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ehind; the new, innovative force isthe center of attention.THE ROMANCEThe Romance form is dark andforbidding, indicating howdifficult it is to create anidentity without a stable society.Most of the Romantic heroes die inthe end: All the sailors exceptIshmael are drowned in Moby-Dick, and the sensitive but sinfulminister Arthur Dimmesdale diesat the end of The Scarlet Letter.The self-divided, tragic note inAmerican literature becomes dominantin the novels, even before theCivil War of the 1860s manifestedthe greater social tragedy of a societyat war with itself.NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEPhoto courtesy OWINathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)Nathaniel Hawthorne, a fifthgenerationAmerican of Englishdescent, was born in Salem, Massachusetts,a wealthy seaport northof Boston that specialized in EastIndia trade. One of his ancestorshad been a judge in an earlier century,during trials in Salem ofwomen accused of being witches.Hawthorne used the idea of a curseon the family of an evil judge in hisnovel The House of the SevenGables.Many of Hawthorne’s stories areset in Puritan New England, and hisgreatest novel, The Scarlet Letter(1850), has become the classicportrayal of Puritan America. Ittells of the passionate, forbiddenlove affair linking a sensitive, religiousyoung man, the ReverendArthur Dimmesdale, and the sensuous,beautiful townsperson, HesterPrynne. Set in Boston around 1650during early Puritan colonization,the novel highlights the Calvinisticobsession with morality, sexualrepression, guilt and confession,and spiritual salvation.For its time, The Scarlet Letterwas a daring and even subversivebook. Hawthorne’s gentle style, remotehistorical setting, and ambiguitysoftened his grim themes andcontented the general public, butsophisticated writers such as RalphWaldo Emerson and Herman Melvillerecognized the book’s “hellish”power. It treated issues thatwere usually suppressed in 19thcenturyAmerica, such as the impactof the new, liberating democraticexperience on individual behavior,especially on sexual and religiousfreedom.The book is superbly organizedand beautifully written. Appropriately,it uses allegory, a techniquethe early Puritan colonists themselvespracticed.Hawthorne’s reputation rests onhis other novels and tales as well.In The House of the Seven Gables(1851), he again returns to NewEngland’s history. The crumbling ofthe “house” refers to a family inSalem as well as to the actual structure.The theme concerns an inheritedcurse and its resolutionthrough love. As one critic hasnoted, the idealistic protagonistHolgrave voices Hawthorne’s owndemocratic distrust of old aristo-37