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Horizons, v. 7, issue 4, whole 27, June 1946

Page 5

dead but the author pretends to be mystified by his character's immobility. The events that were to have transpired on that day are passed in review as the hours wear along. At midnight, the ghosts of the judge's ancestors emerge from the walls, hold a grim party, then vanish at dawn. Hawthorne at last signifies his acceptance of the fate of the judge by letting a symbolic fly smell him out and examine the feast to come.

In the short stories, even more than in the novels, everything is symbolism. The novels exist primarily for the sake of telling a story and painting a moral; the short stories are usually simply symbols, or symbols within symbols, usually with an attached moral, seldom meant simply to be stories. The obscurity varies and has little to do with their literary value or enjoyment-providing qualities. Occasionally, the point that Hawthorne is trying to make comes across to the reader with instant and unmistakable clarity, as in "The Birthmark". The scientist marries a woman whose beauty is marred only by a small mark on her cheek. The attempt to remove this solitary physical imperfection results in her death; the analogy Hawthorne intimates with moral perfection and lack thereof is quite obvious. But it is not always this easy. Some knowledge of the background or circumstances surrounding some of the stories helps. The famous "Ethan Brand" for instance seems to have been written because Hawthorne imagined himself to have sinned by setting himself up above humanity and looking on as a cold observer. (If anyone can explain to me what, precisely, is meant by the paragraph in which the old dog suddenly goes into a fantastic whirl in this yarn, I'd be very much obliged!)

This desire to tell his tales through symbolism led Hawthorne to adopt fantasy themes in a very large number of his short stories. It was the easiest way of getting his point across; the artificial scarecrow which comes to life or the elixir of youth permitted the use of ideas which had been done to death before in the purely mundane moralities of earlier writers. I don't intend to try to be complete here, in referring to some of the outstanding fantasies, and I'm leaving out of consideration altogether the revampings of mythological stories which he wrote for children but are today not quite so often read by the little tots as might be desired.

Hawthorne's first book of short stories, "Twice-Told Tales", demonstrated excellently the qualities that were to pervade all his later writings. There was the liberal use of New England historical events as frameworks for "fanciful" narrations. "The Gray Champion" tells of the appearance of a ghostly visitor at a crucial moment when the colony was smarting under affronts from England. The "Legends of the Province House" is a series of four episodes, held together by their alleged narration at an old inn. The first, one of the most famous, describes a situation somewhat similar to that in "The Gray Champion"; "Edward Randolph's Portrait" becomes clear in a crisis although it had many years before become obscured by the passing of time; "Lady Eleanore's Mantle" and "Old Esther Dudley" are mundane. "The Minister's Black Veil", subtitled "A Parable", is strange enough to be mentioned here, although it contains nothing of the supernatural: its theme, that of the minister who covers his face with a cloth in life, and only when dying tells his parishioners that he means it only as a visible symbol of the veil which men affect to conceal their true selves from one another.

Though Hawthorne did not make much use of Indian legends in his efforts to establish grounds for fanciful fiction in this country, he did adapt one tradition for "The Great Carbuncle", the story of a wonderful jewel hidden away somewhere in the hills, and the influence it exerts on its varied band of finders. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is on a less mystical basis. He receives some liquid from the Fountain of Youth and uses it to restore a few of his friends temporarily to the prime of life.

The best stories from "Mosses from an Old Manse" contain less of history and more subtle themes. "The Birthmark" has already been referred to. "Young Goodman Brown" was the unfortunate experience to encounter, or dream he encountered, a dreadful witch-meeting in the forest attended by all the finest resi-

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dead but the author pretends to be mystified by his character's immobility. The events that were to have transpired on that day are passed in review as the hours wear along. At midnight, the ghosts of the judge's ancestors emerge from the walls, hold a grim party, then vanish at dawn. Hawthorne at last signifies his acceptance of the fate of the judge by letting a symbolic fly smell him out and examine the feast to come. In the short stories, even more than in the novels, everything is symbolism. The novels exist primarily for the sake of telling a story and painting a moral; the short stories are usually simply symbols, or symbols within symbols, usually with an attached moral, seldom meant simply to be stories. The obscurity varies and has little to do with their literary value or enjoyment-providing qualities. Occasionally, the point that Hawthorne is trying to make comes across to the reader with instant and unmistakable clarity, as in "The Birthmark". The scientist marries a woman whose beauty is marred only by a small mark on her cheek. The attempt to remove this solitary physical imperfection results in her death; the analogy Hawthorne intimates with moral perfection and lack thereof is quite obvious. But it is not always this easy. Some knowledge of the background or circumstances surrounding some of the stories helps. The famous "Ethan Brand" for instance seems to have been written because Hawthorne imagined himself to have sinned by setting himself up above humanity and looking on as a cold observer. (If anyone can explain to me what, precisely, is meant by the paragraph in which the old dog suddenly goes into a fantastic whirl in this yarn, I'd be very much obliged!) This desire to tell his tales through symbolism led Hawthorne to adopt fantasy themes in a very large number of his short stories. It was the easiest way of getting his point across; the artificial scarecrow which comes to life or the elixir of youth permitted the use of ideas which had been done to death before in the purely mundane moralities of earlier writers. I don't intend to try to be complete here, in referring to some of the outstanding fantasies, and I'm leaving out of consideration altogether the revampings of mythological stories which he wrote for children but are today not quite so often read by the little tots as might be desired. Hawthorne's first book of short stories, "Twice-Told Tales", demonstrated excellently the qualities that were to pervade all his later writings. There was the liberal use of New England historical events as frameworks for "fanciful" narrations. "The Gray Champion" tells of the appearance of a ghostly visitor at a crucial moment when the colony was smarting under affronts from England. The "Legends of the Province House" is a series of four episodes, held together by their alleged narration at an old inn. The first, one of the most famous, describes a situation somewhat similar to that in "The Gray Champion"; "Edward Randolph's Portrait" becomes clear in a crisis although it had many years before become obscured by the passing of time; "Lady Eleanore's Mantle" and "Old Esther Dudley" are mundane. "The Minister's Black Veil", subtitled "A Parable", is strange enough to be mentioned here, although it contains nothing of the supernatural: its theme, that of the minister who covers his face with a cloth in life, and only when dying tells his parishioners that he means it only as a visible symbol of the veil which men affect to conceal their true selves from one another. Though Hawthorne did not make much use of Indian legends in his efforts to establish grounds for fanciful fiction in this country, he did adapt one tradition for "The Great Carbuncle", the story of a wonderful jewel hidden away somewhere in the hills, and the influence it exerts on its varied band of finders. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is on a less mystical basis. He receives some liquid from the Fountain of Youth and uses it to restore a few of his friends temporarily to the prime of life. The best stories from "Mosses from an Old Manse" contain less of history and more subtle themes. "The Birthmark" has already been referred to. "Young Goodman Brown" was the unfortunate experience to encounter, or dream he encountered, a dreadful witch-meeting in the forest attended by all the finest resi-