what does lit think of hawthorne?

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haha Phoebe PYNCHEON xD
I wrote my masyer thesis about Scarlet Letter AMA hehe

I've been checking around for his short story collection that was apaprently highly influential on Melville but I can't find it. I've never read and Hawthorne but from what Melville's said of him I have a pretty high opinion going in.

>>9062562
just do not start with The marble fawn
just don't

>>9062562
Melville looked up to him and wanted to gain his approval because he enjoyed his writing, respected his opinions, and, unlike Melville, Hawthorne enjoyed popular success during his lifetime. I read some of his short stories in college and was impressed.

Hawthorne's writing is boundary-pushing for his day. It asks questions about homosexuality, magic, science, etc. in ways that really weren't thought of in his time. I think he certainly needs to be read, but how much you enjoy him will greatly depend on how much you enjoy the history of the themes he deals with.

As an example, he frequently uses the occult, alchemy, etc -- fringe parts of society that were only just starting to decline in his day -- to discuss the boundaries of what humans are willing to accept as possible. He writes "scifi" and "magic" stories and books in a way that relates those concepts to human thought, not to "cool look MONSTERS"

I think Hawthorne will always be underrated, because you can read his stories as fairly simple stories about mad scientists, boys getting lost in the woods, etc. but the reality of Hawthorne is that he was writing about the impossible to push the boundaires of what we consider possible.

Do you think Anne of Green Gables would smash?

>>9062621
do you think he was kind of feminist writer having written The Scarlet Letter?

>>9062562
look up The Minister's Black Veil, it should be on gutenberg or the like

Great writer
The Marble Faun is madly underrated

>>9062627
I think he very much has feminist undertones. He most importantly seemed to dislike the idea of masculine males as the leaders of society. Most of his novels show the "autistic", hyper-interested, high-powered male archetype as flawed. I don't know for sure that he was necessarily a "feminist" writer, but he was by all reasonable perspectives an anti-masculinity writer.

Of course I don't think he hated masculinity, I think he was just very uncomfortable with the idea of mainstream male society dominating everything. His writing about science, magic, etc. always deals with subtleties of fringe ways of life, and/or with the failures of masculine, traditional figures and/or mainstream society(whch is lead by such figures) to accept it. Just look at his stories. Read them from this perspective. You will understand readily what I mean.

Hawthorne's men seek perfection, a society where everyone is the same and perfect, and those who aren't are cast out. In turn, all of his non-masculine male characters are either submitting to masculinity, inadvertently destroying masculine figures, or destroyed themselves for following a masculine figure. Even a story like Young Goodman Brown has serious hints towards flaws in a masculine, samey-samey society.

PS. English is my third language so I hope all of the above makes sense. I don't have quite an essay-level grasp on grammar at times

>>9062669
I underastand you, english is also my third language and I just wish I could speak/write in it like you do.
Thank you for answering my questions about Hawthorne's anti-patriarchal aspirations. Nevertheless, every critic underlines his great respect to the masculine protestant tradition