the book, a counselor to whom women come with their problems. There is nothing "new" about this function--it is one of the activities of the witch or wise woman. Dr. Margaret Murray says, "In practice it seems that women-witches were most frequently consulted on personal matters, men-witches 193 77 on affairs of political importance.' A note of the supernatural in connection with Hester is suggested, as in the forest scene, when Hester returns to her cottage by the sea. As she reached the door, "either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments. . ." (VI, 378). The motherhood of Hester is of great importance to the romance. Throughout the book she is a mother, and she holds her infant in the hours of her public humiliation. Even then, she symbolizes motherhood: Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so pictur esque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent. . . . (VI, 78) Without minimizing the seriousness of her sin, Hawthorne brings out the beauty of the motherhood that she represents. Hester's child could have been a boy, but Hawthorne chose to have the child a girl, and a girl who belongs to the same type as her mother--black-haired, black-eyed, and with overtones of pagan preternaturalism. Hawthorne calls 7 7 The God of the Witches (London, n.d.), p. 146. Pearl "a lovely and Immortal flower" (VI, 125). She is a beautiful child, perfect in shape, and graceful and vigorous in her activity. She has a wild freedom in her deportment that makes her mother wonder "whether Pearl were a human child" (p. 129). When expressing her rage against the Puritan children, Pearl's shrill exclamations "made her mother tremble because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue" (p. 133). Many times Pearl is referred to as elfish or demonic. When Hester tells her that she was sent by her Heavenly Father, Pearl replies, "'He did not send me! . . . I have no Heavenly Father!'" (p. 139). The towns folk, not knowing her paternity, sometimes thought her a demon offspring. Governor Bellingham sees in her a resemblance to the children of the Lord of Misrule in the court masks, presented in holiday time in England, and really descended from the Roman Saturnalia. One of the ministers comments on her swift and graceful movements: '"The little baggage had witchcraft in her. . . . She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal!'" (p. 165). Old Mistress Hibbins tells her she is of the "lineage of the Prince of the Air" (p. 351). St. Paul says in Ephesians II, ii, ". . .ye walked according to the 195 courses of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the chil dren of disobedience." But it is not only in terms of witchcraft and diabolical association that Pearl is described. In the scene in the forest where Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale are together, Pearl is at home in the forest, which is friendly to her. The partridge, the fox, even the wolf, are gentle and unafraid of her. The flowers "whispered as she passed, 'Adorn thyself with me!'" (p. 297). Decked with flowers she appears, not a witch-child, but "a nymph child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood" (p. 297). She belongs to the pagan forest, and to the Golden Age mentioned in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," and to the Arcadia Hawthorne was to deal with at length in The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun. The con flict with Puritanism is clear in the forest scene. Her clergyman father is across the brook, and her mother calls to her to come. The brook separates two worlds here, the Puritan and the pagan. "I have a strange fancy," observed the sensitive minister, "that this brook is the boundary between two worlds. ... Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is for bidden to cross a running stream?" (pp. 301-302) 196 There Is a situation here like that in the fourteenth century poem, The Pearl, with the most curious inversion of meaning. In The Pearl, the beautiful child, adorned with pearls and other jewels, is in paradise, while her father, bound by earthly life, cannot .ioss the stream to come to her. The stream represents death, which alone can join them. The child gives her father instruction on the heavenly life. Like the other unhappy father, Dim- roesdale is separated from his child. She appears, across the stream, adorned with flowers. Her mother says, "Dost thou not think her beautiful? . . . Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies, in the wood, they could not have become her better" (p. 298). But Pearl, the elf-child, represents earthly ties, while her father i8 connected with heavenly truth. She rejects her father in this scene, washing away his kiss in the stream. On one occasion little Pearl asks her mother whether she has seen the Black Man, the usual New England name for the devil, and Hester finally replies that she met him once, and that the scarlet letter is his symbol. On the day of the gloomy New England holiday, when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale is apotheosized, Hester and Pearl meet Mistress Hibbins again. The true witch, who died for 197 her faith, so to speak, expresses her surprise that the minister had been to the forest: "Many a church member saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced In the same measure with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, It might be, an Indian powwow or Lapland wizard changing hands with us! That Is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister!" (p. 350) The witch Is astonished that the minister, who has attained a very high place In the community as a spiritual leader, Is really a follower of the Black Man. Young Goodman Brown, In an earlier story, makes a similar discovery. In the church, the Reverend Mr. Dlmmesdale preaches with unexampled eloquence and spiritual exaltation, while outside, by the scaffold, and hearing him, are Hester and little Pearl. He prophesies a great future for the com munity, which regards him with the greatest veneration. It is significant that Hester and her child cannot enter the church, for they belong to a different dispensation. Although she Is the frustrated prophetess of a new revela tion, she belongs also to the pagan past, as the various aspects of her mind and character Indicate. Richard Harter Fogle speaks of the "deep subterranean power" of Puritan demonology as it appears in The Scarlet Letter and its psychological meaning. "This use of the past 198 merges Into a deep-seated ambiguity of moral meaning. The ambiguity comes from the divided sympathy of the author, who admires Hester's large, creative, warm, loving earthllness and at the same time feels that there Is a higher spirituality against which she sinned. There is something right about Hester, the sinner and outcast. There are rich ambiguities in her character, as there are in his other women who have "witch-like" elements. In the witch created in his last years, when his powers were failing, Hawthorne combines the demonology of the European immigrants with the magic of the aboriginal inhabitants of the American forest. Aunt Keziah, in Septimius Felton, is a descendant of sachems and powwows of ancient times. Her great-grandfather had been hanged as a wizard in the days of the witchcraft trials--the action of Septimius Felton, or The Elixir of Life, taking place in Revolutionary times. She speaks of her ancestor the great sachem, who had eternal earthly existence until, by general agreement, in which he concurred, he was done away with by violence, the only way he could die. Aunt ^ Hawthorne1 s Fiction: The Light and the Park (Norman, Oklahoma, 1952), p. 117. 199 Keziah has a witch brew Inherited from the sachem, except that one Indispensable Ingredient Is missing. In Its place Aunt Keziah supplies, faute de mieux. the white man's rum, and she makes herself "comfortable and jolly" by taking frequent doses of the mixture (XIV, 181). The old sachem, "royal, wise, and warlike," was a great leader of his people. He was so old that he could remember the distant past, which had been a kind of Golden Age, "the days of godlike men, who had arts then forgotten" (p. 182). Besides wisdom and goodness he had the art of foretelling the future. The great sagamore seems, in the account of Aunt Keziah, to have been thoroughly good. In speaking of the elixir of life that the sachem left as a legacy, Haw thorne has a note suggesting ways in which he might have completed this passage, the book being an unfinished work: "Perhaps the Devil taught him the drink, or else the Great Spirit,--doubtful which" (p. 184). This is like the indecision expressed during the writing of "Rappaccini's Daughter," and shows an ambiguity of good and evil, as in The Scarlet Letter and other works where goodness is ascribed to pagans. Aunt Keziah is an inferior creation, a poor old drunken, part-Indian witch without a vocation. Hawthorne combines in this story the European and Indian magic traditions, using the formula that was said to have come from Friar Bacon, and identifying it with that which Aunt Keziah received from the great sachem. The story is wearily told, reflecting Hawthorne's Illness, but it is Indicative of an enduring and important strain in his thinking that he combines in this creation of his last years the traditions of European and native Indian pagan ism. Aunt Keziah is an unworthy descendant of a noble paganism, which Hawthorne refers to in "Main Street," recalling the time when "the Great Squaw Sachem, and the Sagamore her son, once ruled over this region, and treated as sovereign potentates with the English settlers. . (Ill, 96). He mentions the Great Squaw Sachem several times, and she is a reminder that the Indians were a primitive people with a matrilineal descent of power among their rulers. From the witch in "The Hollow of the Three Hills" to Aunt Keziah in Septimius Felton, that is, from 1830 or before until the period 1860-63, Hawthorne was inter ested in the woman of extraordinary powers, or at least the woman who believed herself to have, and persuaded others that she had, such powers. In the works of his best period--1850-1852--Mother Rigby of "Feathertop" is 201 an original creation, being the witch of Puritan tiroes with suggestions of earlier goddesses. Medea and Circe engaged his attention. Mistress Hibbins, Hester Prynne and little Pearl, Zenobia, and Priscilla the Sibyl have, each in her own way, elements of witchcraft and of the older mythic attributes. Later, in The Marble Faun of 1859 Miriam is regarded by Donatello as a nymph of Arcadia, and she has obvious resemblances to other female characters mentioned in this connection. The ambiguity arising from a great appreciation of whatever is good and beautiful in earthly paganism, and at the same time a high regard for spirit uality as it was transmitted to him through the Puritan tradition, is apparent in his treatment of these female characters, who in various ways present aspects of the Earth Mother, sibyl, goddess, nymph, and witch. CHAPTER V "MY KINSMAN, MAJOR MOLINEUX," "YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN," AND THE WITCHES' SABBATH In "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and in "Young Goodman Brown" there exist easily recognizable mythic elements transformed by Christian belief and modified to accord with a New England setting. Aspects of myth in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" have been noticed by commentators, and the climactic scene of this story and that of "Young Goodman Brown" will be shown to have similarities to each other, as well as to ancient pagan ceremonies. The introductory paragraph of "tty Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832) gives briefly the historical background of the story, which is brought into vague conjunction with the particular history of the young man and his prominent relative. The Major is a man of high rank, appointed by the king, and he partakes, therefore, of the nature of kingship. His appearance is majestic. The exact cause of his unpopularity and downfall is not explained. The 202 203 reader, like Robin, the young country cousin, is led by one incident after another to an eventual understanding of the tragedy of the Major. Robin undergoes an initiation into the life of the world, coining as he does from the innocence of his country home, and he learns in a ter rifying public demonstration. Richard Chase finds that in the practice of the so- called myth critics . . . there is only one myth--namely, the death and rebirth of a god. . . . The characteristic American form of the mythic archetype is thought to be the fall from innocence and the initiation into life-- an action of the soul that entails a symbolic dying and rebirth.* There is present in this story the fall from innocence and an initiation into life. There is also, in a sense, the dethroning of a king and an implied elevation of a suc cessor, which has been remarked in Hawthorne1s Tragic Vision: All those who had previously made sport of the youth join in the monstrous procession, weirdly reminiscent of the primitive rites proclaiming the violent over throw of an old priest-king. ^The American Novel and Its Tradition (New York, 1957), p. 244. 2Roy R. Male (Austin, 1957), p. 52. 204 Mrs. Q. D. Leavis is struck with Hawthorne's ability to reach back into the past and divine the birth of tragedy by the sheer power of his imagination: But Hawthorne has by some inspiration--for how could he know except Intuitively of the origin of tragedy in ritual drama?--gone back to the type of action that fathered tragedy. ... We seem to be specta tors at that most primitive of all dramatic repre sentations, the conquest of the old king by the new. The supernatural element in the story accompanies and emphasizes what critics recognize as mythic and primitive. There is a mysterious character acting as leader of the mob, and his presence there is not accidental nor without significance. He was ill-favored: His features were separately striking almost to grotesqueness, and the whole face left a deep impression on the memory. The forehead bulged out into a double prominence, with a vale between; the nose came boldly forth in an irregular curve, and its bridge was of more than a finger's breadth; the eyebrows were deep and shaggy, and the eyes glowed beneath them like fire in a cave. (Ill, 300) This personage leads the frenzied crowd in its attack on Major Molineux. Hawthorne does not name him, but his identity is clear from the description: ^"Hawthorne as Poet," Sewanee Review. 59:179-205 and 426-458, Spring and Summer, 1951. 205 One side of the face blazed an intense red, while the other was black as midnight, the division line being in the broad bridge of the nose; and a mouth which seemed to extend from ear to ear was black or red, in contrast to the color of the cheek. The effect was as if two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage. (Ill, 310*11) His ubiquitousness and his ability to disappear quickly add to his preternaturalism. The two-colored face is unusual in portrayals of Satan, although Dante represents him as having a varicolored face, or rather as having three faces, one red, one black, and one yellow (Inferno. Canto XXXIV), the colors mentioned by Hawthorne, and one besides. The two-toned visage is mentioned in the descrip tion of a god of the underworld, Anubis, a chthonic deity of ancient Egypt. In The Golden Ass of Apuleius he appears as . . . the frightening messenger of the gods of Heaven, and of the gods of the dead: Anubis, with a face black on one side, golden on the other, walking erect and holding his herald's wand in one hand, and in the other a green palm. The story is to be understood on a realistic and political level, but the ritualistic element is important; the procession is one--and actually the first, since this ^Tr. Robert Graves (New York, 1952), p. 244. 206 is an early story--of several of Hawthorne's scenes of large public gatherings which, for all their differences, contain elements of pagan ceremonials. There are the Witches' Sabbath In "Young Goodman Brown," the Election Day procession in The Scarlet Letter, the masquerade in The Blithedale Romance, and the Mardi-Gras in The Marble Faun, in addition to the nature celebration in "The Maypole of Merry Mount." The entire atmosphere of the riot scene, taking place as it does in intermittent moonlight and the fitful flare of torches, is fantastic, and has touches of the super natural. The bewildering noises of trumpets and the wild shouts of the multitude emphasize the strangeness of the atmosphere. The two levels of realism and supernaturalism are mingled to produce the feeling of bewilderment the reader experiences along with the young newcomer to the city. The youth yields to the spell of wicked enchantment and excitement, and laughs with the fiendish mob at the miserable old man, who was "of large and majestic person" and "pale as death." The horrible ceremony of tar and feathers, centuries old in England, must have been a popular manifestion of public wrath in New England, and was probably the only 207 occasion on which unrestrained and wild excitement could be indulged in publicly. In Whittier's "Skipper Ireson's Ride" the lawless action of a mob that also tars and feathers a victim and parades him in a cart is given a similar pagan tone by the comparison of the Marblehead women to Maenads, and the victim, Floyd Ireson, to "an Indian idol, glum and grim." In both the poem and the story the lawless violence of New Englanders is given a kind of universality by bringing out the pagan aspect of the event. Hawthorne emphasizes the similarity to the death of a king: When there was a momentary calm in that tempestuous sea of sound, the leader gave the sign, the procession resumed its inarch. On they went, like fiends that throng in mockery around some dead potentate, might no more, but majestic still in his agony. (Ill, 325) Led by the man with the red and black visage, "with two great bumps on his forehead" (III, 318), the crowd is in a state of wild, Bacchanalian excitement. Even Robin, cousin of the victim, is seized by a "mental inebriety" that succeeds his first reaction of pity and terror. In the tarred and feathered victim may be seen a similarity to the character in the dramas of the Wild Man of the Middle Ages, and the "Salvage Man" Hawthorne mentions in 208 "The Maypole of Merry Mount"--"hairy as a baboon," and girdled and crowned with green leaves. He is a vestige of the sylvan deities of the pagan past, the fauns and satyrs discredited by Christianity. This procession has elements of the old ritualistic processions of paganism and even of Catholicism in Italy and Spain. To the New Englanders both kinds of celebration would be forbidden, but the event in which a similar release of emotion was permissible can be seen in this type of punishment. Robin, like the citizens of the town, participates in the ceremonial led by the horned man with the varie gated visage. The tendency of all humanity to follow his leadership, only implied in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," is strongly brought out in "Young Goodman Brown." Here one finds Hawthorne's only presentation of the Witches' Sabbath in the forest, which he mentions frequently in other works. (At witch trials, meetings with Satan in the forest, where witches signed their names in blood In a big book, were described in detail.) A certain uni formity in the accounts was achieved by the leading questions of the inquisitors, who elicited the desired responses by means of torture. The origin of the idea of the Witches' Sabbath is difficult to determine, though 209 several elements contribute to its invention. Professor Kittredge says of witchcraft itself, The Englishman of the sixteenth and seventeenth century did not excogitate or dream it for himself, or borrow it from the continent, or learn it from his spiritual advisers. He Inherited it in an unbroken line from his primeval ancestors.^ But the notion of the Witches' Sabbath he considers to have come from another source: The idea of a Sabbath of Witches was neither ancient nor of popular origin. It was mere transference. What was already established in the inquisitorial mind with regard to the Satanic Synagogue of the Cathari was shifted, as a matter of logical course, to the alleged assemblies of the heretical sect, the devotees of witchcraft. The process was complete by the early fifteenth century, (p. 246) The Witches' Sabbath, Professor Kittredge insists, was not at home on English soil, but was, rather, an importation; and he discounts the idea that English witches were keeping alive a pagan ritual handed down from pre-Christian times. In this view he is at variance with Dr. Margaret Murray; recent writers on the subject have a difference of opinion concerning her explanations, which are made from the point of view of the anthropologist rather than that of the ^George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, 1929), p. 5. 210 historian. Ian Ferguson, in his Philosophy of Witchcraft, favors Miss Murray's view: Miss Murray in an admirable article (Folklore. Vol. xxxviii No. 3) has summarized the edicts of the early period denouncing the illusions of women who state that they fly by night and prohibiting wearing of skins at the calends of January and forbidding the worship of wells and trees. In the twelfth century John of Salisbury mentions the witches' sabbaths, , or assemblies of worshippers of the ancient faith. Although H. C. Lea's Materials toward a History of Witch craft has a vast preponderance of Information originating on the Continent, his book contains several items that tend to support Miss Murray's view. William of Newburgh (c. 1130) tells of a nocturnal gathering in a mound in the East Riding of Yorkshire.^ Lea mentions that he has collected accounts from Walter Mapes that tell of mysteri ous nightly meetings, one of which was attended by the British king Herla, who was condemned to ride about in the upper air like the Host of Woden. Many Welshmen saw this host of Herla finally disappear into the River Wye in 1154 (p. 174). John of Salisbury (1156-9) and Gervais of Tilbury (c. 1218) mention night flights and evil meetings. ^(New York, 1925), p. 50. ^(New York, 1957), p. 170. 211 Gervals says, "Many, indeed, have experienced and have heard from experts worthy of all faith that they have seen Sylvans and Pans, whom they call Incubi and the Gauls Dusii" (Lea, p. 173). He accepts the reality of night flights, whereas John of Salisbury believes them to be delusions. These British sources indicate that the idea of night flights of a supernatural kind might be indige nous, and might be connected with pagan beliefs. In the legends of Robin Hood there Is another pos sibility of the persistence of beliefs in meetings in the forest. There must have been in England a kind of celebration In honor of Robin Hood, who is thought by some to have a connection with the god Woden. As late as 1549 Bishop Hugh Latimer complains that the church where he came to preach was empty because the congregation was out observing Robin Hood's day: Bishop Latimer came to a certain town to preach and found the church locked. One of the parish told him they could not hear him, for it was Robin Hood's day. "I thought my rochet would have been regarded; but it would not serve, it would faine give place to Robin Hood's men."® ®Joseph Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (London, 1855), p. 354. 212 Robin Hood's green clothing and forest habitat are appro priate to a sylvan character. The difficulty that exists in finding a historical nucleus may arise from the mythical nature of his origin. His murder by a prioress, as the ballad tells the story, may have been related to an effort to eradicate paganism. The material Hawthorne draws from Strutt*8 description of old English pastimes Includes references to the green man, and to mummers, who were often dressed as Robin Hoods and Maid Marians. Such items, in addition to the fairies, elves, goblins, and other characters common in English folklore, show that there is a good possibility of a continuous tradition in England of al fresco meetings of a kind that might have been converted to the notion of a Witches' Sabbath under the persecution of the Christian clergy. Hugh Latimer's indignation suggests a motive for attempting to counteract this kind of activity. In the innumerable accounts of witch trials the name of the goddess Diana is frequently mentioned. Why she more than other goddesses of classical mythology may be explained partly by the fact that she is mentioned in the Bible as having great power. Silversmiths of Ephesus feared a loss of the income they derived from making 213 Images of her: So Chat not only this our craft Is In danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshlppeth. And when they heard these savings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion. (The Acts, 19:27, 28, 29) The reference to her in the Scripture may have given her a longer life in the imaginations of Christendom than she would otherwise have had. Since she had three aspects, heavenly, earthly, and underground, her chthonic aspect as Hecate was easily converted to evil associations, even in classical times. Medea Invoked her aid. As goddess of the lower world, it is she to whom the Sibyl sacrificed four black bulls when Aeneas sought entrance to Hades. Her appearance at the nocturnal Witches' Sabbath is appropriate because of ancient associations. It has the sanction, if the word is permissible, of old usage. That she was brought into Macbeth shows that she was commonly regarded as leader of the witches. In the Canon Episcopi (c. 906) of unknown authorship, Diana is mentioned as being worshiped at alleged night Sabbaths attended by witches. She is the only classical divinity mentioned, 214 and the night meetings were said In this document to be not real, but phantasms and delusions (Lea, p. 179). Some Inquisitors followed the opinions set forth in the Canon Episcopi, but held that the delusion was in itself the result of sin; others thought that the meetings were real, and that sometimes the woman attending it fell from the sky on the way home, falling into a river or Into the fields. Some believed that the woman really attended the meetings, and that what seemed to be her body sleeping in bed was actually a demon taking her form. During the ninth and tenth centuries the belief in night flights with the devil and Diana was regarded as delusion, and believers in such possibilities were sometimes pun ished. Charlemagne punished belief in witches. It was later, under the influence of scholasticism and the Inquisition that the reality of witchcraft and of night flights to meetings became official doctrine. H. C. Lea did not live to organize and write his history of witchcraft, and his editor presents his col lection of materials, some of which have comments made by Lea as he collected them. Many different opinions are represented in this three-volume work. On the subject of the pagan origin of the Witches' Sabbath Lea mentions 215 Le Loyer's derivation of the Sabbat from the Dlonyaiaca, originally attributed to Orpheus, where Bacchus held the place now occupied by the devil In the Sabbat, all the customs In which are by Le Loyer drawn from those of the Orpheotelestes. (p. 689) One of the most recent writers quoted by Lea is Salomon Reinach, who recognizes the pagan origins of beliefs still held in the twentieth century, beliefs connected with the practice of witchcraft in many instances: Sylphes, gnomes, feux-follets, farfadets, nains, crions, poulpiquest, fees, loups-garous, etc., sont antant de souvenirs vivants du passd*celtique et m€m preceltique. . . . Les pierres, les sources, les anlmaux ont leurs legendes, parfois penetrees d'elements chrdtiens, mais dont le fond palen reste reconnaissable. ... Le polyddmonlsme Gaule est touJours vivace, parcequ'll a poussd des racines profondes dans notre sol. (from Orpheus; Lea, pp. 1547-1548) The roots were deep in English soil also, although some what different in their origin from those of France. The Druids, the Teutonic gods, Roman mythology, and possibly Mithraism, all contributed to the folk beliefs of England, and too strict a reliance on written records tends to cause a minimizing of the importance of the remains of these beliefs. Writing was done in courts and monasteries, and there are many evidences besides written records that need to be considered. A writer who has studied other 216 sources says of the Witches' Sabbath: There is a close suggestion of the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia of the ancients, of which, indeed, the Sabbath appears to be a continuation, although in a shadowy and degraded form.^ In his treatment of the Witches' Sabbath, Hawthorne accepts and rejects traditional elements at will, and to some degree in compliance with the somewhat Puritanical requirements of nineteenth century writing, which would cause him to eliminate the more indecent aspects of this event as described in many records of witch trials. In "Young Goodman Brown" the Witches' Sabbath is presented as a religious ceremony of an evil kind, and this accords with the tradition perpetuated by the witch trials. Kittredge says: The Witches' Sabbath in its developed form is a combined religious service and business meeting followed by a debauch of feasting, dancing, and wild lust. Satan is visibly present--as a man, or monster, or huge demoniac goat,--to receive homage as a feudal lord and worship as a deity. . . . (p. 243) Since there is no Scriptural warrant for the conception of Satan as a goat, the idea that he was in the habit of assuming this shape may well have come from the old worship Q Grillot de Givry, A Pictorial Anthology of Witchcraft. Magic. and Alchemy (New York, 1958), p. 77. 217 of a horned god. Since he is a god transformed into a demon, he might be thought of as the Bad Sacred. The Witches' Sabbath is a composite made up of the elements almost universally thought to be requisite to a ceremony of worship--there is an altar, a god present in some form, either in animal or human manifestation, a congregation, and a ritual. In the Middle Ages the rise of heretical sects, the Cathars, the Luciferans, the Bogomils, and others, caused the orthodox to entertain suspicions of evil ceremonies connected with proscribed secret worship, and the imaginary rites attributed to heretics perhaps became a part of the composite ritual associated with Satan's church, as Kittredge said. People unacquainted with a religion have sometimes tended to attribute dread ful practices to it, reasoning, no doubt, that since their own religion was right and good, another religion must be evil. Another element contributing to the notion of the Witches' Sabbath was the Black Mass, a rebellious and blasphemous inversion of Christian ritual. The close resemblance of the Witches' Sabbath to Christian ritual is obvious. Michelet points out that the Witches' Sabbath, in imitating features of Christian religious ceremonies, takes 218 some elements that had been used in pre-Christian religious celebrations: The superb Introit Christianity borrowed of antiquity, --usual in all ceremonies where the people wound in and out in long-drawn file under the temple colon nades, before entering the sanctuary,--this the ancient god, come back to his own again, appropriated for his services. Similarly, the lavabo was copied from the old Pagan rites of purification. All this Satan claimed as his own by right of ancient use.^ Michelet speaks of the Black Mass, developed in the four teenth century, as being related in some of its aspects and purposes to the Witches' Sabbath. In the Black Mass there is not merely a desire to gain supernatural power or to partake of pleasures and benefits denied by the Church, but there is a wish to rebel, to blaspheme, to invert the Holy Sacrament, to insult religion. Fraternity of man with man, defiance of the Christians' heaven, worship of Nature's God under unnatural and perverted forms,--such the inner significance of the Black Mass. (p. 121) Michelet believes in the reality of forest meetings in which a natural desire for pleasure was released by people who met at night for feasting and dancing that were ^Jules Michelet, Satanism and Witchcraft, tr. A. R. Allison (New York, 1939), p. 122. 219 denied them in the daytime. These secret meetings were a rebellion against the denial of Nature that prevailed under the religious government of the time. What the reality was can never be known from written records because of the illegal nature of the gatherings. When the Inquisition began to keep records of trials, a pattern for the Witches' Sabbath was established that agrees in the main in all countries in which the persecution of witches became widespread. About 1600 the Spanish Jesuit Martin del Rio's Disquisitiones Magicae describes a Sabbath in connection with an Auto-da-Fe of LogroT>o: At the banquet, for first course, they eat children, hashed; for the second, dead wizards' flesh. Satan, who understands his guests' little ways, conducts the company to the door, holding as a candle the arm of a child who has died unbaptized, etc., etc. (p. 342) This is Michelet's paraphrase of Del Rio. There is some variety in the details of the Sabbaths, but the main events are the same. Hawthorne's ceremonial in "Young Goodman Brown" dissipates before the orgiastic phase, and so is a comparatively sedate and rather Puri tanical affair. There is no feasting of any kind, and sexual license, usual in the last phase of the event, is not even suggested. Hawthorne uses the ceremony in his 220 original way, as Goethe adapted the traditional material to suit his purpose in the Walpurgisnacht scene in Faust. Since the Witches' Sabbath occurred usually at night, and the devil appeared as a black man, a black goat, or other black beast, it is not unreasonable to suppose that this celebration has some connection with the ancient worship of chthonic deities, gods of the under world and of death, to whom black animals were sacrificed in nocturnal rites. The psychological connection is obvious, since darkness, evil, and death have always been closely associated in man's fears, and the powers con trolling these things were believed to desire propitiation, sacrifice, and worship. Kittredge thinks that the first trace of the Witches' Sabbath in any English case appears in the trial of the Lancashire witches in 1612 (p. 265). He depends for his information on the records of witch trials, and while such records are a reliable source, there is no need to assume that belief in the Sabbath did not exist before the trials. The trial of 1612 describes the witch meeting as a modest affair. In a trial of 1665 in Somerset the account stresses the festive aspect of the occasion: 221 The devil was there in the form of a man in black, and received their homage. "They had Wine, Cakes, and Roast meat (all brought by the man in black) which they did eat and drink. They danced and were merry." (p. 274) Scott believed that the Witches' Sabbath as described in Scottish trials was similar to that of England. The modern reader of the trial records must wonder what, if any, reality was behind the idea of nocturnal meetings with Satan. Were there real meetings in which partici pants believed they had seen Satan in some aspect? Scott tried earnestly to find explanations for the situation, and he believed that in many cases physical and mental illnesses of a variety of kinds caused people to believe dreams and hallucinations of such meetings. The procedures of witch trials were such that truth could not be arrived at. The accused were tortured into confessions of what ever the inquisitors desired them to confess, and anyone who did not believe in witchcraft was ipso facto a witch. But there is a persistent idea of a goetic life, con ducted in secret for fear of persecution, and therefore difficult to investigate. There were undoubtedly those who believed themselves to be witches and who practiced what was known as witchcraft: 222 The evidence is suspect throughout, yet when because of that suspicion all is rejected, some episode like that of Gilles de Rais or of Mne. de Montespan exhibits suddenly the undoubted fact that there was a tradition and an operation of the most perverse kind; that in all classes of society demands were made upon hell. Whether devils were seen may be doubtful; that devils were invoked cannot be. 1 Gilles de Rais, a noble and a marshal of France who fought beside Joan of Arc, confessed to six score ritual murders a year, and after a confession of incredible horrors, was hanged for witchcraft in 1440. He had been threatened with torture before his confession, but it is generally believed that at least some of the crimes he claimed to have committed were proved by evidence. He may have been the prototype of Bluebeard, and if the record of his con fession is believed even with some reservations, he was the most horrible of all known practitioners of witch craft. The uncovering of such a case as his gave great impetus to the persecution of witches, which took on a certain uniformity and system after the publication (c. 1490) of the inquisitors' handbook, the Malleus Maleficar- um, a book that caused the torture and death of thousands of innocent victims. ^Charles Williams, Witchcraft (New York, 1959), p. 153. 223 The uniformity of the concept of the Witches' Sabbath is explained by Lea on the basis of the uniformity of the methods of the inquisitors. The trials as begun by the Roman Catholic inquisitors were continued by Protestant nations after the Reformation with no abatement of zeal. John Calvin enthusiastically added new tortures. From February 17 to May 15, 1545, there were thirty-four exe cutions in Geneva (Lea, p. 1118). The witchcraft trials of Western Europe were a unique phenomenon, carried on by the Roman Catholic church and by Protestant churches derived from it. Under the Eastern Church in the Slavic nations there was no such organized prosecution, although witchcraft is a universal practice (Lea, p. 1120). From Italy to Massachusetts there is general agreement on the main events of the Sabbath. Celebrants renounce God and swear fidelity to the demon. They go to the meeting on foot if it is in the neighborhood; otherwise they are transported by demonic power. Young Goodman Brown starts out on foot, since he is in the neighborhood, though many of the congregation, who come from many places, travel to the meeting by air. The Black Man, mentioned in the New England trials and referred to by Hawthorne on many occasions, is the 224 traditional name of the Devil in New England, as it was in Old England. Washington Irving in "The Devil and Tom Walker" uses the conventional Black Man for his Devil, a black man not a Negro nor an Indian, whose face is dark as if with soot from a forge. He has red eyes. A black dog is the devil's disguise in a description of a Witches' Sabbath with which Hawthorne was also familiar--Burns 1s "Tam O'Shanter!" There sat Auld Nick in shape o' beast; A tousle tyke black, grim, and large. The ability of the Devil to change his shape was one of his chief characteristics; and this remnant of paganism, metamorphosis, is seen in many accounts of the devil in Western literature. Marlowe's Mephistophilis is dis agreeable to Dr. Faustus in his devilish aspect, and so Faustus says: 1 charge thee to return and change thy shape; Thou art too ugly to attend on me. Go, and return an old Franciscan friar; That holy shape becomes a devil best. Act I, Scene lii Hawthorne was to present the Evil Principle as a Capuchin in The Marble Faun, and the Capuchins are an austere branch of the Franciscan order. 225 In "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" the devil has horns and a face of two colors. His eyes are fiery. But in "Young Goodman Brown" Hawthorne makes a more subtle choice of the manifestation of the Devil, for here he appears in the likeness of Goodman Brown's father, a man about fifty years old, "in grave and decent attire." He has an air of worldly experience about him, as if he would be at home in any company. He has a staff wrought like a snake, which suggests his pagan connection, since Hawthorne says that the staff was once loaned to the Egyptian magi. The devil gives it to Goody Cloyse to assist her in traveling to the meeting. By making the devil appear to resemble Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne is pointing up an allegorical meaning, and is using a kind of devil mani festation that was to be taken up by later writers. In The Brothers Karamazov the devil who appears to Ivan is "a man no longer young, qui faisait la cinquantaine. as the French say." Hawthorne implies what Dostoievsky has Ivan say, that the devil is a manifestation of himself, but only one side of himself. Dostoievsky's devil modifies for his purpose the often-quoted words of Terence: "Satan sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum 226 12 puto. In this concept the devil has undergone an evolution from a god of paganism to a demon, and from demon to a representative of what mankind has been taught to believe is evil in its own nature. The Witches * Sabbath in "Young Goodman Brown" takes place in the forest, where a great rock serves as an altar. The primitive altar is illuminated by four blazing pines. The service commences with a familiar hymn tune, and the devil welcomes the congregation, calling them all his children. Converts are presented and welcomed to the communion. They are baptized at the altar with the blood, or water red in the firelight, or liquid flame, that the devil dips out of the hollowed basin. The travesty on Christian worship is traditional in the Sabbath; in this instance the worship is Protestant. Cotton Mather had said that the witches were organized in a manner resembling that of the Congregational churches. Scott says, "The devil, who commanded the fair sisterhood, being fond of mimicking the forms of the Christian church, used to rebaptize the witches with their blood, and in his own ^Modern Library Edition, p. 803. i n 13 great name." Goody Cloyse addresses the devil as "your worship," which accords with Scott's item of devil lore, that the fiend demanded respect from his followers, and was displeased when they referred to him privately as 'Black John' (p. 233). In many accounts, flight to the Sabbath was preceded by anointing the body with witches' ointment. Hawthorne mentions this unguent, with the ingredients--smallage, cinquefoil, wolf's bane, fine wheat, and the fat of a new-born babe. This recipe is generally found throughout the literature, although some additions or substitutions, such as bat's blood, were sometimes mentioned. The witch disrobed to apply the salve, and then, as some old illus trations show, departed for the meeting as she was. Graphic representations of the Sabbath, so numerous and so important in influencing the minds of the illiterate masses for centuries, are sometimes neglected by students of this subject. In many paintings and engravings one sees that it was not unusual to attend the Sabbath unclothed. But Hawthorne, though he mentions the ointment, 13 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (London, 1887), p. 234. 228 has the congregation respectably dressed. "A grave and dark-clad company," Goodman Brown calls them (IV, 117). The story stresses the hypocrisy as well as the evil propensities of humanity, and the sedate appearance of the group is calculated to deceive by giving the impression of decency. In the hypocrisy of Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter the reiteration of this theme shows that it is important to Hawthorne. Among the congregation are to be found, side by side, the most depraved wretches and the most pious saints of the community. The minister and the deacon are present along with those known to be given to vice and crime. The old woman who taught Goodman Brown his catechism rides to the meeting on the Devil's own staff, twined with a snake. The young man is horrified to see his own father and mother in the assembly. The members come from afar to worship, for the minister says: I had rather miss an ordination dinner than to-night's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion, (pp. 112-113) The young woman is presumably Goodman Brown's wife. The 229 Indians are Introduced to indicate the relationship between paganism and devil worship, and the forest is symbolic of earthliness as against the aspirations of the spirit. Nature and the devil seem to be one force here. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds-- the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn, (p. 115) Nature, typified by the wild forest, seems to be partici pating in the diabolical Sabbath, along with the Indian medicine men. Since everyone is represented, Hawthorne appears to be saying that all mankind, simply by being alive, partakes of the nature of evil. In his sermon the devil says that they all have more evil impulses than they ever carry out in deeds: "Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race." (pp. 121-122) In this story the devil is certainly prince of this world. All humanity are subject to him, and are his children. Hawthorne is dealing here with the very difficult 230 theological problem of the reason for the existence of evil in the world. He places such great power in the evil principle that he comes close to the Manichaean doctrine, the dualistic system of good and evil. This story brings up profound issues and deep ambivalences. Manichaeism is one way of accounting for the presence of evil. Walter Scott discusses the origins of this belief in connection with the belief in witchcraft: The creed of Zoroaster, which naturally occurs to unassisted reason as a mode of accounting for the mingled existence of good and evil in the visible world--that belief which, in one modification or another, supposes the co-existence of a benevolent and malevolent principle, which contend together without either being able decisively to prevail over his antagonist . . . such is the timid servility of human nature that the worshippers will neglect the altars of the Author of good rather than that of Arimanes, trusting with indifference to the well- known mercy of the one, while they shrink from the idea of irritating the vengeful Jealousy of the awful father of evil. 1 He continues to say that the Celts, the original inhabit ants of Europe, had a "natural tendency to the worship of the evil principle" (p. 78). Zoroastrian elements were incorporated into Mithraism, the religion of the Roman legionaries, who were not permitted in early times to ^ Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 77. 231 become Christians because they shed blood. Roman soldiers carried the belief to Spain, England, the Rhinelands, the Balkan Peninsula, and Latin Africa. It had some resem blance to Christianity in that it taught austerity, the forgiveness of sins, and belief in eternal life. It was supplanted by the religion of Mani, a combination of Christianity and Persian Magism. The Manichaean system teaches that light is good and darkness is evil. Man is created in Satan's image, but possesses some elements of light. At the end of the world, a great conflagration consumes all. The Avesta furnished the basic myths of the religion of Mani. Saint Augustine, an auditor of the Manichees for nine years, later became an enemy of this sect, but traces of its doctrine may be seen in his writings. The emphasis on the power of the evil principle, so important in religions stemming from Zoroastrianism, is seen at times to be very considerable In Christianity also. Dr. A. C. Bouquet says of Zoroastrianism: It is doubtful whether we should make too much of its alleged dualism. It certainly appears that the Good and Bad Sacred are regarded as balanced against one another until a date in the future when the Good will be victorious and the Bad finally defeated, but this is not unlike Christian belief. Where there is 232 a difference it is in the treatment of the Bad Sacred as being sometimes the object of a propitiatory cultus. ' In "Young Goodman Brown," in spite of the reference to the devil as fallen angel, he is represented as prince of this world, and his "propitiatory cultus" embraces all mankind. Hawthorne allowed his imagination to return to the seven teenth century, when fear of the devil was so great as to be obsessive, and Satan was thought to have powers that most modern believers attribute only to God. The Catholic Church, and the Protestant churches of the Reformation, both inculcated a great fear of the Prince of Darkness: It is no matter for wonder or indignation to see, during the whole time that Catholicism had the spiritual direction of Europe, a veritable Church of Evil opposed to the Church of Good, a Church of the Devil defying the Church of God, and possessing, like the latter, its priests, its rites, its cults, its books, its congregations, and its supernatural visitants. This opposition of two conflicting powers, a relic of Mazdaism and of the doctrine of Mani, was perfectly logical. A short definition of Manichaeism sums up the conflict of powers present in this belief: 15The Christian Faith and Non-Christian Religions (London, 1958), p. 66. 16Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft. Magic, and Alchemy (Chicago, 1958), p. 25. 233 A religious philosophy taught from the 3d century to the 7th century A.D. by the Persian Manes, or Manicheus, and his followers, combining Zoroastrian, Gnostic, Christian, and pagan elements, and based on the doctrine of the two contending principles of good (light. God, the soul) and evil (darkness, Satan, the body).17 In the exalting of the soul and the mortification of the body, Christianity emphasized the struggle. When Nature seems to laugh scornfully at Young Goodman Brown, the requirements of earthly existence are asserting themselves. A psychologist might give a Freudian interpretation to this part of the story, and to part of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux." Both stories take place at night, and the darkness has its significance, symbolizing, possibly, evil, Satan, the body. In the Puritan New England in which "Young Goodman Brown" takes place, there was if anything a greater obsession with the power of the devil than there was on the continent or in Britain. The existence of the large population of heathen Indians, from whom the Christian Puritans were gradually taking territory, made the devil unusually interested in this region. Indians were generally regarded as devil worshipers, as the presence of powwows ^ Webster's New World Dictionary. College Edition, 1957, New York. 234 at the Sabbath in "Young Goodman Brown" shows. Kittredge says of the Indians: "These were universally supposed to be devil worshippers,--not only by the Colonists, but by all the rest of the world,--for paganism was held to be nothing but Satanism" (p. 363). Cotton Mather was in total agreement with the Jesuit priests of Canada in this matter (p. 363). The Puritans believed that the devil was giving them his particular attention because he was losing ter ritory that he had formerly held in absolute sovereignty. In view of this belief, the witchcraft delusion of 1692 might be considered as of short duration and of moderate intensity, especially when contrasted with the holocausts that took place on the continent, where sometimes whole families and even entire towns were wiped out. Hawthorne mentions in the story actual "witches" who were tried in the court where his great-great-grandfather had been judge, and here he treats them as "real" witches. Goody Cloyse appears in the story as having taught Brown his catechism, and Martha Carrier, "who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell" is said to be "a rampant hag" (IV, 120). Both are prominent at the Sabbath in the story. In other places he attacks the witchcraft delusion, taking the point of view of the nineteenth- 235 century skeptic. He moves freely into and out of belief in witchcraft in accordance with his purpose of the moment, sometimes in one work siding with the witch as innocent victim and at the same time bringing out really witch-like characteristics. In The House of the Seven Gables Maule is hanged so that his property will go to the Pyncheons; but in Maule1s descendants there appears a malign power to cast spells, the power of the "true" witch. Goody Cloyse and Martha Carrier are treated as evil witches in "Young Goodman Brown." In other places Hawthorne condemns the witchcraft delusion of 1692, attacking Cotton Mather as the chief instigator of the killing of innocent victims. In "Alice Doane's Appeal" he makes a strong attack on Cotton Mather: In the rear of the procession rode a figure on horse-back, so darkly conspicuous, so sternly tri umphant, that my hearers mistook him for the visible presence of the fiend himself; but it was only his good friend, Cotton Mather, proud of his well-won dignity, as the representative of all the hateful features of his time; the one bloodthirsty man, in whom were concentrated those vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to madden the whole surrounding multitude. (XVI, 242) Like the devil in "Young Goodman Brown," the respectably clad, dignified Cotton Mather leads the multitude in an evil undertaking, and is thought by some to be the fiend 236 himsel£. The church of God and the church of Satan are in great confusion when a man like Cotton Mather, with the power he wielded in a theocratic community, leads the people in the paths of unrighteousness. It is the pleasure of persecution that Hawthorne considers diabolical. In "Young Goodman Brown" the fiend tells the young man that he aided his grandfather in torturing Quakers, and his father when he burned an Indian village. What is con sidered by the community to be an act of faith--"auto__da fe" in Portuguese--is, when such incidents are considered, really devil worship. In saying that Cotton Mather was "bloodthirsty" and had certain "vices of the spirit" Hawthorne takes the view that the minister was a hypocrite, a view that is shared by Perry Miller. Cotton Mather defended the witch prose cution when he knew better, and composed that apologia for insincerity which, entitled The Wonders of the Invisible World, has ever since scarred his reputa tion, even among those who have no notion wherein its actual dishonesty consists. Cotton Mather suppressed some of the evidence presented in the trials in order to bolster up his position. Perry ^ The New England Mind (Cambridge, 1953), p. 200. 237 Miller's opinion is, "If ever there was a false book pro duced by a man whose heart was not in it, it is The Wonders" (p. 201). A conscientious merchant of Boston named Robert Calef, horrified at the witch hangings, undertook at some risk to himself to investigate the persecution. He had published in London in 1702 More Wonders of the Invisible World, a book which Increase Mather had burned at Harvard. Perry Miller wonders where Calef obtained the complete transcripts, which he examined and considered (p. 250). Calef believed that there were indeed witches, because the Scripture mentions them; but the Bible does not instruct in the method of finding them out, and there is no mention of a pact with the devil, an indispensable feature of the witch trials. Interested in finding the cause for the delusion that possessed Salem, Calef made an effort to analyze the factors contributing to it, and he arrived at a hypothesis that he set forth with some conviction. It seemed to him that the concept of the great power that devils were supposed to possess, and the system of witchcraft as it was thought to operate, were not derived from the Scripture, but rather came from the classical literature that was an important feature of the 238 higher education of that time: Among the pernicious weeds arising from this root, the doctrine of the power of devils and witchcraft, as it is now and long has been understood, is not the least; the fables of Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, &c., being for the elegancy of their language retained then (and so are to this day) in the schools, have not only introduced, but established, such doctrines, to the poisoning of the Christian world. A certain author expresses it thus: "That as the Christian schools at first brought men from heathen ism, so these schools carry men from the gospel to heathenism, as to their great perfection And Calef refers again to transformations and charms in Virgil's Eclogues and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Certainly classical literature contains an abundance of stories of gods that appear to men in various guises, and stories of the transformation of men and women into animals of many kinds. The transcript of Salem trials contain testimony of such transformations. Many stories from the classic myths might have caused Calef to see resemblances to the witchcraft legends. In Homer, Circe turns men into animals, and the cannibalistic monster Polyphemus might be con sidered a kind of demon, "seeking whom he may devour." The literature of Greece and Rome had taken hold upon the minds of Christian leaders, in Calef's opinion, and made 19 Salem Witchcraft, ed. Samuel P. Fowler (Boston, 1865), pp. xv, xvi. 239 them place too much faith in ungodly powers. He feared that the witchcraft delusion would continue, and God would be dishonored, "As long as men suffer themselves to be poisoned in their education, and be grounded in a false belief by the books of the heathen" (p. 369). Calef mentions a paper of fables written by Cotton Mather, a paper not published, but handed about, in which Mather refers to his father as Mercuriue and to himself as Orpheus (p. 355). It is curious that a Puritan minister would refer to himself and his father in terms of pagan belief. From the point of view of today, Calef's hypothesis seems naive, but it is not impossible that a mind that believed in the transportation of witches, and their metamorphosis into animals, might also have read Ovid with unsophisti cated credulousness. There probably were many who, like Calef, disapproved of pagan ideas and their dissemination throughout New England. An issue of The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge that appeared shortly before Hawthorne became editor, has on the first page an engraving that shows Mercury and Minerva taking Science around the world. The editor sees fit to explain the use of pagan divinities so that none of the readers will be offended: 240 In selecting such a group of mythological divin ities, as the frontispiece for our first number of the second volume, we protest against the charge both of vanity and heathenism. . . . Though we make allusions to the pagan classics, we trust the character of the work for the last eight months at least, will show our deep and reverent regard for whatever is Christian, and our decided, though temperate, disapprobation of whatever is anti- Christian. (Vol. II, 1835) That such an apology was felt to be necessary as late as 1835 indicates that fears of heathen learning and its undermining effect on Christianity might have been general among a certain level of the public for a very long time. Whether or not It derived much impetus from classical learning, belief in the devil was often of such importance in the writings and sermons of priests and ministers as at times to overshadow the greatness of God. This tendency was admonished from time to time, but it continued to have much vitality. The devil was thought to cause tempests and wars, famine and pestilence. He disrupted the thoughts of men and led to evil doings. Calef considers this granting of so much power to the devil as Manichaean doctrine: Are these the expressions of orthodox believers? or are they not rather expressions becoming a maniche, or a heathen, as agreeing far better with these than with the sacred oracles, our only rule? (p. 129) 241 Calef calls the American Indians a kind of Manichaeans, who do what they can to appease the evil power (p. 127). The view of the devil as the ruling power of the world is prominent in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and "Young Goodman Brown," in both of which stories the Manichaeism which has been noted in Hawthorne is to be seen most clearly. "Hawthorne is a dualist of good and evil and of heaven and earth. Like Melville he is more Manichaean 20 than most theologians would approve." In the first of these stories, the young man being initiated into worldly knowledge is swept up with the throng that follows Satan's leadership, and joins in the fiendish laughter of a cruel pagan orgy. The Man in the Moon says, ". . . the old earth is frolicsome tonight" (III, 325). The young man to whom the carnival of Satan is revealed has been protected from such gross realities in the home of his pious father. Part of the initiation is the realization of the struggle for power and position in the world, as the downfall of Major Molineux makes it evident, and part of it is the awareness of the animality of human nature, showing itself in cruelty 20 R. H. Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction (Norman, Oklahoma, 1952), p. 192. 242 and in sexy which is personified by Che laughing young woman in Che red peCCicoaC, from whom Robin flees. He abandons himself, however, Co Che "menCal inebrieCy" of Che scene, and ic is suggesCed ChaC he will make some saCisfacCory adjustment Co Che requiremenCs of worldly exisCence. In boCh sCories Chere is a contrast and a struggle between the Christian and pagan views of the world. In "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" Chere is no confusion of the two. The piety of Robin's home is genuine. In the Manichaean dualism God, Che soul, and light are on one side of Che conflict, and Robin's home symbolizes these things. The world into which he ventures is under a dif ferent rule--darkness, Satan, the body, are paramount here. But Satan makes no pretense of being other than he is. If the young man wishes to cope with worldly matters, he is in no confusion about values. The initiation is a shocking experience, but the young man endures it without sustaining damage. Although Satan is lord of this world, the shrewd and strong young man is able to understand this fact, to remember the higher spirituality of his father's house, and somehow to make the compromise that worldly existence requires of him. Young Goodman Brown is not so fortunate. It is revealed to him not only that Satan is Lord of this world, but that the spirituality of his father's house is tainted with diabolism. Cruelty, hypocrisy, greed, and lust are the chief sins mentioned by the devil as besetting mankind even the reverend clergy. Robert Calef's simple explana tion that the Christian clergy was misled by books of the heathen does not go deeply enough into the matter, for paganism exists not only in the literature of the ancients but is perpetual in the life of the world. The Indians with whom the Puritans associated served to heighten the awareness of a primitive form of it. Goodman Brown has it revealed to him that even his religion cannot be depended upon to lead him in spiritual matters. It would be absurd to suppose that his wife is named Faith simply as a name. Repeatedly the name is used with double significance. When he is late to the Sabbath, he says to the devil, "Faith kept me back awhile" (p. 103). He says there is no reason to quit his dear Faith and follow Goody Cloyse to hell (p. 111). What a calm night he could have spent "in the arms of Faith" instead of attending the diabolical conclave. He says, "With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" (p. 113). 244 Not only is Satan in control of this world, but, by enrolling the clergy into his service he blocks the way to a better world. Hawthorne's poor opinion of the clergy, often expressed, is evident here. One instance, his description of the pictures of his predecessors in the Old Manse, mentions diabolical association: When I first saw the room its walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan ministers that hung around. These worthies looked strangely like bad angels, or at least like men who had wrestled so continually and so sternly with the devil that somewhat of his sooty fierceness had been imparted to their own visages. (IV, 4) But more is evident in the story than Hawthorne's poor estimation of the clergy. Goodman Brown's faith itself has diabolical elements. There is great confusion here of the Good and Bad Sacred. He sees that his Faith is present at the devil's communion. "My Faith is gone!" cried he. . . . "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil, for to thee is this world given" (p. 115). Like Robin he joins in the demonic laughter. Flying to the meeting he says, "Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes G oodman Brown.1 ' 245 Hawthorne's Sabbath disappears before the Bacchanalian phase could have begun. The entire scene is explained as possibly a dream, a typical method of Hawthorne's in handling the supernatural. In the literature on the sub ject of the Sabbath, there is great disagreement as to whether witches attended in the flesh or only in a dream. With Young Goodman Brown it makes no difference which it is, for the revelation he had was a traumatic experience that affected him for the rest of his life. The following morning as he enters Salem village he sees his fellow townsmen who attended the meeting. When the minister blessed him, the young man "shrank from the venerable saint as from anathema" (p. 123). When he hears the Deacon praying he asks, "What God doth the wizard pray to?" (p. 123). The hypocrisy of the ministers causes him to shrink "from the bosom of Faith" (p. 124). During the ages of persecution there must have been many sensitive humane people, unable to protest, who suf fered to observe the miseries of victims, and must have had grave doubts that it was righteous to kill alleged witches, or perhaps Lollards, Hussites, Covenanters, Quakers, and other non-conformists, some of whom differed in their belief very little from the prevailing religion. 246 Hawthorne mentions in "Young Goodman Brown" the torture of a Quaker woman— such punishment had been decreed by his own ancestors. In another story the Gentle Boy was named Ilbrahim for the sake of the Turks who were kind to the Quakers at a time when they were persecuted by Christians. When the Puritan found the child on his father's grave and brought him home, he tells his wife. The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty morsel, and to drink of his birchen cup; but Christian men, alas! had cast him out to die. (I, 94) When there is evil done by those who profess to be guardi ans of true spirituality, and good done by savages and heathen, there is confusion as to what is light and what is darkness. Both these stories, initiation myths, deal with the "fall from innocence and the initiation into life--an action of the soul that entails a symbolic dying and rebirth," as previously quoted from Richard Chase. Both stories present a view of the world that might be called Manichaean. The main action of both tales takes place at night--darkness, Satan, and sin predominate, excluding light, spirituality, and God. The life of this world is a Witches' Sabbath. In both stories the young men are 247 shocked to find the devil directing mankind, and in "Young Goodman Brown" the young man is unable to find his way out of the confusion arising from this revelation. Such a confusion between God and devil as the Goodman found at the Sabbath is disturbing to settle views as to the nature of God: The opponents of Calvinism were not slow to urge that such a theory, which held man responsible not alone for his own sins but for his disastrous inheritance, made of God not an adorable but a diabolical Deity. "Your God," said the picturesque old Methodist, Father Taylor, to the Park Street Calvinists--"your God is my Devil!"^ Father Taylor is the "Son of Thunder" Hawthorne mentions in a letter to Sophia. It was to avoid hearing him that Hawthorne caught cold, as he told Sophia, but it is likely that Hawthorne was acquainted with his views. "Young Goodman Brown" has been interpreted as an attack on Calvinism: Young Goodman Erown did not lose his faith (we are told that his Faith survived him); he learned its full and terrible significance. This story is Hawthorne's criticism of the teaching of Puritanic- Calvinism.^2 21 Nathaniel Hawthorne, Selections, ed. Austin Warren (New York, 1934), p. xxvi. 22t. E. Connolly, "'Young Goodman Brown': An Attack on Puritan Calvinism," American Literature, XXVIII:370-375, November 1956. 248 He learns that the beliefs he has been taught are evil. It Is for this reason that Marius Bewley says, "Despite its air of Christian propriety, this is one of the most deeply 23 agnostic works in existence." The leadership of Satan that is shown as universal in "Young Goodman Brown" and Kinsman, Major Mollneux" is certainly meant by the author as an evil circumstance. The forest in "Young Goodman Brown" is not the sunny sylvan Arcadia of "The Maypole of Merry Mount" nor of The Marble Faun. nor of the "Flood of Sunshine" chapter of The Scarlet Letter. It symbolizes here the lower aspect of human nature, which it is hypocritical to deny, although neces sary to control. Nature, laughing in the wild pines, the presence of savages, the darkness, all emphasize an evil aspect of paganism. There is no clear dichotomy of good and evil to be found in Hawthorne--paganism is sometimes beautiful and associated with sunshine, a symbol of good ness, but in these two stories the evil aspect is made clear. On the other hand, Christianity and its leaders cannot be consistently regarded as good. The clergy is ^ The Eccentric Design (New York, 1959), p. 124. 249 strongly attacked in this story for its hypocrisy, its misleading of the community into acts of barbaric cruelty, and its intolerance. Reference is made to the horrors of King Phillip's War, in which Indians were burnt alive in their homes, to the delight of Cotton Mather, and after which the head of King Phillip was nailed up in a public place, where it remained for many years. Hawthorne does not mention these details, but he was familiar with the history of these events. While paganism is not pictured favorably in these stories, it receives milder treatment than the Christian leadership of the time under consideration. Hawthorne's poor opinion of the clergy was almost life-long, and may have originated in the discomfort associated with early church attendance, which was no doubt compulsory. He speaks of "the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen purgatory of my childhood" (XI, 85). There may also have been an unfortunate experience with a clergyman, for he seems to have disliked the clerical garb at an early age. Rose Hawthorne records that her "unspiritual" Aunt Elizabeth, Nathaniel's older sister, told with glee that Hawthorne, at the age of four, hated a bust of John Wesley so 250 intensely that he filled it with water and set it out in the cold, hoping that it would burst. ^ Although he married a woman who was a devout worshiper, he never attended divine services even when she requested him to go. In a letter written before they were married, he gently warns her that he is not to be coerced in such matters.25 When they lived in the Old Manse he had access to a large collection of theological literature, and he expresses his poor opinion of this material in the intro duction to Mosses: So long as an unlettered soul can attain to saving grace, there would seem to be no deadly error in holding theological libraries to be accumulations of, for the most part, stupendous impertinence. (IV, 25) In his journal he wrote in 1842: I find that my respect for clerical people, as such, and my faith in the utility of their office, decrease daily. We certainly do need a new Revelation, a new system; for there seems to be no life in the old one.26 t Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne (Boston, 1897), pp. 453-454. 25juiian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (London, 1885), I, 214. ^Julian Hawthorne, I, 291. 251 His unfortunate experience with the Reverend Charles W. Upham, who was the chief conspirator In Hawthorne's dis charge from the custom house, probably caused his respect to decline further. Upham Is thought to have been the model for Jeffrey Pyncheon In The House of the Seven Gables. The bitterness of Hawthorne's hatred can be seen In a kind of witch's curse he calls upon Upham and his associates In a letter to Longfellow: If they will pay no reverence to the Imaginative power when It causes herbs of grace and sweet-scented flowers to spring up along their pathway, then they should be taught what It can do In the way of producing nettles, skunk-cabbage, deadly nightshade, wolf's bane, dog wood. If they will not be grateful for its works of beauty and beneficence, then let them dread it as a pervasive and penetrating mischief, that can reach them at their firesides and in their bed chambers, follow them to far countries, and make their very graves refuse to hide them. ' In Liverpool he wanted to keep up appearances of conven tional respectability, but still he did not attend chapel, 28 although he sent his son. His friend Henry Bright wrote a parody of Hiawatha on Hawthorne's abstention from divine services: ^Edward Wagenknecht, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Man and Writer (New York, 1961), p. 97. ^Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. II, 103. 252 I would say he is a sinner,-- Reprobate and churchless sinner,-- Never goes inside a chapel, Only sees outsides of chapels, Says his prayers without a chapel, (p. 79) He enjoyed preaching to a clergyman in Liverpool when the clergyman had drunk enough to suffer from delirium tremens after a week of debauchery. He writes in Our Old Home: What a hideous wrong, therefore, had the backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still more on me, who needed whatever fragments of broken reverence (broken, not as concerned religion, but its earthly insti tutions and professors) it might yet be possible to patch into a sacred image! (XI, 34) But this was written near the end of Hawthorne's life, and the "fragments of broken reverence" seem to have been very small even without the disgraceful conduct of this par ticular clergyman. John Macy calls Hawthorne "a mildly irreverent man."^ In "Young Goodman Brown" the revelation that clergy men attend the devil's communion is a shattering experi ence; but the entire human race belongs to this communion, the devil tells the company. Nature seems to be laughing to scorn man's pretensions to a higher spirituality. It is implied that man cannot escape from the grosser aspects ^ The Spirit of American Literature (New York, 1913), p. 84 . 253 of earthly life because of the requirements of Nature. The assumption of a pious exterior, which gives the impression of living on a high spiritual plane, is hypocrisy. There is an essential paganism that cannot be surmounted. The paganism in this story is evil, as the Puritans thought it to be, and the conflict between paganism and a higher spirituality is the issue. There is a suggestion of a resolution in "Jty Kinsman, Major Molineux," but none in "Young Goodman Brown." The orgy of tar and feathers in one story and the Witches' Sabbath in the other are mob scenes of a debased Bacchanalian kind, the prototypes of which had long been forgotten. The New England community regarded imaginary devil-led meetings with fascinated fear, possibly with a guilty curiosity. Interpretations by qualified Freudian and Jungian psychologists might bring up some interesting explanations which are outside the scope of this study, but the belief in such gatherings seems to be related to a suppression of elements of the psyche. The relation to pagan fertility rituals, in which life forces suppressed by Christianity are apparent, is obvious in both instances. Hawthorne, by some intuition, as Mrs. Leavis says, found his way to these matters and subtly expressed them in 254 literature before Mannhardt, Frazer, Freud, and Jung took other paths. In these two stories deep ambivalences of meaning arise from the confusion of paganism and Puritanism. The devil, as leader of this world, retains pagan elements Hawthorne regards in other works as good, although, for the most part, he represents what is generally regarded as evil. The Bacchanalian gatherings have pagan elements, but they are not the sunny, Joyous celebrations of "The Maypole of Merry Mount" or of the dance in The Marble Faun. And yet Puritanism is not by any means to be contrasted with paganism, the former being good and the latter evil. In both stories the problem of evil is raised, but it is not solved, as it is not the business of the literary artist to solve problems, but to present them creatively. The Puritan-pagan conflict is very subtly presented here; in one story, young Robin solves it with a compromise, while in the other Young Goodman Brown is overwhelmed by it. CHAPTER VI THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE: NEW ENGLAND gDtterdXmmerung The Blithedale Romance is rich in the most obvious and explicit elements of myth. Like The Marble Faun, this romance deals with an attempt to restore Arcadian existence in the nineteenth century. The book can be considered as, among other things,a seasonal myth. The old gods are placed in a New England setting in the Iron Age, and they cannot flourish. They are overwhelmed, and, like the faun Donatello, defeated by the inexorable progression of history. The turn of the year from spring to autumn suf fices Hawthorne to tell his story of the twilight of the gods. The book begins with the account by Miles Coverdale of the magical performance of a woman known to the public only as the Veiled Lady. He had asked her, as if she were a sibyl, about the success of the communal farming enter prise he was to join the next day, and he received an 255 256 ambiguous reply, like the two-sided prophecies of Cumae and Delphi. On his way home he meets a man called Old Moody, a decayed gentleman who wears a patch over one eye, like Odin in the Norse myths. Later, when Moody visits Blithe dale farm, Hollingsworth and Coverdale share their lunch with him in a field, and hand him his food "like priests offering dainty sacrifice to an enshrined and invisible idol" (VII, 117-118). Moody asks if Coverdale knows a lady named Zenobia, a name that signifies "having life from Zeus." Upon Coverdale's arrival at Blithedale, he finds Zenobia presiding there, and he is impressed with her queenly beauty, which makes him think of "Pandora, fresh from Vulcan's workshop, and full of the celestial warmth by dint of which he had tempered and molded her" (VIII, 29). "Pandora" means the gift of all, for all the gods contributed to her perfection, Venus giving beauty, Mercury persuasion, and so on; and Zenobia does indeed seem to Coverdale to be almost divinely endowed. In the Greek myth, Pandora is the first woman, given to Epimetheus by Zeus, and she, like Eve in Genesis, was much to blame for the hard lot of human kind. In Hawthorne's retelling of Pandora's story in A Wonder-Book he avoids the misogyny 257 of Hesiod, and in Che mention of Pandora in The Blithedale Romance only the beauty and divinity are suggested. Zenobia is a kind of prototype of the ideal woman, goddess-like in appearance; Coverdale rapturously describes her magnificence: The image of her form and face should have been multiplied all over the earth. It was wronging the rest of mankind to retain her as the spectacle of only a few. The stage would have been her proper sphere. She should have made it a point of duty, moreover, to sit endlessly to painters and sculptors, and preferably to the latter; because the cold decorum of the marble would consist with the utmost scantiness of drapery, so that the eye might chastely be glad dened with her material perfection in its entireness. I know not well how to express that the native glow of coloring in her cheeks, and even the flesh-warmth over her round arms, and what was visible of her full bu8t,--in a word, her womanliness incarnated,-- compelled me sometimes to close my eyes, as if it were not quite the privilege of modesty to gaze at her. (p. 59) No other character of Hawthorne's is described so fully as Zenobia. Zenobia, "womanliness incarnated," is mythic, a force of nature like the goddesses of classic mythology. The suggestion that her statues and images should be "multiplied over the earth" emphasizes her goddess-like quality, since her idols and icons should appear in many places. She has a talisman--an exotic green-house flower she always wears--just as Athena has her owl and Diana has her hound. The flower is so suitable to her "that 258 Nature had evidently created this floral gem, in a happy exuberance, for the one purpose of worthily adorning Zenobia's head" (p. 60). Hawthorne is creating here a New England mythology based on ancient models. He is acting on the idea expressed by his reteller of myth in Tanglewood Tales and A Wonder-Book that the old myths belong to all mankind and can be used in New England as well as anywhere else. Zenobia, however, is not a complete and perfect goddess. In the nineteenth century there are elements that interfere with myth-making. Zenobia and the Veiled Lady are mentioned together in Chapter I by Coverdale when he says that Zenobia's mystery is maintained by her pen name just as the Veiled Lady's identity is concealed by her veil. The reader never knows Zenobia by her real name, but only by the name of the pagan queen of Syria, a name which, for various reasons, is very suitable to her. Zenobia is lacking in some of the essential attri butes of a mythic deity when considered as an embodiment of womanhood, lacking in tenderness and purity, as well as spirituality, the qualities that are roost apparent in Priscilla, the Veiled Lady. In the ancient goddesses there was a combination of the earthly and the spiritual; 259 there was power as well as maternal compassion, as seen in the Isis described by her priest, Apuleius. Priscilla represents the spiritual mystery, but she is so lacking in physical vigor as to be very frail. The veil she some times wears suggests Isis, who was often represented with head veiled, symbolizing mystery. Coverdale senses, before he knows the fact, that Zenobia and Priscilla are sisters: "Zenobia is an enchantress!" whispered I to Hollings worth. "She is sister to the Veiled Lady. That flower in her hair is a talisman. If you were to snatch it away, she would vanish, or be transformed into something else." (p. 60) Such fancies of Coverdale's are accounted for by the weakness brought about by his illness; such explanations of the supernatural are characteristic of Hawthorne, although he sometimes omits them. Zenobia and Priscilla, daughters of the one-eyed Moody, possess between them the perfection of womanhood, although divided they are incomplete. In Miriam and Hilda of The Marble Faun there is a similar division of qualities that complement each other. For Hawthorne, the ideal woman has domestic skills that are lacking in Zenobia. Her cooking is poor. During his illness Coverdale is carefully nourished by Zenobia, 260 but her gruel Is very wretched stuff, with almost invariably the smell of pine smoke upon it, like the evil taste that is said to mix itself up with a witch's best concocted dainties. . . . Whatever else might be her gifts, Nature certainly never intended Zenobia for a cook. (p. 65) Randall Stewart comments in his edition of the American Notebooks that the reference to a witch's cooking is taken from Cumberland's Observer. and was used less happily than was usually the case with items Hawthorne took from his notebooks for use in the novels and stories: Here the addition is without significance or appro priateness. Hawthorne did not intend seriously to suggest that Zenobia might be a witch. It is evident that in this instance his fondness for curious lore led him to introduce a comparison that was not germane to the matter. However, the introduction of idle bits of information is not like him. As Henry James said, "Hawthorne always knew perfectly well what he was about."2 The item is one more effort to emphasize the "preternatural" and mythic element in the character of Zenobia. There are several other instances where the witch implication appears in connection ^ ■ The American Notebooks of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Randall Stewart (New Haven, 1932), pp. xxxii-xxxiii. ^Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne (London, 1879), p. 47. 261 with her, as when Coverdale asks, "Have you bewitched her?" when Priscilla's behavior is strange. "It is no sorcery of mine," said Zenobia (p. 82). The character of Zenobia is worthy of consideration because she has been regarded as one of Hawthorne's most important creations. "Zenobia was the most striking and 3 original character he was to create." Henry James is another admirer, who calls Zenobia "the nearest approach that Hawthorne has made to the complete creation of a person."^ Although her character may owe something to Margaret Fuller's example--and there are obvious points of similarity between the two characters to confirm this idea--Coverdale makes a point of saying to Priscilla that she reminds him of Margaret Fuller. Hawthorne may have introduced this remark to throw the reader off the track, since he claimed in his introduction that real personal ities are not presented in the romance; and indeed, although real personalities contribute to the fictional characters to some extent, the final creations as they 3 Edward Mather, Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1940), p. 219. ^Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 130. 262 appear in the book are new and original. Zenobia does not resemble Margaret Fuller in appearance, but she does in her opinions, in her writing, in her aggressive feminism, and her brilliant conversation. Like Margaret Fuller, Zenobia is interested in an experiment in communal living on a farm, the Blithedale of the romance and the Brook Farm of reality, where Hawthorne had hoped to solve his economic problems and to live a life of labor balanced with intel lectual activity. Margaret Fuller was, from the testimony of contemporaries, an extraordinary woman. The mythic aspect of Zenobia is paralleled in Emerson's comment on Margaret Fuller, for he speaks of her in his journal in a way that suggests more than merely human attributes: Her growth is visible . . . she rose before me at times into herolcal and godlike regions, and I could remember no superior women, but thought of Ceres, Minerva, Proserpine, and the august ideal forms of the foreworld. In the manner of their death also the fictional and actual proponents of women's rights are alike, for both drowned, Margaret Fuller two years before The Blithedale Romance was written. ^Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes (New York, 1909-14), VI, 364-366. 263 Hawthorne's considered opinion of Margaret Fuller, written, but not for publication, eight years after her death, is resented by her biographers. In the Italian notebook in the entry dated April 3, 1858, Rome, he wrote his own opinion of Margaret and some information he received from the American sculptor Mr. Mozier, who had instructed Margaret's husband, Giovanni Ossoli, in his studio, and claimed to know the Ossolis well. According to Mozier, Ossoli was an uneducated man of poor intellect, devoid of manners. Hawthorne writes: He could not possibly have had the least appreciation of Margaret, and the wonder is, what attraction she found in this boor, this man without the intellectual spark-“she that had always shown such a cruel and bitter scorn of intellectual delinquency. . . . But she was a woman anxious to try all things, and fill up her experience in all directions; she has a strong and coarse nature, too, which she had done her utmost to refine, with Infinite pains, but which of course could only be superficially changed. . . . Margaret has not left, in the heart and minds of those who knew her, any deep witness of her integrity and purity.^ It is in purity that Coverdale feels Zenobia to be deficient. ^The Portable Hawthorne, ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York, 1948), p. 595. 264 According to Mozier, Margaret Fuller had ceased to be able to write, and had with her nothing to publish when she embarked with her husband and baby for her native land. Mozier, and Hawthorne, are making no allowances for the fact that she had her baby under difficult conditions, and that it was still very young and helpless. Hawthorne gives no opinion in the journal except that of Mozier. William Wetmore Story and his wife, who were good friends of Margaret, and who were as accessible to Hawthorne as Mozier at the time of his visit to Italy, might have given different testimony about her. In his unkind comments on Margaret and on the dead Zenobia in his romance Hawthorne betrays a jealousy of the gifted woman. He goes on at length in his journal as if dancing on Margaret's grave: Thus there appears to have been a total collapse in poor Margaret, morally and intellectually; and tragic as her catastrophe was, Providence was, after all, kind in putting her, and her clownish husband, and their child, on board that fated ship. There never was such a tragedy as her whole story; the sadder and sterner, because so much of the ridiculous was mixed up with it, and because she could bear anything better than to be ridiculous. It was such an awful joke, that she should have resolved--in all sincerity, no doubt--to make herself the greatest, wisest, best woman of the age; and, to that end, she set to work on her strange, heavy unpliable, and in many respects, defective and evil nature, and adorned It with a mosaic of admirable qualities, such as she chose to possess; putting in here a splendid talent, and there 265 a moral excellence, and polishing each separate piece, and the whole together, till it seemed to shine afar and dazzle all who saw it. She took credit to herself for having been her own Redeemer, if not her own Creator; and, indeed, she was far more a work of art than any of Mr. Mozier's statues. But she was not working on an inanimate substance, like marble or clay; there was something within her that she could not possibly come at, to re-create and refine it; and by and by this rude old potency bestirred itself, and undid all her labor in the twinkling of an eye. On the whole, I do not know but 1 like her the better for it;--the better, because she proved herself a very woman after all, and fell as the weakest of her sisters might, (pp. 596-97) She married late, at thirty-seven, and became a mother, thus fulfilling a phase of her nature that Emerson may have sensed when he saw her as Ceres. Hawthorne had observed Margaret Fuller closely, as Coverdale observes Zenobia, trying to solve the mystery of her existence; like Coverdale he was fascinated by an unusual personality, and like Coverdale again, he was critical. Zenobia's language is too free, and although it is rather refreshingly in contrast to the mincing niceness of ordinary New England feminine speech, Coverdale felt a lack of refinement in Zenobia. She has some cruelty in her nature, too, as seen in her treatment of Priscilla, although her cruelty comes of an instinctive feeling that Priscilla, with her purity and devotion, is a menace to her, as events prove her to be. 266 In spite of the disapproval Coverdale has for Zenobia, he finds her an exceptional being. Marius Bewley calls her a "life-symbol" and one of the more attractive char acters in Hawthorne's fiction. Bewley speaks of Hawthorne and "the admiration his writing suggests he almost cer- tainly felt for Zenobia." Hawthorne's Puritanism holds his admiration in check. She is the type of earth goddess who is not fulfilling her proper function at Blithedale because of too great Intellectuality and because of her struggle against men, like that of her namesake, Palmyra's queen, who fought the Roman emperor and was defeated. The creation of Zenobia is a composite, made as sculptors of ancient Greece made a statue of Helen or of a goddess from several models. She does not have the physical attributes of Margaret Fuller, who was neither dark nor beautiful, and she is of the same physical type as Hester and Miriam as well as of the dark Medea of the retold myths. It has been suggested that the actress Fanny Kemble, a neighbor of the Hawthornes in the Berkshires, was the model for Zenobia's physical attributes, and indeed ^Eccentric Design (New York, 1959), p. 148. 267 Fanny Kemble was dark and vividly attractive, though not perfectly beautiful, as her appearance had been somewhat marred by smallpox. It may be that there was no living prototype at all. W. D. Howells records that when he visited Hawthorne at the Wayside in 1860 Hawthorne happened to remark that "he had never seen a woman whom he thought o quite beautiful." It is not unlikely that the source of Hawthorne's Zenobia, Hester, and Miriam--all dark, very beautiful, very intelligent and bookish, but nevertheless vital and magnetic--is an image put into his mind by an early reading of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The famous passage describing Zenobia contains items that may have contributed to the creation of Haw thorne's archetype: Aurelian had no sooner secured the person and provinces of Tetricus than he turned his arms against Zenobia, the celebrated queen of Palmyra and the East. Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semi- ramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the climate and manners of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equalled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and ^Literary Friends and Acquaintances (New York, 1910), p. 53. 268 far surpassed that princess in chastity and valour. Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely as well as the most heroic of her sex. She was of dark complexion (for in speaking of ladies these trifles become important). Her teeth were of a pearly whiteness, and her large black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire, tempered by the most attractive sweetness. Her voice was strong and harmonious. Her manly understanding was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal perfection the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages. She had drawn up for her own use an epitome of oriental history, and familiarly compared the beauties of Homer and Plato under the tuition of the sublime Longinus.^ This woman ruled five years, received adoration as a god dess, struck coins bearing her image, and could not be defeated except by the best troops and the best efforts of the Roman emperor. Like the Zenobia of Blithedale she fought against men, and was defeated. The last living appearance of Hawthorne's Zenobia is in the rich costume of the queen of Palmyra, who had been displayed in the most magnificent of all triumphal processions, that of Aurelian, in fetters of gold--". . . a slave supported the chain which enriched her neck, and she almost fainted under the intolerable weight of jewels" (I, 267). Miriam's voice is strong and sweet, and she Is wealthy, like the Zenobia of Blithedale. Hester also has something rich and Oriental ^The Modern Library ed. (New York, 1932), I, 262. 269 in her nature, and she adorns her child as richly as she can. There is something large and opulent in these women. They all have excellent minds that have been "adorned by study." All three are strong and vivid personalities, and all are "celebrated," Hester for her sin, Zenobia for her writing and speaking, and Miriam for a mysterious crime that was well-known throughout Europe. In going back to this imperial pagan for an archetype, certainly of the Blithedale Zenobia and possibly of the two other feminine characters, Hawthorne takes into account the woman of unusual power and intelligence, the idea of a goddess or of an empress, existing throughout the ages. Such a woman is not the shrill suffragette and reformer of the mid-nineteenth century, demanding something new in the history of humanity, but rather a type that has always existed and that, in the more primitive stages of human history, contributed a great deal to the life of the group in which she lived. Hawthorne has a kind of sympathy with this type of woman, but his sympathy is held in check by the patriarchal society of which he is a product.^ ^ The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, "Women." The Mosaic law treated woman as a kind of slave, as did the law of Rome; however, under the older code 270 Hawthorne's Puritanism is in conflict with his paganism. In his retelling of the story of the Golden Fleece he mentions Atalanta, a beautiful young woman, nursling of a bear, and one of the rowers of the Argo. "She had grown up in a wild way, and talked much about the rights of women, and loved hunting and war far better than her needle" (XIII, 482). This is an oblique thrust at the reforming women of his own day, but it also acknowledges that women of exceptional powers always existed, and that pagan legend and myth indicates that at some places in former times their existence was not regarded with alarm. The beauty and gifts of Zenobia are wasted at Blithe** dale as she comes to her self-imposed end. The point about Zenobia is the waste and confusion of her inner life, which results from her always living according to this or that literary or political idea rather than according to the natural urgencies of her being.H However, one reason why Zenobia was thwarted in her "natural urgencies" Is that Hollingsworth preferred of Hammurabi her position "was free and dignified." ^-Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition (Garden City, New York, 1957), p. 84. 271 Priscilla. Zenobia was blighted because of her experience with Westervelt, who would also have ruined Priscilla as well had Hollingsworth not rescued her. Even Zenobia's abject capitulation to Hollingsworth is rejected in favor of Priscilla. In dividing and thereby blighting the perfect archetypal womant Hawthorne gives the elder sister, Zenobia, beauty, intellect, pride, charm, and wealth, while the younger, Priscilla, is characterized by purity, humility, devotion, and spirituality. Priscilla is an utter contrast to the "noble earthliness" of Zenobia. Her spirituality, however, seems linked to physical and nervous infirmity; as Coverdale puts the matter, her "impalpable grace lay so singularly between disease and beauty" (VIII, 143). Her preternatural powers, which are vague, but seem to combine susceptibility to hypnotism and divination, are related to nervous weakness. Among the shamans and medicine men in various parts of the world abnormal mental states, particularly trances, are valued as having about them something supernatural. Hawthorne describes Priscilla as having a certain spirituality which is linked with nervous debility. His skepticism and his love of myth are both apparent in his way of presenting 272 Priscilla and in the naturalistic explanations he gives of her condition. She is the type of the sibyl, as Cover- dale calls her, and it is well known that oracles and others who professed to communicate with the gods or to make prophecies by means of spirit messages were people who, like Priscilla, had some nervous affliction that caused trances. Shamans and witches of various parts of the world, such as Lapland witches, who for over a thousand years have been regarded as outstanding practitioners of their craft, went into trances. The anthropologist Ruth Benedict says: Shamanism is one of the most general human institu tions. The shaman is the religious practitioner who, by whatever kind of personal experience is recognized as supernatural in his tribe, gets his power directly from the gods. He is often, like Cassandra and others of those who spoke with tongues, a person whose instability has marked him out for his profession. In North America shamans are characteristically those who have the experience of the vision. ^ As Priscilla's physical condition improves at Blithedale, she becomes less nervous, and while at the farm she has no spells, trances, or mediumistic visions. Furthermore, Westervelt is not there to encourage her in her abnor mality . ^Patterns of Culture (New York, 1953), pp. 87-88. 273 Hawthorne, with his characteristic ambivalence, treats her as having some special power, and at the same time he gives explanations of her condition. Zenobia and Wester velt, representatives of earthliness, explain Priscilla's powers as a result of poor diet and lack of bathing. In Western civilization the trance is regarded as an abnor mality. According to Dr. Benedict's findings, Even a very mild mystic is aberrant in Western civilization. In order to study trance or catalepsy within our own social groups, we have to go to the case histories of the abnormal. Therefore the cor relation between trance experience and the neurotic and psychotic seems perfect, (p. 245) She finds that shamans among the Shasta Indians were always women who had cataleptic seizures. They were recognized as shamans at the onset of their fits, and since they were believed to have contact with the super natural, they often attained great power and importance in their tribe. In primitive religion hypermental states were regarded as divine, and Hawthorne seems to retain something of the primitive awe of those who are set apart by their malady. Hawthorne, or at least Coverdale, seems at times to believe that nervous debility gives a person particularly acute perceptions. Priscilla is described as "the weakly Maiden, whose tremulous nerves endow her with Sibylline attributes" (VIII, xxxi). Coverdale says to her, "I have sometimes thought that you, Priscilla, are a little prophetess, or, at least, that you have spiritual intimations respecting matters which are dark to us grosser people" (p. 203). But the nineteenth century is not an age of myth and pagan religion, and those who would have been regarded as divine in other times are considered by most people as suffering from illness. During earlier Christian centuries Priscilla would probably have been regarded as a witch. Even in the nineteenth century, however, there was a considerable public that showed great interest in trances during which communication with spiritual powers was thought to take place. The popularity of mediumistlc seances began in America and spread to Europe in the 1830's. Hawthorne shows that even a skeptic like Coverdale would attend such a perform ance and make a half-ironic inquiry of the medium or sibyl, as believers made inquiries in ancient times. The desire to know the future is the same in all ages, and there lingers even in the educated skeptic some of the primitive animism of the savage. In the nineteenth century, however, the sibyl is accepted as genuine by only a limited number of devotees, and by the rest of the community is considered 275 either as an unbalanced person or as a fraud. In primitive and ancient societies women had an impor tant place in religious observances, as goddesses, priest esses, sibyls, and shamans. Hawthorne, whether from the consideration of this fact or from his own intuition and observation, regarded women as having spiritual qualities of a high order, and intimates in several places that humanity would benefit from a proper utilization of such gifts. He has Coverdale explain his views of woman as spiritual leader: 0, in the better order of things, Heaven grant that the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women! The gates of the Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in, when that day comes! The task belongs to woman. God meant it for her. He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost depth and purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with which every masculine theo- logian--save only One, who merely veiled himself in mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine--has been prone to mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics their faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness, (pp. 172-73) In his attitude toward Hester Prynne's aspirations as spiritual leader, and in his interest in Anne Hutchinson, of whose life he wrote a sketch, Hawthorne shows himself 276 to have had views similar to those of Coverdale. His wife, enthusiastically religious, the "pure" daughter of Puritans, probably reinforced Hawthorne's belief that women had talent for spiritual things. In The Blithedale Romance the spiritual gifts of woman as spoken of approvingly by Coverdale are not acknowledged by Priscilla or by Hollingsworth, who anticipates D. H. Lawrence's attitude toward woman as a being whose function it is to consider "man as her acknowledged principle" (p. 174). Even Zenobia, though she is an aggressive champion of woman's rights, does not resent Hollingsworth's despotic, patriarchal attitude, and says only, "Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only too ready to become to him what you say!" (p. 176). Coverdale can explain this unexpected capitulation of Zenobia by thinking that "ages of compelled degradation" may have caused women to be so abject. He wonders if they can ever be redeemed (p. 176). Hollingsworth, whom Priscilla and Zenobia both love, is "manly and godlike" in some ways. He has been a black" smith, and retains the burly vigor requisite to that trade. He has a desire to build an institution in which he will reform criminals, and his reforming zeal governs his relationship with humanity. Zenobia and Priscilla make Coverdale feel rather bitter because they both love the tyrannical and fanatical Hollingsworth when Coverdale has been much more generous in his estimate of womanhood. "Hollingsworth," he says, "by some necromancy of his hor rible injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet'." (p. 176). Coverdale admires Hollingsworth, but not his monomania, and refuses to be of assistance in the squalid project Hollingsworth is determined to undertake. Hollingsworth has some godlike elements: "Hollingsworth . . . wrought like a Titan" (p. 194). He has Promethean impulses and is ready to sacrifice everything for his idea. Westervelt describes him as "a certain holy and benevolent blacksmith; a man of iron, in more senses than one" (p. 132). Coverdale speaks of Hollingsworth's governing pur pose in disapproving terms because the reformer is willing to sacrifice not only h5mself but others to his monomania, and he also has no real insight into his true motive, which is egotistical. Coverdale calls a philanthropist "that steel engine of the Devil's contrivance" (p. 99). The nineteenth-century Prometheus does not understand his true motivation in aiding mankind. The words "iron" and "steel" are frequently applied to him, as if in an iron age 278 the Titans are debased; or as if what they wish to appear as love for man is impossible because of their iron hearts. In Hollingsworth there is an ambiguity of good and evil. Self-appointed reformers are often unwitting agents of evil. Hawthorne lived among many people who were devoted to a great variety of causes for which they made great sacrifices of time, money, and effort, even, as in the case of his neighbor Bronson Alcott, causing their families to suffer for their enthusiasms. His observation of reformers led him to believe in the futility of reform through aggressive effort. He believed that a thorough going reform comes about by means of a gradual growth and education, a slow change that requires time. He had no faith in a planned overturning of established custom. As one sees in the analysis of Hollingsworth, Hawthorne is suspicious of the basic motivation of reformers, who are loyal to a cause only because it is theirs, and blind to the causes of others and to the welfare of humanity in general. Fanatical devotion to a cause implies a distrust in Providence, which has a plan for the gradual melioration of the human condition--the rising spiral curve Clifford speaks of in The House of the Seven Gables. George Parsons Lathrop is convinced of Hawthorne’s faith in Providence, 279 in that operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies and conflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairs to a state of truthful ness. Hawthorne was one of the few great believers of his generation; but his faith showed itself in a negat ive way. In the course of the romance, Hollingsworth, the latter- day Prometheus determined to improve humanity, comes to regard himself not as a benefactor but as a destroyer, for he blames himself for the death of Zenobia, calling himself her murderer. Westervelt is a character described in terms of evil magic. There are chthonic elements in him; he is connected with the underworld, with evil and death. He appears unexpectedly to Coverdale so that "he has almost the effect of an apparition" (p. 128). Hawthorne contrasts him with the descendant of fauns and satyrs. Westervelt was a less appropriate apparition "than if the salvage man of antiq uity, hirsute and cinctured with a leafy girdle, had started out of a thicket." This savage man was one of Hawthorne's celebrants in "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the reference to him at Blithedale may suggest that the times were not favorable to the production of such mythic Study of Hawthorne (Boston, 1876), p. 296. 280 creatures as those of former ages. There are in Westervelt's appearance some of the features Hawthorne associates with some mythic characters, but there is nothing in him of the innocent nature spirits once supposed to inhabit the forest: His hair, as well as his beard and mustache, was coal-black; his eyes too, were black and sparkling, and his teeth remarkably brilliant. He was rather carelessly but well and fashionably dressed, in a summer-morning costume. There was a gold chain, exquisitely wrought, across his vest. I never saw a smoother or whiter gloss than that upon his shirt- bosom, which had a pin in it, set with a gem that glimmered, in the leafy shadow where he stood, like a living tip of fire. He carried a stick with a wooden head, carved in vivid imitation of that of a serpent, (pp. 129-30) There are similarities here to the description of Pluto in Tanglewood Tales, in the story "The Pomegranate Seeds." The diabolical symbols are the black witch eyes of Medea, and the gold chain, for in Hawthorne gold and gems are often associated with the rich underground palace of Dis. Jaffrey Pyncheon, for example, carries a gold-headed cane that symbolizes him. The gem on Westervelt's shirt-bosom scintillates with hell-fire. The snaky staff is that of the devil in "Young Goodman Brown," which the devil once loaned to the Egyptian Magi. It is an evil counterpart of the innocent caduceus of Mercury in Tanglewood Tales and 281 The Wonder-Book. The diabolical element in Westervelt is even more expressly stated: . . his black eyes sparkled at me, whether with fun or malice I knew not, but certainly as if the Devil were peeping out of them" (p. 132). Westervelt's name is symbolic, for he represents the scoffing Western world. . . . the Professor's tone represented that of worldly society at large, where a cold scepticism smothers what it can of our spiritual aspirations, and makes the rest ridiculous, (p. 143) He is, like Goethe's Mephistopheles, the spirit that denies. Hawthorne uses a curious feature of the old witch trials to bring out further the diabolism of Westervelt. The witch hunters looked for a physical abnormality that indicated to their satisfaction that their victim was in league with the devil. Coverdale regards Westervelt's dentures as the devil's mark. By making Coverdale his spokesman and by using the expression "I-fancied" Hawthorne evades responsibility for this remark, but the entire presentation of Westervelt is such that this item is in keeping with the whole character. Westervelt appears at the lyceum hall dressed like a bearded enchanter from the Arabian Nights. Hawthorne says that "ten years ago," which was around 1840, performers of mesmerism did not make much 282 claim to scientific objectivity, but used trance states as manifestations of magic and supernatural powers. The audience attended, not to learn about psychological truths, but to be entertained by a magic show and to find out about the future. A New England lyceum hall seems a strange place for a sibyl, a shaman, an oracle, or a necromancer, but according to Hawthorne's view of old myths as the common heritage of mankind, there was no reason why a New England farmer should not consult an oracle just as a Greek would have gone to Delphi. In his mesmeric performance Westervelt is not simply a magician. He is doing something Hawthorne considers evil; it is actually the unforgivable sin of Ethan Brand-- the violation of the sanctity of the human spirit. Wester velt invades Priscilla's mind to exploit her spiritual gift or neurotic illness, as one wishes to regard it. Priscilla had second sight, or cryptesthesia, and was sup posed to be able to foresee future events, but there was nothing evil in Priscilla; it was Westervelt's hypnotic influence that Hawthorne considers a malignant thing. The characters at Blithedale, happy valley, are attempting to establish something like the Golden Age. Hawthorne uses the expressions "Golden Age," "Arcadia," 283 and "Eden" as synonyms, and he uses them frequently as if the past rather than the future is an ideal to be striven for. Nothing new is being attempted at Blithedale, but rather there is an attempt to restore a happy condition that was supposed to have existed in some period in the remote past. In spite of the best efforts of the young enthusiasts engaged in the enterprise, the experiment cannot succeed, possibly because the times are out of joint and the Golden Age cannot be restored. They work with a will, these young people of strength and intelligence, but somehow the spirit of the age is against them and they cannot succeed. Time cannot move backward. A new revela tion is needed to reanimate old myths. In the pastimes of Blithedale one sees efforts to perpetuate ancient rituals, and the mythic quality is very clear. In Chapter VIII, entitled "A Modern Arcadia," May-Day is celebrated as a festival, and Zenobia is promoter of the festivities. She decks Priscilla as May- Queen. Priscilla is made beautiful with flowers, and is like the Queen of the May in "The Maypole of Merry Mount." A note of discord, of impropriety, is observable in Zenobia's rather devilish act, for she inserts an evil smelling weed among Priscilla's flowers. This weed is 284 undoubtedly skunk cabbage, associated, like deadly night shade, with witchcraft. Zenobia plucks It out when Cover dale mentions It, but some damage has been done to the personification of Flora, or Mala, or other fertility goddesses of whom the Queen of the May Is a more recent equivalent. Like "The Pomegranate Seeds," The Blithedale Romance, written In the same period, Is a seasonal myth. It begins at the end of winter. Coverdale's Illness and convales cence are spoken of as a death and rebirth, and may be taken as symbolic of spring, as If he were a god of the old fertility rituals, like Dionysus, for example. The book begins with spring and continues until fall, covering the period of fertility and fruitfulness of the earth. The summer progresses, and Coverdale leaves the farm for a change of scene. He returns in September, harvest time, and there Is a passage in which he is a sort of Bacchus as he visits his secret hermitage, a pine tree on which a grapevine twines. The grapes have ripened in his absence: Methought a wine might be pressed out of them pos sessing a passionate zest, and endowed with a new kind of intoxicating quality, attended with such bacchanalian ecstasies as the tamer grapes of Madeira, France, and the Rhine are inadequate to produce. And I longed to quaff a great goblet of it at that moment! (p. 297) The "bacchanalian ecstasies" are mentioned with much enthusiasm here and in the scene where Coverdale meets with Old Moodie in a Boston tavern, a place described in detail. The frequenters "sucked in the joyous fire of the decanters and kept it smouldering in their inmost recesses, with a bliss known only to the heart which it warmed and comforted" (p. 252). The chapter "An Old Acquaintance" is largely devoted to an appreciation of the happy effect of alcohol on Old Moodie and the other occupants of the establishment. Hawthorne refers to spirituous liquors in such a way as to give the impression that he, as well as Coverdale and Old Moodie, is a worshiper of Dionysus.^ Coverdale, a poet, may feel a sort of obligation to worship Bacchus, since the literature of the Western world has close associations with the ritual of Dionysus. It is not known how much Hawthorne concerned himself with the origins of Greek tragedy, but his intuition led him to suggest what later scholars have more definitely stated on the subject. One scholar and translator of Greek tragedy has ^In a letter to Ticknor, October 8, 1853, Hawthorne writes: "I dined with two sons of Burns last Saturday, and got into great favor with them--partly by the affection which I showed for the whiskey-bottle." Caroline Ticknor, Hawthorne and His Publisher (Boston, 1913), p. 114. 286 made an observation that is important in this connection: I wish to suggest, however, that while the content has strayed far from Dionysus, the forms of tragedy retain clear traces of the original drama of the Death and Rebirth of the Year Spirit.*--* The classic drama is specifically mentioned in the romance when Coverdale refers to himself as taking the part of the chorus, watching the events with sympathetic interest and adding his comments and his tears (p. 137). After pausing in his hermitage in the vine-covered pine tree, Miles Coverdale, Hawthorne's New England Bacchus, ironically named after the Bishop of Exeter, goes on to find his former associates. They are not in their accus tomed haunts, and after some search he hears voices in the wood where a festival, presumably a harvest celebration, is under way. The farmers seem as gay as the crew of Comus--a simile that recalls the festival at Merry Mount, where Hawthorne also likened the participants to Milton's wicked pagans. An Indian chief is here at the Blithedale masquerade, and also a gypsy fortune teller, and shepherds of Arcadia. The only goddess of the Greek myths who is *^Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis (Cambridge, 1912), p. 342. (Gilbert Murrays "Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy") 287 mentioned is Diana, with a crescent on her head. She is here in her heavenly aspect as Selene, the moon goddess. The Witch of Lynn is in the assembly of transformed farmers, the famous Moll Pitcher of whom John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem published in Boston in 1832: Even she, our own weird heroine, Sole Pythoness of ancient Lynn-- Despite her fortune telling sin, Sleeps calmly where the living laid her. . . . Whittier's note explains that Moll Pitcher was well known to all New Englanders: No Pythoness of olden time--no Druid of ancient Britain, churming over his mistleto [sic]--no Scald of the North, bending over the shrine of Odin, ever acquired a more diabolical reputation, or was sought after with greater earnestness by a credulous com munity . ^ The transformed homed god is prominent in the gathering: "homed and long-tailed gentleman (in whom I recognized the fiendish musician erst seen by Tam O'Shanter) tuned his fiddle, and summoned the whole motley route to a dance" (p. 300). This musician is Hawthorne's version of Bums's "tousie tyke" or shaggy dog who plays the bag-pipe for the Witches' Sabbath Tam watches until the discovery of his 16 From a rare edition of this poem in the Huntington Library. Page not numbered. presence breaks up the meeting. This celebration at Blithedale is glimpsed through the eyes of Coverdale, who has been away, and so the reader knows nothing about the details of planning or the purpose of the event. Hawthorne is able therefore to be vague and suggestive in his rendering of the spectacle, which is actually subordinate to events of greater importance to the principals. The festival is a curious blending of ancient harvest ceremonials, which probably contained elements of Hallowe'en at Blithedale. The participants are representa tives of several kinds of paganism, and the subsequent death of Zenobia suggests mythic factors connected with the death of the year. At an autumnal ceremonial held by the pagan Druids in honor of the Sun god to give thanks for the harvest, Saman, their lord of death, called together evil souls who had been sentenced to occupy the bodies of animals. Modern celebrations of Hallowe'en retain features of the Roman feast of Pomona, in which apples and nuts, representing the harvest, were used. But the masquerade at Blithedale is given no name, and Haw thorne brings in freely such elements as he wants to make use of, as he does in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," and in descriptions of other public gatherings. The details 289 of the Blithedale festival are taken from the notebook, where Hawthorne describes an event at Brook Farm, a cele bration of a child's birthday. Like the convocations in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," "Young Goodman Brown," Kinsman, Major Molineux," and the Mardi-Gras in The Marble Faun, the Blithedale festivities suggest anci:nt nature worship. These gatherings not only serve an artistic purpose in adding universality to the story of individuals, but they also provide the element of what Aristotle called spectacle to the drama. In the Blithedale masquerade the figures are not chosen at random; all have some significance, epitomizing paganism in various periods and localities. Diana, with her crescent and her hound, may have been chosen because the cult of Diana was thought to have been operative in witch times, whereas other classical deities, at least in their original form, had been forgotten. At Blithedale the moon goddess shoots with her arrows, one of which almost strikes Coverdale. The gypsy who tells fortunes here was Hawthorne's own link with magic, for he and his friend Bridge were frequent patrons of a gypsy of Brunswick when they were students at Bowdoin. The Indian--and Indians do not do anything in Hawthorne's works except 290 to be present--typifies the primeval American forest with its particular paganism, so like that of Europe, because it is, indeed, universal. Moll Pitcher, the Witch of Lynn, represents paganism in its transformation in Christian times, and the horned gentleman playing the fiddle for the dance is the Satan whose power was almost supreme over the Puritans of earlier times. There is obvious signifi cance in the fact that all the world dances to his music on this occasion, as they follow him obediently in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and in "Young Goodman Brown." Curious ambivalences are observable here, of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, of life and death. A kind of Pantheon is needed to contain all these elements, as the Roman Pantheon is used in the last scene in The Marble Faun; but it would not in this place and time be a Pantheon of splendid aspect. There is something worn and seedy and unsuccessful about this Blithedale festival. Diana's hound is the old, lazy, farm dog they all know. Silas Foster, the professional farmer who taught the newcomers their work, stands aside in his smock and watches the proceedings with some cynicism. Zenobia, Queen Zenobia, as they call her, who is looked to as leader, has her traumatic interview with Hollingsworth, 291 and is reduced Co humiliation and despair. The subsequent chthonic event, the death of Zenobia, the search for her body, and the raising of it out of the black water at dnlght, follows out the mythical sugges tions of the rest of the book. Zenobia, a life symbol, extraordinarily beautiful as if favored by Nature herself, becomes in a short time a horrifying corpse. Coverdale has some cynical thoughts about the dead Zenobia, thinking how ironical it was that she looked so hideous when no doubt she had planned to be a rather picturesque corpse. This is similar to Hawthorne's unkind views of Margaret Fuller's death. The fascination such a woman had for the critical observer was not unmixed with some Puritanical guilt or fear. Coverdale's position is ambivalent. He expresses some Instinctive pagan feelings, as when he says, on his return to Blithedale, "I could have knelt down and have laid my breast against that soil" (p. 294). Coverdale has a primitive wish for human sacrifice; although the wish is expressed in refined language, it is perfectly clear. He feels that the life of the community would be "sanctified by death." A poetical end is imagined, with edifying rites. Hollingsworth considers his views 292 heathen (p. 185). When Coverdale speaks of the end of Hollingsworth and Zenobia and his attitude toward them, unrelenting as destiny, perhaps, but sympathetic, the language of human sacrifice is used again: And, after all was finished, I would come as if to gather up the white ashes of those who had perished at the stake, and to tell the world--the wrong being now atoned for--how much had perished there which it had never yet known how to praise, (p. 229) Punishment for sin is also intimated, as in the burnings of witchcraft days. The psychology of witch-burnings may not as yet be fully understood, and is probably a composite of many strains, one of which may be an impulse that caused the widespread use of human sacrifice in the long ages of pre-history. In the death of Zenobia there is something of the sacrifice of paganism and the punishment of Puri tanism. How close she was to Nature Coverdale re-empha sizes near the end of the book: "While Zenobia lived, Nature was proud of her, and directed all eyes upon that radiant presence, as her fairest handiwork" (p. 349). The struggle between Priscilla and Zenobia symbolizes a contest between spirituality and earthy paganism, and Zenobia is conquered; however, the victory is almost with out meaning, for poor Priscilla is left with the remorseful Hollingsworth, who feels that he has done an evil thing 293 toward Zenobia. Priscilla, a simple creature, was hardly aware of the battle she was engaged in. Like the similar conflicts in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," The Scarlet Letter, and The Marble Faun, the victory is on the side of history, as it must be, paganism being defeated, and, in spite of its beauty and a certain goodness, suppressed. The conquest is without rejoicing, Hawthorne makes the reader feel, either on earth or in heaven. Hawthorne's sympathies are strongly engaged on the side of paganism, no matter how much his Puritanism and the verdict of history force him to accept the triumph of the spiritual in the conclusion of his stories. The part played by prudence in the conclusions of his stories can only be conjectured; and Hawthorne buries himself deeply in the ambivalences of his books. His Coverdale, in whom many readers see much of Hawthorne himself, is fascinated by Zenobia throughout the book, but at the end he stammeringly and blushingly reveals to the reader the news that he himself was in love with Priscilla. It is likely that conscience had something to do with Hawthorne's management of events, although expediency may have had some Influence. Critics have expressed discontent with The Blithedale Romance. One, referring to Hollingsworth, writes: 294 Worst of all, this man who is the real protagonist of the novel, is surrounded by the material of another type of book altogether, the relations between Zenobia and Priscilla, the mesmerism and the Veiled Lady apanages, and the generally fantastic qualities that probably appealed much more to Hawthorne than the social experiment of Brook Farm or the philan thropic fanaticism of Hollingsworth. Because of this bad mingling of the elements the book is immeasurably weakened and comes as a distinct anticlimax to The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables^ This critic ignores the mythical element pervading the book, and is not considering the romance in the light of Hawthorne's other works. He speaks of the "fantastic" elements that Hawthorne preferred to write about, meaning what might be called the pagan and mythic factors of the work; and he does not regard these elements with the attention Hawthorne meant them to receive. If a reader takes this novel to be a realistic criticism of Brook Farm, he will, of course, be disappointed in the book. It is called a romance for the purpose of freeing the author from any such design. Woodberry perceives that Hawthorne cannot be taken on a simple, realistic level: Hawthorne, as he matured, wrote, as it were a palimpsest; there was a hidden writing beneath ^Herman Gorman, Hawthorne (New York, 1927), pp. 105- 6. Mark Van Doren in his Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, "Few poorer novels have been produced by a first-rate talent" (p. 189). 295 the script, and the script was only the key to what was beneath.*8 Actually, he had multiple meanings and concealed signifi cances in some of his early work also. The Blithedale Romance does not discuss socialistic principles and methods in detail, in the vocabulary of Fourier, St. Simon, Owen, nor other social theorizers of the age, nor is the book a satire on experiments in communal living. Hawthorne translated the alms of the experimenters into terms of myth, looking backward as well as forward, using expres sions like the Golden Age, Arcadia, and Eden rather than new words like "phalanstery." The "hidden writing" of this book is not difficult to decipher. Hollingsworth, the shattered Titan, ends with the vulture of remorse tearing at his vitals. The earth goddess is dead, a futile sacri fice. There are overtones in the night scene where her body is recovered that suggest descent into the underworld, like the descent of Proserpine, connected with the dying year. In an earlier chapter Coverdale and Hollingsworth discuss the fact that no one has died at Blithedale, and that no cemetery has been planned there. They anticipate l^George Woodberry, Hawthorne. How to Know Him (Indianapolis, 1918), p. 89. 296 death, but it is ironic that the death is that of Zenobia, the life symbol; this circumstance indicates that the Golden Age and its way of life cannot be restored. In the Iron Age the gods of nature do not function as of old. Hawthorne views history as organic. He feels that changes come by some inevitability and in accordance with laws of development that man cannot hasten nor disrupt. In his Life of Franklin Pierce he writes: There is no instance, in all history, of the human will and intellect having perfected any great moral reform by methods which it adapted to that end; but the progress of the world, at every step, leaves some evil or wrong on the path behind it, which the wisest of mankind, of their own set purpose, could never have found the way to rectify. (XVII, 166) His view of progress is tempered, however, by his rather romantic longing for what has been lost as humanity advances. The desire for a life of instinctive innocence, close to nature, has great appeal for him, and the Golden Age, the life of Arcadia, is a beautiful ideal that even his skepticism does not destroy. In the era of the iron steam engine, efforts to restore this ideal meet with failure. His Coverdale speaks of "the Arcadian affecta tion" in the lives of the farmers of Blithedale (p. 338). And Coverdale mentions the romantic aspect of the experi ment as furnishing mythic materials, though his remarks 297 are a mixture of the comic and the serious: In a century or two, we shall, every one of us, be mythical personages, or exceedingly picturesque and poetical ones, at all events. ... In due course of ages, we must all figure heroically in an epic poem; and we will ourselves--at least, I will--bend unseen over the future poet, and lend him inspiration while he writes it. (pp. 183-184) Hawthorne Intended these characters, then, as char acters of an epic, and the epic belongs to the age of myth. He adapts the nature myths freely, New Englandizing them and placing them into the situation where they were closest to Arcadia. His best creation is Zenobia, the pagan earth-goddess. His Puritanism is evident in the way Hollingsworth and Coverdale both prefer Priscilla. Here again is the Puritan-pagan conflict, the pagan gods defeated once more, as they must be, though Hawthorne has given his best powers to re-creating them. It is the pagan aspect that enriches his art, as in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," The Marble Faun, and The Scarlet Letter. The gods are defeated at Blithedale, as they are in Wagner's Ring. on which Wagner was working while Hawthorne wrote. Haw thorne implies in the beauty and vigor with which he creates his myth that the earth is poorer for this defeat. CHAPTER VII HAWTHORNE'S TREATMENT OF THE MAGI Hawthorne's interest in paganism was partly the result of his temperament and education, and partly the result of his search for materials suitable to his art. He was involved both as man and as artist in his re creations of Arcadia, presented with nostalgic enthusiasm in "The Maypole of Merry Mount," The Marble Faun, and The Blithedale Romance. These stories are somewhat romantic attempts to restore a kind of existence impossible in recent centuries. In these three works the Arcadia is overwhelmed, and Hawthorne's re-embodiments of Pan, Demeter, and the rest cannot function as of old. Haw thorne's gravitation toward pagan material is, moreover, symptomatic of his time to some extent, for he lived in a period of the weakening of old orthodoxies and the establishment of new religions, some from Christian roots, but some more like the religions of early or primitive pagans. In Hawthorne's time there was a revival of 298 299 interest in a type o£ character that was suppressed, but without complete success, in the Christian centuries, and that came to be regarded with much interest in the most respectable circles of society. This character will be called here the magus. It will be seen that Hawthorne, the enthusiastic re-creator of Arcadias, was fascinated but repelled by modern exponents of pagan magic when he actually encountered them. The Reverend Charles W. Upham observes in his Salem Witchcraft a similarity between the earliest known magi cians, the Chaldean priests, the Brahmins of India, the Magi of Persia, the oracles of Greece, the augurs of Italy, the Druids of Britain, and the powwows (or prophets, or medicine men) among the Indians.^ Unusual powers were claimed by all of these. They were supposed to have the ability to foretell the future, to exercise control over nature, to communicate with spirits of the dead, to cure diseases by means of potions and charms, and sometimes to raise the dead. Almost all the elements of Elizabethan witchcraft, brought to New England in the seventeenth century, can be found in the lore of the ancient Assyrian ^■(Boston, 1867), I, 332. 300 2 magicians. And the Assyrians obtained the "art" from the Chaldeans before them, and handed it on to their neighbors. E. M. Butler traces a historical progression in the history of the practitioners of the occult arts from Zoroaster to the evil monk Rasputin. The derivation of the word "magician" from "magi" suggests the Persian origin of this concept, although the practice of magic is, of course, older than history and is universal. "Magia" meant, according to the Greeks, "the religion, learning and occult 3 practices of the Eastern Magi," as Herodotus tells. Those individuals who undertook to serve the public by practicing magic, in whatever branch or by whatever means, possessed power over the minds of others. They had a quality recognized as superior, a quality which depends upon an innate "intellectual, spiritual, or personal" force greater than the average members of the group possess (p. 3). The Myth of the Magus describes the type of the magician, dealing chiefly with famous examples of the type--Zoroaster, Moses, the Solomon of later legends, 2 George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, 1929), p. 27. ^The Myth of the Magus (New York, 1948), p. 15. 301 Pythagoras, Apollonius of Tyana, Christ (whose history has points of similarity with the history of the others, though he caused the downfall of the magus of antiquity), Simon Magus, Cyprian of Antioch, the legendary Vergil, Merlin, Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais, Zyto, Doctor Faust, Friar Bacon, Dr. Dee, and modern masters considered in the last part of the book, which is called "The Return of the Magi." Different lists might easily be compiled by other scholars; however, these beings had, in varying degrees, the quality that is now sometimes called "mana," and they exercised it for a variety of purposes, good or evil. Hawthorne's interest in the type is seen in his treatment of witches, and also in his alchemist-physician- sorcerers who appear in a number of his works. Though he may call one of these characters a scientist or a physi cian, it is observable that in all of them there is some thing of the magus. They are not in the least, in spite of the long hours they spend in their "laboratories," like the scientists of the present day--patient experi menters whose work is carefully checked by co-workers and by other scientists all over the world. Hawthorne would have considered the modern scientist a dull plodder, fumbling about the periphery of the great enigmas of life, 302 instead of boldly aiming at the master knot of human fatet or solving the riddle of the universe. To spend a life time learning to control, or perhaps merely to limit the effect of, one of the thousand ills that flesh is heir to, would not be of interest to Hawthorne. Eternal earthly existence with perpetual youth, power over the mind of another, the creation of life, divination--these are some of the problems his "scientists" concern them selves with. No Hawthorne story deals with such characters as Harvey, Boyle, or Franklin; discovering the difference between chemical elements and compounds is an achievement that is a long way from finding the elixir of life. As one student of Hawthorne's work puts it: Despite certain realistic appurtenances in the correct scientific tradition, the laboratories of Hawthorne's scientists stood nearer to the dark, mysterious dens of the medieval alchemists than to the laboratories of the nineteenth century, equipped to dispel all mystery and all shadows; and his scientists stood closer to their medieval than to their modern counterparts. In an entry in his notebook in 1838 Hawthorne mentions the alchemists who formerly lived in Salem. One he par ticularly remembers kept a fire burning under a mixture for ^Elizabeth Hosmer, Science and Pseudo-Science in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne (An Abstract of a Thesis. Urbana, Illinois, 1950), p. 12. 303 seven weeks, only to fail in achieving his elixir because the fire went out. While it is true that what is called real science owes much of its early development to the magical pseudo-sciences of former ages, the distinction between the two was certainly almost as clear in Haw thorne's time as it is today. Lacking means of divination, one cannot foresee what scientists of the future will say of the science of the present. Some of it may seem comical; but many safeguards are used to prevent anything like the gross magic of alchemical methods that Hawthorne returns to again and again. To enter into one of Hawthorne's laboratories and to look at the books the "scientist" uses is to see how far such a character as Aylmer in "The Birthmark" (1843) is from being what is now considered as a scientist. Aylmer reads Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Friar Bacon, whose talking brazen head Hawthorne mentions. Hawthorne comments on these men: All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a sway over the spiritual world. (IV, 65-66) It is the sway over the spiritual world that is most important in the characters Hawthorne creates. Hawthorne is interested only in very extraordinary discoveries, like the universal solvent or the philosopher's stone, that alchemists sought. Aylmer refers to himself as a sorcerer (p. 67). In citing the speaking brazen head of Friar Bacon, Hawthorne refers to a legend, like the myth of Talos, the brass robot he mentions in the story of the Minotaur. Brazen heads were said to have powers of divination. It is possible that the alchemists Hawthorne lists in "The Birthmark" are his prototypes, seen with some variations in many works, from "The Haunted Quack" (1831) to The Dolliver Romance of his last years. These "scientists" attempted what may always be impossible, and what was very far from any realization in the elementary state of scientific knowledge in their times. These men referred to in "The Birthmark" held opinions regarded as heretical; the Church looked with suspicion on their writings, because they invoked, or were thought to invoke, evil powers to assist them. Friar Bacon spent ten years in prison. Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was charged with heresy; he had enemies because he attacked the learned men of his day, and the Inquisition tried to 305 suppress his De Occulta Philosophia (c. 1510). Paracelsus also, that great doctor of the Renaissance, leaned toward the occult, studying the cabala and developing a mystical system of medication. He burned the books of ancient medicine, Arabic, Greek, and Jewish, claiming that he derived his real medical knowledge from sorceresses, shepherds, and hangmen. He rejected anatomy, and believed that the causes of disease were spiritual. He, too, was so heretical in his views that he had to flee from place to place and live in want. Hawthorne's Aylmer is a slender, spiritual type, impatient with earthly limitations, striving after the infinite. Aylmer hints that he could, if he wished, con coct an elixir that would give eternal life, but that his scruples prevent him. There is no date suggested for the action of this story, but since the Royal Society is mentioned, it must take place after 1660, when modern scientific methods were making headway. Hawthorne, however, is out in regions of magic in this story. The story is to be taken as an allegory, to be sure, but the details of the work are typical of Hawthorne's attitude. Aylmer and his helper Aminadab have been likened to Prospero and Caliban. While Prospero is learned, and he is said to 306 achieve his special phenomena as a result of study, he is certainly a magician, exercising "sway over the spiritual world." It may be wondered whether it is really science that Hawthorne is concerned with at all. When one considers the scientists who were Hawthorne's contemporaries, it becomes plain that Hawthorne is not interested in the scientific method, so laborious, so frustrating, so slow. Pasteur, Lyell, Darwin, were working in the 1850's. Simply to think of Darwin's painstaking collecting, labeling, and classifying of specimens is to realize how far Hawthorne was from portraying a scientist. In their efforts to control Nature, Hawthorne's scientists overstep the bounds of human knowledge. Austin Warren sees a yearning toward the preternatural in these characters: Pride of intellect, "libido sciendi": these are real temptations to an intellectual. The particular form of this in his speculative heroes is the pre-scientific impulse toward magic, toward pressing beyond the bounds set for human knowledge and human power, the Faustian thirst which (Hawthorne, like the Church, would say) ends with making not a God but a Devil of man.5 ^Nathaniel Hawthorne. Representative Selections, ed. Austin Warren (New York, 1934), p. xlvi. 307 Here Hawthorne's scientists are mentioned in terms of magic. They desire power over the unknown; they have an urge to create. This pagan attitude flourished in spite of the efforts of the church over the centuries. With Aylmer Hawthorne has some sympathy because Aylmer desires perfection. There is something exalted in his striving. But Hawthorne also is favorable to the opposite sentiment of Aminadab--shaggy, smoky, strong, earthly-- in favor of natural worldly limitations. Aylmer kills his wife with his experimentations, but since he aspired nobly, Hawthorne is surprisingly uncen- sorious of him. In the case of Dr. Rappaccini ("Rappac- cini's Daughter" was published in 1844, under the title "Writing of Aubdpine") the poisoning magus is clearly evil. Venefica often meant witch. as the witch was often resorted to for poisons; the evil often attending witch craft is the atmosphere surrounding Dr. Rappaccini. He is said to be devoted to science to such an extent that he would sacrifice himself and his best-loved ones in order to add to the sum of human knowledge. But he himself gives another motive. He tries to give his child power over others, so that she could overcome all enemies--to make her as terrible as she is beautiful. He is more interested 308 in power than in knowledge. He wishes to prove himself a creator. When young Giovanni asks about the origin of the poisonous flower, Beatrice replies, "My father created it" (IV, 170). There is a suggestion of occult knowledge: "He is a man fearfully acquainted with the secrets of Nature" (p. 171). Between Beatrice and the flower there is a mystical relationship, for they were born together. The two young lovers, infected by Rappaccini's poisons, attempt to free themselves by means of an antidote con cocted by a scientific rival of Dr. Rappaccini. This mixture is an all-purpose remedy, a miraculous, magical potion effective against all poisons. Its maker says of it, "One little sip of this antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous" (p. 165) . As in the case of Aylmer, Rappaccini's efforts turn out badly, for "our great creative Mother," as Hawthorne states in "The Birthmark," "... permits us indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make" (IV, 57). The Impiety of Rappaccini's work is noted by Fogle: "Rappaccini is a great though impious creator; defying God, he has not wholly failed 309 in his effort."** Impiety is expressly stated in "The Great Carbuncle," as the search for the magic gem of Indian legend is "little better than traffic with the Evil One" (1, 206). The alchemist in this story is Doctor Cacaphodel, a name made possibly from the Greek cakos. bad, evil, deformed, and asphodel. the flower of the underworld. He had dried himself out in the fumes of his researches in chemistry and alchemy. Further on in the story Hawthorne refers to him simply as an alchemist. Hawthorne's enduring interest in alchemists appears in his curiosity about Dr. Dee's magic crystal, which he saw in the British Museum in December, 1857: In another case is the magic glass formerly used by Dr. Dee, and in which, if I rightly remember, used to be seen prophetic visions or figures of persons and scenes at a distance. It is a round ball of glass or crystal, slightly tinged with a pinkish hue, and about as big as a small apple, or a little bigger than an egg would be if perfectly round. This ancient humbug kept me looking at it perhaps ten minutes; and I saw my own face dimly in it, but no other vision. (XXI, 106-107) * * Richard Harter Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction (Norman, Oklahoma, 1952), p. 98. 310 Ten minutes Is a rather long time for a skeptic to test a crystal ball; It would be Interesting to know the train of his thought during that time, as he looked Into a famous Implement of Queen Elizabeth's astrologer, who appointed the day of her coronation so that It would be auspicious. Dr. Dee was prodigiously learned, but he dealt persistently In the old black magic, looking for short cuts to knowledge, wealth, and power through con sulting the dead, and by various other means. He was one of the leading mathematicians of his day; his calculations contributed to the reform of the old-style calendar. On the other hand, he claimed to have seen the angel Uriel, the spirit of light, in his laboratory. He bore In his hand the famous "angelical stone"; a thing "most bright, most clere and glorious, of the bigness of an egg." And then Michael appeared with a fiery sword and bade Dee "Go forward, take it up. and let no mortall hand touch it but thine „ i n7 own. This was the stone Into which Hawthorne peered. His skepticism and his gravitation toward the magical are both exemplified in this incident. Dr. Dee has a great ambition ^Myth of the Magus. p. 165. The quotation is from Charlotte Fell-Smith, John Dee (London, 1909), pp. 86ff. 311 to attain all knowledge. Like Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus he was ahead of his time in some respects, but he retained hope of communication with powers that would give easy solutions. The magician as medicine man is a variant of Haw thorne's alchemists. Dr. Heidegger is a physician who has a magical elixir that restores youth. It was sent to him from Ponce de Leon's legendary Fountain of Youth in Florida. In addition to the magical elixir, the doctor uses a book of magic, a folio volume of prodigious powers. Though told in a jocular style this story (1837) has the same appurtenances as Hawthorne's other accounts of the magical physician, who is usually an ineffectual healer, if not a downright killer. Hawthorne consistently speaks ill of the medical fraternity. In The House of the Seven Gables Holgrave says, "We are sick of dead men's diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients!" (VII, 265). In The Marble Faun Miriam calls a physician a privileged murderer. The doctor is mentioned in pagan terms in "Dr. Bullivant," where Hawthorne mentions a bust of Aesculapius, and the "smell of musk and assafoetida, and other drugs of potent perfume, 312 as if an appropriate sacrifice were just laid upon the altar of the medical deity" (XVII, 270). Dr. Grimshawe was a medecin malgre lui. sought out by the public. "There was unquestionably an odor of quackery about him; but by no means of an ordinary kind" (XV, 8). htystery is con nected with him. Townspeople call him a spider-witch, and threaten to tar and feather the "British wizard." But they value him for his magic remedies. Hawthorne's con sistently adverse opinion of doctors is apparent in a comment on his harrowing experience with the death of Ticknor when they were traveling for Hawthorne's health, in April, 1864. He told Fields that doctors "belabored with pills and powders, and then proceeded to cup, and poultice, and blister, according to the ancient rule of Q that tribe of savages." Hawthorne's father-in-law may have been a means of keeping physicians in Hawthorne's mind. Hawthorne was, from all reports, a most considerate husband, and he would probably not have hurt his wife's sensibilities by speaking unfavorably of her father's medical skill. Dr. Peabody g Randall Stewart, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography (New Haven, 1948), p. 236. was a dentist, but he also prescribed for various ailments. He kept a kind of pharmacy in Salem. One may conjecture what opinion Hawthorne had of the medication given to Sophia through the years of her invalidism. If Dr. Peabody did not prescribe, he at least condoned the administration of drugs that were exceedingly harmful-- opium, arsenic, and mercury were some of these. To extend the conjecture, Hawthorne was perfectly safe in feeling that the innocent Sophia would not recognize herself as la Belle Empoisonneuse, nor her well-meaning father as Dr. Rappaccini. While it is well known that the idea of mithridatism came from Hawthorne's reading, the father- daughter relationship is a theme that came from elsewhere, and may have been found at home. Sophia's ailment has been called neurotic by some Hawthorne biographers, though the ill effect of drugs has been mentioned also. After her marriage her health improved; she was able to care for her three lively children, born when she was no longer young. She seems to have had a consistently cheerful dis position that does not accompany neurosis. It may be that in a sense Hawthorne was the Guasconti who succeeded in freeing her from her father's poisons. 314 The close connection between the history of medicine and the history of magic was still to be seen in the superstitious regard the public had for quack potions and elixirs in the nineteenth century. Many dispensers of these remedies claimed to have derived their ingredients from the Indian medicine men, considered by some Americans to be in close communication with the Great Spirit. In Mark Twain's boyhood, folk remedies and Indian medicines were highly regarded: Every old woman gathered her own medicines in the woods and knew how to compound doses that would stir the vitals of a cast-iron dog. And then there was the "Indian doctor"; a grave savage, remnant of his tribe, deeply read in the mysteries of nature and the secret properties of herbs; and most backwoodsmen had high faith in his powers and could tell of wonder ful cures achieved by him.9 One of the many profitable quack remedies sold in the early nineteenth century was called "the Wine of Cardui," which came in a carton decorated with the picture of an Indian maid pointing to a plant and saying, "Take and be healed-- The Great Spirit sent it."^ The Indians were thought to g The Autobiography of Mark Twain, ed. Charles Neider (New York, 1959), pp. 10-11. lOstewart H. Holbrook, The Golden Age of Quackery (New York, 1959), p. 105. 315 know all the God-given medicinal plants. The quack reme dies of this age, with their high alcoholic content, produced an immediate effect, and the most extravagant claims were made for useless potions. Hawthorne seems to go along with the belief in the efficacy of Indian medicine, and at the same time expresses his scorn of quack remedies. It is from the Indians that Roger Chilllngworth, the alchemist-physician in The Scarlet Letter derives valuable cures. He first appears in the story accompanied by an Indian. He tells Hester that he learned secrets from the Indians, and he gives her a potion he learned to mix in the forest--". . . a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus" (VI, 102). In this exchange of magic Chilllngworth seems to have gained something healing; but he uses his knowledge to prolong life in order to prolong suffering. The combination of European and native American magico-medical lore Hawthorne was to use again in Septimius Felton, who is concerned with a recipe from England which is the same as that handed down from his Indian ancestors. Chilllngworth is referred to often in terms of evil magic. He has a bent shoulder, which indicates to older superstition something of diabolic connection, the devil's mark. Hawthorne describes him as if he were an evil magician. His long gray beard almost touches the ground. Hester fancies that poisonous herbs spring up to greet him as he approaches to gather simples. A shadow seems to surround him, and she imagines that he could sink into the ground, leaving a "blasted spot" where plants asso ciated with malefic witchcraft would grow (VI, 252). Chilllngworth was reputed to have joined in the magical incantations of the Indian medicine men. He had been seen by a witness in the company of Dr. Forman, the poisoning sorcerer of the notorious Overbury murder case. He claimed to be associated with Sir Kenelm Digby, whose wife, it was rumored, died of a viper wine administered by her husband to enhance her beauty. Though Digby had considerable scientific knowledge, he made claims to fabulous cures, and was considered a mountebank by some of his contemporaries. Quacks of the nineteenth century made the most extravagant claims for their nostrums--that they cured an assortment of serious but unrelated diseases, and that 317 they restored youth and strength. The American public had a childlike faith in the most flagrantly false advertising, and spent great sums of money for useless remedies: By 1820, to choose an arbitrary date, there was not only a nostrum for every ill. . . . The business gradually developed several divisions, or types. . . . For instance, there were those who claimed to be privy to the "secret” herbal formulas of the American Indian chiefs.^ These mixtures were advertised in New England papers. A typical cure-all, "Hashalew's Elixir of Life,” was adver tised widely. "Old Doc Hashalew claimed to know the 'Secret Arts and Herbal Virtues of the Great Indian Chiefs of the Seneca and Cayuga tribes'” (p. 38). The Elixir of Life, one of the objectives of the old alchemists, was, appar ently, a common commodity in Hawthorne's youth. In "Doctor Bullivant” the public is enticed to the pharmacy "by the printed advertisement of a Panacea, promising life but one day short of eternity, and youth and health com mensurate" (XVII, 271). "The Haunted Quack" (1831) describes a potion made of forty-nine ingredients, and called "The Antidote to Death, or the Eternal Elixir of Longevity." Its discoverer, Dr. Hippocrates Jenkins, *~^The Golden Age of Quackery, p. 33. 318 learned medicine from Dr. Ramshorne, "regarded, in point of occult knowledge and skill, as a second Faustus" (XVI, 277). The teller of this story made the acquaintance of the quack after reading Joseph Glanville's History of the Witches. The books of Dr. Ramshorne seem to be magic, for he forbade his apprentice to touch them. That Dr. Jenkins is not a killer is a mere fortunate circumstance; he believes for a while that his panacea has killed an old woman, but she was strong enough to survive, and the "mana" of the healer prevailed in the community. Although Hawthorne mentions the elixir of life from time to time, it is in his last years that the theme seems to be almost obsessive. His health gradually deteriorated, and loss of strength and approaching death may have been constantly on his mind. In The Dolliver Romance old Doctor Dolliver is the guardian of a young child he will leave unprotected when he dies. Hawthorne was the father of three children not yet ready to be independent. The youngest was only thirteen when her father died. The distress of his declining health must have been increased by his concern for his family. The elixir would have solved his problems. Dr. Dolliver finds the elixir, which benefits him, but ironically kills the old Colonel when 319 he insists upon taking it neat Instead of "guttarn unlearn in aquam puram. two gills" (XIV, 46). The receipt was on an ancient parchment of which a part is missing. A mysterious powder was needed to make the potion efficacious. Septimius Felton, or The Elixir of Life, not published in Hawthorne's lifetime, deals at length with the pursuit of the magical elixir, the life-giving property of which must come from a flower. Septimius believes that he has found the flower growing on a soldier's grave--there is some idea that the blood of the dead causes the flower to grow--but after much labor to compound the elixir, he finds that he has only made a poison. Sibyl is the appro priate name of the girl who misled him in his expectations, and caused him to waste much of his natural life in the frustrating search for the Impossible. In Septimius Felton there is considerable mention of magic--Septimius is the descendant of a wizard hanged in witchcraft days. His witch-like aunt brews a potion handed down from Indian ancestors. Dr. Portsoaken, who seeks the elixir also, is an alchemist. Sibyl's legend tells of an attempt to achieve the elixir by means of human sacrifice. The formula that came from the English soldier who died near Septimius's dwelling had been handed down in the family 320 from a friend of Friar Bacon's. The combination of English and Indian lore connected with the recipe suggests the universality of the search for youth and perpetual earthly existence. To strive for earthly life beyond the allotted span is a pagan tendency. Christianity stresses the bliss of the life to come. Hawthorne was not able to make any literary work of great excellence out of this theme, possibly because, even with all due consideration of the work as a romance, the concept belongs to a more primitive or more elementary state of the development of a literature. The romance, as Hawthorne differentiates it from the novel, goes back, through the Gothic novel and the medieval romance, to the epic. In the theme of the elixir of life Hawthorne reaches back to old myth, to the classic myth of Tithonus, for example, and to the oldest of epics so far discovered, the Epic of Gilgamesh. 1500 years older than the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Gilgaroesh. as in Septimius Felton, the essence of eternal life is to be found in a flower. Haw thorne could not possibly have known of the Babylonian hero's search for earthly immortality, because the material was not yet available in translation. It is curious that some intuitive sympathy with the mythic way of 321 apprehending experience led Hawthorne to a plot so essen tially similar to that of the ancient Sumerian legend. In "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" his use of "the type of action that fathered tragedy" is noted by Mrs. Q. D. Leavis as a remarkable inspiration, since his use of it was intuitive. This was mentioned in Chapter III, and illustrates how naturally Hawthorne, at least in some of his moods, adapts himself to the pagan way of responding to life. Septimius Felton, like Gilgamesh, finds his flower, but is frustrated in his search for earthly immortality. In the ancient epic, as in Septimius Felton, there is the arduous search, the seeming success, and the frustrating failure. In his descriptions of elixirs--the water from the Fountain of Youth in "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and the potion of Dr. Dolliver--the liquid has a beautiful color and clarity, it gives off a delightful aroma, and it has an effect like that of alcoholic beverages. When spirit uous liquors were first made, the name aqua vitae or eau de vie given to them suggests the anticipations of their discoverers. Dr. Portsoaken's name indicates the way in which he makes up for the lack of a more effective panacea. Aunt Keziah uses alcohol in place of the missing ingredient. Even Dr. Dolliver takes Santa Cruz rum to 322 augment the effect of his drop of elixir. Old Moody in The Blithedale Romance has the fires of life stirred up in the grog shop. There are many instances in Hawthorne's writings that show great appreciation of "the good creature." The quacks who sold the elixir in Hawthorne's day / were appealing to the ancient pagan desire, never com pletely controlled by the Christian churches, for perpetual earthly existence and eternal youth. Divination and necro mancy, which had been forbidden by the Church, had a recrudescence in the nineteenth century. The interest in the pseudo-sciences of phrenology and physiognomy also developed because of their use in divination. Articles on these subjects appeared in The American Maga2ine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, of which Hawthorne was editor for six months in 1836. In Fanshawe Hawthorne writes, "A phrenologist would probably have found the organ of destructiveness in strong development, just then, upon Edward's cranium" (XVI, 89). The intellectual equip ment of a barkeeper in The Blithedale Romance is indicated by the bumps over his eyebrows (VIII, 251). Hawthorne seems neither to accept the "science" implicitly, nor to reject it. "On phrenology he reaches no 323 12 conclusion." Physiognomy, which Walter Scott in his Demonology classifies with chiromancy and other arts of mystical prediction, is mentioned by Hawthorne as more of a gift than as a science. In "The Gentle Boy" Ilbrahim is the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy (I, H6). In The Blithedale Romance Hawthorne has Coverdale comment on "the mysticism, or rather the mystic sensuality, of this singular age" (VIII, 281-2). Two related mani festations of this tendency that receive extended treatment in his works are mesmerism and spiritualism, both very popular at the mid-century. The European fad of mesmerism combined with the American craze of spiritualism, for the hypnotist, as in The Blithedale Romance, sometimes sub jected the medium to his will. The rise of spiritualism in America may have been related to ancient practices of 13 Indian shamans. The hypnotist and the medium appeared in New England to give demonstrations at the lyceum. The 12 Edward Wagenknecht, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Man and Writer (New York, 1961), p. 185. ^In Robert Frost's poem "The Witch of Coos" the witch and her son are two "old believers." She is a medium who consults the dead through a Sioux control. 324 hypnotist also offered therapy for a variety of afflictions, as he does today. The power of the mesmerist consists in controlling the will of another; it is the domination of a weak will by a strong one. Through the ages this phe nomenon has been exercised: With Friedrich Mesmer (an Austrian physician who published his first book on "magnetic cures" in 1775) we come across again a belief much more thoroughly recognised in ancient Egypt. ... In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus, magician, alchemist and physician, studied the influence of animal magnetism (in con nexion with that of the stars) in sickness, in talismans, and in rites of enchantment.^ Hawthorne was concerned over the use of mesmerism as a form of therapy when it was proposed that Sophia Peabody should resort to it to cure her ailment. Though he was to become interested enough in the phenomenon to make extended use of it in two romances--The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance--and to allude to it elsewhere, as in "Ethan Brand" and Dr. Grimshawe*8 Secret, he had an instinctive horror at the thought of it--the wind invaded and enslaved by another--and he implored his intended not to submit to this indignity. ^Maurice Bouisson, Magic. Its History and Principal Rites. tr. G. Almayrac (New York, 1961), p. 228. 325 The popularity of mesmerism at the mid-century may be judged by the mention of it by writers of the age. Thack eray begins Chapter XXIII of Vanity Fair: What is the secret mesmerism of friendship. . . ? As Alexis, after a few passes from Dr. Elliotson, despises pain, reads with the back of his head, sees miles off, loH<s into next week, and performs other wonders.... And Mark Twain participated in a public hypnotic exhibition in his village on the Mississippi in 1850. The "magician" put on this show for a fortnight. Mark Twain, in order to get the chance to appear, pretended to respond, and by the aid of his excellent memory gave a convincing perform ance . ^ That Hawthorne considered hypnotism as a kind of witchcraft is plain in The House of the Seven Gables, and in this opinion he agrees with other writers on the subject: As we go on, we cannot but see that fascination, in many of its aspects, is nothing more nor less than what we now call Mesmerism or Hypnotism, by which, as we all know, certain people have an extraordinary influence over others.16 15The Autobiography of Mark Twain. Chapter XI, pp. 50 58. ^Frederick Thomas Elworthy, The Evil Eye (New York, 1958), p. 36. 326 Fascination here means the evil eye, which, in The House of the Seven Gables is attributed to the wizard Matthew Maule; it is part of the inheritance of his descendant, who is called Holgrave. Holgrave has no malefic purpose, and refrains from using his "gift." He says, "1 am somewhat of a mystic, it must be confessed. The tendency is in my blood, together with the faculty of mesmerism, which might have brought me to Gallows Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft." (VII, 317) He has power of some kind, whether of personality or will it is difficult to say. Hawthorne is skeptical enough not to accept the idea of supernatural power, and he suggests the possibility of a scientific explanation: Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to reduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting them as altogether fabulous. (VII, 33) He uses the word "necromancy" loosely here, for properly It means divination by means of the dead; but an old and mistaken spelling was "nigromancy," which was used with the meaning of "the black art." In spite of his sugges tions of the evil eye and the magnetic power of the Maules, Hawthorne's romance follows out the idea of the witch's curse on several generations of the Pyncheon family; and Hawthorne himself had at least sometimes a feeling that the witches killed by his great-great-grandfather had put 327 a curse on his own family that resulted in misfortunes. Besides Westervelt in The Blithedale Romance and Holgrave in The House of the Seven Gables. Dr. Grimshawe and pos sibly Ethan Brand have hypnotic power. There is a sug gestion of necromancy here also, because Dr. Grimshawe recovered Omskirk from hanging. Necromancy, as spiritualism, became an American phe nomenon in 1848, when strange rappings were heard by the family of J. D. Fox in Hydesville, New York. Two sisters in this family became the first mediums. The pre-existing interest in hypnotic trance was favorable to the rise of the new movement, which spread rapidly in the United States and then over European countries. About the time Hawthorne went to England as consul, Daniel Dunglas Home, one of the most famous of American mediums, began to hold seances in London. Although spiritualism became a religious movement, one common reason for consulting the medium was the age-old desire to foretell the future, as Coverdale asks questions of the Veiled Lady at the beginning of The Blithedale Romance. Today some people consult mediums for advice on the stock market. In The Blithedale Romance and other works Hawthorne shows his interest in this subject, and in revenants 328 generally. His attitude is skeptical, but is not one of complete disbelief. In England and Italy he heard so much upon the subject that he became very weary of it, so that, when he was back at the Wayside writing about Dr. Grim- shawe's house, he was happy to relate that it was not haunted, "the ghostly chord having been played upon in these days until it has become wearisome and nauseous" (XV, 5). The Italian notebooks recount several conversa tions about spirits, some with Robert Browning and his wife. Hawthorne and Browning were skeptics, while their wives were inclined to believe. However, Hawthorne showed great interest in the magus as necromancer when he visited the home of Mr. Kirkup in Florence. The old Englishman dwelt in the romantic former residence of the Knights Templars, reading books of magic and the occult. Through a medium he communicated with Dante and other poets, and with emperors as well. Mr. Kirkup*s medium having died, he used her child, who had inherited the "gift," to con tinue his communication. The house of Mr. and Mrs. Powers, whom Hawthorne also visited, had been a convent, and the sculptor and his wife were troubled with visits from twenty-seven badly behaved ghostly monks, who pulled Mrs. Powers* clothing "so hard 329 as to break the gathers" (XXII, 220). Even in his own home Hawthorne had occasion to consider mediumistic experiences. The tutor of the Hawthorne children did automatic writing under spirit direction, as she thought, although Hawthorne believed that a kind of telepathy might be operating here, the young woman "being uncon sciously in a mesmeric state" (XXII, 199). The interest in spirit rappings was so extensive that Hawthorne became bored with it. He did not entirely discount the possibility of spirit communication, but thought that the "necromancers" were often charlatans, and felt a kind of disgust toward the subject. E. M. Butler places on the title page of her book Ritual Magic a quotation from Gotama the Buddha that expressed, so many centuries ago, what Hawthorne appears to have felt: "It is because I see this peril in the marvel of psychic power that I am distressed by it, that I abhor it, that I loathe it." Toward the magus personality Hawthorne shows a fascinated Interest balanced by skepticism. He shows consistently his distrust of physicians, his fear that alchemical experiments were harmful, his abhorrence of spiritualism and mesmerism. But he was sympathetic toward 330 Che urge to find a short cut to the prevention of the aging process, to the cure of diseases, and to the acqui sition of knowledge and wealth. While he sermonizes on the golden touch of Midas, he is interested enough to re-create the myth. As for his own involvement in these matters, Mark Van Doren writes, with reference to the elixir of life: "He never shared the belief, except by that weird process which permitted him, a skeptic, to believe everything and nothing at once."^ The ancient pagan idea of such an elixir, which Medea brewed in her caldron, and which Goethe's Faust obtained in the Witches' Kitchen, was prevalent in Hawthorne's day. It was impor tant in Bulwer Lytton's A Strange Story (1862). Here the potion is mixed in a caldron in an out-of-doors scene of the most extraordinary strangeness. This novel was published when Hawthorne was struggling with the same theme. In A Strange Story there is also a hypnotist of great power. Hawthorne shows his sympathetic and intuitive feeling for some pagan and primitive ways of apprehending the world. He is pagan in his desire for prolonged earthly life, for ^Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York, 1949), p. 249. 331 an earthly paradise, an Arcadia. He Is somewhat romantic In his notion of what a possible Golden Age must have been, and when confronted In his own day with sibyls, necro mancers, hypnotists--in a word, magi--he was repelled by them. In this he shows his characteristic ambivalence, which really arises from the complexity of problems con fronting man in the world, where there are sometimes no clear dichotomies between good and evil, beauty and horror. His art is enriched by these ambivalences, which suggest deep enigmas. Had he written romances on the theme of the magi and their works when he was younger and more vigorous than he was when he worked on Septimius Felton and The Polliver Romance, it is possible that he would have been able to produce works considerably superior to A Strange Story. But his powers were failing, and the theme was unproductive. CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSION This study shows that the paganism of Hawthorne, whether expressed in traditional myths adapted and re-created, in stories of witchcraft, or in the creation of practitioners of magical "science," is a unity. Paganism was natural to him, as is revealed in many incidents of his life that are reported in his journals and letters. His use of material that may be called pagan, mythic, or primitive is seen in most of his works, from the earliest to the last. The material is used with much variety and originality, but it is clearly recognizable in Hawthorne's adaptations. His art is enriched by this traditional material. A recurring theme is the conflict of paganism with the Puritanism that attempted to destroy it. One theme from early pagan myth, eternal earthly life, attracted Hawthorne for many years. Of the search for the elixir of life in Septimius Felton he comments: . . . in adopting it he had strayed into a region long abandoned to superstition, and where the shadows 332 333 of forgotten dreams go when men are done with them; where past worships are; where great Fan went when he died to the outer world. . . . (XIV, 205) "Past worships" and "great Pan" are significant here; for Hawthorne, great Pan never died, and Hawthorne never forgot the dream of Arcadia, which inspired much of The Marble Faun and The Blithedale Romance, and parts of other works. In an early story, "The Maypole of Merry Mount," a New England Arcadia, with its celebration of the rites of spring, is defeated by invading Puritans. The pagan tendency to personify Nature as a mother is apparent in many of Hawthorne's tales and romances. His love of Nature, developed in childhood, and the fact that he lived for most of his life in a household of women, led him to treat this personification as much more than a mere figure of speech. His treatment of Ceres in the classic myths he retold for children indicates his concern with this theme. Elements of this goddess appear in Hawthorne's most important feminine characters. His interest in the condition of women is related to the pagan concept of woman as the Great Mother, or as a force of nature. Hawthorne's interest in witchcraft is related to his sympathy with pagan feeling. He was well aware of the 334 transformation of pagan deities into the demons and witches of later times. Deep ambiguities arise from the fact that he has great sympathy with some aspects of paganism, and at the same time a Puritanical fear of the evil that pagan ism came to represent. Traces of pagan ceremonials are apparent in the tar and feather orgy of Kinsman, Major Molineux," the Witches' Sabbath in "Young Goodman Brown," the ceremonies of "The Maypole of Merry Mount," the masquerade of The Blithedale Romance, and the carnival of The Marble Faun. Residual aspects of fertility rituals and the worship of pagan gods are evident in these gather ings, which are sometimes beautiful and innocent, but sometimes sinister, led by Satan. Many of Hawthorne's tales and romances depict joyous, innocent, and instinctive responses to the natural world that he imagined to have characterized man in the Golden Age and in Arcadia. This essentially romantic view derives both from classical literature and from the works of writers like Rousseau, to whom man was naturally and instinctively good. Hawthorne probably would not have cared to know what archaeologists and anthropologists have learned since his day about the life of the peoples of very ancient times; but in some ways he intuitively 335 divined, and re-created in literature, what research has discovered. The painstaking methods of science would have bored him. Some of the facts would have repelled him. In Hawthorne's day a revival of interest in pagan literature, as well as the weakening hold of old ortho doxies, tended to abet his natural inclinations toward the mythic. What he termed the "mystic sensuality" of the age both attracted and repelled him. His disgusted fascination with quack doctors, magical elixirs, hypno tists, and spirit mediums, is related to his interest in ancient magic. The paganism of Hawthorne, overlooked by many critics who are concerned with other aspects of his work, is an important strand running through almost the whole fabric. By following it through, one can see deeper and more con sistent meanings in his work than some critics attribute to it. A consideration of the pagan strain might lead commentators to modify some of their adverse criticism. For example, Richard Chase writes: His books falter at various points and then, not knowing how to re-establish the progression, he trots out a traveling puppet show, a masquerade, a symbolic well, an old legend, a mesmerist, as if he 336 were an entertainer on a stage who must improvise in order not to lose his audience.*- These items may be regarded, not simply as the attention- getting devices o£ a tired or lazy writer, but as part of his Weltanschauung. They are also devices of his art. The puppet show in "The Seven Vagabonds" adds a kind of ironic depth of meaning to this charming and beautiful story. The showman is a "conjurer"; the fortune-teller, the primitive Indian, the girl suggestive of May sunshine- the entire group retain a "primitive instinct" in "this weary old age of the world" (II, 178). The other examples Chase lists can also be explained in the light of a pagan attitude. Henry James, whose debt to Hawthorne has not yet been adequately assessed--"The Last of the Valerii" derives from The Marble Faun, but there are many more subtle influences--has explained the pagan attitude here attri buted to Hawthorne. In "The Author of Beltraffio" James has a famous author explain his conflict with his wife: The difference between us is simply the opposition between two distinct ways of looking at the world, which have never succeeded in getting on together or * - The American Novel and Its Tradition (Garden City, New York, 1957), p. 83. 337 making any kind of common menage, since Che beginning of time. They have borne all kinds of names, and my wife will tell you it's the difference between Christian and Pagan. ... It's the difference between making the most of life and making the least-- so that you will get a better one in some other time and place. Hawthorne shares the attitude of James's character to some extent. This point of view characterizes one side of Hawthorne to which his anti-clericalism is related. In him the "two ways of looking at the world" did make a common menage; whatever interior strife may have resulted was well concealed. The two ways alternate in his works, and the alternation accounts for some of the ambiguities that critics have noticed. The stock image of Hawthorne as Puritan has been before the public for a long time, and it has prevented readers from recognizing the pagan elements pointed out in this study. The image needs to be altered so that the entire personality of the man and the full beauty of his art may both be understood. The opinion of John Macy, quoted in Chapter I, that the art of Hawthorne is basically heathen, is almost the only American acknowledgment of the 2 Ten Short Stories of Henry James, ed. Michael Swan (London, 1948), p. 130. 338 pagan side of his work. But Hawthorne's most important works depend for beauty and richness upon pagan themes and attitudes. The Scarlet Letter, set in the midst of a Puritan community at its most theocratic period, is illuminated with the pagan figures of Hester and Pearl. The Blithedale Romance is an artistic and satisfying whole when read as a seasonal myth, whereas it is weak and baffling when considered as social criticism. The Marble Faun is based on a mythic figure. In The House of the Seven Gables a modern wizard is prominent, as are his forebears, from whom he inherits his "gift." The most beautiful and profound of Hawthorne's stories are rich with mythic elements of which a reader must be aware in order to grasp the full meaning. A French critic, R^gis Michaud, puts the matter in forceful words: The favorite and latent theme of his novels is paganism and the joy of living, the love of love, the delight in voluptuousness. . . . It is impossible to be mistaken. Hawthorne's imagination was pagan. The two protagonists of "The Scarlet Letter," con sidered his most puritanical book, are thoroughly immoral. . . . All of "The Marble Faun"--subJect, characters, and descriptions--is a plea for natural and instinctive expansion, a pagan plea. Donatello is an inspired symbol of this naturalistic conception of life. Donatello is the Faun, the beast become man, the man of nature, by definition good and happy 339 until the awakening of his conscience. Hester Prynne, Miriam and Zenobia of "The Blithedale Romance" are seductive women, drawn without the slightest touch of hypocrisy or hesitation.3 In expressing paganism in his art, Hawthorne is refined and selective, restrained by his Puritanical back ground. The social and literary conventions of the Victorian age reinforced his Puritanical restraint. Never theless, aspects of paganism are the source of most of the beauty of his work. ^The American Novel Today (Boston, 1928), pp. 33-34. BIBLIOGRAPHY 340 BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Texts Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge. Vol. 2, Nos. 7-12, March- August 1836. __________________ . The American Notebooks, ed. Randall Stewart. New Haven, 1932. The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. Norman Holmes Peason. New York, 1939. The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne! . Old Manse Edition. 22 vols. Cambridge. 1900. The English Notebooks, ed. Randall Stewart. New York, 1941. Hawthorne's First Diary, ed. Samuel T. Pickard. Boston, 1897. Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne. (1839-41 and 1841-63), 2 vols. Chicago, 1907. _______________ . Nathaniel Hawthorne: Representative Selections, ed. Austin Warren. New York, 1934. The Portable Hawthorne, Cowley. New York, 1948. ed. Malcolm Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny. New York, 1904. 341 342 B. Biographical and Critical Abel, Darrel. "Hawthorne's Hester," College English. 13: 303-309, March 1952. ___________. "Hawthorne's Pearl: Symbol and Character," ELH. 18:50-66, March 1951. ___________. "The Devil in Boston," Philological Quarterly. 32:366-381, October, 1953. Arvin, Newton. Hawthorne. Boston, 1929. Astrov, V. "Hawthorne and Dostoievski as Explorers of the Human Conscience," New England Quarterly. 15:296-319, June 1942. Bewley, Marius. Eccentric Design. New York, 1959. Boewe, C. "'Rappaccini's Daughter,"' American Literature. 30:37-49, March 1958. Bridge, Horatio. Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York, 1893. Brooks, Van Wyck. The Dream of Arcadia. New York, 1958. ______________ . The Flowering of New England. New York, 1936. Browne, Nina E. A Bibliography of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston, 1905. Cable, L. I. "Old Salem and The Scarlet Letter." Bookman. 26:398-403, December 1907. Cantwell, Robert. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The American Years. New York, 1948. Cargill, 0. "Nemesis and Nathaniel Hawthorne," PMLA. 52:848-862, September 1937. 343 Carpenter, F. I. "Puritans Preferred Blondes: The Heroines of Melville and Hawthorne," New England Quarterly, 9:253-272, June 1936. Chandler, Elizabeth L. A Study of the Sources of the Tales and Romances Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne before 1853. Northampton, Massachusetts; 1926. Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Garden City, New York, 1957. Cherry, F. N. "Sources of Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,"' American Literature. 5:342-348, January 1934. Connally, Thomas E. "Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown1: An Attack on Puritanic Calvinism," American Literature, 28:370-375, November 1956. Conway, Moncure Daniel. Life of Hawthorne. London, 1890. Crews, F. C. "New Reading of The Blithedale Romance." American Literature. 29:147-170, May 1957. Cuff, Roger Penn. "A Study of the Classical Mythology in Hawthorne's Writings." An unpublished doctoral dis sertation, George Peabody College for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1936. Dhaleine, L. N. Hawthorne, sa vie et son oeuvre. Paris, 1905. Doubleday, N. F. "Hawthorne's Criticism of New England Life," College English. 2:639-653, April 1941. . "Hawthorne's Hester and Feminism," PMLA. 54:825-828, September 1939. ______________. "Hawthorne's Inferno," College English. 1:6858-6870, May 1940. ______________. "Hawthorne's Use of Three Gothic Patterns," College English, 7:250-262, February 1946. Eisinger, C. E. "Pearl and the Puritan Heritage," College English. 12:323-329, March 1951. 344 Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York, 1960. Fields, James Thomas. Hawthorne. Boston, 1876. Fogle, Richard Harter. "Ambiguity and Clarity in *Young Goodman Brown,"1 New England Quarterly. 18:448-465, December 1945. ___________________. Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark. Norman, Oklahoma, 1952. Garlitz, B. "Pearl: 1850-1955," PMLA. 72:689-699, September 1957. Gorman, H. S. Hawthorne. Garden City, New York, 1927. Hawthorne, Hildegarde. Romantic Rebel. New York, 1932. Hawthorne, Julian. Hawthorne and His Circle. New York, 1903. . Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. 2 vols. London, 1885. . The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne, ed. Edith Garrigues Hawthorne. New York, 1938. Hawthorne, Manning. "Nathaniel Hawthorne at Bowdoin," New England Quarterly. 13:246-279, June 1940. ________________ . "Nathaniel Hawthorne Prepares for College," New England Quarterly. 11:66-88, March 1938. Hosmer, Elizabeth. Science and Pseudo-Science in the Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Urbana, Illinois, 1950. Howells, William Dean. Literary Friends and Acquaintances. New York, 1910. James, Henry. Nathaniel Hawthorne. London, 1879. Kesselring, Marion. "Hawthorne's Reading, 1828-1850," Bulletin of the New York Public Library. 53:55-71. 345 Lathrop, George Parsons. A Study of Hawthorne. Boston, 1876. Lathrop, Rose Hawthorne. Memories of Hawthorne. Boston, 1897. Lawrence, D. H. Studies In Classic American Literature. New York, 1953. (First published in 1923.) Leavis, Q. D. "Hawthorne as Poet," Sewanee Review. 59: 179-205 and 426-458, Spring and Summer 1951. Levin, H. The Power of Blackness. New York, 1958. Lundblad, Jane. "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Tradition of Gothic Romance," The American Institute in the University of Upsala IV. Upsala, 1946. Macy, John. The Spirit of American Literature. New York, 1913. Male, Roy R., Jr. "Dual Aspects of Evil in Rappaccini's Daughter," PMLA, 69:99-109, March 1954. _______________. Hawthorne^ Tragic Vision. Austin, Texas, 1957. Mather, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York, 1940. Matthiessen, Francis 0. The American Renaissance. New York, 1941. Melville, Herman. The Portable Melville, ed. Jay Leyda. New York, 1952. Michaud, R^gis. The American Novel Today. Boston, 1928. Miller, J. E. "Hawthorne, Melville, and the Unpardonable Sin," PMLA. 70:91-114, March 1955. Morris, Lloyd, Rebellious Puritan. New York, 1927. 346 Mumford, Lewis. The Golden Day. New York, 1926. Orians, G. H. "Hawthorne and Puritan Punishments," College English, 12:424-432, May 1952. _________. "Hawthorne and 'The Maypole of Merry Mount,'" Modem Language Notes. 53:159-167, March 1938. Proceedings in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Held at Salem Massachusetts. June 23. 1904. Salem, Massachusetts, 1904. Reid, Alfred S. The Yellow Ruff and The Scarlet Letter. Gainesville, Florida, 1955. Sanborn, F. B. Hawthorne and His Friends. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1908. Schwartz, Joseph. "A Note on Hawthorne's Fatalism," Modern Language Notes. 70:33-36, December 1955. Sherbo, A. "Albert Brisbane and Hawthorne's Holgrave and Hollingsworth," New England Quarterly, 27:532- 534, December 1954. Stearns, Frank Preston. The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Philadelphia, 1906. Stein, William Bysshe. Hawthorne's Fausts, a Study of the Devil Archetype. Gainesville, Florida, 1953. __________________ . "The Parable of the Antichrist in 'The Minister's Black Veil,'" American Literature. 27:386-392, November 1955. Stewart, Randall. "The Concord Group: A Study in Relationships," Sewanee Review. 44:434-446, October 1936. ______________. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography. New Haven, 1948. __________ . "Recollections of Hawthorne by His Sister Elizabeth," American Literature. 16:316-331, 347 January 1945. Stovall, Floyd, ed. Eight American Authors, a Review of Research and Criticism. New York, 1956. Tharp, L. H. The Peabody Sisters of Salem. London, 1951. Thompson, W. R. "Aminadab in Hawthorne's 'The Birthmark,'" Modern Language Notes. 70:413-415, June 1955. Ticknor, Caroline. Hawthorne and His Publisher. Boston, 1913. Turner, Arlin. Hawthorne as Editor. University, Louisiana, 1941. Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York, 1949. Von Abele, R. R. Death of the Artist. London, 1955. Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Man and Writer. New York, 1961. Waggoner, Hyatt Howe. Hawthorne. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1955. Waples, D. "Suggestions for Interpreting The Marble Faun." American Literature. 13:224-39, November 1941. Warfel, H. R. "Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson," FMLA, 50:574-594, June 1935. Warren, Austin. "Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Nemesis," PMLA, 54:615-618, June 1939. _____________. "Hawthorne's Reading," New England Quarterly, 8:480-497, December 1937. Winters, Yvor. "Maule's Curse: Hawthorne and the Problem of Allegory," American Review. 9:339-361, September 1937. Woodberry, George. Hawthorne. How to Know Him. Indianapolis, 1918. 348 C. General Works Adams, James Truslow. The Founding of New England. Boston, 1926. Apuleius, Lucius. The Golden Ass, tr. Robert Graves. New York, 1952. Aymar, Brandt. Treasury of Snake Lore. New York, 1957. Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture. New York, 1953. Bernhelmer, Richard. The Wild Man in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1952. Bouisson, Maurice. Magic. Its History and Principal Rites, tr. G. Almayrac. New York, 1961. Bouquet, A. C. The Christian Faith and Noti-Chrsitian Religions. London, 1958. Bovet, Richard. Pandaemoniuro. 1684. ed. Montague Summers. Aldington, England, 1951. Bradford, William. History of Plimouth Plantation. Boston, 1898. Brett, S. R. "Witchcraft," Quarterly Review. 279:206-217, October 1942. Brown, Herbert Ross. The Sentimental Novel in America. 1789-1860. Durham, North Carolina, 1940. Bullfinch, Thomas. Mythology. The Modern Library Edition. New York [n.d.j. Burr, George Lincoln. Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases. 1648-1706. New York, 1914. Burriss, E. E. "The Terminology of Witchcraft," Classical Philology. 31:137-145, April 1936. Bury, J. A. A History of Greece. New York, 1937. 349 Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1937. Butler, E. M. The Myth of the Magus. New York, 1948. ___________. Ritual Magic. Cambridge, 1949. Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology. New York, 1959. Conway, M. D. Demonology and Devil-Lore. New York, 1879. Cox, George Williams. The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. London, 1882. Davies, R. Trevor. Four Centuries of Witch Beliefs. London, 1947. Diehl, Katherine Smith. Religions. Mythologies. Folklores: An Annotated Bibliography. New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1956. Drummond, J. Life of James Martineau. 2 vols. New York, 1902. Dunham, Barrows. Man Against Myth. Boston, 1947. Elworthy, Frederich. The Evil Eye. New York, 1958. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes. 10 vols. New York, 1909-1914. Epic of Gilgamesh. ed. N. K. Sandars. London, 1960. Ferguson, Ian. The Philosophy of Witchcraft. London, 1924. Fontenrose, Joseph. Python. Berkeley, 1959. Fowler, Samuel P., ed. Salem Witchcraft. Boston, 1865. Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 12 vols. London, 1911-1915. 350 Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 2 vols. New York, 1932. Givry, Grillot de. Witchcraft and Alchemy. Chicago, 1958. Glanvill, Joseph. Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions. 2 vols. London, 1681. Graves, Robert. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. New York, 1948. Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston, 1942. Harrison, Jane. Themis. Cambridge, 1912. Higby, Chester Penn, and B. T. Schantz, ed. John Lothrop Motley, Representative Selections. New York, 1939. Holbrook, Stewart. The Golden Age of Quackery. New York, 1959. Hole, Christina. Witchcraft in England. London, 1945. James, E. 0. The Cult of the Mother Goddess. New York, 1959. Jung, Carl Gustav. Essays on a Science of Mythology, tr. R. F. C. Hull. New York, 1949. Kittredge, George Lyman. Witchcraft in Old and New England. Cambridge, 1929. Lang, Andrew. Modern Mythology. London, 1897. ___________. Magic and Religion. London, 1901. Lea, H. C. Materials toward a History of Witchcraft. 3 vols. New York, 1957. Lehmann, Alfred. Aberglaube und Zauberei. Stuttgart, 1908. Leisy, Ernest E. "Folklore in American Literature," College English, 8:122-129, December 1946. Levin, David, ed. What Happened in Salem. New York, 1959. 351 Lytton, Edward Bulwer. A Strange Story. Boston, 1893. Mannhardt, Wilhelm. Antike Wald- und Feldkulte. Berlin, 1905. Michelet, Jules. Satanism and Witchcraft. tr. A. R. Allison. New York, 1939. Miller, Perry. The New England Mind. Cambridge, 1953. Miller, W. M. "How to Become a Witch," Journal of American Folklore. 57:280, October 1944. ___________. "How to Catch a Witch," Southern Folklore Quarterly. 10:199, Sumner 1946. Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan. Amsterdam, 1637. Motley, John Lothrop. Merry-Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony. Boston, 1849. Murray, Margaret Alice. The God of the Witches. London [n.d.]. Nieder, Charles, ed. The Autobiography of Mark Twain. New York, 1959. Ovid. The Metamorphoses. tr. Horace Gregory. New York, 1960. Perry, W. J. Origin of Myth and Religion. New York, 1923. Prior, M. E. "Joseph Glanvill, Witchcraft and Seventeenth Century Science," Modern Philology. 30:167-193, November 1932. Radin, Paul. Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin. New York, 1957. Rahv, Philip. "The htyth and the Powerhouse," Partisan Review, 20:635-648, November-December 1953. Read, Sir Herbert Edward. The Nature of Literature. New York, 1956. 352 Reade, Winwood. The Martyrdom of Man. London, 1885. Reinach, Salomon. Cults. Myths, and Religions. London, 1912. Scott, Walter. Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. London, 1887. Steadman, J. M. "Satan's Metamorphosis and the Convention of Ignoble Disguise," Modern Language Review. 52:81- 85, January 1957. Stein, A. "Satan: The Dramatic Role of Evil," PMLA, 65:221-231, March 1950. Story, William Wetmore. Castle St. Angelo and the Evil Eye. London, 1877. Strutt, Joseph. Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. London, 1855. Summers, Montague. The History of Witchcraft and Demonology. London, 1926. Sumner, William Graham. Folkways. New York, 1960. Swan, Michael, ed. Ten Short Stories of Henry James. London, 1948. Thompson, Richard Lowe. The History of the Devil, the Horned God of the West. New York, 1929. Upham, Charles W. History of Salem Witchcraft. 2 vols. Boston, 1867. Wade, Mason. Margaret Fuller, Whetstone of Genius. New York, 1940. Wellek, Rene, and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. New York, 1942. Weston, Jessie L. From Ritual to Romance. New York, 1941. Williams, Charles. Witchcraft. New York, 1959. Willison, George F. Saints and Strangers. New York, 1945.

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Creator Blyth, Marion Dalrymple (author)

Core Title The Paganism Of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

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Advisor McElderry, Bruce R. (committee chair), Hadley, Paul E. (committee member), Moritz, Kenneth (committee member)

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