A Man under Enchantment by Samuel M. Crothers
Samuel M. Crothers portrays Nathaniel Hawthorne as a lifelong visionary who stood apart from the energetic public life of nineteenth-century New England. Though surrounded by reformers, philanthropists, political agitation, and war, Hawthorne responded less to immediate events than to an ever-present borderland of mystery. Like a speculative New Englander who says “I guess” there is something behind appearances, he looked past the ordinary world toward hidden meanings, inherited consequences, and the strange instability of human life. Crothers argues that Hawthorne cannot be adequately explained either by his contemporaries or by his Puritan ancestry. Hawthorne acknowledged the influence of his “stern and black-browed Puritan ancestors,” and his imagination shares their darkness, mysticism, and awareness of judgment. Yet Crothers warns that readers may see Puritanism itself through Hawthorne’s transfiguring imagination, making it difficult to separate historical inheritance from artistic creation. Hawthorne gives the old Puritans their familiar shadowy character as much as they give it to him. More importantly, Hawthorne differs sharply from the active, burdened “New England conscience.” The Puritan and later reformer feel personal guilt and seek immediate resistance to evil; Hawthorne instead contemplates the aftermath of wrongdoing. He begins where the deed has already been committed, showing persons caught in consequences they cannot undo. His governing idea is akin to Greek Nemesis: a wrong survives across generations, shedding temporary circumstances and becoming an uncontrollable mischief. In The Scarlet Letter, guilt, revenge, love, and hatred become entwined in a dark necessity, and Hawthorne’s own attitude toward his characters is questioning and merciful rather than condemnatory. Crothers contrasts Hawthorne’s imagination with the modern sense of life as an immensely complex web of causes and effects. Hawthorne prefers the ancient image of a single thread spun and cut by the Fates. His stories trace dark, isolated streams of consequence flowing from one decisive act. This concentration gives them great imaginative power, though it separates characters from the many ordinary relations that soften and complicate real life. Hawthorne himself recognized the danger of placing an individual under a moral microscope, magnifying peculiarities until a distorted creature results. Crothers therefore maintains that Hawthorne should not chiefly be judged as a realist or as a conventional romancer. His mind works allegorically: abstract truths become persons, and imagined persons become living symbols. He deliberately selects incidents and scenes that illuminate a governing theme, creating a realm with laws distinct from everyday actuality. In this region, romance and allegory merge, dreams become transparent symbols of reality, and familiar life appears strange. Hawthorne, usually shy and aloof, becomes a sure guide in this enchanted borderland, revealing its sombre meanings with intimate authority.
By Samuel M. Crothers · First published 1919 · Genre: Literary Criticism, Literary Essay, Author Study · 3,860 words
First lines
I sat down by the wayside of life like a man under enchantment. " So Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of his own visionary youth, and, truth to tell, the spell lasted through life.
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A Man under Enchantment is listed on Textopian as an essay by Samuel M. Crothers, dated 1919 CE.
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- Work type: Essay
- Author: Samuel M. Crothers
- Date: 1919 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Literary Criticism, Literary Essay, Author Study, Biographical Criticism, American Literary Studies
- Length: 3,860 words
- Structure: 1 section, 56 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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Genres
- Literary Criticism — The work is principally an interpretive critical essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne's imagination, themes, artistic methods, and relation to literary traditions.
- Literary Essay — It uses an essayistic, reflective prose style to develop an argument about Hawthorne's vision of fate, sin, symbolism, and reality.
- Author Study — The discussion centers on Hawthorne's personality, intellectual temperament, inherited Puritan background, and distinctive creative outlook.
- Biographical Criticism — Although not a full biography, it interprets Hawthorne's writing partly through his life, ancestry, historical setting, and self-described visionary disposition.
Tags
Nathaniel Hawthorne criticism · literary essay · nineteenth-century New England · Puritan inheritance · Salem and Boston · Transcendentalism · social reform · Civil War era · mysticism · visionary imagination · alienation from public life · moral consequence