A Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne

The last main influence on my writing is my Puritan family background. "One of Hawthorne's forefathers was Judge Hawthorne, who presided over the Salem witch trials in 1692 . . . Hawthorne's sensitivity to guilt is clearly present in The Scarlet Letter" (Clendenning). I used the backdrop of the natural world to show not only that characters in The Scarlet Letter are anonymous to the Puritan culture, but also above it. Describing Pearl as a "...lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion" (81, The Scarlet Letter), begins this image. This "rank luxuriance" is based on the strict Puritan morals. It describes the child as a mistake or an outcast even though the birth of a child is supposed to be a wonderful thing. A difference in a positive way is a direct statement about Puritan children: "...Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children..." (87, The Scarlet Letter). …