The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-08-06

Olege, santa Rosa, Cal.
and a subtlety of analysis in his
work to which the great Sir Walter
never attained.
Hawthorne has, indeed, given us
scenes of marvellous dramatic power.
The night vigil on the scaffold of
Hester and the minister and little
Pearl the grim irony of the chap
ter over the dead body of Judge
Pyncheon; the description of the
murder in the "Marble Faun - the
discovery of Zenobia's body in the
midnight waters-these are all tri-
umphs of tragic intensity. But such
scenes are rare in Hawthorne. He
cares little, as a rule, for external
machinery, and rarely strives after
thrilling incident or elaborate plot.
His arena of action is a limited one,
yet how expansive! 1t is the human
heart. As he himself has written
in "Earth's Holocaust :"
''The heart-the heart! There
was the little, yet boundless, sphere
wherein existed the original wrong
of which the crime and misery of
this world are merely types. Purify
that inward sphere, and the many
shapes of evil that haunt the out
ward, and which now seem almost
our only realities, will turn to
shadowy phantoms and vanish of
their accord"
1t is with this little sphere that
Hawthorne's romances have TO do.
There is one theme of which he
never seems to tire-the exceeding
sinfulness of sin and it's inevitable
retribution. The penalty of trans
gression always had for Hawthorne
a great fascination. It is the theme
of his three chief romances.
In the blouse of Seven Gables"
it takes the form of a discussion of
sin al a factor in heredity-a theme
which has been of absorbing inter
est to thoughtful minds from the
days of Hschylus to our own.
In the MARBLE Faun" there is
presented and left unsolved the
problem as to whether a knowledge
of good and evil is essential to the
the highest virtue. Was Dona-
tello through contact with crime
awakened from unconscious animal
innocence to a higher and nobler in
dividuality? This fascinating prob
lem the author has left to each of
US to be solved from his own inner
consciousness. Add from the mys
terry of Miriam and the beauty of
Hilda, from all the art and architec-
ture of imperial Rome, we are led
back inevitably to the imperious
question SIS sin, like sorrow,
merely and element of human edu-
cation, through which we struggle
to II higher, purer state, than we
could otherwise have attained?"
In the Scarlet Letter. the domi-
nant problem is the consuming power
of hidden, though repented, Sin. In
his earlier life, Hawthorne had
written: AT the last day, when we
see ourselves as we are-man's only
inexorable judge will be himself, and
the punishment of his sins will be
the perception of them"
This truth is incarr ated in the
heart fortunes of Reverend Arthur
Dimmesdule Hypocrisy is a can
oerous growth which will surely eat
the real substance of character.
To the untrue man the whole uni
verse is false. The only truth that
continued to give Mr.. Dimmesdale
real existence on this earth was
the anguish in his inmost soul"
And before that keen torture of
guilt scared and branded in his
Matchmaking even the "red stigma
on his flesh no more than a type
the scarlet letter placed by Puritanic
rigor on the breast of Hester Prynne
pales and fades away.
Hawthorne deals not with the sin
inself, but with it's calamitous SEQUEL.
NO other writer has ever handled so
ueIlcate a theme with such purity OF