III.

Maturity

To survive, Hawthorne returned to government service in 1846 as surveyor of the Salem Custom House. In 1849 he was dismissed because of a change in political administration, but he had already begun writing The Scarlet Letter (1850), a novel about the adulterous Puritan Hester Prynne, who loyally refuses to reveal the name of her partner. Regarded as his masterpiece and as one of the classics of American literature, The Scarlet Letter reveals both Hawthorne's superb craftsmanship and the powerful psychological insight with which he probed guilt and anxiety in the human soul.

In 1850 Hawthorne moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he enjoyed the friendship of his admirer the novelist Herman Melville. At Lenox he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he traced the decadence of Puritanism in an old New England family, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852) and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys (1853), retelling classical legends. During a short stay in West Newton, Massachusetts, he produced The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852), which show his continuing preoccupation with the themes of guilt and pride, and The Blithedale Romance (1852), a novel inspired by his life at Brook Farm.

In 1852 Hawthorne returned to Concord, where he wrote a campaign biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, who became the 14th president of the United States. After his election to the presidency, Pierce rewarded Hawthorne with the consulship at Liverpool, a post he held until 1857. In 1858 and 1859 Hawthorne lived in Italy, collecting material for his heavily symbolic novel The Marble Faun (1860).

In 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, Hawthorne returned to the United States. His political isolation is indicated in his dedication of Our Old Home (1863) to Pierce, who was highly unpopular because of his support of the Southern slave owners. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, while travelling with Pierce, and was buried at Concord. His posthumously published works include the unfinished novels Septimius Felton (1872), The Dolliver Romance (1876), Dr. Grimshawe's Secret (1883), The Ancestral Footsteps (1883) and his American Notebooks (1868), English Notebooks (1870), and French and Italian Notebooks (1871).

With modern psychological insight Hawthorne probed the secret motivations in human behaviour and the guilt and anxiety that he believed resulted from all sins against humanity, especially those of pride. In his preoccupation with sin he followed the tradition of his Puritan ancestors, but in his concept of the consequences of sin, as either punishment due to lack of humility and overwhelming pride, or regeneration by love and atonement, he deviated radically from the idea of predestination held by his forebears. Hawthorne's emphasis on allegory and symbolism often makes his characters seem shadowy and unreal, but his characters reveal the emotional and intellectual ambivalence he felt to be inseparable from the Puritan heritage of America. A study of his life and work was published by Henry James in 1879 in the “English Men of Letters” series.