Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Remedios Benéitez
BIOGRAPHY
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July the
4th, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, and died on May the 19th,
1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire). He was an American dark romantic novelist and
short-story writer. His works often focus on history, morality and religion.
An ancestor, William Hawthorne,
was the first of his family to emigrate from England to America in 1630.
Nathaniel was the only son of Nathaniel and Elisabeth
Clark Hawthorne. His father, a sea captain, died in 1808 of yellow fever. After
that, her mother moved back into her parent’s house with her children.
With the help of relatives. Nathaniel entered Bowdoin College
in 1821 and graduated in 1825.
He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe.
He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837
as Twice-Told Tales.
He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook
Farm, a transcendentalist community, where he met his future wife, Sophia
Peabody. They got married in 1842. The couple rented a home in Concord where
they were neighbours with writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau
and the Alcott family.
The Hawthorns struggled with debt and a growing family,
and eventually returned to Salem in 1845. There he worked a few years as
Surveyor of the Port at the Salem Custom House.
Hawthorne published his most well-known work, The
Scarlet Letter, shortly after, in 1850, bringing him fame and
financial relief. He then began working on The House of Seven Gables, a
novel based on an old family, the Pyncheons, in Salem.
He was appointed to the consulship in Liverpool,
England, by his old college friend president Franklin Pierce (14th
USA president). While in Europe, he wrote The Marble Faun and Our Old
Home before moving back to his house in Concord in 1860.
Hawthorne suffered from poor health in 1860, and died
in his sleep during a trip to the White Mountains in 1864.
THE BIRTHMARK
Aylmer is a brilliant scientist and natural philosopher
who has abandoned his experiments for a while to marry the beautiful Georgiana.
One day, Aylmer asks his wife whether she has ever thought about removing the
birthmark on her cheek. He thinks that her face is almost perfect, but he wants
to remove it. She is angry at first, and then she weeps, asking how he can love
her if she is shocking to him.
He obsesses about the birthmark. He can think of
nothing else. For him, it symbolizes mortality and sin. He wants to remove it,
even if it ends her life. Finally, she agrees for love.
QUESTIONS
Talk about the characters:
Aylmer
Georgiana
Aminadab
What is exactly “natural philosophy”? (27, 2)
“A spiritual affinity more attractive than any
chemical one” (27, 3-4). Do you know what do people mean when they talk about
“elective affinities”?
Is there any scientific explanation for a birthmark?
Can you describe Georgiana’s birthmark?
Why do you think Aylmer didn’t see it before marrying
her, or why did it appear after getting married?
Why did Aylmer, and then Georgiana, want to erase her
birthmark?
In the story, Aylmer has a dream. Can you tell us this dream? For you, what are
the meaning of dreams?
Do you know the myth of Pygmalion?
Can you find a similitude between this story and the
legend of Faust?
The story tells us that a lot of Aylmer experiments
are failures and there is a risk for Georgiana’s life if he tries to delete her
birthmark. Why do they want to take risks so dangerous?
Do you think there’s any relation between the
birthmark and the speck in the saying, “You can see the speck in your friend’s
eye, but you don’t notice the log that is in your own eye"? What were
Aylmer flaws in this case?
Do you know who were these people: Albertus Magnus,
Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus? And what was the Brazen Head?
What do you know about alchemy?
According to your opinion, what is the meaning of
Georgiana’s birthmark? Remember that when Aylmer removes it, she dies.
VOCABULARY
votaries, weaned, charm, wont, fastidious, flaw, aught,
shudder, affrighting, bears witness, mar, patentee, boudoir, pastil, lore, sway,
thence, concoct, heretofore, penned, shortcomings, quaff, rapt, musings, goblet,
lofty, ere, clod
