Scarlet Journal

Post your comment when you are done with your SCARLET JOURNAL here:

Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, a descendant of a long line of Puritan ancestors including John Hathorne, a presiding magistrate in the Salem witch trials. After his father was lost at sea when Nathaniel was only four, his mother became overly protective and pushed him toward relatively isolated pursuits. Hawthorne's childhood left him overly shy and bookish, which molded his life as a writer.
Hawthorne turned to writing after his graduation from Bowdoin College. His first novel, Fanshawe, was unsuccessful and Hawthorne himself disavowed it as amateurish. He wrote several successful short stories, however, including "My Kinsman, Major Molyneaux," "Roger Malvin's Burial," and "Young Goodman Brown." Still, his insufficient earnings as a writer forced Hawthorne to enter a career as a Boston Custom House measurer in 1839. After three years Hawthorne was dismissed from his job with the Salem Custom House. By 1842, his writing finally gave Hawthorne a sufficient income to marry Sophia Peabody and move to The Manse in Concord, which was the center of the Transcendental movement. Hawthorne returned to Salem in 1845, where he was appointed surveyor of the Boston Custom House by President James Polk, but he was dismissed from this post when Zachary Taylor became president. Hawthorne then devoted himself to his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. He zealously worked on the novel with a determination he had not known before. His intense suffering infused the novel with imaginative energy, leading him to describe it as a "hell-fired story." On February 3, 1850, Hawthorne read the final pages to his wife. He wrote, "It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success."
The Scarlet Letter was an immediate success that allowed Hawthorne to devote himself to his writing. He left Salem for a temporary residence in Lenox, a small town in the Berkshires, where he completed the romance The House of the Seven Gables in 1851. While in Lenox, Hawthorne became acquainted with Herman Melville and became a major proponent of Melville's work, but their friendship became strained. Hawthorne's subsequent novels, The Blithedale Romance--based on his years of communal living at Brook Farm--and the romance The Marble Faun were both considered disappointments. Hawthorne supported himself through another political post, the consulship in Liverpool, which he was given for writing a campaign biography for Franklin Pierce.
In 1852, after the publication of The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne returned to Concord and bought a house called Hillside, owned by Louisa May Alcott's family. Hawthorne renamed it The Wayside. He went on to travel and live in France and Italy for a spell, but he returned to The Wayside just before the Civil War began. Indeed, he would publish an article entitled "Chiefly About War Matters" for the Atlantic Monthly just before he fell ill, detailing the account of his travels to the Virginia battlefields of Manassas and Harpers Ferry and to the White House.
Hawthorne passed away on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, after a long period of illness during which he suffered severe bouts of dementia. Hawthorne was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson described his life with the words "painful solitude." Hawthorne had maintained a strong friendship with Franklin Pierce, but otherwise he had had few intimates and little engagement with any sort of social life.
A number of his unfinished works were published posthumously. His works remain notable for their treatment of guilt and the complexities of moral choices.

Scarlet Letter

Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Glossary of Terms
apostolic: having been sent out on a mission
arduous: hard; difficult
conspicuous: easily seen
decorous: in keeping with society's norms
decrepit: in terrible condition
dilapidated: in broken-down condition
domestic: household; local
dotage: old age, with its mental troubles
edifice: a building; the scaffolding in the novel might count as a minor edifice
emoluments: benefits
eulogium: speech of praise
gules: red
indolent: lazy
infirmity: illness
languid: weak
laudable: praiseworthy
liberality: generosity
reprimand: disciplinary warning
sable: black
sagaciously: wisely
tempestuous: stormy
torpid: dull, sluggish, numb
truculency: defiance
venerable: august
vixenly: like a dangerous woman