InnIsstDtiittuutteeO ooff DDLiissttannce annd OOnnl ilninee L Leaeranrinnigng

ENNHAHNACEN YCOEU RY QOUUALRIF QICAUTAIOLNI, FICATION, ADDVVAANCNE CYEOU YR OCAURREE RC. AREER. I I - E R U

1T 9 A R E T I L

 H S I B.A. L G N

ENGLISH LITERATURE-II E

Course Code: BAQ154

Semester: Second

SLM UNITS : 2

Unit: 2

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 230 OBJECTIVES INTRODUCTION (July 4, 1804 – May 19, . 1864) was an American novelist, Dark  To enable students to write Romantic, and short story writer. He was born fluently and accurately. in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hawthorne and the former  To write and speak a dialogue. Elizabeth Clarke Manning. Hawthorne published his first work, a novel titled To enhance their creative Fanshawe, in 1828; he later tried to suppress  skills. it, feeling it was not equal to the standard of his late.r work. He published several short  To enhance their speaking stories in periodicals, which he collected in skills. 1837 as Twice-Told Tales.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) INASlTl I TriUgThEt OarFe D rIeSsTeArNvCeEd AwNitDh OCNUL-IDNOE LE ARNING I I - E R

2U 1 T A

TOPICS TO BE COVERED R E T I L

• Introduction H S I

• Nathaniel Hawthorne: Life and Works L G

• David Swan: Text N E • Summary of the Unit • Conclusion • Keywords/Abbreviations • Learning Activity • Unit End Questions (Descriptive, Short & MCQs) • References

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL INTRODUCTION 22

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and short story writer. • He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hawthorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. Hawthorne published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828; he later tried to suppress it, feeling it was not equal to the standard of his later work. • He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. • The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Hawthorne

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 23

• He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. • The couple moved to in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to in Concord. • was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. • Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife

and their three children. https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.65.55

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL INTRODUCTION 24

Much of Hawthorne’s writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral

allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the

Romantic Movement and, more specifically, Dark romanticism. His themes often center

on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and

deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a

biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: LIFE AND WORKS25

• Born in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his historical tales and novels about American colonial society. • After publishing The Scarlet letter in 1850, its status as an instant bestseller allowed him to earn a living as a novelist. • Full of dark romanticism, psychological complexity, symbolism and cautionary tales, his work is still popular today. • Nathaniel Hawthorne, (born July 4, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.—died May 19, 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire), American novelist and short-story writer who was a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. • One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature, he is best known for The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL EARLY YEARS 26

• Hawthorne’s ancestors had lived in Salem since the 17th century. His earliest American ancestor, (Nathaniel added the w to the name when he began to write), was a magistrate who had sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping. • He had acted as a staunch defender of Puritan orthodoxy, with its zealous advocacy of a “pure,” unaffected form of religious worship, its rigid adherence to a simple, almost severe, mode of life, and its conviction of the “natural depravity” of “fallen” man. • Hawthorne was later to wonder whether the decline of his family’s prosperity and prominence during the 18thcentury, while other Salem families were growing wealthy from the lucrative shipping trade, might not be a retribution for this act and for the role of William’s son John as one of three judges in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 27 • When Nathaniel’s father—a ship’s captain—died during one of his voyages, he left his young widow without means to care for her two girls and young Nathaniel, aged four. • She moved in with her affluent brothers, the Mannings. • In college Hawthorne had excelled only in composition and had determined to become a writer. Upon graduation, he had written an amateurish novel, Fanshawe, which he published at his own expense—only to decide that it was unworthy of him and to try to destroy all copies. Hawthorne, however, soon found his own voice, style, and subjects, and within five years of his graduation he had published such impressive and distinctive stories as “The Hollow of the Three Hills” and “An Old Woman’s Tale.” By 1832, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” and “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” two of his greatest tales—and among the finest in the language—had appeared. “,” perhaps the greatest tale of witchcraft ever written, appeared in 1835.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 28

• His increasing success in placing his stories brought him a little fame. Unwilling to depend any longer

on his uncles’ generosity, he turned to a job in the Boston Custom House (1839–40) and for six months

in 1841 was a resident at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm, in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Even when his first signed book, Twice-Told Tales, was published in 1837, the work had brought

gratifying recognition but no dependable income. By 1842, however, Hawthorne’s writing had brought

him a sufficient income to allow him to marry Sophia Peabody; the couple rented the Old Manse

in Concord and began a happy three-year period that Hawthorne would later record in his essay “The

Old Manse.”

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL RETURN TO SALEM 29

A growing family and mounting debts compelled the Hawthornes’ return in 1845 to Salem, where Nathaniel was appointed surveyor of the Custom House by the Polk administration (Hawthorne had always been a loyal Democrat and pulled all the political strings he could to get this appointment). Three years later the presidential election brought the Whigs into power under Zachary Taylor, and Hawthorne lost his job; but in a few months of concentrated effort, he produced his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter. The bitterness he felt over his dismissal is apparent in “The Custom House” essay prefixed to the novel. The Scarlet Letter tells the story of two lovers kept apart by the ironies of fate, their own mingled strengths and weaknesses, and the Puritan community’s interpretation of moral law, until at last death unites them under a single headstone. The book made Hawthorne famous and was eventually recognized as one of the greatest of American novels.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL LAST YEARS

30 The remaining 11 years of Hawthorne’s life were, from a creative point of view, largely anticlimactic. He performed his consular duties faithfully and effectively until his position was terminated in 1857, and then he spent a year and a half sight-seeing in Italy. Determined to produce yet another romance, he finally retreated to a seaside town in England and quickly produced . In writing it, he drew heavily upon the experiences and impressions he had recorded in a notebook kept during his Italian tour to give substance to an allegory of the Fall of man, a theme that had usually been assumed in his earlier works but that now received direct and philosophic treatment.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL MAJOR NOVELS

31

• The main character of The Scarlet Letter is Hester Prynne, a young married woman who has borne an illegitimate child while living away from her husband in a village in Puritan New England. • The husband, Roger Chillingworth, arrives in New England to find his wife pilloried and made to wear the letter A (meaning adulteress) in scarlet on her dress as a punishment for her illicit affair and for her refusal to reveal the name of the child’s father. • Chillingworth becomes obsessed with finding the identity of his wife’s former lover. • He learns that Hester’s paramour is a saintly young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth then proceeds to revenge himself by mentally tormenting the guilt-stricken young man. • Hester herself is revealed to be a compassionate and splendidly self-reliant heroine who is never truly repentant for the act of adultery committed with the minister; she feels that their act was consecrated by their deep love for each other.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL LEGACY 32

Hawthorne’s high rank among American fiction writers is the result of at least three considerations. First, he was a skillful craftsman with an impressive arthitectonic sense of form. The structure of The Scarlet Letter, for example, is so tightly integrated that no chapter, no paragraph, even, could be omitted without doing violence to the whole. The book’s four characters are inextricably bound together in the tangled web of a life situation that seems to have no solution, and the tightly woven plot has a unity of action that rises slowly but inexorably to the climactic scene of Dimmesdale’s public confession. The same tight construction is found in Hawthorne’s other writings also, especially in the shorter pieces, or “tales.” Hawthorne was also the master of a classic literary style that is remarkable for its directness, its clarity, its firmness, and its sureness of idiom.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL SUMMARY OF THE UNIT 33

• An American fiction writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne is called the author of the Scarlet Letter. His writings ‘The House of Seven Gables’ and the ‘Minister’s Black Veil’ are unique in its style exploring the result of sin, the effect on human conscience of guilt, pride, egotism and isolation. • The story David Swan depicts the life of a youth. David who is Twenty years, is on his trip to the city of Boston for an employment in his uncle’s small grocer at the counter. • It was a summer’s day and he was journeying on foot from dawn. At noon he was tired and decided to wait under a shade, while awaiting the stage coach to carry him to Boston. He had quenched his thirst from the spring in the midst of the trees and laid his head down to take a nap. There were passers by some on foot, others on horseback and all sorts of vehicles. Some glanced his way without even noticing him, while others scoffed at him with scorn. A middle aged widow uttered to herself that he looked charming in his sleep. A preacher illustrated him as an example of a dead drunkard in his sermon.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 34 • The author comments that criticism, praise, merriment, scorn and indifference were the same at that

moment as it meant nothing to the youth. A carriage driving to Boston had halted in front of David’s

resting spot in order to fix up a linchpin which had fallen out and one of the wheels of the carriage had

slid off. A lady and a gentleman travelling in that carriage turned to the shelter under the trees and

noticed David asleep.

• The next visitor was a pretty young girl, who had just turned in to tidy her dress. Catching sight of the

young man asleep, she was about to tip toe out when she saw a monstrous bee hovering above his

head and settling on his eyelid. After attacking the bee with her handkerchief, she blushed on taking a

glimpse of his youthful, handsome face and passed on.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 35

• The last visitors were two rascals, who got their living from other men’s goods. • Expecting the bundle on which David had rested to have a bottle of Brandy, they almost murdered him; but stopped in their tracks when a passing dog arrived on the scene to take a sip from the spring. Concluding that the dog’s master was close behind, the rogues fled from the scene. • After an hour’s rest the youth stirred from his sleep and hearing the approaching stage coach, he called out to know if the driver could take a passenger. He was offered a room on top, mounting on top of the coach off he sped not aware that wealth, love and death had all passed by him in that brief hour while he lay asleep. • Nathaniel Hawthorne remarks, ‘Unexpected things thrust themselves across our paths still there is regularity’.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 36 CONCLUSION

In concluding, we can say that major focus in the story David Swan is on the idea

of missed opportunities. This is illustrated when the protagonist is asleep on a busy

road and he is seen by two travellers who could have helped him make his fortune had

he been awake.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL KEYWORDS/ABBREVIATIONS 37

• innumerable: too many to be counted

• serenity: the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled

• pantaloons: women’s baggy trousers gathered at the ankles

• superfluity: an unnecessarily or excessively large amount or number of something

• linchpin: a person or thing vital to an enterprise or organization

• intercept: obstruct (someone or something) so as to prevent them from continuing to a destination

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL LEARNING ACTIVITY 38

1. What is the theme of the story David Swan? ______

2. What is the setting of David Swan? ______

3. Critically analyse the story David Swan? ______

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS 39 1. “David Swan” is set: (a) in a big city (b) on a farm (c) along a well-travelled road? 2. Which vehicle came to David’s resting place when he slept asleep? (a) Black car (b) Brown Carriage (c) Black jeep 3. When the old merchant and his lady had gone, who came to David’s side? (a) Young Pretty girl (b) Old lady (c) Young boy (d) Old man 4. When two villains were trying to rob David Swan, which animal came there? (a) Cat (b) Dog (c) Horse (d) Lion 5. After David stirred up, he heard the noise of (a) Car (b) Horse (c) Stage-coach

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION

40 1. Write in short the setting of the story? Ans. “David Swan” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is set along a well-travelled road. David is on his way to Boston and chooses to rest in a quiet glen next to a busy road where many travellers see him. (For more detail please refer SLM UNIT-II) 2. Why did David Swan go to sleep? Ans. “David Swan” is a story of a young man who is on his way to Boston and while waiting for the coach, he falls asleep. ... So they just decide to leave him there alone and asleep. It happens that the couple are wealthy and can offer him some fortune, but he misses it because he is asleep. (For more detail please refer SLM UNIT-II) 3. Describe the reaction of people around when David Swan slept? Ans. While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting the slumbered among their busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan. (For more detail please refer SLM UNIT-II)

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 41 REFERENCES

• Hawthorne, Nathaniel. David Swan. Rise of Douai, 2014.

• The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 23 vols. Eds. William

Chavart et al. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1962-97.

www.cuidol.in UUnniitt--I1I ((BBAAQQ 115544)) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL 179

THAN K YOU

For queries Email: [email protected]

www.cuidol.in Unit-1 (BAQ154) All right are reserved with CU-IDOL