by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Written 1851
Hawthorne wrote this book in the warm aura of his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter. This book dwells on the theme of whether a Puritan history – replete with its sad stories like the Salem Witch Trials – will haunt the New England culture forever or whether New England can overcome such sad austerity.
The hope for the future lies in the characters of Phoebe and Hargrove, who end up getting married in this story. They are open to new ideas and open to learning from the past. They seek to experiment in new things like gardening while researching the past. They are Renaissance people for another era. They might not have the best education, but they are interested in learning and growing as people. They alone can free the New England mind (and mind you this book was written in the nineteenth century) from sterility and stagnation based on pride.
It is interesting to read this classic in my current setting in the modern American South. The New England mind of the nineteenth century is a distant and foreign concept to me. A miniature picture of its norms before the Civil War is interesting. While the Southern mind was becoming more entrenched, the New England mind was figuring out new ways to grow and expand its virtue. Puritanical idealism still exists in the American South. Perhaps we need to listen to Hawthorne more to overcome our stagnation in our contemporary setting. Perhaps we need our own Hawthorne to overcome the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow in our history and so to embrace growth.