Why nathaniel hawthorne wrote the scarlet letter

A copy of The Scarlet Letter with a hand-painted celluloid cover. Excerpts the opening scene and final scene from a dramatic poem written for an opera of The Scarlet Letter , A model of the ship Arabella , on which over Puritans sailed with livestock and provisions from England to New England in summer An image of John Elliot, the first missionary among Indians.

A photograph of a reconstruction of a seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay Colony home. Look for the Boston of in history books, and you will not find the magical and Gothic elements that abound in Hawthorne's story.

For the mind of genius has created a Boston that is shrouded in darkness and mystery and surrounded by a forest of sunshine and shadow. In writing The Scarlet Letter , Hawthorne was creating a form of fiction he called the psychological romance, and woven throughout his novel are elements of Gothic literature. What he created would later be followed by other romances, but never would they attain the number of readers or the critical acclaim of The Scarlet Letter.

Hawthorne began The Scarlet Letter in September, , and finished it, amazingly, in February, Its publication made his literary reputation and temporarily eased some of his financial burdens. This novel was the culmination of Hawthorne's own reading, study, and experimentation with themes about the subjects of Puritans, sin, guilt, and the human conflict between emotions and intellect. Since its first publishing in March of , The Scarlet Letter has never been out of print.

Even today, Hawthorne's romance is one of the best-selling books on the market. After college Hawthorne tried his hand at writing, producing historical sketches and an anonymous novel, Fanshawe, that detailed his college days rather embarrassingly. Hawthorne also held positions as an editor and as a customs surveyor during this period. His growing relationship with the intellectual circle that included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller led him to abandon his customs post for the utopian experiment at Brook Farm, a commune designed to promote economic self-sufficiency and transcendentalist principles.

Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century that was dedicated to the belief that divinity manifests itself everywhere, particularly in the natural world. It also advocated a personalized, direct relationship with the divine in place of formalized, structured religion. This second transcendental idea is privileged in The Scarlet Letter. In he published Mosses from an Old Manse, a collection of essays and stories, many of which are about early America.

In Hawthorne again went to work as a customs surveyor, this time, like the narrator of The Scarlet Letter, at a post in Salem. American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, circa By Jennifer Latson.

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