INFORMATION TO USERS

This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer.

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book.

Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.

University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Z eeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600

Order Number 9307873

The meaning and impact of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s narrator doubles

Ventura, Mary Kathryn, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1992

UMI 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

THE MEANING AND IMPACT OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S

NARRATOR DOUBLES

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor o f Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Mary Kathryn Ventura, B.A., M.A.

* * * * *

The Ohio State University

1992

Dissertation Committee: Approved by

Thomas Woodson

Debra Moddelmog Adviser Steven Fink Department of English To My Husband,

C., L., B., and T.B.

ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I express sincere appreciation to the members of my dissertation committee-Drs.

Thomas Woodson, Debra Moddelmog, and Steven Fink-for their guidance, suggestions and support throughout my research project. VITA

July 10,1941...... Born - Columbus, Ohio

1964...... B.A., Capital University, Columbus, Ohio

1967 ...... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1965-1968 ...... Teacher, Reynoldsburg High School, Reynoldsburg, Ohio

1968-1971 ...... Instructor, Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio

1971-1987...... Teacher, Lancaster High School, Lancaster, Ohio

1980-1981 ...... Instructor, Ohio University, Lancaster Branch, Lancaster, Ohio

PUBLICATIONS

Ventura, Mary K. "The Portrait of a Ladv: The Romance/Novel Duality." American Literary Realism 1870-1910 22 (1990): 36-50.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: English

Other Specialties: Nathaniel Hawthorne; 19th Century British Literature

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iii

VITA ...... iv

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER PAGE

I. "ALICE DOANE'S APPEAL": THE SEDUCTIVE POWER OF STORYTELLING ...... 10

N otes ...... 38 Bibliography...... 43

II. "THE DEVIL IN MANUSCRIPT": THE AUTO-EROTICS OF STORYWRITING ...... 45

N otes ...... 70 Bibliography...... 73

III. "THE HAUNTED QUACK"/"MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE": THE FRAGILITY OF "WHITE MAGIC"...... 74

N otes ...... 121 Bibliography...... 127

IV. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES: FROM OBERON TO PROSPERO...... 129

N otes ...... 173 Bibliography...... 180

v V. THE NARRATOR BEHIND THE NARRATORS: HAWTHORNE 182

N otes ...... 194 Bibliography...... 195

LIST OF REFERENCES...... 196

vi INTRODUCTION

In Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narratives. Peter Brooks explores the implications of Susan Sontag's claim that "rather than theories of interpretation we need an 'erotics' of art" (xv). Brooks is, of course, exploring a principle of postmodern literary criticism by suggesting that any textual confrontation involves not only intra-textual issues, but also extra-textual considerations-most particularly the relationship between a narrator and his/her audience. Brooks, like Sontag, suggests that this relationship is most aptly described by sexual metaphors, especially the metaphor of "seduction," for such a metaphor identifies narration appropriately as an act o f exerting power over an audience and suggests the necessity of a narrator's manipulating a fiction to that end.

This postmodern paradigm is certainly applicable to postmodern texts. However,

applied to the canon, it also furnishes scholars new access to established texts and often confirms their value by demonstrating that they are capable of inducing many meaning­ ful readings. Indeed, the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne seem particularly appropriate for such a reading, because Hawthorne himself seems so personally aware of his own vulnerability to the charge of sinning by writing. Because he wrote about so many self-

conscious artists and artist figures and employed so many intrusive, self-reflexive narra­

tors to tell his stories, Hawthorne's texts suggest a continual and intensive concern on

Hawthorne's part about the power he wields as a writer-a power which, he seems to feel,

he may subconsciously expose in his narratives and by that exposure indict himself as a

"sinner."

1 It is possible to speculate that Hawthorne's anxiety about his role as a storyteller is rooted in the moral and theological concerns of the nineteenth century. In The Instructed

Vision, for example, Terence Martin alludes to Hawthorne's likely acceptance of the nineteenth-century view of the artist as a sort of theological heretic. Martin cites the nineteenth-century suspicion of novelists and other artists as usurpers of God’s power and refers to the fear that they, as "creators," produce little worlds which are not simply mimetic, but defacto creations, drawn from their own inner beings (60-76). Similarly,

Richard Chase and F. O. Matthiessen suggest that Hawthorne's discomfort with the cre­ ative process is a personally moral issue for Hawthorne who wrote so consistently about the effects of hidden sin. Indeed, Chase and Matthiessen deal with the issue of

Hawthorne's problematic narrators, their closeness to-in fact, intrusiveness into-the lives of their characters, without exhibiting much sympathy for or understanding o f those characters. Such a posture, these critics argiie, aligns Hawthorne's narrators (and, by extension, Hawthorne) with the scientist/doctor/scholar group of protagonists who are guilty of the "unpardonable sin" of Ethan Brand-the violation of the human heart.

According to Chase and Matthiessen, Hawthorne's exploration of so many examples of this unbridled human egotism (the bosom serpent which replicates Original Sin) is sound textual evidence that Hawthorne sees his own narrators and thereby himself as sinners.

We can see Chase’s argument most clearly in his analysis of the problematic narrator of Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance. Miles Coverdale. Interestingly, Chase suggests that Hawthorne becomes increasingly absorbed with the problem of Coverdale as narra­ tor, rather than character, once the story progresses and as Hawthorne begins to see the

"literary and moral implications" for himself (85). Hawthorne, says Chase, "comes to think in The Blithedale Romance that the novelist commits the unpardonable sin, that he

is a kind of Chillingworth, whose probing intellect violates the human heart" (85).

According to Chase, it is likely that Hawthorne feared that he himself was "guilty of the unpardonable sin" since "he [Hawthorne] must perforce pitilessly scrutinize his charac­ ters without being able to share with them their imperfect humanity, to acknowledge his kinship with their experience and destiny" (87).

Matthiessen draws similar conclusions when he investigates Holgrave's narrative role in The House of the Seven Gables. In Matthiessen's critique of Holgrave, Matthiessen extends his concern beyond Holgrave's narration to the author's:

. . . as Holgrave recognizes his share in other traits of the Maules, some of them are likewise those which Hawthorne felt dangerous in himself. His cool habit of scrutinizing the characters of others, which is symbolized by his daguerrotype portraits, causes the young man to say to Phoebe that his tendency. . . might have brought him to Gallows Hill in the old days. (300)

Although Matthiessen points out that Holgrave's salvation, that which saves him "from hardening into fatal arrogance," is "the birth of his love for Phoebe," he still argues that

"the common denominator between Holgrave and Judge Pyncheon and even Hepzibah, as well as between Hollingsworth and Ethan Brand and a dozen others, consists in pride, the worst sin in Dante's theology as well as in Milton's and Edwards" (300). Certainly, what Chase and Matthiessen say about The Blithedale Romance and The House of the

Seven Gables is applicable to any number of Hawthorne's fictions. In fact, as I shall show in this study, in addition to his ostensible purposes for writing, Hawthorne also uses his fictions to probe into matters relating to his own guilt or innocence in his profession as a writer-a concern which spans his career. Indeed, so much of Hawthorne's work is devoted to the exposure of his characters' hidden guilt that it seems a natural conse­ quence to consider Hawthorne’s works as evidence o f his.

However, whatever the causes of Hawthorne's sensitivity about his artistic role, more interesting to me-and thus the subject of this study-are the effects of Hawthorne's mis­ givings about narration on his narrative strategy. My study, of course, is necessarily lim­ ited to a particular strategy. Because of the size of the Hawthorne corpus, I have limited myself to those works which are clearly metafictive-to those which most blatantly hold up the mirror of fiction to fiction itself. The works are those where Hawthorne chose to embed a narrative within a narrative-a choice which invariably necessitated his creation of one or more new narrators, or "narrator doubles," to share the responsibility of story telling with the original, or "primary," narrator of the work (typically an unnamed observer/narrator who claims to be aloof from his fiction). These works deserve singling out because the primary narration becomes subject to subversion by the secondary text[s], thus revealing the psychological complexities of the act of narration itself. These works, which I discuss in roughly chronological order, are "Alice Doane's Appeal" (pub­ lished in 1835, but likely Hawthorne's first story), "The Devil in Manuscript" (1835),

"The Haunted Quack" (1831), "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" (set into its original frame, "Passages from a Relinquished Work" [1834]), and The House of the Seven

Gables (1851). I have deliberately excluded consideration of any fully framed collec­ tions of tales, like "Legends of the Province House" and Hawthorne's framed collections for children (although I refer to The Wonder Book in my conclusion). I have done so, not because their study would be unproductive, but because their format introduces an issue not directly related to this study: the relationship of the individual tales to each other, irrespective of their separate insertion within the same frame.

Further, in the first four chapters of this study, apart from autobiographical connec­ tions (which I cite in each chapter), I am allowing Hawthorne his "veil"-allowing him the distance from these texts that he wanted to achieve through the smokescreen o f narra­ tor doubling. I focus instead on the narrative dynamics between/among the embedded stories and the primary fiction, and between/among the narrator doubles and the primary narrators-dynamics set in motion by Hawthorne's choice of strategy and ultimately reve­ latory of the hidden sins of the creative process. I will show that the embedded fictions provide a metafictive subtext which subverts the main text thereby permitting the guilty psyche of the primary narrator to become transparent. Indeed, as the storytelling shifts to one or more narrator doubles, the fiction begins to take on a life of its own-to reshape itself beyond the primary narrator's ability to control it. The net result is an exposure of the guilt of the primary narrator who is revealed as a dynamic and sinister participant in the fiction toward which he had feigned aloofness. The awesome power of the creative process is demonic in origin. Indeed, Hawthorne regularly figures it as sexual perversion and/or as other forms of violation, penetration, or conquests o f human life-even murder.

That is, in this study, I deal with a range of narrative power-both extra-textual, as it extends to Hawthorne's audience, and intra-textual, as it extends to both the narrator (in the throes of creativity), to his Active characters (who live or die at the stroke of their creator's pen), and to the narrator's audience.

In the first two chapters, I examine two tales that are provocative examples of the demonic power both in storytelling and in story writing. Chapter 1 concerns the tale pre­ sumed to be Hawthorne's first, revised for publication in 1835 as "Alice Doane's

Appeal," while Chapter 2 treats a tale published the same year as "Alice Doane's

Appeal," but likely written later, "The Devil in Manuscript." Through narrator doubling,

"Alice Doane's Appeal" exposes the primary narrator's erotic designs on his listening audience of two young women and his seduction of the reader into being a voyeuristic-and, thus, vicarious-participant in his "rape" of the girls. "The Devil in

Manuscript" likewise exposes the storywriting process as sexual, in this case, auto-erotic, rather than seductive. Here, in a psychomachia (a conversation between the primary nar­ rator and "himself"), the solitary act of creating a fiction is likened to masturbation-a trope heightened within the narrative by the self-stimulation o f the interaction between the primary narrator and his double.

Certainly, in all of the works examined in this study, the dark side of the creative process is rarely far from the surface. But, in the works I treat in Chapter 3, we see how Hawthorne modified his strategy of narrator doubling to explore the possibilities of nar­

rative innocence. Indeed, we can see emerging in these narrators a sense of urgency to nullify, or at least suspend, the psychic and demonic energy which threatens to expose them. In such instances, the primary narrators are not totally successful at controlling

this energy, but are able to control the substance and direction of their narrations by using

narrator doubles to exculpate themselves at least partially or temporarily. Through dou­ bling, these primary narrators indulge in a whimsical wish-fulfillment in which they try

to ensure a positive outcome for themselves and to secure a positive image for them­

selves in the eyes of the reader.

In Chapter 3, then, I examine those tales where primary narrators try to wrest their

fictions from the diabolical force working to subvert them. First, I treat "The Haunted

Quack," a tale not universally accepted as Hawthorne's, but distinctly Hawthornian in its

strategy of narrator doubling, enough so, I believe, to warrant its inclusion. This tale, I

suggest, is a less personally implicating one than "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil

in Manuscript" because of the way the primary narrator co-opts the ending of his narrator

double's tale. Indeed, at the beginning, the narrator double's story about his alleged

killing of a patient indicts the primary narrator as a potential murderer of his own charac­

ters. However, at the end, by introducing new characters into his frame-characters who

exonerate the narrator double-the primary narrator achieves a vicarious, though quali­

fied, exoneration, too. Further, as the narrator double is reunited with his friends, the pri­

mary narrator adumbrates himself as a responsible public figure whose social dynamics

are positive. Second, in this chapter, I examine "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" as set

in its original frame, '.’Passages from a Relinquished Work." The two tales, taken togeth­

er, are the only intact portion ever published of Hawthorne's originally projected collec­

tion to be called The Storyteller. Like the primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack," the

primary narrator (the narrator of "Passages..." ) manipulates the fiction of his narrator double (the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe") to create the self he would like to be. While his own fiction lays bare his insecurities and guilt, the primary narrator assumes in his narrator double the identity of success and invulnerability. Thus, for a space of time, the frame narrator transcends his fear of failure and of exposure as a "par­ ricide." As a result, like the narrator of "The Haunted Quack," this primary narrator cre­ ates a kind o f self-liberating fiction, albeit a temporary one, one which lasts only until he resumes his own tale.

Throughout this study I have termed the dark power which wrests narrative control from a primary narrator as "Oberon's black magic" and the more controlled efforts o f a primary narrator to vitiate that power as "Oberon's white magic." These terms, while my own, are apt on two counts: first, because Hawthorne adopted the fanciful name o f

Oberon during his years at Bowdoin and used it occasionally to name an artist figure in his works ("The Devil in Manuscript," for instance); second, because the name, as

Hawthorne knew, invites comparisons to the Fairy King Oberon of Shakespeare’s

Midsummer-Night's Dream, a comparison I discuss more fully in Chapter 2. Briefly, however, Oberon is the King whose magic creates both mischief and welfare, depending upon whether or not he himself directly controls the implements of his magic-a duality comparable to what Hawthorne’s narrators must contend with.

The strategies of the primary narrators whom I describe in Chapter 3 are not wholly successful at liberating these narrators of guilt. Still, there remains an alternative-one

Hawthorne explores in The House of the Seven Gables, the subject of Chapter 4. Here the primary narrator, through his narrator double, Holgrave, is able to effect a full (albeit vicarious) redemption for himself-but only at a significant price. Latent in the "prosper­ ous close" of this romance is the bittersweet implication that the only redeemed narrator is the narrator who gives up his craft-a Prospero, as it were. Thus, while the magic of

Oberon is fraught with danger subject as it is to a dual potential, the magic of Prospero resolves itself in artistic suicide, an act which Hawthorne could not commit.

But Hawthorne did seem aware of the implications of this magic when he composed

The House of the Seven Gables, a point I take up in the concluding chapter. Here I sug­ gest that Hawthorne became increasingly anxious about his role as a storyteller both during and following his writing of The House of the Seven Gables. In a brief examina­ tion of Hawthorne's later work, I demonstrate how he tried to accommodate the knowl­ edge of his own secret guilt by changing his narrative strategy to lessen it.

Ultimately, then, I do lift a comer of Hawthorne's veil to reveal, if not the man, at least his secret fears regarding his vocation. Thus, howevermuch Hawthorne may have been rooted in nineteenth-century morality and theology, the effects o f his strategy o f narrator doubling suggest yet another reason why Hawthorne's works speak so forcefully to our contemporary sensibilities. Indeed, these works which hold up the mirror o f fic­ tion to fiction to reveal the guilt inherent in the creative process suggest that Hawthorne exists in a postmodern episteme. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narratives. New York: Random, 1984.

Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Garden City: Doubleday, 1957.

Martin, Terence. The Instructed Vision: Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and the Origin of American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1961.

Matthiessen, F. O. "Hawthorne's Psychology: The Acceptance of Good and Evil." Casebook on the Hawthorne Question. Ed. Agnes McNeill Donohue. New York: Crowell, 1963. 296-308. CHAPTER I

"Alice Doane's Appeal": The Seductive Power of Storytelling

"What is Guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast interest, whether the soul may contract such stains, in all their depth and flagrancy, from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon but which, physically, have never had existence."

-Hawthorne, "Fancy's Show Box: A Morality"

A truncated revision of an earlier story "Alice Doane," the 1835 version, "Alice

Doane's Appeal," "represents either the earliest or else one of the two earliest of

Hawthorne's extant short stories" (Shroeder 129). A s such, it is a good starting point for any study of Hawthorne's later work. This is especially so from a narrative viewpoint because o f the abstruse relationship among what appear to be two tales bracketed within the frame of a third, any one of which might have been a whole story, but which, taken together, seem disjunctive. There are, indeed, two definable stories within the frame of a narrative about the storytelling event.

The frame concerns a writer who takes two young women to Gallows Hill to read them a Gothic story about murder and incest-a story he has written some time ago. His motivation, it seems, is to elicit an emotional response-to awaken their "heartfelt memo- ries"-to quicken their feelings about evil afoot in the world. This Gothic story presents a love/lust triangle in which Leonard Doane recounts his murder of Walter Brome (his psy­ chological double) for having presumably violated Leonard's sister Alice. Leonard is 11 doubly tortured: first, by his guilt for the murder (which additionally implies parricide because the dying Walter resembles Leonard's father) and second, by his suspicion that he, like Walter, has harbored incestuous feelings toward Alice. Desperate, he confesses to a wizard (who, we later learn, has prearranged everything), and the wizard takes

Leonard and Alice to a midnight visit in the Salem graveyard. There they witness a spectral procession of the dead, including Walter Brome, who, as a result of her "appeal," absolves Alice of her guilt.

The narrator of the frame, however, realizes that this story is a failure: his audience merely laughs. So the man attempts a second tale in which he evokes the historical spec­ tre of witchcraft, calling before the girls a vision of the innocent people who were has­ tened up Gallows Hill to their unjust deaths. This time he reaches "the seldom trodden places of their hearts" and finds "the well-spring of their tears."* They leave the barren hill together, regretting "that there is nothing on its barren summit, no relic of old, nor lettered stone of later days, to assist imagination in appealing to the heart" (11:280).

Not difficult to summarize, the story is not so easy to comprehend, for the reader is left with at least two puzzling questions: first, what is the real story we are to focus on?

(the Gothic tale of incest and parricide? The historical evocation of innocent "witches" going to their deaths? The tale about tale-telling? Or-even more compelling-is there, despite the insubstantiality of each individual tale, a thread of continuity uniting them into a more substantial whole?), second-and the one we will concern ourselves most with-who is in control of the story? (Hawthorne? The frame/primary narrator? The recalled/created narrator? Leonard Doane? Or someone/thing else?). These two ques­ tions are, as we shall.see, interrelated, although critics tend to separate them.

Critics have dealt with the first question variously and exhaustively. Although most critics admit either explicitly or implicitly that the work reflects the blunders of a writer in his "literary nonage" (Williamson 351), it remains a tantalizing story to those tracing 12 the evolution of the themes and style of the polished craftsman from the presumably less polished products of his writing apprenticeship.^

Other critics, however, believe that to regard the tale as crude is to detract from

Hawthorne's skill, giving the artist far too little credit for his ability. Accordingly, many of them find levels of interpretation immanent (though not especially manifest) in the tale which make it quite coherent. In fact, "Alice Doane's Appeal," which Hyatt

Waggoner once judged "incoherent" and "loosely tangled" (Hawthorne: A Critical Study

50), Douglas Robinson has more recently called "wholly coherent," even "innovative"

(213). Indeed, we can read Hawthorne as virtually an avant garde postmodernist, at least, in impulse.

So, while the story still is, as Stanley Brodwin claims, "one of the few stories of

Hawthorne's that has not fared well with the critics" (116), it remains intriguing to them.

It is, in fact, especially so to those seeking order in what Waggoner refers to as its "gaps, inconsistencies, unexplained shifts of scene and bits of action" ("Introduction to Third

Edition" vii). These "coherence" critics tend toward one of three responses: presenting the story's coherence in terms of a thematic infrastructure; explaining its coherence in terms of a metafictive superstructure; or defending its coherence on the basis of both.

The first group finds the story coherent by reading the implications of the tale's infrastructure, locating patterns of comparison, contrast, and repetition which pull the disparate elements together in spite of the "contradictions" and "false starts" (Crews 48) of the surface story and despite Hawthorne's failure to give the moment its dramatic force" (Brodwin 123). Most of these critics see Hawthorne as balancing imagination and history (or head and heart, romanticism and realism) in some symbiotic way.

Stanley Brodwin, in particular, argues that Hawthorne balances the tales to remind a forgetful reader of the need to confront the "heartfelt" lessons of history through the power of imagination. To Brodwin, Hawthorne's Gothic tale of Leonard Doane's guilt 13 for murdering Walter Brome comments on the historical story of Puritan guilt for con­ demning w itches:" ... he [the narrator] has been telling a tale of guilt and woe in an extreme Gothic setting which might well be rejected by the most credulous reader or lis­ tener. But we are suddenly reminded that the stories which condemned the innocent on

Gallows Hill were indeed wilder and were believed" (122).^

While Brodwin stresses Hawthorne's purpose-the need to confront history-Susan Swartzlander emphasizes Hawthorne's means of achieving that purpose-'imagination and emotion" (123). To Swartzlander, it is, after all, "the reader's heart that the writer hopes to touch with his words" (123).^ Interestingly, Brodwin and

Swartzlander-and other critics of their "school"-down-play the role o f the narrative frame even while they attempt to explain it. That is, they acknowledge the metafictive function of the frame but concentrate principally on the two interior narratives as evi­ dence of what the frame narrator wishes to "teach." As a result, their approach to a coherent reading is generally to thematize-that is, to identify thematic threads common to each of the bracketed stories and then to suggest that the two stories illustrate "how fiction and history work together" (Swartzlander 128). To them, the interior tales are the real story.

Other "coherence" critics work from the opposite perspective, beginning with the frame. As a result, they stress the metafictive qualities of the story's superstructure more than the thematic connections of the interior stories. Nina Baym, for example, claims that the story illustrates how to write a Gothic tale (37-40). Terence Martin calls it an example of a writer "writing fiction about the problems of writing fiction" (187). And

James L. Williamson claims that in the tale Hawthorne "celebrates his own growth as a professional artist" (346).

Certainly all of these views have merit. Yet, if we return to the original question-what is the real story?-we realize that these coherence critics tend to privilege 14 one story over another to see the tale as a whole. Brodwin, for instance, must privilege the final tale o f historical confrontation; Swartzlander, the Gothic tale o f Leonard

Doane; Baym, Martin, and Williamson, the narrative frame. And while none excludes consideration o f other portions of the tale, each clearly suggests that one should take precedence over the others.

Douglas Robinson's 1982 reading of this tale, then, is especially appealing because he takes a holistic approach. While not denying the "persuasive" nature o f other read­ ings, Robinson criticizes those "who advance by the reductive process o f isolating a sin­ gle feature of the story's structure as interpretively significant and diminishing or denying the relevance o f all others" (213). Believing that "only a holistic perception" will allow us to "conceive the story's structure as wholly coherent," Robinson sets out "to recognize and account for the existence and function o f all narrative levels and the gaps between them, and at the same time to demonstrate the importance o f the thematic links that tie the various structural levels together" (213).

To Robinson, "the true meaning of 'Alice Doane's Appeal' emerges not from any one of the narrative possibilities raised, but from a paradoxical balance between seemingly exclusive extremes: between the ethical statement of truth in the story's insistence on heartfelt memory, and the ironic denial of truth in its formal strategy of metafiction"

(213-14). By seeing that parallels exist wherever we discover "ironic distancing,"

Robinson argues that we as readers are subjected to "a complex matrix o f pulls and coun­ terpulls" (216) preventing fanatical adherence to any particular source o f truth. Thus, the metafictive apparatus undermines not only the patently fictive Gothic story of Leonard

Doane, but "the serious historical vision" (214) as well.

Robinson's reading of the paradoxical nature of "Alice Doane's Appeal" is convinc­ ing: it accounts for the necessity of various narrative "filters"; it accounts for the simul­ taneous existence of narrative distance and thematic closeness; it resolves the issue of 15 narrative relationships by suggesting that they are paradoxical (clearly, to Robinson, the real story is the whole story); and it has implications which bear on our discussion of the second question-who is in control of the story?-an additionally challenging issue in light of Hawthorne's other works where Hawthorne experiments with other narrators who seek the means of exerting control over their works.

As this review of the criticism reveaL, a considerable number of critics have debated what the real story of "Alice Doane's Appeal" is. Fewer, however, have related this ques­ tion to narrative control, unless they find the issue tangentially important when, for instance, they acknowledge Hawthorne's strategy of narrator doubling-a strategy which suggests a division of responsibility among his narrators. However, when critics do deal with narrator doubling directly, most do so to understand the cawses-the reasons why

Hawthorne might want to share, disperse, or even deflect narrative authority. In fact, though they claim that Hawthorne and the narrator are not identical, most nonetheless connect Hawthorne's narrator doubling to the psychological dimension o f Hawthorne himself. That is, they generally conclude that Hawthorne divided narrative responsibility to deflect accountability because he feared either public humiliation for poorly received stories or moral condemnation for having committed the unpardonable sin that he him­ self deprecated.^

However, few critics have attempted to analyze the process of Hawthorne's narrator doubling or its effects in any substantive way. Here is where the implications of

Robinson's reading become significant, for his approach bears on matters relating to nar­ rative control. In fact, Robinson's interpretation is pivotal, for he draws together the two central critical concerns of the story by demonstrating that who is in control o f the story affects what the real story is. Indeed, as Robinson identifies and analyzes the narrative configurations, he finds that the divided (yet related) responsibility among the narrators results in paradox: the real story involves the impossibility o f accepting/rejecting any 16 one locus o f truth. In fact, without saying so directly, Robinson deals not only with nar­ rator doubling, but-more to the point-with the effects of this narrator doubling on our perception of truth.

Robinson stops short, however, of identifying the ultimate ironic effect, one inherent in the very process of narrator doubling: how the storytelling roles which shift among narrator doubles allow the tale to take on a life of its own-to shape itself, so to speak, beyond the attempts of the primary narrator to control it. Thus, Robinson leaves unex­ plored the possibility of further dissolution into the ultimate paradox that not even the primary narrator can exert absolute control over his own materials and, in the process of trying to do so, is drawn into the tale's meaning. As a result, we may read works which involve narrator doubling as metafictions. These, indeed, are issues we must analyze fur­ ther and expand upon in order to deal effectively with questions of narrative control and responsibility-not only in regard to "Alice Doane's Appeal," but in relation to other

Hawthorne works where the author divides, shares, and sometimes transfers narrative responsibility.

"Alice Doane's Appeal" is a good starting point, for it is, as James L. Williamson points out, "a seminal steppingstone in Hawthorne's career" (351). It is, as Robert

Fossum suggests, "of interest if only because the very weaknesses, the artistic uncertain­ ties . . . illustrate in a number of ways Hawthorne's dilemma as a writer of historical romance" (294). And certainly it is, as Frederick Crews argues, "of peculiar interest. . .

[because] what is subtle and even problematical in his more polished writing leaps plain­ ly into view" in this less polished work (44). We can, as Crews indicates, watch

Hawthorne "first trying to subdue, and later trying to fend away from consciousness, obsessive attitudes that are successfully sublimated elsewhere" (44). Thus, we need not deny the artistic inventiveness of the tale by acknowledging it as rudimentary and forma­ tive. In fact, "Alice Doane's Appeal" is important for those very reasons. It offers us, as 17

Crews points out, "special opportunities for knowledge [about Hawthorne's craftsman­ ship] because. . . [its] inmost structure is directly exposed to us" (44).

Certainly Hawthorne himself was concerned with issues of narrative control at least as early as the publication year of "Alice Doane's Appeal." In a journal entry, dated

October 25,1835, Hawthorne outlined a story idea which suggests that control is an issue in storytelling:

A person to be writing a tale, and to find that it shapes itself against his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought; that unfore­ seen events occur; and a catastrophe comes which he strives in vain to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate — he having made himself one of the personages. (The American Notebooks 161

Whether or not Hawthorne ever produced this exact tale is immaterial. His very sugges­ tion "shadows forth"-prefigures-a problematic issue in "Alice Doane's Appeal" and in other works of the Hawthorne corpus: that a story might not be under the absolute con­ trol of an author/narrator.

Issues of control are not as subtly represented in "Alice Doane's Appeal" as we may think, even if we are overwhelmed by questions of coherence and theme. The truth is, problems of control dominate the thoughts of the primary narrator. His anxieties, in fact, range from control over his own career, to control over his audience[s], to control over his own narratives, which, for a time, frustrate his attempt at management. His reliability is an issue, for he cannot control his materials. In fact, as we shall see, he fails to learn the lesson of his own narrative, even when he finally feels he has successfully told it.

Significantly, then, the primary narrator is the most fully characterized of the four identifiable narrators in "Alice Doane's Appeal," and he is probably the closest to

Hawthorne himself. To begin with, he is beatable within a time-frame that is clearly contemporary to that Of Hawthorne. Including himself among the "people of the present"

(11:267), he knows the landmarks Hawthorne was familiar with-Legge's Hill, Cold 18

Spring, "the old batteries of the Neck" (11:266), Paradise, and, of course, Salem and the infamous Gallows Hill. His interest, too, is clearly in Salem's past-particularly 1692, the year of the great witchcraft delusion. He is frustrated that the people of his time com­ memorate the executions with bonfires on November 5 without any feeling "beyond the momentary blaze" (11:267). What he longs for is a recovery of that "heartfelt interest in olden time" (11:267) which will reveal history as a continuum including people of his day.

To recover a sense of this past, he "often courted the historic influence of [Gallows

Hill]" (11:267). Still, he can find "vestiges" of Salem's past only "within the memory of man," not in any "precise spot" (11:268), for though he can imagine that he and his com­ panions are about to "sink in the hollow of a witch’s grave" (11:268), there is nothing to mark it as such. Even "the precise spot of the executions" is indicated by no "prominent mark" (11:268). His avowed goal as a storyteller, then, is much like Hawthorne's-to engage his audience in obeying "the summons of the shadowy past," to take a "heartfelt interest in the olden time" (11:267).

Besides these fundamental similarities, this narrator also refers to verifiable events and actual experiences of Hawthorne. For example, he deplores the fact that Salem's his­ tory had "till a year or so since . . . been imperfectly written" (11:267). However, he deplores as well the efforts of a recent historian for treating the subject without feeling and only, in fact, "in a manner that will keep his name alive" (11:267). Unnamed in

"Alice Doane's Appeal," this writer is identifiable as Charles Wentworth Upham, who lived near Gallows Hill and who published a book "a year or two" before "Alice Doane's

Appeal" appeared in the Token (Ephreneis 116).^

Further, the primary narrator and Hawthorne both burned their manuscripts. The background of the original "Alice Doane" is vague-in fact, pieced together by such hazy recollections as Elizabeth Hawthorne's that she had once read "a tale of witchcraft-'Alice 19

Doane' I believe it was called" (Julian Hawthorne 123-24). Elizabeth is supposed to have

read the tale in the summer of 1825 as it appeared in Hawthorne's manuscript of Seven

Tales of Mv Native Land. However, evidence in "The Devil in Manuscript" and the per­

haps more reliable 1851 preface to Twice-Told Tales suggests that Hawthorne burned this

manuscript, "Alice Doane" somehow surviving. Similarly, the primary narrator of "Alice

Doane's Appeal" refers to a group of his stories, some of which "appeared in the Token."

others that "fed the flames." the story in his hand having survived because it was "in

kinder custody at the time" (11:269).

While such similarities have led critics like James L. Williamson to conclude that "in

'Alice Doane’s Appeal' the portrait of the artist is . . . self-consciously and directly autobi­ ographical" (346), others recommend caution about connecting the tale too directly to

Hawthorne's biography. As Douglas Robinson states, the "many thematic links preclude the assumption of an absolute rift between [author and narrator]" (214). but, even so, "no doubt an ironic gap of some sort separates author from narrator" (214). Certainly, for instance, it would seem ironic for Hawthorne to lament losing his creative powers fol­ lowing the writing of "Alice Doane" (as the primary narrator does), because "the portions of that tale actually quoted [in "Alice Doane's Appeal"] show just the opposite, that

Hawthorne's talent had improved markedly in the interim" (214). Besides, as Robinson says, "Hawthorne does paint a rather ludicrous spectacle of this mad strolling gentleman who drags two girls up a hill and virtually holds them prisoner until after dark while he harangues them to the point of tears and takes what seems a somewhat monstrous glee in their plight" (214). Clearly, then, we must be careful in directly identifying Hawthorne as the primary narrator, for though they share experiences and concerns, the primary nar­ rator is a character in his own right.

The primary narrator's storytelling reveals his anxieties and is actually more self- serving than he would like to admit. Despite his ostensible purpose of making the past 20 meaningful-laudable indeed-he seems at least as concerned with regaining control over his own writing career and with exerting control over his audience[s] as he does with awakening an historical sensitivity in the contemporary world. He is obviously insecure as a writer. The manuscript which the narrator takes from his pocket is "one o f a series written years ago" (11:269) when, he feels, he had been a better writer than he is now.

His pen, he believes, is now "sluggish and perhaps feeble" (ll:269)-he may never regain his power. As a result, he sees the girls—at least in part-as a means of bolstering his wan­ ing self-confidence.

Yet even with them he hesitates, suspicious, perhaps, that they are not the willing, enthusiastic listeners he would like to have. He admits, for instance, that he has intruded

. . . [his] performance on them" (ll:269)-that he has indeed imposed. Further, he hesi­ tates to begin reading his manuscript. He claims that his uncertainty stems from "a dread of renewing . . . [his] acquaintance with fantasies that had lost their charm" (11:269).

But, given his stern response when the girls laugh at his tale, w e suspect that all along he has wanted their approval. However, as we shall later see, we might likewise question what "fantasies" he dreads facing again.

In any event, he has never had much public approval and is clearly sensitive on that score. He observes wryly that even his former tales, which he claims were more inspired, had "incumbered. . . [him] with no troublesome notoriety even in . . . [his] birthplace" (11:269). In fact, it seem s clear that this failure with the public caused him to burn his work, for he refers to the burning as a "brighter destiny" (11:269) than, presum­ ably, public consumption. He has pinned his hopes, then, on this last remaining manuscript to regain his sense o f self-worth as a writer.

If he appears pathological in burning his manuscripts, he seems no less so when the girls do not respond well to the remaining story. When they laugh, they anger him so much that he maintains "an awful solemnity of visage" (11:278), although he says he is 21 merely "a little piqued" (11:278). He'd wanted them at least "to tremble"-they being

"timid maids" (11:278). The girls' reaction forces him into bizarre, if not obsessive-com­ pulsive, behavior. He will not allow them to leave until he has had his way with them

(or, as Michael Colacurcio suggests, until "he may work upon them his entire imagina­ tive will" [81]). Actually, because he detains "them a while longer on the hill" (11:278) to tell them another story-when, we suspect, the girls would sooner return home (it being

"past suppertime" [ll:278])-w e may justifiably doubt if making "a trial of whether truth were more powerful than fiction" (11:278) is the narrator's only motive in telling the sec­ ond story. As we shall see, he has another sub-conscious motive.

To be sure, the girls weep at the end of the narrator's second tale, but we might not agree with the narrator's assessment of why they do so. He feels that his story has touched them at last and that they are all now of one mind in understanding and valuing the impact of history:" ... ere we left the hill, we could not but regret, that there is noth­ ing on its barren summit, no relic of old, nor lettered stone of later days, to assist the imagination in appealing to the heart" (11:280; my italics). We, on the other hand, sus­ pect that he has taught the girls a darker lesson than he will admit and that they cry because they are tired, hungry, and frightened. And because they have been violated.

There is, in fact, more than a hint of some repressed sexual motivation on the part of the narrator who, while claiming to appeal "to the heart" of his audience (11:280), seems instead to reveal his own subconscious prurient interests. Indeed, even his literary impo­ tence suggests a dark rationale behind what in fact seems less a pleasant afternoon of lit­ erary indulgence than a seductive journey which takes the girls from innocence to guilty awareness. Unless we, too, are beguiled into believing the narrator's avowed purpose, we can surely see him as a sexual provocateur who lures his virginal auditors from the pleasant June sun of the recognizable, "civilized" world of "tanners and curriers"

(11:266) to the dark, threatening (even phallic) slope of Gallows Hill in the fading sun, 22 with the promise of a "wondrous tale . . . of old times" (11:269). Involved in this literary menage a trois, the narrator fails in his first attempt to despoil the innocence of his com­ panions. But in his second attempt he is successful. Their "nerves were trembling"

(11:280); "they seized an arm on each side" (11:279). He "had reached the seldom trod­ den places of their hearts" (11:280; my italics). And this he calls a "sweeter victory"

(ll:280)-the words of a triumphant rapist, spoken as the jubilation of a successful chron­ icler of history's heartfelt meaning-a meaning which he, the teacher of it, does not, or cannot, apply to himself. The primary narrator's strategies reveal a subconscious agenda which asserts itself despite his efforts to repress \\P

Given the narrator's efforts to repress his subconscious motive, it may come as no surprise, then, that he deflects the responsibility for telling the first tale onto his created narrator, the first of several narrator doubles in "Alice Doane's Appeal." It is clear that we are to make some identification between the created narrator and the primary narrator, for they employ similar storytelling techniques. The primary narrator, for instance, begins the story, as we have seen, very much in the real world of accurate place names, in the month of June, and in a year identifiable in terms of its contemporary context.

Very quickly, however, he leads us beyond the actual and into consideration of the world of sign and symbol-a reading of the symbolism of Nature. We are not long into his story before he draws our attention to the "wood-wax" on Gallows Hill-that "deceitful ver­

dure" (11:266) which poisons other vegetation, such that "a physical curse may be said to

have blasted the spot" (11:267).

The created narrator likewise begins with some precise detail-a body was found, he says, "at about the distance of three miles, on the old road to Boston" (11:269). And he, too, draws us quickly into the shadowy realm of Nature's analogue. He suggests that the

"slight fall of snow during the night" (11:270) was Nature's response to the murder. It 23 was "as if Nature were shocked at the deed and strove to hide it with her frozen tears"

(11:270).

Still, the created narrator's tale is not quite as the primary narrator has represented it.

It is indeed "wondrous," but not as charmingly/whimsically so as he implies by calling it a "wondrous, tale . . . of old times" (11:269). Surely it was not what the girls expected to hear, accustomed as they must have been to the "gift book" fare offered in the Token.

And the narrator implies that they had indeed read some of his work through that "legiti­ mate medium . . . the press" (11:269).

Nor is the tale as historical as the narrator had implied it would be when he identified the year 1692 as its setting. The created narrator, in fact, makes little pretense of histori­ cal exactitude. Instead of identifying the year as 1692, he refers to the time vaguely as "a hundred years and nearly half that time" ago (11:269). Moreover, he never refers directly to the historically documented witchcraft delusion. Certainly he names no historical per­ sonages. His characters appear to be purely fictional. In fact, even the graveyard proces­ sional, which in some Hawthorne tales provides an opportunity for the narrator to cata­ logue historical names or for the reader to investigate historical parallels, is simply sug­ gestive of the Puritan past. He refers to "defenders of the infant colony," "venerable shapes . . . [of] the New England clergy," "men of history," "former townspeople,"

"chaste matrons," "fond lovers" (11:275-76), and others-all identified by description, but not by name. In addition, his focus is not on the execution of witches, but on a murder, incest, and parricide. The created narrator's story, then, illustrates the primary narrator's

expressed point only indirectly, for, the truth is, he actually focuses on dark, psychologi­

cal themes which involve the ambiguous, hidden sexuality that we sense is gnawing at

the narrator himself.

Seen in this light, the created narrator's tale is potentially damaging to the primary

narrator because it is monstrously revealing. After all, the narrator has two audiences, 24 and we, as an audience, may be more perceptive than are the girls with him on Gallows

Hill. Vexed on two fronts, he must, then, control two sets of reactions. This is not, as we shall see, an easy task, for such efforts reveal in him a dissonance which he cannot sup­ press. He has, in effect, two contradictory motivations: on the one hand, he subcon­ sciously wishes to arouse the girls to an awareness of their own sexuality, a type of rape; on the other, he wishes to repress his own darker side, preferring that we accept his inter­ est in history as his reason for the tale telling. Thus, if he is not careful, he may reveal more to us than he concedes even to himself, for he has admitted to and believes in only a pure motive for this metaphoric seduction. In any event, because he fears us as a sec­ ond audience and also desires to think well of himself, the primary narrator suppresses the blatantly sexual material. By doing so, he denies us access to the tale's explicit mate­ rial, but allows the created narrator to reveal all o f the sordid material to the girls, who are, after all, the primary narrator's personal target.

The primary narrator, then, tries to control his created narrator's material for our con­ sumption through a metafictive analysis of his own work. By keeping our attention focused on his storytelling methods and intentions, he desexualizes the content and, in some measure, neutralizes our awareness of his own less-than-pure, subconscious motives. To do so, he continuously interrupts the tale, trivializing the importance of our hearing the story first-hand. He implies, in fact, that most of what he summarizes involves the mere housekeeping chores of writing. At the same time, he focuses our attention on the fictionality of his writing, thus evading the suggestion that the story reveals anything about himself.

In his first interruption, for example, the primary narrator identifies himself as the reader: "I read on," he says, "and identified the body as that of a young man, a stranger in the country, but resident during several preceding months in the town which lay at our 25 feet" (11:270). He continues, describing other chores of a writer-disallowing the mimet­ ic detail that the created narrator presumably provides. He explains, for example, h ow he

"brought forward" (11:270) the characters-three in number. He characterizes each briefly: a brother with a "diseased imagination and morbid feelings" (11:270); a sister,

"beautiful and virtuous" (11:270); and a wizard, "fiendish . . . in devising evil" but

"senseless . .. to all better purposes" (11:270-71). He even identifies and prepares us for what is to be "the central scene of the story"-an "interview between this wretch [the w iz­ ard] and Leonard Doane" (11:271). Significantly, he also paraphrases a portion of

Leonard Doane's confession to the wizard. He speaks o f Leonard's discovery of "a secret sympathy between his sister and Walter Brome" (11:271) and the consequent develop­ ment of his own "distempered jealousy" (11:271). This phrasing, though suggestive, softens the sexual issues of seduction and incest.

However, he must be concerned with both audiences, a concern which we see surface in a later interruption. Here, the primary narrator interrupts his created narrator. H e does so to describe his intention to us and to check on the reactions of his "two fair auditors"

(11:275). The created narrator has just described a scene of glittering ice-of "slippery brightness," of "frigid glory"-the "creation of wizard power" (11:274). It is such a graphic delusion that "one looked to behold inhabitants suited to such a town, glittering in icy garments, with motionless features, cold, sparkling eyes, and just sensation enough in their frozen hearts to shiver at each other's presence" (11:274). A s before, the primary narrator stresses for us the fictionality o f the scene and invites us to appreciate his writ­ ing:

By this fantastic piece of description, and more in the same style, I intend­ ed to throw a ghostly glimmer round the reader, so that his imagination might view the town through a medium that should take off its every day aspect, and make it a proper theater for so wild a scene as the final one. (11:274) 26

We, it appears, are to react to his imaginative writing intellectually-appreciatively-con- scious of the "scene" as theatrical and of his rendering as evidence of a skilled craftsman at work.

He looks at the girls, however, for another response. Before he continues, he

"paused, and gazed into the faces" (11:275) of the girls to reassure himself that matters are going well: that they are responding physically, sensually. Indeed they are, for he takes "courage" from what he sees: that "their bright eyes were fixed on... [him]; their lips apart" (11:275). He is so encouraged by his ability to mesmerize them that he momentarily falters and loses control over the way he presents himself to his other audi­ ence—us. For a brief moment, he confuses the girls with the characters of the tale and thus suggests that he is somehow enacting the tale his created narrator tells. He says, "I took courage, and led the fated pair to a new made grave, where for a few moments, in the bright and silent midnight, they stood alone" (11:275; my italics). Surely-it being midnight only in the created narrator's tale-the primary narrator is referring to Alice and

Leonard Doane as "the fated pair." Yet we cannot be sure, for the primary narrator assumes the role of agent: he both takes courage and leads the fated pair. As a result, the identity of this "fated pair" is at least ambiguous and just as likely may refer to the girls as to Alice and Leonard Doane.^

W hile this is the most egregious instance of the primary narrator's conflation of the two stories, actually we see his struggle with his materials in even the first interruption.

In fact, even as he begins to summarize his created narrator's tale, he seems uncomfort­ able settling into a single, controlling role with regard to the story he is telling:

I read on, and identified the body as that o f a young man, a stranger in the country, but resident during several preceding months in the town which lay at our feet. The story described, at some length, the excitement caused by the murder, the unavailing quest after the perpetrator, the funeral cere­ monies, and other common place matters, in the course of which, I 27

brought forward the personages who were to move among the succeeding events.... The central scene of the story was an interview between .... [the wizard] and Leonard Doane, in the wizard's hut.. . . They sat beside a mouldering fire, while a tempest of wintry rain was beating on the roof. The young man spoke of the closeness the of tie which united him and Alice, the concentrated fervor of their affection from childhood upwards.... He related his discovery, or suspicion of a secret sympathy between his sister and Walter Brome, and told how a distempered jeal­ ousy had maddened him. In the following passage, I threw a glimmering light on the mystery of the tale. (11:270-71; my italics)

The point-of-view shifts in this passage suggest a primary narrator who is discomfited by, yet desirous of, the management of the narrative. At times, he dissociates himself from the tale: he simply reads it, or allows a character to tell something. At other times,

he identifies with, or even takes over from, his created narrator by bringing "forward" the

characters or helping to explain "the mystery." Moreover, at one point the tale seems to

have a life of its own: it is the story which describes the murder and surrounding events.

Clearly, because of the psychological closeness of the tale to the primary narrator him­

self, he must apply rigorous management skills, but he shows that he is not up to the task.

To the very end of the created narrator's tale (which the primary narrator dares not

describe "except in a very brief epitome" [11:277]), the primary narrator struggles psy­ chologically to control two audiences, paraphrasing incriminating material for our con­

sumption, but delighting in breaking down the girls' defenses, as they grow more

involved in his lurid tale.

Interestingly, Leonard Doane bears a doubling relationship to Walter Brome just as the primary narrator does to his created narrator. Both Leonard and the primary narrator

must, on some level, overpower their doubles. Just as Leonard Doane struggles with his evil identity, so, too, the primary narrator, as we have seen, must struggle with his created

narrator who is taking the story of "history" into a psychological dimension which could be dangerously revelatory. Indeed, while the primary narrator allows the created narrator 28 to tell this sexually provocative tale to the young girls, at the same time, the primary nar­ rator works to repress, to censor, to effectively "kill" for us what his narrator has to say.

If he is successful, he can leer at the young girls through his narrator's story but avoid the kind of blatant drama that would allow us to see him for what he really is. Certainly he is not totally successful, but he has made an artful attempt to manipulate two audiences.

We can, then, see that the created narrator is not the only double of the primary narra­ tor. Indeed, Leonard, who is the tale's third narrator, and Walter (Leonard's double) are the primary narrator's doubles as well, although the primary narrator tries to prevent us from recognizing them as such by sequestering them within the created narrator's story.

However, as the speaker for the primary narrator's darker impulses, Leonard is pre­ dictably more difficult for the primary narrator to control than the created narrator is. It is Leonard, in fact, who reveals a guilty consciousness of the very impulses which sub­ consciously moved the primary narrator to tell the tale in the first place. The primary narrator even characterizes Leonard's words as a "dreadful confession" (11:273).

As is characteristic of feelings repressed for too long, Leonard's tumble forth, without the narrative exposition which characterizes the storytelling of both the primary and cre­ ated narrators. In fact, Leonard seems less self-protective than the other narrators, less concerned about the impression he is creating on either the girls or the reader. His only sense of audience is the wizard to whom he is confessing. Thus, we seem to be privy to a personal self-analysis in which Leonard reveals the dark side of his psyche. First, he reveals his loathsome self-knowledge that he and Walter Brome are "counterpart[s]"

(11:271): "There was a resemblance from which I shrank with sickness, and loathing, and horror, as if my own features had come and stared upon me in a solitary place, or had met me in struggling through a crowd" (11:271). He obviously both despises and fears the implications of their physical resemblance. 29

Even worse, Leonard knows that they resemble each other morally, too. He sees in the ungoverned "evil of... [Walter's] character" his own "fierce and deep passions" and

"other varieties of wickedness" which to this point had been latent, only his "soul. . . conscious of them" (11:271). What he resents most, however, is that Walter may be able to give way "to that impure passion" with Alice that he cannot, his character having been

"softened and purified by the gentle and holy nature o f Alice" (11:271). Frederick Crews provides an interesting psychological analysis of Leonard's torment which we may see as equally applicable to the primary narrator:

[Leonard] tries to discriminate between "sisterly affection" whose appro­ priate object is himself and "impure passion," which can be directed only to a stranger like Walter; yet Walter is his very "counterpart"! In effect he attributes incestuous feelings to his sister by saying that she must be attracted to Walter because Walter resembles him. The reason Leonard shrinks from the resemblance . . . is that his counterpart's frankly sexual interest in Alice points up his own surreptitious one. The alter ego to whom all vices are permitted has boasted of enacting Leonard's most secret wish. (Crews 51)

Since Leonard is the primary narrator's double, his psychological connection to

Walter Brome is equally damning to the primary narrator who, despite his series of narra­ tive buttresses, stands revealed as well. Indeed, both Leonard and the primary narrator are living with psychological dissonance, professing one moral position, while possess- ing-and repressing-another. Thus, Leonard exposes not only his own unwholesome self, but also the primary narrator's. Interestingly, Leonard even guides us to this conclusion.

Leonard shrinks from the fact that he and his hated double Walter often express them­ selves "in the same words. . . proving a hateful sympathy in our secret souls" (11:271).

He thus reminds us, as readers, that Leonard and the primary narrator likewise share the same words, "proving a hateful sympathy" between them as well.

This doubling relationship becomes even more significant when we realize that the same relationship exists between Alice and the girls to whom the primary narrator reads. 30

As Mark Hennelly points out, "Alice . . . allegorically represents the girls" (131).

Certainly both Alice and the girls are characterized as innocent-virginal-and questions relating to their virginity disturb both Leonard and the primary narrator. Indeed, these women have similar effects on Leonard and the primary narrator:

Alice is "beautiful and virtuous,... instilling something of her own excel­ lence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature" [270], while the Narrator admits, after describing the girls' "rainbow" disposition that "My own sombre hue was tinged by theirs" [268]. (Hennelly 131)

More importantly, however, Alice and the girls are equally innocent and remain so at the end of the first tale:" the conclusion of the inset, 'absolving her from every stain,'

celebrates the 'sinless presence of an angel' in Alice; and the attentive reader, discount­

ing the Narrator's protestations about universal guilt, must honor the same goodness in

the girls" (Hennelly 131). It is no wonder, then, that the primary narrator's first story fails

to have the desired effect, either as a revelation of history or as a seduction. The girls

may indeed laugh, for they have been implicated in no crime-historical or otherwise. In

fact, they have been subject to a grand delusion themselves, and just as Alice is absolved

"from every stain" (11:277), so, too, are the girls.

Because of Leonard's harmful revelations, the primary narrator resorts to a further

deflection of narrative responsibility in a subconscious attempt to distance himself from

the tale and thus to control the damage Leonard has done. In a summative section, the

primary narrator informs us that what has transpired has actually been controlled by the

wizard to whom Leonard confesses. It was he, the primary narrator later tells us, "who

had cunningly devised that Walter Brome should tempt his unknown sister to guilt and

shame, and himself perish by the hand of his twin-brother" (11:277). As Leonard

confesses, the wizard, we discover, is hearing "what he already knew" (11:272). In fact,

the wizard is implicitly a fourth narrator, for "by a word here and there . . . [he] 31 mysteriously . . . [fills] up some void in the narrative” (11:272). The wizard also laughs, causing Leonard to realize that he had been "deceived" (11:272). Presumably, the prima­ ry narrator subconsciously wishes us to have a similar impression-to believe that we have likewise been "deceived" should we believe him a secret sharer of Leonard's guilt.

Later, in fact, he tells us that "the reader had been permitted to discover that all the inci­ dents were the result of the machinations of the wizard" (11:277), as though he is letting us in on an ironic joke-on us!

We must not forget, however, that the wizard, as an implied narrator, stands in a dou­ bling relationship with the primary narrator, just as the other narrators do. In fact, even apart from the narrative functions of the wizard and the primary narrator and their power to delude, other similarities exist: the primary narrator's pen is now "feeble"-he is unable to produce works o f value; the wizard is "feebler than a child, to all better pur­ poses" (11:270-71). Moreover, each sheds "a glimmering light on the mystery of the tale" (11:271). The wizard, in fact, is powerless "to withhold his aid in unravelling the mystery" (11:274).

Frederick Crews' analysis of the wizard is most helpful in seeing how the wizard functions as the primary narrator's double. Crews believes that the narrator uses the wiz­ ard to displace "attention from . . . [the story's] implicit center of interest" (53):

The principle of displacement. . . helps us to grasp the role of the wizard, which is far from admirable on aesthetic grounds. Every reader must feel cheated when he is told that the wizard has prearranged the greater part of the plot; with one blow Hawthorne thus cancels all the personal motiva­ tion he has so carefully established.. . . He acts as a deus ex machina who relieves the other characters of responsibility for their compulsions. At the same time . . . [the narrator's] description of the wizard shows us that he has been thinking of unconscious compulsion all along. Though fiendishly evil, the wizard is "senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all better purposes" (XII, 284). Under certain conditions . . . he "had no power to withhold his aid in unravelling the mystery" (XII, 288). He per­ sonifies that portion of the mind which drives men to do things they find 32

abhorrent, and if we confront him honestly he will reveal his machina­ tions. (54)

Certainly, the wizard, then, personifies that portion o f the primary narrator's mind as well, for indeed the machinations which he subconsciously tries to hide are recoverable to us within the text of the tale.^ Nor, we might note, is this a singular instance where we might see an association of one of Hawthorne's narrators with a wizard. At the end of this study we shall see how the narrator of The House of the Seven Gables "becomes" a member o f the Maule family, noted for their wizardry.

When the primary narrator begins his second tale-one more obviously grounded in history-he appears more in charge, more assertive:

... I called back hoar antiquity, and bade my companions imagine an ancient multitude of people, congregated on the hill side, spreading far below, clustering on the steep old roofs and climbing the adjacent heights, wherever a glimpse of this spot might be obtained. I strove to realize and faintly communicate, the deep, unutterable loathing and horror,the affrighted wonder, that wrinkled on every brow, and filled the universal heart. See! the whole crowd turns pale and shrinks within itself, as the virtuous emerge from yonder street. Keeping pace with that devoted com­ pany, I described them, one by one ... (11:278; my italics)

The primary narrator here is clearly the agent of this tale: he calls back antiquity; he bids his companions to imagine; he strives to realize and communicate the emotions of the scene; in fact, he describes the scene. Moreover, while he includes, as before, a metafictive analysis of his intentions-what he is trying to do-he does not, this time, use the metafiction to hide his covert motivations with his immediate audience. Indeed, the metafiction here accompanies a dramatic realization o f the tale which the primary narra­ tor this time calls before the eyes not only of the girls, but of his other audience-our- selves-as well. He actually calls upon us-in the imperative-to "see" the same dramatic vision that he asks the girls to witness. 33

However, while the narrator might appear more straightforward, more honest, actual­ ly he is simply more comfortable with an historical, rather than a psychological, tale. His subconscious motivations haven't changed, just his materials. The truth is, in this final tale, we can see even more clearly the primary narrator's doubling relationship with the wizard, for he uses the same sort o f "wizard power" that the wizard did in conjuring up a vision.

However, the two visions, while similar, are not exactly the same. The wizard pro­ duced a graveyard scene wherein the dead souls o f antiquity come from their graves to share gleefully in the fall of Leonard and, especially, Alice. These spirits, however, are

"none but souls accursed" and "false spectres o f good men" who are "fiends counterfeit­ ing the likeness of departed saints" (11:276): in fact, "all, in short, were there" (11:276).

The wizard, thus, created a powerful vision that everyone, presumed saints and sinners alike, shares in a fiendish guilt. The spectres' joy at Leonard and Alice's communion with them is, however, cut short by the absolution of Alice. As w e have seen, this abso­ lution is significant, for it proves that there is such a thing as innocence in the world, innocence which the listening girls indeed connect with themselves. If anything, it is universal evil that is the delusion! Well may the girls, then, laugh. Their innocence remains intact.

The primary narrator's vision is more compelling, at least in part because it is histori­

cal. He is describing the events o f 1692, the accused witches climbing Gallows Hill to

their deaths, the entire scene viewed by Cotton Mather. But it is also compelling, espe­

cially to the girls, because these people-the imminently dead-are the "virtuous" (11:278),

made to appear guilty. In fact, some of them even seem to accept their own guilt:"...

here tottered a woman in her dotage, knowing neither the crime imputed her, nor its pun­

ishment; there another, distracted by the universal madness, till feverish dreams were

remembered as realities, and she almost believed her guilt" (11:278-79). And over this 34 scene, as with the fictional one, presides a master delusionist, in this case Cotton Mather, described as the "good friend" of "the fiend himself' (11:279). Indeed, Cotton Mather is

"darkly conspicuous, so sternly triumphant, that... [the primary narrator's] hearers mis­ took him for the visible presence of the fiend himself" (11:279). He is "the representa­ tive of all the hateful features of his time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were con­ centrated those vices of spirit and errors of opinion, that sufficed to madden the whole surrounding multitude" (11:279).

Because Mather is pictured in this way, we can see more clearly his function in regard to the other narrative levels. That is, he has a role similar to that of the wizard and, as such, he is the orchestrator of the witchcraft delusion for his audience. This rela­ tionship becomes chillingly apparent when the primary narrator takes over the duties which might more accurately belong to Mather:

... thus, I marshalled them onward, the innocent who were about to die, and the guilty who were to grow old in long xexnoxsz-tracing their every step, by rock, and shrub, and broken track, til their shadowy visages had circled round the hilltop, where we stood. I plunged into my imagination for a blacker horror, and a deeper woe, and pictured the scaffold-. (11:279; my italics)

His tale ends abruptly on this final vision of death as the girls seize the arm of the prima­ ry narrator. And, indeed, we, too, are left with that final vision-a scaffold. Nowhere in this tale is absolution. The innocent are, paradoxically, guilty-or at least made to feel guilty at the hands of a master delusionist-be he Mather or the primary narrator. A s the condemned climb Gallows Hill to die, Mather is "sternly triumphant" (11:279). A s the girls react, trembling, the narrator has his sweet "victory."

Still, a further irony exists, for the narrator believes he has safely protected his secret self and in that sense has deluded himself. Having "reached the seldom trodden places of

. . . [the girls'] hearts . . . the well-spring of their tears" (11:280), the primary narrator reverts coolly to his theme of historical confrontation in an almost self-congratulatory 3 5 manner, claiming, "and now the past had done all it could" (11:280). Yet, having brought the girls to the brink of "a new-made grave" (11:275), having made them fearfully aware of their own guilty souls, the narrator remains aloof, proud, it seems, to suggest that a

"memorial column" be built to commemorate "the errors of an earlier race... not to be cast down, while the human heart has one infirmity that may result in crime" (11:280).

Ironically, then, the primary narrator is both deluder and the deluded, for he does not realize that he stands revealed as a guilty man.

"Alice Doane's Appeal," then, has clear implications for the narrator who appears before us as a self-deluded egoist. He is, in fact, a seducer seduced by his own belief that he can control the energy and direction of his tales. Although he believes he has success­ fully negotiated his way to a worthy end, he fails to see that the narrator doubles, created for self-protection, have actually subverted his noble purpose and revealed his base one.

It is perhaps no accident that repressed sexuality is at the core of "Alice Doane's

Appeal"-and, indeed, of other Hawthorne tales-for Hawthorne appears to suggest that storytelling is a seductive act. And, given the number of bosom serpents-devils in manuscript, as it were-in the Hawthorne corpus, it is difficult not to identify this seduc­ tive energy as diabolical. As a seduction, then, diabolical in origin, storytelling becomes a powerful means of exerting control over others-characters and audience alike.

However, because the emotions which generate a seduction are, by their very nature, lawless-ungovernable-the writer himself is in jeopardy. He may become the victim of this energy now beyond his control. Thus it is with the primary narrator of "Alice

Doane's Appeal," who, trying to gain control, loses it. Sexuality, then, becomes a power­ ful metaphor not only for the creative process itself (the primary narrator's "pen" is now

"sluggish and perhaps feeble" [11:269]), but also for the relationship between the writer and his audience. 36

We can see, then, how "Alice Doane's Appeal" also has important implications for the audience/reader/listener. In fact, Edgar A. Dryden suggests that "for Hawthorne the act of reading is a compelling, mysterious, perhaps even dangerous occupation. Writers, after all, possess strange powers of enchantment that allow them to cast hypnotic spells over their readers. . (111). Indeed, to Dryden there is in a book "a presence cap­ able . . . of transforming the world" (112). Thus, the unifying principle behind "Alice

Doane's Appeal," as suggested in its eroticism, is the power relationship between the writer and himself and between the writer and his audience-and the resultant tension between these two relationships. In seeking to wield power, a writer may, in fact, come under its sway. The audience/reader/listener, on the other hand, if he/she is not careful, may be drawn into the very delusion that the narrator perpetrates, for "the price the read­ er pays for his curious desire is to be pulled away from the real world and delivered through the unreality of language into the mental universe of another" (Dryden 112).

The reader, says Dryden,"... is not only surrounded by strange words, images and ideas, but he is in [the] control of the alien principle who is their source" (112). The reader, then, must be careful when approaching Hawthorne's fiction, peopled as it is with "dark enchanters who in their relations to their victims illustrate the effect of writers on read­ ers" (Dryden 112).

However we might judge the intrinsic literary merit of "Alice Doane's Appeal," espe­ cially in relation to Hawthorne's later work, we may certainly judge the story coherent, if we have, as Robinson suggests, "a holistic perception" of it. The real story is the whole story because the self-deluded narrator, with his various narrator doubles, not only pro­ vides that story but is implicated in its meaning. "Alice Doane's Appeal," is, in fact, the story of delusions-delusions on many levels: not only the historical, but the literary and personal as well. In addition, as an early tale, "Alice Doane's Appeal" shows us the beginnings of what is, in fact, an abiding concern for Hawthorne: managing the power of storytelling. As we shall see in later chapters, Hawthorne's strategy of narrator dou­ bling typically leaves a primary narrator mired in guilt. But, at other times-especially in

Hawthorne's more mature work-we will see a narrator attempting more successfully to use a narrator double to his advantage-as a means of relieving his guilt. 38

* Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Alice Doane's Appeal," The Snow-Image and Uncollected

Tales., eds. William Charvat and others, vol. 11 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974) 280.

Subsequent parenthetical references to "Alice Doane's Appeal" are presented thus:

(11:280).

2 Hyatt Waggoner, for example, believes the work "the projection o f the experience of an immature writer" ('Hawthorne: A Critical Study 53). Yet he admits that within the story "are the strands from which many of Hawthorne's finest and most typical tales were later woven" (50). But, to Waggoner, only a psychological reading would be effective since, as it stands, "Alice Doane's Appeal" "is incoherent on the literal and manifest level" (Introduction to Third Edition" vii).

Seymour L. Gross essentially agrees with Waggoner but excuses the tale's clumsiness and incoherence. He maintains that "Alice Doane's Appeal" suffers artistically, not because of Hawthorne's youthful ineptitude, but because the original "Alice Doane" pre­ sented delicate themes too explicitly-too dramatically. According to Gross, because the editor of the Token was doubtful the public would approve, he caused Hawthorne to edit the original tale and add what he feels is a clumsy frame. To accommodate his editor, then, Hawthorne "told about rather than told" the incidents of incest and parricide to mit­ igate their bluntness and render them satisfactory both for his fictional audience-the two young women-and his reading audience (232).

To Brodwin, "Hawthorne has brought his reader and two auditors to the point where fiction and truth-'Actual and Imaginary'-meet the graveyard of the puritan martyrs and the graveyard of Walter Brome in a community of the past" (122). In the end,

Hawthorne shows that by linking "the fantasy to a base which is historically and human­ ly 'real,' however romanticized... the artist will stand a better chance to humanize the reader and, by extension, the community of which he is a part" (125). 39

^ Swartzlander describes the two narratives within the frame as a "series of nested boxes" (126) and argues that they concern "the various ways of understanding (or some­ times misunderstanding, in the case of the narrator) imagination and its relationship to emotion" (126). A t first, she says, "[w]e have a narrator learning about imagination, emotion and the writer, while telling a story about a man who has murdered because of his emotions and imagination " (126). Later, in the narrator's second attempt at story­ telling, Hawthorne examines "the role of history in fiction and the role of imagination in relating history to a reader" (126). In this way, says Swartzlander, the artist takes "the materials of history and transforms them into memorable legend," raising "history to poetry and myth" (126-27).

5 Waggoner supports the first view when he remarks that "the whole tale ['Alice

Doane's Appeal'] must be framed in comments calculated to remove it to a safe distance"

(Hawthorne: A Critical Study 55). Waggoner explains that although "Hawthorne want­ ed to open an intercourse with the world... he had no desire to lay bare his mind and heart to the casual reader" (55). So, to Waggoner, narrator doubling expresses "artistical­ ly .. . only certain blocks of feeling" with which Hawthorne had to struggle (55).

Rudolph VonAbele and Mark M. Hennelly, Jr., take a second view. They believe that

Hawthorne diverts attention from his own sin of probing too deeply into the human heart by allowing his narrators to do so-at a distance from himself. VonAbele recognizes, for example, that "artistic activity is often associated in Hawthorne with supernatural goings- on," and VonAbele claims that "the possession of [such] occult power over others is, in

Hawthorne's most notorious phrase, a violation of 'the sanctity of the human heart"' (5).

Writing specifically of "Alice Doane's Appeal," Hennelly suggests the therapeutic value of Hawthorne's remonstrating his prying and perjuring narrator for violating the human heart while he "was fully aware of... what he was doing" (128). To Hennelly, then, "this condemnation is all the more poignant and telling because the Narrator's 40 aesthetic crime is one which Hawthorne himself often feared he might commit" (125).

Through his narrative strategy Hawthorne can avoid implicating himself, for Hawthorne

"levels irony not against himself, but against the probing Intellect he always feared he might become; and this fear was so threatening he could not even allow his name to be associated with it ['Alice Doane's Appeal']," Hennelly concludes (138).

6 Indeed, Susan Swartzlander argues that Charles Upham's book actually motivated

Hawthorne to write "Alice Doane's Appeal." Upham, she states, "vehemently preached against the dangers of the heart [and] emotions" in both his lectures and his books, while

Hawthorne opposed "the prevailing nineteenth century view... that history, fact, should not be tainted by fiction" (122). To Swartzlander, then, Hawthorne used "Alice Doane's

Appeal" to attack Upham's ideas, to show, in effect, "that it is harmful, and for a writer impossible, to deny the heart, the imagination and passions" (123).

7 Mark Hennelly, Jr., is also suspicious of the primary narrator's motives. He sug­ gests, for instance, that the narrator shows "symptom[s] o f displaced sexuality," and he refers to the narrator's actions as "a kind of verbal or aesthetic rape of the girls" (134).

Additionally, Hennelly points to the narrator's unacknowledged cognitive dissonance in that he loses control, confusing fiction and truth: "[Following the first tale, the narrator] has not yet confirmed his own dark disharmony by striking a correspondent chord within his audience; nor has his black art exorcised and hence punished the sexual guilt he knows must reside within the girls' hearts" (134). As a result, says Hennelly, "he decides to recite a second, more realistic tale or inset, in his words, to make "a trial of whether truth were more powerful than fiction"' (134). It is ironic, then, that "his [the narrator's] very confusion of truth with black fantasy . . . negates this one-sided vision of life" (134).

® Actually, at several points it is difficult to distinguish when the primary narrator's summary ends and the created narrator's resumes. Following Leonard Doane's first por­ tion of narrative, for example, the primary narrator begins summarizing: 41

Leonard Doane went on to describe the insane hatred that had kindled his heart into a volume of hellish fire. It appeared, indeed, that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had actually sought the love of Alice, who also had betrayed an undefinable, but powerful interest in the unknown youth..(11:272)

But, then, the narrator easily glides, without preamble, into what appears to be the creat­ ed narrator's text:

Leonard started, but just then a gust of wind came down the chimney, forming itself into a close resemblance of the slow, unvaried laughter by which he had been interrupted. "I was deceived," thought he; and thus pursued his fearful story. (11:272)

This sort of blending suggests a further conflation, for one narrator becomes indistin­ guishable from another. Mark Hennelly, Jr., too, is conscious of the narrator's problems.

Hennelly says that the narrator "does leave implicit clues" of his peijury: "a tone betray­ ing growing paranoia, rhetorical confusion with narrative slips and ambiguous references between the tale and the allegorical insets..." (128).

^ The function of the wizard in "Alice Doane's Appeal" is the subject of much criti­ cal commentary. While most read him as evil and scheming-an "Archimago" (Shroeder

131)-others, most notably Helen Elias, read him as innocent, another falsely accused vic­ tim of Salem's past-not, for example, unlike the wizard Maule of The House of the

Seven Gables, a wizard whose innocence the narrator, in this case, appears to defend. As

Elias says,

The old man [the wizard of "Alice Doane's Appeal"] is either an evil wiz­ ard, guilty of terrible meddling in the lives of three people, or he is a harmless, weak-minded hermit, the kind of person who is readily victim­ ized in a witch hunt... [In] the narrator's mind, nearly 150 years later, all those buried On Gallows Hill are innocent; the wizard's very presence in that burial ground must be for the narrator evidence enough of innocence. (31) Douglas Robinson, however, sees Elias' analysis as flawed, since she suggests that our perception of the wizard's delusion comes from Leonard Doane's diseased imagina- tion-that, in fact, "the disgorgement scene in the graveyard is not literal event but

Leonard Doane's hallucination" (217). Robinson corrects Elias' reading by pointing out that "the disgorgement scene is presented not by Leonard but by the recalled [created] narrator and it is nowhere even suggested that this scene is visualized through Leonard's eyes" (217). Thus, to Robinson, we cannot "make absolute claims as to the innocence or guilt of Leonard and the wizard" (217-18).

Michael Colarcurcio would agree, for he claims, "The point, of course,not is at all to absolve or convict the wizard" (84). However, Colacurcio is guilty of the same error as

Elias in not recognizing the narrative source of our information about the wizard. He. like Elias, says that the wizard "scarcely exists apart from Leonard Doane's 'diseased imagination and morbid feelings'" (84). Such a view ignores the fact that most of our information about the wizard comes from the primary narrator's double. Although, as the primary narrator's double, Leonard is implicated in the wizard's activities, the primary narrator seems more clearly associated with the wizard's delusions. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne's Career. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1976.

Brodwin, Stanley. "Hawthorne and the Function of History: A Reading of'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 4 (1974): 116-28.

Colacurcio, Michael J. The Province of Piety : Moral History in Hawthorne's Earlv Tales. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.

Crews. Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes. New York: Oxford UP. 1966.

Dryden, Edgar A. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Poetics of Enchantment. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

Elias, Helen. "Alice Doane's Innocence: The Wizard Absolved." Emerson Society Quarterly 62 (1971): 28-32.

Ephreneis, Anne Henry. "Gaskell and Hawthorne." Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 3 (1973): 89-119.

Fossum, Robert H. "The Summons of the Past: Hawthorne's 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Nineteenth Century Fiction 23 (1968-69): 294-303.

Gross, Seymour L. "Hawthorne's 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Nineteenth Century Fiction 10 (1955-56): 232-36.

Hawthorne. Julian. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885.

Hawthorne. Nathaniel. "Alice Doane's Appeal." The Snow-lmaue and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 1974. 11:266-80.

— . The American Notebooks. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1972. 8:16.

Hennelly, Mark. "'Alice Doane's Appeal': Hawthorne's Case Against the Artist." Studies in American Fiction 6 (1978): 125-40.

Martin, Terence. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Robinson, Douglas. "Metafiction and Heartfelt Memory: Narrative Balance in 'Alice Doane's Appeal."' Emerson Society Quarterly 28 (1982): 213-19.

Shroeder, John. "Alice Doane's Story: An Essay on Hawthorne and Spenser." Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 4 (1974): 129-34.

Swartzlander, Susan. "'Appealing to the Heart': The Use of History and the Role of Fiction in 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Studies in Short Fiction 25.2 (1988): 121-28.

VonAbele, Rudolphe. The Death of the Artist. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft, 1955.

Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1963.

. "Introduction to Third Edition." Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Holt, 1970. iii-viii.

Williamson, James L. "Vision and Revision in 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" American Transcendental Quarterly 40 (1978): 345-53. C H A PT E R II

"The Devil in Manuscript": The Auto-Erotics of Storywriting

"In the solitude of a midnight chamber, or in a desert afar from men, or in a church, while the body is kneeling, the soul may pollute itself even with those crimes which we are accustomed to deem altogether carnal. If this be true, it is a fearful truth."

—.Hawthorne, "Fancy's Show Box: A Morality"

"The Devil in Manuscript," published the same year as "Alice Doane's Appeal," has received far less critical attention than "Alice Doane's Appeal" which has a secure critical position because it is one of Hawthorne's early-hence, seminal-works. As this study has shown so far. critics commonly refer to "Alice Doane's Appeal" when they trace the evolution of the themes, style, and-as I have done-narrative concerns of the more mature Hawthorne. Thus, "Alice Doarie's Appeal" has an intrinsic m erit-if not in the story itself, at least in its early position within the Hawthorne corpus. It is tantalizing as. perhaps, a "first."

In contrast, critics have consigned "The Devil in Manuscript" to relative obscurity, treating it in a sentence, a paragraph, at most a page or two, in critical volumes of many pages. It is. after all, but one of 17 tales and sketches published in 1835, Hawthorne's most prolific year for the publishing of his tales. And among those tales are others which critics judge as far more significant-"The Gray Champion," "Wakefield," certainly

45 46

"Young Goodman Brown," for example. Indeed, critics have been interested in "The

Devil in Manuscript" almost solely for its autobiographical and/or historical import.

However, as a tale which contains a narrator double, "The Devil in Manuscript" deserves our attention for its metafictive implications-in this case, for what it reveals about the process of creating a story.

In the tale, a somewhat urbane and sardonic narrator visits his "intimate" friend* whom he calls Oberon, "a name of fancy and friendship" between them (11:171).

Having "arrived by mail" on a "bitter evening of December" (11:170). the narrator calls on Oberon at the legal office where Oberon works and where they will likely be alone for the evening since "the learned counselor" in charge of the office is "attending court in a distant town" (11:171). On the night of his friend's visit, Oberon is agitated, overwrought, almost maniacal, in his despair of trying to get published, for though he is a student at law, Oberon is also a would-be author who has had '"seventeen booksellers'" reject his worv s, "'only one . . . [having] vouchsafed even to read . . . [them]"' (11:172).

And even this bookseller, claims Oberon, had "'the impertinence to criticize them'" and then to pass "'a general sentence o f condemnation with the definitive assurance that he will not be concerned on any terms'" (11:172-73).

The narrator learns that Oberon has determined to burn his manuscripts on this night.

Oberon '"loathefs] the very thought of them [his tales]'" and "'experiencefs] a physical sickness of the stomach'" when he so much as "'glances at them'" (11:173). Moreover, he has concluded that "'there is a demon'" (11:173) in the tales-'"a devil in this pile of blotted papers'" (11:171). This is the devil he intends to exorcise that very night by returning it to its element-fire. And he believes that he will take "'wild enjoyment in seeing ... [his manuscript] blaze'" (11:173).

Although the narrator privately feels that these stories are not especially good, that, in fact, they "would make a more brilliant appearance in the fire than anywhere else" 47

(11:173), he tries to dissuade Oberon from such an irrevocable act. Oberon, however, is

unconvinced. He is sure that he has been '"eloquent and poetical and humorous [only] in

a dream'" (11:175) and that burning the manuscripts will be like "'destroying something

noxious'" (11:173). In fact, he may never write again. Oberon pitches his "manuscripts

into the hottest [part] of the fire" (11:176). As the embers rise and settle and then finally

fly up the chimney "like a demon with sable wings" (11:177), a clamor arises in the

street. Fire engines thunder past; church bells sound the alarm. The town is afire. To

all of this Oberon responds ecstatically: '"The fiend has gone forth by night, and startled

thousands in fear and wonder from their beds! Here I stand-a triumphant author!

Huzza! Huzza! My brain has set the town on fire! Huzza!"' (11:178). Paradoxically,

he feels that only through destruction has he created an impact on others. He finally has

the audience he had wanted.

Because this tale echoes so many facets of Hawthorne's life, critics are quick to see it

as autobiographical. Certainly it reflects Hawthorne's own failure to publish and his

disenchantment with American publishers generally. As J. Donald Crowley points out,

"More than any other writer of his time, Hawthorne was to make the difficulties of

authorship in America one of the centraldonnees of his fiction" IHawthorne: The

Critical Heritage 2). Indeed, as many critics point out, prior to 1835, Hawthorne, like the

Oberon of "The Devil in Manuscript," had difficulty publishing his works as collections.

He published his first novel Fanshawe. written in the latter part of 1825, at his own expense, and it received less-than-enthusiastic public attention. Other projected

collections of his tales-Seven Tales of Mv Native Land (1825), Provincial Tales (about

1829), and The Storyteller (1832 or 33)-were never published in the form Hawthorne

desired although, as Nina Baym points out. "stories from all of them were separately published" (22). Most critics, then, contend that Oberon's feelings reflect Hawthorne's.

Mark Van Doren, for example, views "The Devil in Manuscript" as the "revelations 48 o f . .. [the] disillusion .. . [the] rage," and the "disgust" (42) Hawthorne felt "with

himself, with his art, and with the meager fashion in which that art was recompensed"

(42). J. Donald Crowley says that "Oberon's inability to find a publisher for his

manuscripts is an accurate if comic reconstruction of Hawthorne's own early difficulties

in publishing his tales" (Nathaniel Hawthorne 14), and Philip Young calls "The Devil in

Manuscript" . . autobiographical... [a tale] reenacting the author's own despair" (23-

24).

The manuscript-burning also connects "The Devil in Manuscript" to Hawthorne.

However apocryphal or-more likely-exaggerated the incident may be, Hawthorne is

supposed to have burned his manuscript of Seven Tales of Mv Native Land after a

publisher rejected it.^ The event is referred to by the narrator of "Alice Doane's Appeal."

is substantiated by the recollections of Hawthorne's sister Elizabeth, and, as we have

seen, apparently forms the basis of the plot of "The Devil in Manuscript." While some

critics question just how sweeping this destruction was, most at least tentatively accept

that the event happened-at least in spirit-for historically Hawthorne appeared to be

fascinated by fire's ambivalent power. Thomas Woodson, for example, suggests that

Oberon's apparent fire-worship in "The Devil in Manuscript" is linked to Hawthorne's

nearly life-long affinity to fire as a guardian of secret matters. Woodson points out that

"from the time of his graduation from Bowdoin to his work as editor of a Boston

magazine in 1836 only twelve letters appear" (5). This dearth of letters exists, says

Woodson, because Hawthorne "set out to destroy systematically the epistolary record of

those years" (5), requesting urgently, on several occasions, that his friend Bridge burn

Hawthorne's correspondence. According to Woodson, later in Hawthorne's career, these

destructive tendencies continued:

[They] did not recede [even] after Hawthorne attained fame and prosperity. James T. Fields told the English writer Mary Russell Mitford that Hawthorne was "a difficult mind to deal with.... If I had found the 49

slightest fault" with The House of the Seven Gables, "he would instantly have flung the whole MS. into the fire." (5)J

Crowley likewise tentatively accepts the connection between biographical "fact" and

"The Devil in Manuscript": "Full of despair . . . [Hawthorne] is thought to have burned the manuscript much as he later has Oberon burn his unpublished tales" fHawthorne:

The Critical Heritage 2). George Woodberry concurs: "the tale of'The Devil in

Manuscript' is taken to be the autobiographical parable, at least, commemorating the burning of the 'Seven Tales of my Native Land.' although . . . written some years later"

(50). At the very least, says Woodberry, the tale illustrates "Hawthorne's general experience as a discouraged storyteller" (50).

Besides these biographical connections, the very name Oberon should direct us immediately to Hawthorne. Even before he wrote about the lonely, pale, and melancholy

Fanshawe (whom critics easily convert to Fanshawthorne), Hawthorne adopted the fanciful name Oberon which he used among intimates. According to Philip Young,

"That is how . . . [Hawthorne] signed letters to [his friend] Bridge after they left college, and while still at Bowdoin . .. [Hawthorne] had inscribed his commencement program

Nathaniel Oberon Hawthorne" (23). Oberon. then, is a persona of Hawthorne, one consciously selected, and one that appears in other works besides "The Devil in

Manuscript"-"Fragments of the Journal of a Solitary Man." for example.

Taken from A Midsummer-Night's Dream. Oberon, says Philip Young, "was a good name for a prospective author of romance" (23), for Shakespeare's Oberon is King of the

Fairies-a whimsical, capricious, and generally unworldly character-suited well to

Hawthorne's chosen genre. The name was also, as we shall see, apt for a writer fascinated with the immense power he might harness to influence-even manipulate-the lives and emotions of others. Indeed, Shakespeare's Oberon manipulates people in and 50 out of love relationships which they would have otherwise rejected, but then, happily, at the end, he reshuffles the mismatches, allowing-in fact, causing-the true lovers to be together.

The Fairy King Oberon plies others with magic from the juice of a small flower to control people according to his whim and his own sense of rectitude. Wanting to punish his wife, Titania, he makes her the object of a jest. He causes her to fall in love with

Bottom, a rustic sporting the head of an ass. Because he wants to help Helena, who loves the young man Demetrius, Oberon directs his assistant Puck to use the magical liquid on

Demetrius to make him love Helena. But, with the magic out of his hands, Oberon loses control over what happens for a time. Puck applies the liquid to the eyes of the wrong

Athenian, Lysander. As a result, the wrong lovers pursue each other. Oberon must use his magic several more times before he regains control and reunites the true lovers-Demetrius and Helena, and Lysander and Hermia. In the meantime, he releases

Titania from the charm he had worked on her. and they renew their love. As this brief summary suggests, Oberon, of Midsummer-Night's Dream, has no truly evil intent and, in fact, no evil ultimately results from his magic. But he is not always able to control his magical power either. Thus, it is obvious that his magic is potentially harmful as well as helpful. And were Midsummer Night's Dream not a comedy-the magic, perforce,

"white"-Helena might never have won Demetrius, and Titania might have stayed in love with the ass, Bottom-

Certainly, the Hawthorne persona in "The Devil in Manuscript" originally intends no evil either. He has simply used his '"writer's magic'" to give concrete existence to a

"'thousand visions'"-in effect, to give life to "'lovers . .. villain[s] . . . holy men . . . [and] angelic women'" (11:176). But his "'magic'" is blighted. Whatever parallel Hawthorne originally saw between himself and Shakespeare's Oberon is inverted, rendered ironic, in the Oberon he creates to narrate "The Devil in Manuscript," for this Oberon spends his 51 dark night of the soul tormented that the magic of his pen both produces, and was produced by, an evil energy he cannot control. As Jean Normand puts it, "[the creative process] drained the writer's brain, it sucked his very substance from him. . . . Oberon, the enchanter, attempting to continue his spellbinding after the allotted hour, was caught in his own trap" (164). Or, as Oberon himself admits, '"[I am] the victim of my own enchantments'" (11:174).

Finally, this Oberon uses what power he has spitefully to destroy his creations-to

"'annihilate . . . the creations of long nights and days'" along with the other "'unborn children of . . . [his] mind'" (11:177). In fact, he believes that he has returned his characters to their proper element. As the manuscripts burn, he seems to relish how appropriate a fiery destruction is to his characters:

"They blaze. .. as if I had steeped them in the intensest spirit of genius. There I see my lovers clasped in each other's arms. How pure the flame that bursts from their glowing hearts! And yonder the features of a villain, writhing in the fire that shall torment him to eternity. My holy men, my pious and angelic women, stand like martyrs amid the flames, their mild eyes lifted heavenward." (11:176)

Good and evil alike find their destiny in flame. As Oberon says, "'all elements are but one pervading flame!"' (11:176). Clearly, Hawthorne's Oberon (and, as we shall see, his narrator double) is a victim of the underside of the Fairy King's "white magic," and this underside is a fiend-a devil. And, as we will see, in other works, Hawthorne's narrator continues to exploit his power to annihilate his creations.

Because "The Devil in Manuscript" is so clearly autobiographical, critics tend to

focus on the character of Oberon as the more significant of what are, in fact, two characters in the tale-characters who are, we should remember, both storytellers. Still,

despite this telling similarity between the two characters, criticism is generally skewed

toward the view that because "The Devil in Manuscript" recounts Hawthorne's

experience and presents a Hawthorne persona, it is Oberon's story-the narrator simply a

convenient means of presenting Oberon/Hawthorne to us. 52

When critics do account for the relationship between the primary narrator and

Oberon, they still treat the tale as autobiography, for they generally concur that Oberon and the primary narrator represent two sides of Hawthorne's personality. According to this view, the primary narrator represents the public, convivial, social self which contrasts the introverted, morbid, asocial personality of Oberon-a split characterization often linked to Hawthorne.^ In relating the two characters to Hawthorne, Kenneth

Dauber, for example, calls the primary narrator the "ostensibly social man" (57) that

Oberon is not. Similarly, Jean Normand identifies him as "the vagabond with his worldly wisdom" (45) of travel and trades who contrasts the unworldly Oberon "who held the keys to hidden spheres" (45). Indeed, this contrast is apparent. It is the primary narrator who travels, dines out. and braves the elements to see the less social Oberon who has confined himself to an empty office where he and his friend "had little dread of intrusion of clients or of the [return of] the learned counselor himself" (11:171).

Whether we choose to connect these personalities to Hawthorne or not, it is still important for us to view the narrator[s] independent of biographical considerations.

Indeed, the text invites us to explore a psychological dimension, for when the primary narrator comes in out of the cold to Oberon's isolated chamber, we witness a kind of psychological retreat to the mind's inner recesses. As a result, given Hawthorne's treatment of narrator doubling in "Alice Doane's Appeal," I believe that we can further develop our understanding of Hawthorne's relationship to his fiction by examining the storytellers o f "The Devil in Manuscript" in tandem for what they reveal, not so much about Hawthorne's life, but about Hawthorne's concerns about the storytelling process.

Certainly, as we have seen with "Alice Doane's Appeal." narrator doubles may not be simple, narrative conveniences, but self-protective stratagems which stand revealed as such to the careful reader who is not seduced into accepting appearances as the final truth. 53

While "Alice Doane's Appeal" presents a series of repressed narrator doubles, "The

Devil in Manuscript" offers but one narrator double, correctly identified by Kenneth

Dauber as one half of a divided self, a self which encompasses both the isolated and tormented Oberon and the more social, rational primary narrator. The story, Dauber says, "is a psychomachia . . . It is the translation of a divided self into narrative. Its dialogue is bifurcated monologue" (57).

As a matter of fact, it is clear from the start that the two parts make a whole, for their very existence depends upon each other. We do not know whether the meeting is planned-prearranged. The narrator, in fact, makes it appear to be otherwise by indicating that the bottle of champagne is one which "Oberon had provided for keeping up his spirits in this doleful business" (11:173; my italics). But clearly Oberon expects to share the champagne, for "a tall, decanter-shaped bottle stood on the table between two tumblers" (11:171; my italics). He appears to be expecting a friend who will-and does-materialize. At the same time, it is evident that Oberon's existence depends upon the primary narrator as well. In effect, the primary narrator creates him: "I shall call

[him] Oberon" (11:171). The name, says the primary narrator, is one "of fancy and friendship between him and me" (11:171), thus suggesting that apart from the primary narrator Oberon does not exist. Since the two, then, are actually one, their dialogue may be considered an interior-and private-monologue. As such, it is a form of conscious self-evaluation, any secrets that might be revealed allowable-safe-because the conversation is private.

However, though the two characters appear to be opposite, yet related, parts of a whole, their relationship is more complicated than mere dialectical opposition within the self. The truth is, the "conversation" as we receive it is not the original one at all. It is, instead, the conversation as it is told to us by the primary narrator at a later time. Thus, we, as an audience, become a complicating factor, for what was private is now open to public scrutiny. As a result, the primary narrator, as only one side of a bifurcated self, becomes self-protective, afraid, it seems, of divulging just how closely he and Oberon resemble each other. Thus, while he seems to sympathize with Oberon (from whom he cannot/would not divorce himself completely), he uses a mocking tone in his commentary to us (from whom he desires approbation). Indeed, for our benefit he tries to distance himself from Oberon and the products of Oberon's art. But his transparent irony is a diversionary tactic. His actual goal is to distance himself from, by controlling our reaction to, what Oberon reveals about the process of his art. But he achieves dubious success on all counts, for by openly mocking Oberon's artistic products, the primary narrator reveals that his relation to Oberon is less that of friend and more that of subversive. At the same time, by attempting to dissociate himself from Oberon's artistic process, he reveals, in relation to us, that he is a less-than-straightforward narrator-especially if we remember that the two storytellers are, indeed, secret sharers.

In fact, what we, as an audience, must keep in mind is that if the devil is in Oberon's manuscripts, then the same may well be true of the primary narrator's, for even though he explicitly mocks Oberon, the primary narrator also implicitly replicates him.

From the very beginning, the primary narrator tries to maintain a consciously ironic distance from Oberon, for our benefit. For example, he is obviously condescending toward Oberon, identifying him to us as an unremarkable failure at both art and law.

Oberon is, says the primary narrator, "one of those gifted youths who cultivate poetry and the belles letters, and call themselves students at law" (11:171). By condemning

Oberon with faint praise, the primary narrator suggests that Oberon is neither unique (he is one of other "gifted youths"), nor successful, for, apparently unable to support himself through writing, he has determined on a career at law. However, the narrator suggests that Oberon is less-than-successful at this profession, too. Oberon simply "calls" himself a student at law. His real concern is with papers "dissimilar to any law documents 55 recognized in our courts" (11:171), and it is over these manuscripts-his literary ones-that he agonizes. By characterizing Oberon as he does, the primary narrator tries to establish his own superiority because he can succeed as a storyteller and does not need to "call" himself anything else.

Further, in his conversation with Oberon, the narrator tries to appear supportive of

him, while he makes clear to us that his sympathy is merely a pose. In fact, his sardonic thoughts and flippant tone provide an ironic commentary which trivializes Oberon's concerns and, at least theoretically, distances the primary narrator from his double. For example, he reveals to us. as he does not to Oberon. that Oberon is probably right: there is something repugnant about the manuscripts. In one exchange. Oberon begins by laying bare the '"horror of what was created in . .. [his] brain,"' confident, it seems, that

the narrator who has "read" the manuscripts will "'know w hat. . . [he] means'" (11:171).

He ends by exclaiming, "’would they were out of my sight!"' (11:171). Indeed, the primary narrator has read the manuscripts; he does know what Oberon means. Though

he does not reply to Oberon, he wryly remarks to us, "And of mine, too!" (11:171).

Later he more clearly articulates to us his private opinion about the manuscripts: they

should not only be out of their sight, but burned! He creates, in fact, the sardonic pun on which the story is based: "I did not strenuously oppose this determination [to burn the

manuscripts]," he tells us. "being privately of the opinion, in spite of my partiality for the

author, that his tales would make a more brilliant appearance in the fire than anywhere

else" (11:173).

We can also see a disparity between the primary narrator's expressed outrage over the way publishers have treated Oberon and the melodramatic, exaggerated tone he uses to express that outrage. Because we believe we know how the primary narrator privately

feels about Oberon's manuscripts, we see also, as Oberon does not, that the primary

narrator is actually mocking him openly-not just privately. In their conversation about publishing, Oberon details how many publishers have rejected his work in favor of other manuscripts, '"schoolbooks"' (11:172), for example.^ The narrator responds with mock horror: "What a voluminous mass the unpublished literature of America must be!"

(11:172). When Oberon tells him that one publisher wanted him to advance '"half the cost of an edition and . . . [give] bonds for the remainder'" and then adds that another had advised "'a subscription,'" the narrator cries, "The villain!" (11:172). Later the narrator

suggests that "it might not be amiss to pull . . . [the] nose" of a publisher who. Oberon claims, had "'the impertinence to criticize1" his work (11:172). Then he calls members of

the entire trade "paltry rogues" (11:173). Thus, we can see that behind the primary

narrator's sympathetic posture lies a patronizing attitude. Because he is so hyperbolic in

his exclamations, he does not sound genuinely sympathetic. It is clear that he is trying to

discredit Oberon further. By means of his own over-reactive tone, the primary narrator

implies that it is really Oberon who has over-reacted.

However, while the primary narrator may have succeeded at discrediting Oberon, he

does not thereby achieve the distance from him that he desires. Their conversation, in

particular, reveals a closeness between the two despite the primary narrator's efforts to

dissociate himself from his double. For example, as we have seen, the narrator would

have us believe that he dislikes Oberon's manuscripts. Yet he reveals both to Oberon as

well as to us that he actually has mixed feelings about them. In fact, he seems to share

Oberon's love/hate response to them. For example, while he claims to scorn the tales, he

tells Oberon that they are "delightful" (11:171) and partly supports this praise by

informing us privately that he could recall "passages of high imagination, deep pathos,

original thought and points of . . . varied excellence" (11:175). Further, although he has

told us that he wants the manuscripts out o f his sight-indeed burned-it is he who grabs

Oberon's arm to prevent them from being consumed by the flames. In fact, he exclaims,

"Surely you do not mean to burn them!" (11:175). Thus, he demonstrates, despite his 57 mocking criticism, that he actually shares many of Oberon's feelings. He, like Oberon, seems to feel "a mixture of natural affection and natural disgust" (11:173) towards the tales.

Even when the primary narrator mocks Oberon's publishing attempts, he is unsuccessful at creating the distance he seems to desire, for here Oberon demonstrates that he is very like the narrator. In fact, as the conversation proceeds, Oberon takes on the same jocular tone as the narrator. For instance, when the primary narrator cries,

"What a voluminous mass the unpublished literature of America must be!" (11:172),

Oberon responds with his own wry humor: "'Oh! the Alexandrian manuscripts were nothing to i t . . . [One] gentleman is just giving up business, on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my book'" (11:172). Later. Oberon also jokes about the primary narrator's suggestion that he tweak a publisher's nose: "'If the whole 'trade' had one common nose, there would be some satisfaction in pulling it!"' (11:173). Thus, Oberon demonstrates that he is fully capable of the same sardonic wit that the primary narrator exhibits. If the primary narrator, then, is like Oberon, Oberon is like the primary narrator. The primary narrator's apparent attempt to dissociate himself from Oberon fails.

Certainly, then, we can easily see through the primary narrator's attempt to control our reaction to him by controlling our reaction to Oberon. But why he wishes to do so-and in such an obvious way-is still puzzling. After all, his attempt seems both transparent and gratuitous. Certainly what he has tried to hide he has not hidden well.

Moreover, nothing he has hidden suggests anything of seriously damaging consequence

should it be revealed. His strategy seems to involve the simple motivation of covering his own insecurities by elevating his own ego. And if he must swagger at Oberon's expense, we may be inclined to forgive him. In the end he is harmless: he has revealed only his own insecurity and ineptitude for dissembling. 58

Looked at from this perspective, the primary narrator’s mockery of his counterpart, we might conclude, is either foolish (he has nothing significant to hide) or counter-productive (he does not hide things well). But the truth is, the primary narrator would prefer looking foolish to appearing guilty. His transparent mockery of Oberon's creations-the products of his art-seems actually to be a ploy to direct us away from the true source of his uncomfortable relationship with Oberon-participation in the process of his art. After all. Oberon reveals that he, like the primary narrator of "Alice Doane's

Appeal," has not controlled his own work. In fact, Oberon's torment stems from his belief that his creations are the product not of his own power, but of a fiendish power that is beyond his management. And, as in "Alice Doane's Appeal," the ungovernable nature o f this power is characterized as erotic, indeed, this time, as auto-erotic, for the image which Oberon uses to describe the creative process is masturbatory. This is a creative process which, we shall see, is one that the primary narrator, as a narrator double, implicitly shares with Oberon. However, this process is also one that he would like to appear not to share.

The key to the source of the primary narrator's discomfort lies in what he chooses not to treat ironically, indeed, in what he appears to take very seriously. The clues, then, lie not so much in the areas where the narrator is in agreement (albeit mock agreement) with

Oberon, but in those areas where the narrator openly disagrees with him. To see the darker reason for the primary narrator's desire to dissociate himself from Oberon, we must consider what Oberon says about his creative processes, rather than his products, and, most especially, the matter of the devil in manuscript.

We must first realize that the focus of the story is actually not Oberon's difficulties with publishers, even though the primary narrator's intentional irony influences us to think that it is. Instead, most of the story concerns Oberon's agitation over, yet fascination with, "the devil in manuscript"-a matter which Oberon emphasizes and 59 which is indeed significant enough to be the primary narrator's title for the tale. It is this connection with Oberon that the primary narrator wishes to conceal from us. Yet, as we shall see, the text disallows such concealment. The text, in fact, reveals an unintentional irony that connects the primary narrator directly to the fiendish power that controls the creative process.

Oberon describes the influence of this devil in a variety of ways and thus points out how extensive this devil's power is. At one point, he suggests that this devil is in the content of his works, in "'the character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written records of witchcraft'" (11:171). Elsewhere, he notes how this devil has affected others: "'You remember. . . how the hellish thing used to suck away the happiness of those who, by a simple concession that seemed almost innocent, subjected themselves to his power'" (11:171). But most often he agonizes over how the devil has affected himself. First, it has separated him from others, forcing him into a "'strange solitude'" of dreams and fantasies:

"I have become ambitious of a bubble and careless of solid reputation. I am surrounding myself with shadows which bewilder me, by aping the realities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the world and led me into a strange solitude-a solitude in the midst of men .. ." (11:172)

More importantly, perhaps, Oberon is horrified at what he has produced in this isolation, the devil having been his source of inspiration. "'I have a horror,"' says Oberon, "'of what was created in my own brain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea a sort of material existence'" (11:171). The creative process which Oberon goes on to reveal is auto-erotic-indicating that the solitary act of creation is masturbatory. Thus, Oberon's unread "products" are illicit, base, shameful, but, like a father's "deformed infantfs]" (11:173), they are objects of both his love and his hate.

When Oberon describes his experiences of writing while inspired, he evokes the feelings and emotions of sexual desire and fulfillment. However, insofar as these 60 creative experiences are essentially private-even, at times, covert-they appear to us as instances of onanism and, as such, grounds for Oberon's frenzied sense of guilt. Oberon describes three such creative experiences:

.. how many recollections throng upon me, as I turn over these leaves [manuscript pages]! This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on a starlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air, I became all soul, and felt as if I could climb the sky and run a race along the Milky Way. Here is another tale, in which I wrapt myself during a dark and dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the wheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of a dream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled page describes shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight; they would not depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake and feverish, the victim of my own enchantments." (11:174)

All of Oberon's recollections have features in common which link them to masturbatory behavior. In each, Oberon brings a tale to life at night-the first "'on a starlight October evening,"' the second during a "'night-ride,'" and the third "'at midnight.'" In each, he is either alone or detached from others, for even on his "'night- ride'" with '"companions'" he is essentially alone: he "'wrapt'" himself in his fantasies so that "'the voices of... [his] companions seemed like the faint sounds of a dream and . . .

[his] visions a bright reality.'" Indeed, in each case, Oberon is in a similar dream or trance-like state-focused, in a very private way, on the creative process.

However, Oberon describes these experiences as varying in character and quality, thus implying that he has evolved in his understanding of how degenerate he actually is when in the throes of creativity. Indeed, the experiences seem to move from a pre- lapsarian feeling of innocence to a post-lapsarian sense of transgression. When he describes, for example, the first of the three experiences, Oberon presents it as rapturous-akin to the Platonic sublime. Inspiration seems holy-Transcendental-for it strikes him in the '"starlight,"' in the "'pure and bracing air,'" and he becomes, as he puts it, '"all soul.'" He feels ethereal-heaven-bound: "'[I] felt as if I could climb the sky and 61 run a race along the Milky Way."'

But in the second and third experiences, Oberon no longer feels this sense of innocent spirituality. In fact, his recollections grow progressively darker, both in setting and impulse. As a result, his source of inspiration seems more diabolical. For example, as the activity becomes more secretive, the setting is darker and more confined. In the second experience, Oberon is no longer exulting in the "'starlight.'" Instead, he is confined in a coach at night, and though he has companions, he is separated from them, for he is "'wrapt'" in the cloak of his own thoughts. By the time of the third experience,

Oberon is confined to his room at midnight with no human companions. Indeed, he is in his bed, surrounded by the phantoms, or '"shadows,"' of his imagination-shadows which make him "'feverish.'" Interestingly, as long as Oberon permits the creative force to co­ opt his own, he feels either ecstatic or, at least, warm and comforted. But when Oberon resists, as he does in the third experience, he feels sick, "'feverish.'" He discovers that although he has the power to call forth the "'shadows,'" he is powerless to make them depart: "'they would not depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me awake and feverish, the victim of my own enchantments.'"

Oberon describes other creative experiences in erotic terms. Describing a second sequence of writing experiences, Oberon suggests that the process is a mixture of pleasure and pain, of orgasm and impotence:

"And then the various moods in which I wrote! Sometimes my ideas were like precious stones under the earth, requiring toil to dig them up, and care to polish and brighten them; but often a delicious stream o f thought would gush out upon the page at once, like water sparkling up suddenly in the desert; and when it had passed, I gnawed my pen hopelessly, or blundered on with cold and miserable toil, as if there were a wall of ice between me and my subject." (174)

Here, Oberon compares his moments of greatest inspiration with sexual ejaculation, connecting the brilliance of his creations directly to an imaginative fertility which is as 62 undefiled as his Platonic experience under the starlight. His '"stream of thought’" is pure—"'delicious'"-gushing "'out upon the page1" like '"sparkling"' water. And even when he achieves satisfaction more slowly by mining his thoughts which are "'like precious stones under the earth,"' he feels successful. But he also remembers times of frustration which follow his orgasmic release. And these were times when he "'gnawed at... [his] pen hopelessly,'" blundering on "'with cold and miserable toil."'

Whether Oberon's disillusionment with the creative process is actually as progressive as either of these sequences suggests is inconclusive. But, at the very least, his descriptions of these experiences do suggest the ambivalence toward that process which

Oberon aims to resolve (but never quite does) by burning his manuscripts. Certainly, by the night of his meeting with the primary narrator, Oberon has concluded that all these instances of inspiration, regardless of appearances to the contrary, have the same fiendish source-a "’hellish thing'" (11:171). In fact, he now understands that he has been beguiled, for he can now see no difference between what he produced when he was inspired and what he wrote "'with cold and miserable toil'" (11:175). He admits as much to the primary narrator:

"I find no traces of the golden pen, with which I wrote in characters of fire. My treasure of fairy coin is changed to worthless dross. My picture, painted in what seemed the loveliest hues, presents nothing but a faded and indistinguishable surface. I have been eloquent and poetical and humorous in a dream-and behold! it is all nonsense now that I am awake." (11:175)

Thus, what Oberon once saw as positive he now realizes is negative. In fact, he invites a negative comparison between himself and the Fairy King Oberon by claiming that his magic is not only worthless, but impure. And he reinforces this position by using a standard Elizabethan metaphor for sexual activity (the "purse" for male genitalia;

"money" for male potency). His purse may not be empty, but his "'fairy coin,"' he says, is "'worthless dross.'" Because he now sees Platonic sublimity and demonic power as 63 pieces of the same cloth, Oberon determines to return his creations to their source: '"I will burn them. Not a scorched syllable shall escape!'" (11:175). And, although he later wavers in his resolve, he decides not to create again: '"May my hand wither when it would write another'" (11:175).

Given the primary narrator's inconsistent, and thus transparently ironic, responses to other aspects of Oberon's art, it comes as a surprise that the primary narrator neither quips about, nor quibbles over Oberon's disclosure that the the devil is the source of his inspiration. In fact, he establishes his distance from Oberon immediately and flatly by denying both to us and to Oberon that he has felt any of the same fiendish influences.

Because he does so in such an urgent and consistent way, the irony that we detect has a different quality (and, indeed, a different source) than the earlier irony which the narrator used purposefully to manipulate us. Here he does not want us to see through him because he has a stake in whether we do or not. In any event, it is clear that he would have us take him seriously in his denial, and so he is markedly consistent in distancing himself from Oberon. We can see the primary narrator trying to do so when Oberon questions him:

"... Have you felt nothing of the same influence [the devil]?" "Nothing," replied I [the primary narrator], "unless the spell be hid in a desire to turn novelist after reading your delightful tales." "Novelist," exclaimed Oberon, half-seriously, "then, indeed, my devil has his claw on you! You are gone! You cannot even pray for deliverance ..." (11:171)

In his denial of the devil's influence, the primary narrator might seem to betray a proclivity toward writing that links him to Oberon. But he mitigates the connection by making a careful distinction. As we have seen, Oberon's tales are clearly fanciful evocations of "shadows which bewilder. . . by aping the realities of life" (ll:172)-in other words, the stuff of romance. The primary narrator has a different goal. He desires to be a novelist, not a romancer. Oberon, of course, appears to disclaim the significance 64 of this distinction, for he replies, "'Then, indeed, my devil has his claw on you!'" But the primary narrator maintains his distance. He discredits Oberon's observation by claiming it is a joke. Oberon, he says, speaks only "half-seriously."

If we are to see the primary narrator, then, as sharing the same artistic processes as

Oberon, we will not find the evidence where we did before. In other words, his connection to Oberon here does not lie in the bifurcated dialogue or in his conversational asides to us, but in the text-in the narrative itself. Indeed, it is here where, in showcasing his own storytelling abilities, he reveals-despite himself-that he replicates Oberon. In fact, he demonstrates that they share a disposition toward the whimsical, the imaginary, and the diabolical. More importantly, in offering us a story which emerges from-and attempts to duplicate-a private communication with the self, he invites us to be voyeurs-witnesses to his own auto-erotic experience.

At first, we may notice only stylistic similarities-an inclination, for example, toward whimsical description. The primary narrator exercises his fancy very early in the narrative when he compares the weather to a gale at sea, himself and other pedestrians as ships tossed about in the storm:

The wind blew so violently, that I had but to spread my cloak like a mainsail, and scud along the street at the rate of ten knots, greatly envied by other navigators who were beating slowly up, with the gale right in their teeth. One of these I capsized, but was gone on the wings o f the wind before he could even vociferate an oath. (11:170)

Oberon, as we have seen, likewise indulges in the extended metaphor: his ideas are "'like precious stones . . . requiring toil to dig them up and care to polish and brighten them"'

(11:174); his inspired writing is like ’"a delicious stream of thought'" which "'would gush out upon the page at once, like water sparkling up suddenly in the desert'" (11:174).

However, besides demonstrating similar narrative penchants, the primary narrator betrays an even closer-and darker-alliance with Oberon. In the narrative, the primary 65 narrator and Oberon actually stimulate each other's diabolical vision by working symbiotically to produce it. Thus, the primary narrator reproduces an auto-erotic experience. Typically, what Oberon asserts the primary narrator "suggests," either before or after the fact. From the very beginning, for instance, Oberon asserts that in burning his manuscripts he will be committing '"the fiend to his retribution in flames'" (11:171), returning, as it were, the writings inspired by the devil to the flames of hell. In his narrative, the primary narrator seems not only to corroborate Oberon's assertion, but to encourage it. In fact, by using tropes which affirm Oberon's belief he also suggests his own involvement with the diabolical. It is he who reinforces Oberon's view that the flames are a hellish retribution by likening the fire which will annihilate Oberon's

"'children'" (11:177) to Nebuchadnezzar's "furnace" and to a "glowing purgatory"

(11:175). And it is he who suggests that fire is the appropriate destructive medium since what Oberon refers to as his '"children,"' the primary narrator has earlier characterized as

"deformed infant[s]" (11:173).

Elsewhere, as well, what the primary narrator describes to us as a devilish potential

Oberon presents as fact, suggesting progressive and incremental self-arousal. For example, the primary narrator describes the tales in the fire as though they embody a laughing devil: "The tales were almost consumed, but just then threw forth a broad sheet of fire, which flickered as with laughter, making the whole room dance in its brightness, and then roared portentously up the chimney" (11:176). Further, Oberon immediately makes the primary narrator's ambiguities absolute, thus impelling the primary narrator toward more graphic visualizations: '"... You must have seen him . . . How he glared at me and laughed in that last sheet of flame with just the features that I imagined for him!"'

(11:176), exults Oberon. Thus spurred by Oberon's vivid imagination, the primary narrator does seem to see this devil later, although he again couches his language in ambiguity: "... the extinguished embers arose and settled down and rose again, and 66 finally flew up the chimney, like a demon with sable wings" (11:177). Oberon finally-and climactically-makes a straightforward identification. He calls this being

'"the fiend [who] has gone forth by night'" (11:178). As we can see, the momentum of the tale builds toward a kind of sexual release in Oberon's final "'Huzza!'" (11:178). In fact, even apart from the textual evidence we have just examined, the primary narrator makes clear from the outset that he is as attracted to fire as Oberon is. Having come in out of the cold and seated himself before "a great blazing fire" (11:170), he tells us that the fire "looked so comfortable and delicious that I felt inclined to lie down and roll among the hot coals" (11:170). And there is little question but what the fire inspires them both creatively. Oberon, startled by the shouts of fire in the town, declares, "'In an hour, this wooden town will be one great bonfire! What a glorious scene for my next-pshaw!"' (11:177). In spite of Oberon's deprecatory "Pshaw," it is apparent that

Oberon's double-the primary narrator-has indeed made this scene the subject of his tale.

In these ways, the primary narrator and Oberon anticipate and reinforce each other's imaginative visions and demonstrate their shared affinity for the diabolical.

What we actually witness in this tale, then, is a masturbatory experience committed

to paper. The ejaculatory excitement that Oberon expresses in his climactic "'Huzza!'"

(11:178) results from self-induced arousal-both sides of the bifurcated self participating, each stimulating the other in what is, paradoxically, a destructive creative act. Even the effects of this libidinous fire are less wide-spread than Oberon projects, for despite his

exultant sense of union with a world beyond himself (he claims to have "'startled

thousands in fear and wonder from their beds'" [11:178]), the primary narrator describes

the tramp of the firefighters as "above, beneath, and around" (11:178) only himself and

Oberon. While realistically such a fire could set a nineteenth century town afire (the

dwellings being in such close proximity), Oberon is speaking metaphorically about the

effects of his creative process. Metaphorically, the eroticism of the primary narrator and 67

Oberon has simply set their own chimney afire.

Thus, whatever the narrator has denied concerning the devil in his own manuscript the very manuscript we have before us would contradict. Although the irony here is more opaque than the primary narrator's intended-and manipulative-irony, it is recoverable from the primary narrator's own text. What he would most like to hide his own storytelling reveals. Thus, he fails to maintain distance from Oberon on every level.

Indeed, he is one of many Hawthorne narrators whose detachment is more apparent than real.^

The sexuality that we have observed in "The Devil in Manuscript" and, earlier, in

"Alice Doane's Appeal" has not gone unnoticed by critics. In fact, they tend to relate the eroticism of the narratives to Hawthorne's own sexual problems. Claudia D. Johnson, for example, suggests that Hawthorne explored the idea "that the artist himself is a moral degenerate" (41).^ Jean Normand, however, sees Hawthorne as "sexually deprived" (42) and thus taking "pleasure in . . . [an] atmosphere of veiled sensuality in which talent often elects to show itself (43). To Normand, Hawthorne was trying "to repress a passion that was threatening to destroy him, and with him his work" (43). Thus, says

Normand, Hawthorne "was obliged to learn how to make use of these fascinations that suddenly seized him in order to master the dark forces that had made him a creator" (43).

Philip Young likewise associates the sexuality of Hawthorne's works to Hawthorne's sexual psychology. Young, in fact, explores the possibilities of Hawthorne's imagined-or even consummated-incestuous relationship with his sister Elizabeth. In his study,

Hawthorne's Secret. Young explores the idea that Hawthorne used his works as a means of purging his guilt. Frederick Crews sees a personal connection to Hawthorne as well.

Crews’ study of Hawthorne's treatment o f the "artist-type" (162) provides evidence that

Hawthorne "continues to cherish his own dream of undying fame but senses that it would be dissipated by a happy marriage" (162). Thus, for Hawthorne, "art sometimes becomes 68 a symbolic outlet for eroticism," and we can find patterns "of furtive erotic gratification through artistic fancy" (162-63) in Hawthorne's work. To Crews, the eroticism in

Hawthorne's tales suggests that he has withdrawn from sexual reality. Hawthorne's art, says Crews, can be interpreted as "compensation for sexual failure" (164).

These views are tantalizing and supported by my own analysis which furthers the idea that, to Hawthorne, the artist indulges in vicarious eroticism-his storytelling becoming a vicarious seduction ("Alice Doane's Appeal"), his storywriting becoming vicarious onanism ("The Devil in Manuscript")-the readers, voyeurs o f both processes.

Indeed, in the following chapter we will see that sexual misconduct is not the only crime for which a narrator stands guilty. He is, in fact, fully capable of murder. However,

Oberon's "black magic" does not offer the final word on Hawthorne's narration. After all, the magic of Shakespeare's Fairy King has a dual potential: to do good as well as to do evil. And certainly Hawthorne's fascination with narrative control leads him to explore a variety of scenarios. In some of these scenarios, the diabolical potential, rarely far from the surface, appears to be nullified, or at least muted. This vitiation of diabolical power occurs whenever the narrator is able to control his narration long enough to effect an exculpation for himself (through his narrator doubles)-if only partially or temporarily. At these times, the narrator is able to bring about the same sort of result that Shakespeare's Oberon effected in (re)uniting the appropriate lovers with his

"white magic": he exonerates himself (partially or temporarily) and, by indulging in wish-fulfillment through a narrator double, he sees himself as reintegrated in society.

However fascinated Hawthorne may have been with these more positive scenarios, he remained cautious about attributing any assuredly positive outcome to the power of the narrator, for Hawthorne seemed convinced that stories have lives of their own. For this reason, Hawthorne portrayed his narrators almost consistently as detached observers who claim no responsibility-for good or for ill. Hawthorne apparently believed that it 69 was safer for his narrators to adopt an amused, detached, ironic attitude than an involved one. Such a posture is, as James L. Williamson suggests, "an accommodation of art to the recognition of the perverse and the demonic" (160), but it is also a recognition that the "white magic" of Oberon may not be controllable either. In the next chapter we shall see just how fragile that "control" is by examining "The Haunted Quack" and "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe" (as it appears reinserted in its frame, "Passages from a

Relinquished Work"). 70

1 Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Devil in Manuscript." The Snow-Image and

Uncollected Tales, eds. William Charvat, and others, vol. 11 (Columbus: Ohio State UP,

1974) 170. Subsequent parenthetical references to "The Devil in Manuscript" are presented thus: (11:170).

2 Nina Baym, in particular, is highly skeptical of the manuscript-burning as biographical fact. Despite circumstantial evidence, Baym states that "no direct evidence proves that a complete and integrated collection of tales was burned" (24). Baym notes that the narrator of "Alice Doane's Appeal" states just the contrary:

. . . the narrator of "Alice Doane's Appeal" observes that this story and one other escaped the flames because they happened to be in the possession of a friend at the time. If this is true, then the idea of Hawthorne throwing the whole manuscript into the fire after demanding it back from the publisher is necessarily false, unless he had copies. And if he had copies, there is no way of knowing what was irrevocably lost and what survived. There are no extant descriptions of missing tales; although we may extrapolate from the surviving tales what the whole collection might have been like, we cannot begin to conjecture about the interrelations among the stories. (24)

3 Woodson cites The Friendship of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents, ed. A. G. L'Estrange (London: Hurst & Blackett,

1882) 362.

^ Hawthorne's self-characterized twelve dark years, his long-deferred marriage to

Sophia Peabody, his retreat from contemporary society at Brook Farm, and his expressed

yearning to open an intercourse with the world suggest a solitary existence, a withdrawal from the world. However, Hawthorne is also known to have lived an active and social

life, visiting friends, taking extensive summer tours to New England and Niagara Falls,

and frequenting local taverns. Because of these varying life-styles, critics often see

Hawthorne's personality as double-sided. Hawthorne is, however, a much more complex

individual than a light/dark, social/antisocial paradigm would allow. 71

^ While my argument avoids the necessity of making a biographical equation between Hawthorne and his narrators, it is interesting to note a biographical connection here. Thomas Woodson points out that Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Hawthorne's first publisher, "widely sold educational publications for children" (47), much like the publisher who rejected Oberon's work. Moreover, Hawthorne, like Oberon, indulged in some memorable epithets in describing his publishers. Woodson points out that

Hawthorne wrote "a memorable description of Goodrich [in a letter of August 13,1857] which he must have assumed Elizabeth [Peabody] would eventually bring to light; the editor 'was born to do what he did . . . as maggots feed on rich cheese'" (49). According to Woodson, "In letters of 1836, Hawthorne had found . . . [Goodrich] an 'unscrupulous' but 'ridiculous' man" (49). Thus we can see how Hawthorne's own penchant for the colorful epithet is reflected in Oberon. But the primary narrator's mockery of Oberon's extremism suggests that Hawthorne was aware of-even self-conscious about-his own hyperbole.

^ Although Kenneth Dauber recognizes "The Devil in Manuscript" as a

"psychomachia," he draws a different conclusion than I do. Dauber maintains that no synthesis occurs in the "would-be dialectic," essentially because, by the end, "the narrator. . . becomes pure spectator" (59). While the primary narrator indeed portrays himself in this way, we must not forget that he is the storyteller of this tale and thus cannot be the "pure spectator" he would have us regard him as.

7 Johnson writes specifically of "The Devil in Manuscript," pointing out that Oberon is "one who must of necessity go to hell to borrow artistic creativity and so becomes a fiend himself' (40). She continues by suggesting that Hawthorne himself feared artistic nonconformity to established moral patterns:

. . . Hawthorne was working out his moral values and psychological suppositions within a framework explained by Puritan and perfectionist regeneration, [and] he was exploring what he saw as his own and every other artist's inability to conform to that moral pattern. He was afraid that the artistic imagination functioned only in the deadly territory across the threshold and that the artist himself would, so long as he remained an artist, be lost. (41) BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne's Career. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1976.

Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes. New York: Oxford UP, 1966.

Crowley, J. Donald. Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage. New York: Barnes, 1970.

—. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Humanities P. 1971.

Dauber, Kenneth. Rediscovering Hawthorne. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Devil in Manuscript." The Snow-Image and Uncol­ lected Tales. Eds. William Charvat. and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:170-78.

Johnson, Claudia D. The Productive Tension of Hawthorne's Art. University, AL: U of Alabama P, 1981.

Normand, Jean. Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Approach to an Analysis of Artistic Creation. Trans. Derek Coltman. Cleveland: P of Case Western Reserve, 1970.

Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Viking, 1949.

Williamson, James L. '"Young Goodman Brown': Hawthorne's Devil in Manuscript." Studies in Short Fiction IS 11981): 155-62.

Woodberry, George E. American Men of Letters: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, 1902.

Woodson, Thomas. Introduction. The Letters: 1813-1843. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat. and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984. 15:3-89.

Young, Philip. Hawthorne's Secret. Boston: David R. Godine, 1984. CHAPTER III

"The Haunted Quack"/"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe":

The Fragility of "White Magic"

"Oh! the slight tissue o f a dream can no more preserve us from the stern reality of misfortune, than a robe of cobwebs could repel the wintry blast."

-Hawthorne, "The Village Uncle: An Imaginary Retrospect"

To this point, we have seen how Hawthorne's strategy of narrator doubling allows us access to a subtextual level of his tales where we can see the dark psychology of the creative process at work. As this study has shown so far, when the responsibility of the storytelling shifts from the primary narrator to one or more narrator doubles, the primary narrator's power to control the substance, quality, and direction of his work is subsumed by a sinister power, a "black magic," as it were, beyond his control. This diabolical power allows us to see the arcane motivations and hidden character of the storyteller because it directs the narrative progressively and inexorably inward to reveal the primary narrator's psyche. It is not surprising, then, that so many of Hawthorne's works "wear a stern and sombre aspect" (Hawthorne, "The Custom House" 43), for especially when

Hawthorne uses narrator doubling in plots that are already solemn, he strengthens- reinforces in a demonstrable way-the theme of universal guilt so common to these plots.

As we have seen, in such tales as "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript" no one is absolved of guilt; everyone is implicated: characters and narrators. Moreover, as readers, we must face the’most chilling truth of all: as voyeurs, we are at least as

74 75 guilty as the narrator of the worst crime in the Hawthorne canon-the unpardonable sin of probing too deeply into the human heart.

Still, w e must remember that not all o f Hawthorne's works are so darkly and diabolically exposing, even though critics do tend to focus on Hawthorne's psycho- symbolic tales and novels-and, indeed, to be puzzled by his lighter, sometimes humorous ones. We need only recall, for example, that an entire line of critical commentary is directed toward explaining the conclusion of The House of the Seven Gables which takes what many critics regard as an uncharacteristically auspicious turn, at odds with the theme o f inherited guilt. However, if we examine how Hawthorne uses his narrator doubles in this and other "lighter" works, we can at least account for and perhaps understand how the narrative strategy creates those surprising instances when Hawthorne gladdens his stories with the "genial sunshine" he himself felt lacking in The Scarlet

Letter (Hawthorne, "The Custom House" 43), but which we can see appear in "The

Haunted Quack," "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" and The House of the Seven

Gables.

Certainly, if we consider only the plots of Hawthorne's "lighter" fictions, we can see that they move toward social, rather than private, concerns: Dominicus Pike and Mr.

Higginbotham's niece, and Phoebe and Holgrave marry; Pike, in fact, goes into business and acquires money; Hippocrates Jenkins returns to the bosom of his patients and friends; and Hepzibah, Clifford, and Phoebe become heirs of the Pyncheon fortune. In fact, the plots move the characters toward integration with society, rather than exclusion from it. Interestingly, there is, at the same time, a corresponding movement within the narration among Hawthorne's narrator doubles. Of course, we will find variation. But typically, in Hawthorne's "lighter" tales, two of which I will examine in this chapter, the narration moves like the plot: away from self-absorption and toward the social integration which Hawthorne's narrators feel their guilt as storytellers denies them. 76

Certainly one result is that the sexual metaphors, so richly suggestive of the storywriting/telling process in "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript," are dissipated as the narrator creates a less personally implicating story in which he adumbrates himself as a responsible, public figure who participates positively in the lives of others. In fact, sometimes a narrator's sexual inclinations (which so far we have seen revealed only privately, perversely) are redirected into a socially acceptable frame of reference (Holgrave, a narrator double, marries). In these works Hawthorne's narrators tap into the resources of Oberon's "white magic." In fact, just as Shakespeare's Oberon is eventually able to fulfill the true wishes of the lovers he enchants, Hawthorne's narrators are sometimes able to fulfill their own desires, in some measure, by indulging in wish- fulfillment, through their narrator doubles. By blocking access to a self-revelatory subtext, these narrators at least temporarily project themselves into a fantasy of social participation and respectability. Typically, then, as the narrator of these tales tries to move toward reintegration, both personally and socially, both the narrator and the reader move toward absolution, albeit a qualified absolution. Oberon's "white magic," it seems, spares the narrator the full force of his painful self-revelation in a seemingly fortuitous-yet sadly ephemeral-way.

Two tales in particular serve as instructive examples of how Hawthorne's fascination with narrative control led him to experiment with these lighter scenarios: "The Haunted

Quack," printed as "The Haunted Quack. A Tale of a Canal Boat. By Joseph Nicholson" in the 1831 edition of the Token and attributed to Hawthorne by J. Donald Crowley, even though we have no conclusive evidence to authenticate it as his; and "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe," originally printed with its frame tale in the New England

Magazine in 1834 and later published separately in Hawthorne's collection, Twice-told

Tales in 1837.1 To examine its narrative levels, we must reinsert "Mr. Higginbotham's

Catastrophe" into its originally intended frame (republished separately in Mosses from an 77

Old Manse as "Passages from a Relinquished Work"). "The Haunted Quack," however, exists as tale and frame together.

Although it is not as convoluted as "Alice Doane's Appeal," "The Haunted Quack" is a frame tale with several narrative levels. The narrator of the frame tells the tale o f his

"excursion to Niagara during which time, "the roads nearly impassable," he was forced to take "passage in a canal boat for Utica" (11:251). He occupies his time observing others, for he has nothing else to do. He has brought nothing to read, and the rainy weather prevents him from "vary[ing] the monotony of the scene by walking" (11:251).

Aloof from his fellow passengers, he is disinclined to make any conversational overtures.

In fact, he finds his fellow travelers "uninviting in appearance" and "stupid" and "surly"

in their responses to the "few... questions" he asks (11:251). Finally, late at night, after

the others have retired, the primary narrator gains access to a book he has seen another

man "deeply engaged in" all day-"Glanville's marvelous book, entitled the History of

Witches, or the Wonders of the Invisible World Displayed" (11:252). At midnight, he is

still "poring half asleep over the pages" (11:252).

However, the narrator is aroused "from this dreamy state" by the "sounds of distress"

coming from "a man enveloped in a cloak, who was lying asleep upon one of the benches

of the cabin" (ll:252)-a man whom he says he recognizes as a passenger he had earlier

singled out as worth attention, for he seemed to be "either a fugitive from justice or else a

little disordered in [the] mind" (11:253). And the narrator tells us he had resolved at that

time to keep his "eye on him and observe what course he should take" (11:253) once the journey ends at Utica. Indeed, as the narrator listens, the sleeping man's words do mark

him as an agitated, guilty man, for he appears to be having a nightmarish visititation

from a '"bloody old hag'" whom he had '"poison[ed]'" (11:253). The sleeping man

awakens, and because, as the narrator tells us, he sees in the narrator's "countenance, the

mingled sentiments of pity and abhorrence" (11:253), he decides to confide in the 78 narrator. Admitting from the start that he is '"a murderer'" (11:253), '"the unhappy cause of blotting out the life of a fellow being from the page of human existence'" (11:254), the guilty man begins to relate his story. As he commences his "'sad story,"' he asks the primary narrator to be the audience of his '"unhappy narrative'" (11:254).

The new narrator identifies himself as Hippocrates Jenkins, one-time apprentice "'in the boot and shoe-making line’" (11:254), later apprentice to Dr. Ephraim Ramshome, whose credentials as a doctor are questionable. While he speaks of his master as "'the beau ideal'" of his profession, he also relates some local skepticism regarding the doctor.

He refers, for instance, to the village lawyer who "'used to whisper that the Doctor's Greek thesis was nothing but a bundle of prescriptions for the bots, wind-galls, spavins, and other veterinary complaints, written in high-Dutch by a Hessian horse doctor'" and who added that the doctor's diploma "'was a sham'" (11:256). According to this lawyer,

"'Ephraim was no more a doctor than his jack-ass"’ (11:256). The apprentice further admits that even the "'simple country people'" thought of the doctor, not so much as a scientist, but as a practitioner '"of occult knowledge and skill... a second Faustus'"

(11:255). But despite his master's dubious character, the young man declares that, blinded by "'golden visions . . . [of] a fortune already made,"' he had decided to become a student of medicine "'under the benign influence of.. . [his] munificent patron'" (11:256).

The young man describes how he advanced in the profession, beginning as an errand boy, but gradually assuming more and more responsibility until ’"the greater part of...

[his] time was occupied in compounding certain quack medicines of Ramshorne's own invention'" (11:258). In this way, he "'was gradually initiated, arid soon acquired so much skill in their manipulation that... [his] services became indispensable to... [his] master'" (11:258). Thus, when the doctor died, the young man explains, he was in an excellent position ’"to commence quacking-[that is] practicing-on . . . [his] own account'"

(11:259). 79

Successful at first, Jenkins explains how he had to be more and more inventive because "'people [were] beginning to discover the inefficacy o f the old nostrums'"

(11:259). At length, he claims, he went too far and invented "'a curious mixture, composed of forty-nine different articles . . . [which he] dubbed in high flowing terms,

"The Antidote to Death, or the Eternal Elixir o f Longevity'"" (11:260). It is this drug that he believes killed one of his patients, Granny Gordon, whose death-bed curse now causes him to have nightmares '"every night, at the solemn hour o f twelve'" (11:263).

He ran away from town, but because these '"visitations'" have become '"insupportable"'

(11:263), the young man has '"resolved to return'" and give him self up "'to justice'"

(11:263), for even though he has so far eluded the authorities, he cannot escape his guilt.

After Jenkins ends his story, the primary narrator concludes the framing tale. But what he describes is his own (and Jenkins') surprise at the new perspective others provide of Jenkins' tale. As the two are leaving the wharf, the primary narrator relates that he and Jenkins encounter numerous citizens from Jenkins' village who are relieved to see Jenkins alive and who hail him as a sort o f local hero. These people, in fact, tell their own version of the tale that the young man had just concluded. As eyewitnesses, they know that Granny Gordon did not die and that, in fact, "'she thinks the stuff did her a mortal sight o' good'" (11:264). However, because they were not privy to the truth about Jenkins' whereabouts, the townspeople are in Utica to try Granny Gordon's husband Bill for having killed Jenkins. Mystified, but fascinated, the primary narrator follows the group of new "narrators" to the tavern, "wishing to obtain a further explanation of this strange scene" (11:264). After he satisfies his curiosity, the narrator and the young man have breakfast, shake hands, and part, the young man "jumping into the wagon [and riding] off with his friends" (11:265). 80

Although the end of the tale moves outward to a less personally revealing dimension, the initial movement of it, like "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript," is clearly inward toward the psyche. Moreover, as a tale within a tale, it resembles "Alice

Doane's Appeal" which is structured like "a nest of boxes." And, as a night-time evocation of a hidden and troubled self, "The Haunted Quack" is reminiscent of "The

Devil in Manuscript," for the young man who narrates the interior tale is a narrator double, and the textual dynamics, in which one text subverts another, are like those of

"The Devil in Manuscript," indicating that we are witness to another interior conversation.

There are. however, certain fundamental differences between "The Haunted Quack" and these other stories even in the portion of the tale which moves inward. These differences, indeed, are key to our understanding of just how varied Hawthorne's strategy of narrator doubling can be and how his shifting strategies reveal him to be exploring different questions related to authorship and storytelling-specifically, questions concerning not only a narrator's guilt, but a narrator's exoneration. For example, the sexual metaphors apparent in "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript" are nonexistent in "The Haunted Quack" which applies a different, though related, trope to the issue of narrative control. "The Haunted Quack" implicitly explores the relationship of a storyteller to his characters by exploring the relationship of a physician to his patients. The dominant metaphor is medicine-apt, since both the narrator and the physician have a life-and-death power over their charges-and the indictment against the primary narrator (implied in the literal charge against the narrator double) is murder, rather than seduction or auto-eroticism. Indeed, through the primary narrator and his double, "The Haunted Quack" exposes the guilt that narrators in general may share: guilt for '"blotting out the life of a fellow being/row the page of human existence'" (11:254; my italics). But the primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack," unlike those we have 81 examined thus far, tries to find a way-by means of his narrator double-to clear himself.

In "The Haunted Quack," the narrator double arises as the conscience of the primary narrator under circumstances we commonly associate with the emergence o f a repressed self in literature. "[Mattering, as of a suppressed voice" (11:252), the narrator double emerges at night during the private reverie of the primary narrator's dream state-a state induced by his delving into the occult and so intensely absorbing that "the hours [had] slipped unconsciously away" (11:252).^ These circumstances suggest that the narrator double is the primary narrator's repressed self, most likely his conscience, for the double is also awakening from a dream-in his case, a nightmare-and his dream is likewise induced by his pursuit o f recondite knowledge. Moreover, this nightmare results from the narrator double's own guilty conscience which compels him to confront his diabolical side in the nightly visitation of the "'bloody old hag'" (11:253), Granny Gordon. The narrator double's emergence from the primary narrator’s dream-state suggests, then, that he, too, functions as a conscience. Because the two narrators are so similar from the start, w e are alerted to expect, even before the narrator double begins to tell his story, that their relationship is a darkly psychological one-one likely to be exposed more fully once the narrator double begins to speak. Because the narrator double is a projection of the primary narrator's troubled soul, the primary narrator must set out almost immediately to recast the narrator double as another personage on the ship whom he can characterize

(and thus reshape) as part of his narrative. Of course, he must do so in a retrospective account, an account which, as we shall see, raises more questions about the primary narrator than he can control.

At first, the primary narrator's account of the narrator double seems to strengthen the connection between the two. He describes, for example, the narrator double's behavior on the canal boat and his relationships to others as similar to his own. When the primary narrator describes his double in retrospect, he notes that the young man "appeared 82 restless and unquiet," that he "[kept] away from the table at meal times," and that he

"[seemed] averse from entering into conversation with the passengers" (11:252). The young man had even, claims the primary narrator, "slunk away" from him (11:252). In short, the primary narrator could easily be (and actually is) describing his own behavior.

As we have seen, the primary narrator is similarly restless and fidgety. Unable to settle on a satisfactory activity, he finds every condition on the boat intolerable: the weather is bad; the "beasts" that tow the boat are "lazy" (11:252); he has no books to read; he cannot take a walk; the boat is moving "at the dull rate of four miles per hour" (11:251).

In fact, the monotony so agitates him that he claims to suffer "the foul friend Ennui coming upon [him] with all her horrors" (11:251).

Besides being restless, the primary narrator, as w e have seen, does not associate with his fellow travelers any more than he describes the young man as doing. Indeed, the primary narrator maintains his distance, implying to us that he feels superior: the others'

"appearance[s]M are uninviting; the others' responses are "stupid" or "surly" (11:251).

The primary narrator will not even converse with the one gentleman who seems to share his interest in books. In fact, he waits until the man retires for the night and only then picks up the book the man leaves behind, the volume he "had more than once envied"

(11:252) throughout the day.

Clearly, then, as his public persona-his storytelling persona-the primary narrator prefers to seem an annalist, a chronicler of events, not a creator or controller of them-certainly not a participator in them. Hence, for the audience o f his tale, he assumes the posture of a lofty observer (a pose common to many of Hawthorne's narrators, like

Miles Coverdale of The Blithedale Romance and the narrator of The House of the Seven

Gablesl.^ As such, the primary narrator watches and records, creating the impression that his judgments are objective because he does not draw himself into the action of his own narrative. Accordingly, he notes for our benefit some apparently desultory minutiae 83 about the other travelers but reveals little about himself. In fact, he allows us access only to what he would have us believe about him: that, from his superior vantage point, he is so remote and detached that his objectivity is assured. In short, the primary narrator uses his detachment to suggest his disinterest.

But the primary narrator is transparent. We can see almost immediately that he does function from self-interest and that he manipulates his material for public consumption, showing us only what he would have us see. In fact, because the narrator double is a subconscious force which challenges the primary narrator's self-portrait, it is clear that the primary narrator would have preferred to keep his narrator double repressed (after all, he mentions him only when he feels he must-after the young man emerges from his psyche). Moreover, even when he tries to deal with the narrator double on the conscious level-by recasting him as a character-the primary narrator remains in the same predicament. After all, his omission of the young man from his earlier commentary immediately calls into question the primary narrator's portrait of himself not only as a careful observer, but also as an objective one, for it suggests that he has manipulated his material. We need only recall that at the beginning of his tale the primary narrator portrayed himself as so bored that he could amuse himself only by observing and commenting upon the people around him. But clearly the passengers whom he described were those in whom he took little interest. So it seems curiously contradictory that the primary narrator should withhold information about the only person/character on the whole trip who is o f singular interest to him. Indeed, we learn only after the fact that this young man has been nearly the sole object of the primary narrator's attention on the voyage. The primary narrator reveals only later that he had been so "struck" by the young man's "appearance and behavior" (11:252) that he had resolved "to keep . . . [his] eye on him" (11:253). Thus, either as the psychological phenomenon he is, or as the character the primary narrator would make him into, the narrator double becomes an 84 embarrassment to the primary narrator, and the primary narrator must apply damage control. The primary narrator, thus, feels obliged to continue characterizing his double, but, even as he acknowledges how similar the young man is to himself, he sets about minimizing other connections w e might make between them. In fact, like the primary narrator of "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript," the primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack" tries to discredit his double and thus distance himself from him so that he can continue his pose as an uninvolved observer-and as an innocent person.

The primary narrator begins distancing himself-and us-from the narrator double by describing him as physically unappealing, even repulsive. He portrays him as seedy and unkempt, someone to be viewed askance, as crazed or mentally deficient: "He was tall and thin in person, rather shabbily dressed, with long, lank, black hair, and large grey eyes, which gave a visionary character to one of the most pallid, and cadaverous

countenances I had ever beheld" (11:252). And he further detracts from the narrator double's credibility by suggesting that he is a criminal. In fact, he emphasizes what he wants us to interpret as a very telling difference between himself and the narrator double:

different reasons why they avoid others. Whereas the primary narrator suggests that his

own aloofness precludes guilt, the narrator double, he claims, behaves similarly as a

result of guilt: He has a "conscience smitten by the remembrance of some crime"

(11:252). Indeed, the primary narrator further claims that the narrator double "dreaded to

meet the gaze o f a fellow mortal" (11:252) because he is "either a fugitive from justice, or else a little disordered in mind" (11:253). This is an important distinction to him. The

primary narrator characterizes his double as aloof because the double fears exposure.

The primary narrator, on the other hand, claims no such fear. If anything, we might

charge him with vanity-but that is a charge the primary narrator can live with, for it is his

cold detachment which he would like us to believe protects him from the charge that he,

like the narrator double, meddles criminally in the lives of others. In this sense, he is 85 very like the primary narrator of "The Devil in Manuscript" who prefers seeming foolish to seeming guilty.

While the primary narrator, in emphasizing their differences, tries to dissociate himself from the narrator double (and thus reduce the impact of the narrator double's tale), through his narrator double he accomplishes the opposite agenda. By allowing the narrator double to emphasize their similarities, the primary narrator perversely reveals himself as the narrator double subverts the primary narrator's attempt to conceal their relationship. It is through the narrator double's story that the primary narrator confesses the guilt of the narrator double as his own. Indeed, howevermuch the narrator double's story exposes his own guilt as a physician, his storytelling suggests that he is also metaphorically exposing the primary narrator's guilt as a storyteller. It is the narrator double's text that is the primary narrator's undoing, for what the narrator double reveals is really what the primary narrator subconsciously must reveal. And what the narrator double does in his tale is challenge not only the likelihood of the primary narrator's disinterest/innocence, but the very possibility of a disinterested/ innocent narrator.

While the primary narrator, then, suggests that he and his double are quite different, the narrator double establishes that they are the same. The narrator double's identity as the repressed self of the primary narrator becomes most apparent in their nearly identical narrative styles. The similarity, of course, does not lie in the length of the double's narrative, nor in its detail. The narrator double, after all, is not as reluctant to reveal

himself as the primary narrator is. In other words, because he is in a confessional mode,

the narrator double is more voluble, hence more detailed, than his narrative counterpart.

However, the way they express themselves-their rhetoric-is remarkably similar,

especially when we recall that the narrator double is not characterized as a formally

educated man. In fact, he even claims that he had to apply himself "'to try and puzzle out

the hard words'" (11:257) in Dr. Ramshome's medical books. The primary narrator, 86 though, is clearly an educated, intellectual man, and his style, logically, reflects his scholarship. He is, for example, especially prone to classical allusions: which we may find scattered throughout his work: he refers to the sleepy passengers as "resigning themselves to the embrace of Morpheus," for example (11:251). Surprisingly, the style of the narrator double-whose background suggests he is far from educated-is similar.

He, too, demonstrates a partiality for the classical reference; he refers to being threatened '"with the fate of Marsyas'" (11:259); he calls Granny Gordon, wife of the local blacksmith, '"the rib of the village Vulcan'" (11:260); and he calls his mentor, Dr.

Ramshorne, '"a very Apollo in the healing art'" and "'in point of occult knowledge and sk ill. . . a second Faustus "1 (11:255).

Both narrators likewise display a fondness for a heavily Latinate vocabulary with a sprinkling of French phrases: the primary narrator refers to his double as his "protege"

(11:263); the narrator double refers to Dr. Ramshorne as '"the beau ideal of a doctor'"

(11:255). Moreover, each reveals his erudition by quoting from Shakespeare.

Describing the approach of night, which will relieve his boredom, the primary narrator quotes Macbeth: "Time and the hour runs through the roughest day'" (11:251)^ The narrator double quotes from Romeo and Juliet. In describing why he had chosen to "'dub

. . . [his elixir] in high flowing terms,"' he claims that, while '"a rose might smell as sweet by any other name'" (11:260),6 such might not be true of his drugs. With "'a more

humble title'" (11:260), they might not be as appealing. In his narrative style and vocabulary, then, the narrator double clearly transcends his own unlettered background.

Importantly, though, he is able to do so only as long as he narrates his tale. In the "grey

of morning" (11:263), circumstances return to normal, and the narrator double speaks in

character. Indeed, the scholarly style the narrator double uses as a storyteller is in

marked contrast to the unliterary-even colloquial-language he uses within the text of the

primary narrator. However cultivated his language is at night, in the morning the 87 narrator double speaks in the vernacular: "’Hang me, if there isn't old Graham the sheriff, with lawyer Dickson, and Bill Gordon come to take me'" (11:263).

Clearly, then, the two are the same man. Through his style, the narrator double shows us that he is the primary narrator. Accordingly, he also demonstrates that the primary narrator is, like him, a guilty man-a damaging claim, latent in the narrator double's metafictive apparatus. For example, unlike the primary narrator, the narrator double calls attention to the fact that he is telling a story. He unabashedly requests that we hear his "’sad story,”’ his '"unhappy narrative'" (11:254). Later in the tale, finding himself digressing, the narrator double once again reminds us of his function as a storyteller: "'I must,"' he says, "'return to my sad tale'" (11:258). By calling attention to himself as a storyteller, the narrator double reminds us that the primary narrator is, too, despite the primary narrator's failure to tell us so. The narrator double, in fact, calls attention to that similarity to suggest that he and the primary narrator are equally culpable. Significantly, the narrator double describes his own criminal malfeasance as the act o f a callous writer: "'Yes, I am a murderer,"' he admits. "'I have been the unhappy cause of blotting out the life of a fellow being from the page of human existence'" (11:253-54; my italics). Thus, when he asks us to "'read enstamped [on his features]"' (11:254) the guilt of Cain, the narrator double is suggesting that w e "read" the primary narrator similarly.

If we do, then, read the guilt of the primary narrator as the guilt of the narrator double, we can see that the primary narrator is just as accountable for what happens to his characters as the narrator double is for what happens to his patients. Even though the primary narrator presents himself as detached, the narrator double suggests that being detached is not the same as being innocent. Indeed, the primary narrator's claim to disinterest is a mere pose. If the narrator double's aloofness on the canal boat results, as the primary narrator says, from his guilty conscience, we may conclude that the primary 88 narrator's pose covers his guilt as well.

The narrator double reveals that neither he nor the primary narrator is what he appears to be. Certainly the narrator double is a fraud, and he knows it, for he tells us that after Dr. Ramshorne died, '"I accordingly resolved to commence quacking-I mean practising-on my own account'" (11:259). And he practices his art to benefit himself, not those in his care. In fact, when he describes the doctor's nostrums, he tells us about their composition and price, not their healing properties:

"What chiefly reconciled me to the drudgery of the shop, was the seeing how well the Doctor got paid for his villainous compounds, a mixture of a little brick dust, rosin, and treacle, dignified with the title of the anthelminthic amalgam, he sold for half a dollar, and a bottle of vinegar and alum, with a little rose water to give it a flavor, yclept the antiscrofulous abstergent lotion, brought twice that sum. I longed for the day when I should dispense my own medicines, and in my hours of castle- building, looked forward to fortunes far beyond those o f the renowned Dr. Solomon." (11:258)

The narrator double, however, goes well beyond Dr. Ramshome's harmless compounds, flirting with cures that are downright dangerous-a near-fatal steambath, for

instance, and unknown mixtures which he even feels obliged "'to try [first] upon cats or

dogs'" (11:260). Finally, he oversteps his bounds and "'in an evil hour. . . invented a curious mixture, composed of forty-nine different articles. . . [which he] dubbed. . .

"The Antidote to Death, or the Eternal Elixir of Longevity""’ (11:260). Guilty of fraudulently representing his dangerous compounds as efficacious, the narrator double believes he is, as a result, responsible for the death of his patient. He is tortured by his conscience in the person of the "dead" Granny Gordon: "'her ghost appears to me, wrapped in a red cloak, with her grey hairs streaming from beneath an old nightcap of

the same color, brandishing the vial, and accusing me of having poisoned her'" (11:263).

Similarly shrouded, the narrator double arises at midnight as the primary narrator's conscience to suggest that the primary narrator stands similarly accused. Indeed, his 89 detached "pose" aside, we can see that prior to the narrator double's appearance the primary narrator has actually exerted a tight grip on his material, characterizing even the passengers on the boat as he wishes us to see them. It is he who characterizes them as

"stupid" and "surly." We, on the other hand, never hear them speak. In fact, at the beginning of the tale, no one except the primary narrator speaks. We have access to what others say only through the primary narrator's paraphrase. Thus, since he judges his characters and filters their words through his own consciousness, the primary narrator shapes and controls not only the way we perceive them, but, in some sense, the way they actually are. And, just as the narrator double goes beyond harmless compounds, the primary narrator goes beyond essentially harmless judgments. Indeed, the primary narrator has similarly invented and dispensed medicinal concoctions among his characters as part o f his imaginative rendering of the scene. He provides, in fact, an extensive catalogue of cures for an assortment of ailments-a catalogue which is indeed worthy of the eminent "quack" himself:

One [passenger] called for a glass of hot whiskey punch, because he felt cold; another took some brandy toddy to prevent his taking cold; some took mint julaps; some gin-slings, and some rum and water. One took his dram because he had nothing else to do. (11:252)

Even the old gentleman reading the book "called for a pint of beer, to take the vapors out of his head" (11:252). Of course, the primary narrator offers this description to us as a sort o f gratuitous example of his uninvolved attention to detail. But it is equally apparent that he is involved. Not only has he created them as characters in the very act of writing about them, but, by means of these drinks, he also rids the stage, so to speak, of persons whom he has characterized as irritating—individuals with whom he desires no connection.

W hether these individuals live or die is immaterial, for under the guise of objective description, the primary narrator has effectively blotted "'out the life of a fellow being from the page of human existence'" (11:254). And, it is true, we never see 90

these individuals again.

It is important for us to note that what the primary narrator does is perfectly ordinary

behavior for narrators generally. After all, narrators must manipulate-shape-their

materials in order to produce an effective tale. However, what causes the primary

narrator's behavior to seem diabolical is his discomfort with this role-his self-conscious

desire to appear above responsibility for what happens in his tale, when, in fact, the

responsibility is his. It is the story of the narrator double, then, that exposes a truth that

the primary narrator does not wish to face: the truth that the primary narrator's concept

of a disinterested narrator is patently a contradiction in terms. The truth is, the narrator

double's tale implies that guilt is an unavoidable condition of the act of narrating, an act which is inherently manipulative. Once the narrator double concludes his tale, the

primary narrator appears to understand the tale's implicit lesson, for he rationalizes: "To

comfort him," says the primary narrator, "I told him, that if he had killed fifty old

women, they could do nothing to him, if he had done it professionally" (11:263).

However, the primary narrator also promises that, come morning, he will find a way to

clear them both: "as for the ghost," he says, "we would take means to have that put at

rest, when we reached Utica" (11:263). This cryptic promise is clarified when the

primary narrator changes his narrative strategy to resume the frame tale.

Unlike "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript," which end on a note

of unresolved guilt, the conclusion of "The Haunted Quack" takes a surprising turn

toward resolution as the primary narrator "put[s] [the ghost] at rest" (11:263). He does so

by inventing new characters whom he allows to "narrate" for themselves without his

overt intervention. Having struggled to mitigate our consciousness of his guilt by

projecting his double as a character, the primary narrator continues the process by co­

opting the narrator double's story. The primary narrator, in other words, supplies the

ending of the narrator double's tale through characters whom he seems to draw from a 91 world outside of his psyche. These characters provide a closure through which the primary narrator intends to exonerate both himself and his double, for if the narrator

double is innocent, then the primary narrator will be as well.' Once they are both found

innocent, each may terminate his private ordeal: the narrator double is united with his patients and friends, and the primary narrator is reintegrated with his double as a whole personality. Moreover, through the narrator double's experience, the primary narrator is

able, vicariously, to be reunited with society.

As the new characters speak, the primary narrator relinquishes his grip on the tale

and becomes, in effect, the objective observer he had only pretended to be before.

Instead of paraphrase, the primary narrator relies on quotation: that is, the new

characters-the sheriff, the blacksmith, and a village farmer-now appear to speak for

themselves in their own voices to add a public dimension to what had been, until now, a

private confession. The sheriff offers his portion of the tale first:

"Why Hippy, my lad,. . . where have you been? All our town has been in a snarl about you. We all supposed you had been forcibly abducted. Judge Bates offered a reward of twenty dollars for your corpse. We have dragged the canal for more than a mile, and found a mess of bottles, which made us think you had been spirited away. Betsey Wilkins made her affadavit, that she heard Bill Gordon swear that he would take your life, and here you see we have brought him down to have his trial. But come, come, jump in the wagon, we'll take you up to the tavern, to get your duds dried, and tell you about it." (11:264)

The blacksmith continues the tale, not only absolving the young quack of killing Granny

Gordon, but also praising him for his good work:

"By goles, Doctor, I am glad to see you. If you hadn't come back, I believe it would have gone hard with me. Come man, you must forgive the hard words I gave you. My old woman soon got well of her fit, after you went away, and says she thinks the stuff did her a mortal sight o' good." (11:264)

And, finally, "a plain looking man in a farmer's dress" (11:264) offers his explanation to

the now amazed-and curious-primary narrator: "'She was only in a swoond . . . but 92 came to, soon after the Doctor had left her"' (11:264). He adds that Jenkins is '"a nation smart doctor, who had a power of laming, but gave severe doses’" (11:265).

Each new character speaks in an unliterate voice—a voice that the educated primary narrator might earlier have judged stupid. However, now, the primary narrator does not judge, but appears to listen in rapt attention, most o f the time standing in virtually the same "mute amazement" (11:264) that the narrator double exhibits. Far from stupid or monotonous, this "twice-told" (or reshaped) tale excites the primary narrator's curiosity, and he begins to participate in his own unfolding tale. He accompanies the group to the tavern, "wishing to obtain a further explanation of this strange scene" (11:264). Indeed, he and the narrator double seem equally surprised by what they hear.

Through these new voices, the primary narrator is able to redirect our attention from his guilt-ridden psyche to what he portrays wishfully as a more forgiving social arena, represented not only by the new characters, but also by the tavern-a public-house, by definition. Indeed, he allows these voices to deliver the tale from the limits of his morbid introspection and to make the tale virtually public property. As such, the tale becomes capable of accommodating-even embracing-a variety o f perspectives, including those that forgive, rather than accuse. Thus, through these characters, the primary narrator may absolve both his narrator double and indirectly himself as well. After all, as one charged with a similar crime, the primary narrator likewise puts his own ghost "at rest" (11:263).

At the same time, by allowing these new characters to speak and by socializing with them at the tavern, the primary narrator is, in his imagination, forging for himself a link in the magnetic chain of humanity-an issue that we shall see surface again in "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe." If only imaginatively, the primary narrator js becoming a participator in a story broader than the one limited by his own psychological frame of reference. Thus, when we see the primary narrator and his double shake hands and the narrator double jump "into the wagon . . . [riding] off with his friends" (11:265), we feel 93 that the primary narrator is liberated, too. Imaginatively, then, the primary narrator has indulged in the creation of a self-liberating fiction.

However, the primary narrator's projection of himself into a fantasy of social participation and respectability does not bring him total absolution. Indeed, while the new characters absolve the primary narrator and his double of guilt in particular, they cannot do so for their guilt in general. If anything, they remind both narrators of just how fragile their bond with humanity is, for their exoneration is qualified, rather than full. Implicit in their exoneration is a warning-a warning that it is impossible to avoid accountability. Clearly, every action-even inaction-brings results which impact on others. We must remember that, by avoiding his accountability for one "crime" (the

"death" of Granny Gordon), the narrator double is nearly guilty of another (the unjust hanging of Bill Gordon). Such murderous potential reveals the fallacy in the primary narrator's presumed detachment-a posture which, we have seen, is not equatable with innocence.

In the end, the primary narrator and his double are reintegrated, and together they are reunited in a community of friends. But the implicit admonishment of the new characters' voices is not lost on the primary narrator, for he conveys a warning to his double:

After discussing a good breakfast, my young friend thanked me for the sympathy and interest I had taken on his behalf. He told me he intended returning to the practice of his profession. I admonished him to be more careful in the exhibition of his patent medicines, telling him that all old women had not nine lives. (11:265)

Certainly we can recognize that throughout the tale the primary narrator is responsible for what happens in his story. In the final segment, of course, he is responsible for allowing a fortuitous turn of events-not only for the characters, but for the narrators as well. Indeed, by imaginatively re-shaping the narrator double's tale, the primary narrator is actually indulging in whimsical wish-fulfillment in which both he and 94

the narrator double can emerge as heroes, rather than villains. At the same time, in "The

Haunted Quack," as well as in "Alice Doane's Appeal," and "The Devil in Manuscript,"

Hawthorne is exhibiting his anxiety about certain unavoidable conditions of the act of

narrating-an act which virtually assures a guilty involvement of some sort, not only

because of the power unleashed in the process itself, but also because of the methods by which narration is created. Whether "black magic" (as in the case of "Alice Doane's

Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript") is at work, or "white magic" (which at least

partially dominates "The Haunted Quack" and temporarily, as we shall see, "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe") controls the storytelling/writing process, the narrator is at

least potentially, if not actually, culpable. While the diabolical power appears to be partially nullified in "The Haunted Quack" by a self-liberating assertion of the Fairy

King's "white magic," "black magic" remains a potential, not far from the surface.

Indeed, in "The Haunted Quack," both narrators take from their experience a warning to

exert care in the practice of their professions, because the good fortune they try to create

through wish fulfillment is more fragile than the power of evil. Certainly, the guilt

Hawthorne's narrators feel is all-pervasive and extends, as we shall see in "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe," to the very decision these narrators have made in

becoming storytellers in the first place. Indeed, because a narrator becomes a storyteller,

he is an outcast-and figuratively, at least, a parricide.

Critics generally consider "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" as a unit apart from its

separately published frame which is a more psychologically somber story than the

embedded one. Because "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," considered by itself, is

clearly comic, critics often link it to "The Haunted Quack" because they see the tales as

similar in tone. As J. Donald Crowley points out in his "Historical Commentary," for the

Centenary Edition of The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales, they are written in a 95 similarly light, "farcical vein" (399). Arlin Turner who speaks of "Mr. Higginbotham's

Catastrophe" as dependent on the sort of stock "... characters exploited by ... [many] humorists" (119), suggests another parallel. In "The Haunted Quack," for example, we can identify the stereotypical country bumpkin; in "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" we see the shrewd, entrepreneurial Yankee, "keen at a bargain.

However, if we re-insert "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" into its frame, we may look beyond these qualities which produce the stories' humorous tones to identify other parallels which impact on our study of narration. In general, for example, both "The

Haunted Quack" and the framed "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" are metafictive because they involve narrators trying to control their fictions to their own advantage.

Moreover, though the narrators do so in different ways, we can see in both stories that narrators use their fictions to indulge in wish fulfillment and, in so doing, can claim at least a partial victory over the perils of self-reflexive storytelling. That is, they can, for a time at least, effectively wield the "white magic" which allows a narrator to achieve his desires, rather than reveal his guilt. In these idealized roles, the narrators avert a murder

(or the charge of murder), are thus exonerated of guilt (at least partially or temporarily), and, as a result, project themselves into a life of common intercourse with others-an implicit longing, it seems, for many of Hawthorne's narrators, but, as we shall see, especially true of the frame narrator for "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe."

Still, wish-fulfillment, at best an ephemeral ideation, does not carry the day in either tale. As we have seen. "The Haunted Quack" ends with an implicit warning about the guilt inherent in the storytelling process. Similarly, once it is reintegrated into its frame

("Passages from a Relinquished Work"), "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" ends on a note of continuing guilt. The potential charge against a narrator is again murder, for one o f the issues is his life-and-death power over a character-Mr. Higginbotham. But a more significant issue concerns what Mr. Higginbotham represents psychologically to the 96 frame narrator, who stands accused of parricide. In the case of "Mr. Higginbotham's

Catastrophe," the frame narrator's double does not murder within his narrative because the frame narrator fears he has "murdered" because o f it. That is, the frame narrator fears that in becoming a storyteller, he has abrogated his filial responsibility. Thus, he feels that, for all intents and purposes, he has "killed" the man who is his surrogate father.

He has, he feels, cut himself off forever from this "father" and the warmth of social relationships by his irrevocable decision to tell stories. As a result, the narrator can only dream about meeting his "father" in the setting of the after-life-or indulge in telling a tale which psychologically fulfills his dream of reintegration with a father and society, if only temporarily. Thus, both "The Haunted Quack" and "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe"

(with its frame) are, in some measure, self-liberating fictions and, in this sense, differ from "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript" which are only self- incriminating.

Certainly, "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is less integrated into the tale

Hawthorne intended as its frame than are the tales we have examined thus far, for those tales cannot be extricated from their frames and, at the same time, retain an integrity o f their own, as "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" can. Nonetheless, w e must remember that Hawthorne originally intended "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" to be one of a series o f tales in his projected volume The Storyteller, which became another of what

Mark Van Doren refers to as Hawthorne's "doomed" (42) ventures-projects which, like

Seven Tales of My Native Land and Provincial Tales, never "appear[ed] as the unit

Hawthorne had planned" (Van Doren 42).^ Of this work, only "Mr. Higginbotham's

Catastrophe" retained a semblance of Hawthorne's original conception when it was published with relevant portions of The Storyteller frame in the November-December

New England Magazine o f 1834 as "The Story Teller. No. I" and "The Story Teller. No.

II," according to J. Donald Crowley (Historical Commentary, Mosses 526).9 We, 97 however, are more likely to be familiar with the tales as they were later published-under separate titles and in separate volumes: "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" in Twice-told

Tales: and "Passages from a Relinquished Work" (the frame) in Mosses From an Old

Manse. This separation, of course, was possible because each tale has its own integrity apart from the other. As a result, it is important for us to examine each tale as a separate unit before we try to see how each impacts on the other. Since, unlike the tales we have examined so far, we will see the psychological dimension exclusively in the frame, rather than in the embedded tale, as we have come to expect, we will examine the embedded tale, "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," first. Without its frame, it is, as we shall see, psychologically unrevealing.

"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," as it appears in Twice-told Tales without its frame, is uncomplicated by the sort of narrative convolutions found in "Alice Doane's

Appeal," "The Devil in Manuscript," and even "The Haunted Quack." It is a story unit, dominated by a single narrative voice who is the sole authority and source of truth for the tale. Interestingly, however, the tale he tells from his retrospective vantage point concerns another narrator-Dominicus Pike-whose authority and control are not as firm as his own, for Pike has difficulty controlling not only his Protean material, but also his fickle audience. As a result, Pike struggles to maintain his reputation as a credible storyteller, and he often suffers humiliation at the hands of his audience.

Pike, the narrator tells us, was a "tobacco-pedlar by trade" (9:106), a storyteller by circumstance and temperament. As an itinerant who traveled alone, Pike was as interested in hawking local gossip as he was his wares. In fact, the narrator confides,

Pike was "something of a tattler, always itching to hear the news, and anxious to tell it again" (9:106). One day a passing traveler provided him a "trifle of news" (9:107): "'Mr.

Higginbotham, of Kimballton, was murdered in his orchard, at eight o'clock last night, by an Irishman, and a nigger. They strung him up to the branch of a St. Michael's pear-tree, 98 where nobody would find him till morning'" (9:107). From this short, but specific, piece of news, Pike created a fully embellished story which he did not hesitate to "intro­ duce . . . at every tavern and country-store along the road" (9:108). Pike "was so pestered with questions," the narrator wryly comments, "that he could not avoid filling up the outline, till it became quite a respectable narrative" (9:108). In fact, by the time

Pike "put up at a tavern, about five miles short of Parker's Falls" (9:109), the "story of the murder had grown so fast that it took him half an hour to tell" (9:109). However, although his tale succeeded as a narrative, it was quickly proven to fall short of truth, for a guest at the tavern told Pike that Higginbotham was not dead: he had shared "a glass of bitters" with the alleged "ghost" that very morning (9:109).

On the following day, with this embarrassing corrective in mind, Pike, the narrator tells us, approached another traveler, for Pike was still curious to learn "the real fact about this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham" (9:110). To Pike's surprise, the traveler confirmed most of the original tale, with only a few changes in detail: Mr.

Higginbotham had been murdered, the traveler said, not by a "'colored man,1" but by "'an

Irishman' acting alone"' (9:111). Having now been corrected twice, Pike was more cautious about repeating the tale-and especially so about representing himself as the authority for its truth. Thus, he introduced a more qualified account to his audience at

Parker's Falls. He claimed, for instance, to be "not. . . positive as to the date" of the murder and "uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto, or by the son of Erin alone" (9:112). "Neither," the narrator tells us, "did . .. [Pike] profess to relate it on his own authority . . . but mentioned it as a report generally diffused" (9:112).

Still, despite these precautions, Pike's story generated considerable excitement, especially when the Parker's Falls Gazette published its own story which amplified, and thus further falsified, the story which Pike now alleged to be true. Pike's celebrity as the source of the story was shortlived, however, because eye-witnesses-including Higginbotham's own 99 niece-appeared on the scene to disprove once again Pike's story. The townspeople summarily ran Pike out of town, sparing him from tar and feathers because of the niece's eloquent appeal on his behalf.

Even though Pike's story had twice been transformed from fact to falsehood, Pike remained dissatisfied that the truth had been uncovered. Convinced that at least some of the evidence corroborated the original report, Pike decided to check on the truth himself.

Approaching the toll-house near Kimballton at dusk, Pike exchanged words with the toll­ man and learned that Mr. Higginbotham had just passed the gate in a hurry to be at home by eight o'clock. Pike followed Higginbotham and arrived just in time to save his life: "

. . . [Pike] rushed forward, prostrated a sturdy Irishman with the butt-end o f his whip and found-not, indeed, hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree, but trembling beneath it, with a halter round his neck-the old, identical Mr. Higginbotham!" (9:119). The narrator clarifies the "simple machinery" (11:119) of the mystery:

Three men had plotted the robbery and murder o f Mr. Higginbotham: two of them, successively, lost courage and fled, each delaying the crime one night, by their disappearance; the third was in the act of perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of Dominicus Pike. (9:120)

As romantically befits such a romantic hero, Pike, the narrator reports, received rewards: the hand of Mr. Higginbotham's niece in marriage and the wealth and property of Mr.

Higginbotham upon his death, wealth which Pike eventually used to establish "a large tobacco-manufactory" in the narrator's home town (9:120).

Even considered without its frame, the plot of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" suggests many tantalizing metafictional themes, for it is told by a narrator who exposes the difficulties his character has in controlling the story he tells about Mr.

Higginbotham's demise, although the narrator himself shows no signs of having similar problems. At its most rudimentary level, the story describes the act of storytelling as similar to the child's game of "telephone," in which a story becomes distorted as it is 100 passed along-filtered through a variety of personal perspectives. Arlin Turner would concur, for he refers to "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" as "simply a tale o f rumor"

(50). As Pike's tale evolves, says Turner, "the rumors are [proved to be] patently unreliable, [yet] dismissing them out of hand, the events prove, could have cost Mr.

Higginbotham his life" (51). Thus, even in rumor we may find a grain of truth. On a more philosophical level, James Folsom sees "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" as exploring "two orders of truth" (28)-"unimpeachable evidence" and "untrustworthy opinion" (28)-an opposition which Thomas Pauley refers to as the often indistinct line between "fact and fiction' (172). In this sense, "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" examines a narrative issue close to the heart o f Hawthorne: how to present "truth" as

Hawthorne puts it, "under circumstances, to a great extent, o f . • - [the author's] own choosing or creation" (Preface. The House o f the Seven Gables 1). After all, Hawthorne, like Dominicus Pike, aimed not "at a very minute fidelity" to detail (Preface, The House o f the Seven Gables 1), but to a larger, implicit truth, in general-the truth, as it were, of the human heart. But, of course, unlike Pike, Hawthorne is generally cautious about relating tales on his own authority.

Clearly, then, "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" comments thematically on the difficulty a narrator faces controlling both his narrative and his audience's response.

Still, unlike the tales we have analyzed so far, in "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" these themes remain at the level of description, rather than demonstration. That is, w e cannot read the text of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" as we have the texts of other narrators-as an exemplum of these themes-for unlike his character Dominicus Pike, the narrator carefully controls the substance, quality, direction, and outcome of his tale so that he does not risk exposure at the hands o f a narrator double, who, under less controlled circumstances, might have been Pike. Indeed, howevermuch Pike is a character who is also a storyteller, he does not participate in narrating along with his 101 creator. In terms of this tale's narration, then, Pike is not a narrator double, but simply a character whose voice and fate are controlled by the narrator.

A conspicuous difference between "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" and the other tales we have examined is the fact that the narrator and Pike never meet within the tale and thus have no opportunity for the sort o f mutually revealing encounter we have come to expect between narrator doubles. Nor, w e might note, does the narrator express toward Pike the ambivalence-the sort of tortured sympathy and aw[e]ful self- recognition-that has been the undoing of other narrators. The truth is, the narrator of

"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" remains distinct from Pike, as, for example, the primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack" is unable to do in relation to Hippocrates

Jenkins. Indeed, the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" maintains a safe, ironic distance from which he passes along tongue-in-cheek judgments which emphasize the differences between himself and Pike. H e is able, in other words, to distinguish himself from Pike, as the narrators we have examined thus far have been unable to do.

Of course, later in this discussion we will see that this is exactly what the frame narrator wants this narrator to accomplish in order to create a safe distance between himself and

Dominicus Pike through whom the frame narrator fantasizes.

Certainly, the narrator o f "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" differentiates himself from Pike intellectually. In fact, the narrator treats Pike with the condescension that one of superior intellect might reserve for an inferior. He records, certainly, that Pike is "of excellent character, keen at a bargain" ( 9:1 0 6), "extremely polite" (9:114), and "funny"

(9:116), that is, capable o f laughing at his ow n predicament. But these attractive qualities he renders humorous by also remarking on Pike's less exemplary qualities, qualities which the narrator exploits in the rest of the story: Pike is "inquisitive . . . something of a tattler" (9:106); more importantly, Pike is self-absorbed and naive, unable to piece together the clues of the "riddle" that the narrator has already solved. For 102

example, the narrator questions, as Pike does not, the character of the man who initially

tells Pike o f Mr. Higginbotham's murder. According to the narrator, this man was "as ill-

looking a fellow as one would desire to meet, in a solitary piece of woods" (9:107)-a

man, the narrator implies, who surely might be suspect of criminal behavior. But Pike,

"as eager to hold a morning gossip, as a city shopkeeper to read the morning paper"

(9:107), greets the man warmly and, in fact, treats the man's story as fascinating gossip,

rather than as a confession. Later, the narrator again interprets details that Pike seems

incapable of interpreting-or, in fact, of even seeing. When Pike encounters the second

stranger who confirms, but alters, the original murder story. Pike remains stolidly blind

to detail. However, the narrator notes that the stranger has a "yellow hue" (9:110)-has, in fact, "a deep tinge of negro blood" (9:110). Given the alleged involvement of a Black man in the death of Mr. Higginbotham, this is scarcely a fact to be ignored. But Pike appears, at least initially, to do so. The narrator even seems embarrassed at Pike's myopia and feels he must explain, perhaps even apologize, for him: "Dominicus," he claims, "had spoken in too great a hurry to observe, at first. • • [the] yellow hue" of the stranger (9:110). Clearly here, as at the story's end (when he impatiently explains the

tale's "simple machinery" [9:119]), the narrator is emphasizing that certainly he and most likely the reader as well are capable of unraveling the "riddle" which Pike is too obtuse

to solve except, at the behest o f the narrator, by accident.

The narrator exposes Pike's deficiencies but allows Pike no opportunity for rebuttal, no chance to subvert the narrator's text and reveal the narrator as a fraud, by carefully controlling what he allows Pike to say-and think. When Pike does speak, as he does from time to time, his remarks are innocuous: they consist o f greetings ("'Good morning mister...'" [9:107]), questions (’"What's the latest news at Parker's Falls?"' [9:107]), the occasional platitude or ingenuous exclamation ("'111 news travels fast. . . but this beats rail-roads'" [9:108]), or his embarrassed recanting ("'I don't say I saw the thing done'" 103

[9:109]). We are, of course, more often made privy to Pike's thoughts. But we may indeed question whether the narrator records Pike's thoughts or simply renders what

Pike, given his character, probably thought. The narrator uses an indirect free style in entering Pike's consciousness, a style which obscures the line between what Pike is really thinking and what the narrator wants us to perceive Pike is thinking. In this way, the narrator is able to poke even more fun at Pike. He does so, for example, after Pike has been run out of Parker's Falls. Here he exposes Pike's grandiose sense of his own celebrity by "recording" Pike's thoughts:

Being a funny rogue, his heart soon cheered up; nor could he refrain from a hearty laugh at the uproar which his story had excited. The handbills of the selectmen would cause the commitment of all the vagabonds in the State; the paragraph in the Parker's Falls Gazette would be re-printed from Maine to Florida, and perhaps form an item in the London newspapers; and many a miser would tremble for his money-bags and life, on learning the catastrophe of Mr. Higginbotham. (9:116)

More frequently, though, the narrator employs the indirect free style to illustrate how obtuse Pike is. When, for example, Pike encounters the "yellow man" but fails to connect the stranger's race to that of one of the alleged murderers, the narrator reinforces how unperceptive Pike is:

. .. Dominicus stared after him [the stranger] in great perplexity. If the murder had not been committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet who had foretold it, in all its circumstances, on Tuesday morning? If Mr. Higginbotham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the mulatto, at above thirty miles distance, to know he was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the unfortunate man was hanged at all? (9:111)

The narrator, intent always on emphasing Pike's naivete, in contrast to his own sophistication and deductive powers, uses the same strategy toward the end of the tale, when Pike decides he has to see for himself whether Mr. Higginbotham is alive or dead:

As he [Pike] approached the scene of the supposed murder, he continued to revolve the circumstances in his mind, and was astonished at the aspect which the whole case assumed. Had nothing occurred to corroborate the 104

story of the first traveller, it might now have been considered as a hoax; but the yellow man was evidently acquainted with the report or the fact; and there was a mystery in his dismayed and guilty look, on being abruptly questioned. (9:117)

As one who has shaped the tale from beginning to end, the narrator certainly knows the answers to Pike's questions, and thus, if he "becomes" Pike, it is only to emphasize just how groping and callow Pike is at understanding matters too complex and sophisticated for him. In fact, at the end, the narrator abandons Pike's consciousness altogether because he is impatient to conclude the story and to reinforce his own credibility. After all, he has hoax-proof powers of observation:

If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the simple machinery, by which this "coming event" was made to "cast its shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr. Higginbotham; two o f them, successively, lost courage and fled, each delaying the crime one night, by their disappearance; the third was in the act o f perpetration, when a champion, blindly obeying the call of fate, like the heroes of old romance, appeared in the person of Dominicus Pike. (9:119-20)

Of course, even here he takes a final swipe at what he regards as his character's absurdly romantic-even chivalric-defense of Mr. Higginbotham by prostrating "a sturdy Irishman with the butt-end of his whip" (9:119). And he ends the tale quickly, rewarding Pike with a new bride, a new "father," and enough o f a fortune that he can give up his itinerant life and become a village tycoon.

Clearly, the narrator is the authoritative voice of the tale. Even though he allows himself the luxury of entering Pike's mind to exploit the humor o f Pike's naivete, he does not allow Pike the sort of reciprocal luxury of entering his mind that we have seen primary narrators, to this point, allow their narrator doubles to have. As a result, the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" resists subversion at the hands o f Pike by not relinquishing narrative responsibility of any sort to him. This narrator, then, is the single, controlling voice o f the tale. The authority is his. 105

He is also the only credible source of truth for the tale-something we must consider, since authority and veracity are separate issues. Pike, as we have seen, speaks often as an authority, only to have his veracity questioned-his authoritative "truth" proven false.

But here, too, the narrator proves invulnerable. The narrator's strategies, in fact, direct us to regard authority and veracity as equivalent. While the narrator may be imaginatively embellishing his story in the same way Pike does, he does not seem to be. In fact,

Michael Dunne suggests that the narrator relies on creating a strong illusion of experiential fact as the objective basis of his authority and thus of his veracity. Dunne says that the narrator establishes this base of truth by indulging in what Gerard Genette calls "metalepsis." That is, the narrator attributes "an equivalent reality to fictional characters and narrators" (Dunne 39) and extends that reality to the reader. Or, put another way, the narrator functions within a reality that he posits as objective, for it is his own, his characters', and his readers'. In this posited reality, the narrator and Dominicus

Pike share roots (Pike has a "large tobacco-manufactory" in the narrator's "native village"

[9:120]); the narrator knows that the Yankees approve of Pike's shrewd business dealings because he has "heard them" appraise Pike (9:106); and "everybody knows"

(9:lll)-including the reader-the character and quality of Parker's Falls.

In this hermetically sealed environment of his own creation, the narrator feels comfortable that his authority will be equated with truth, especially when he has posited a home-grown reader who shares his experience and intellect. Indeed, this cozy relationship between the narrator and his home-grown reader allows the narrator to assume a broad base of shared experience such that the reader will understand and appreciate his irony. If "everybody knows" that Parker's Falls is not a very thriving town

(only "as thriving . . . as three cotton-factories and a slitting mill can make it" [9:111]), then presumably, everybody also knows the Yankee character ("They would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one" [9:106]) and the tendency of lawyers and 106 pretty girls to be loquacious ("The couple were struck speechless, though one was a lawyer and the other a young girl" [9:113]). Moreover, everybody must likewise know

Pike and be as amused at him as the narrator is. Certainly, then, the reader is no more likely than Pike to expose the narrator as a fraud.

To be sure, we are not the narrator's homebred reader and thus may be less likely to accept this narrator as both authority and truth-teller. We may not even like this narrator very much, inclined as he is to display a smug sense o f self-worth by directing jokes at lawyers, young girls, and ingenuous tobacco-pedlars. We may even want this narrator to topple-to have to endure the sort of humiliation Dominicus Pike endured. We may also be skeptical of the narrator's commitment to fact, especially in light of Pike's exposure as an unreliable storyteller. Certainly there is at least the possibility that, like Dominicus

Pike, this narrator is also embellishing a piece of local gossip into an effective tale and is thus subject to the same humorous exposure as Pike. Actually, Michael Dunne implies as much when he claims that "the narrator [of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe"] is not inventing his discourse whimsically-ar least not entirely-b\il is basing it—af least in part-on his own experience in the 'real' world" (39; my italics). Clearly, the qualifications Dunne applies to his generalization suggest his own skepticism regarding the mix o f "whimsy" and experiential fact in the narrator's tale. More significantly, though, Dunne's statement hints at the degree to which we are left without criteria to distinguish between the narrator's use o f fact and fiction. The truth is, we are not given, as we are with Pike's tale, access to information that either corroborates or corrects what the narrator tells us. Howevermuch w e may hold the narrator suspect, he is our only source o f authority and truth. He permits no one the means of subverting his tale.

Dominicus Pike is not the narrator, and the narrator is no Dominicus Pike.

But the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is the narrator of "Passages from a Relinquished Work," the introductory matter Hawthorne originally intended as a 107 frame. That is, the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is the creation o f the frame narrator. A s a result, the two exist in a doubling relationship. However, this doubling relationship is different from those we have seen thus far. Here the frame/primary narrator is not rendered vulnerable to further psychological exposure by his double as in "Alice Doane's Appeal," "The Devil in Manuscript," and even the initial segment of "The Haunted Quack." Instead, here, the created self protects the frame narrator by being what he wishes he could be-so self-contained as to permit no breach of his psyche, so self-possessed as to preserve "the immunities of a private character" *0 which the frame/primary narrator fears "relinquishing" so much (10:415). In this case, it is the frame/primary narrator who appears to us as the guilt-ridden, self-conscious, and self-tormented individual driven by self-recrimination that we have come to associate with narrator doubles-not with primary narrators-at least until they are exposed. Thus, if only for a little while, the frame narrator may live through his created narrator as a self- contained, invulnerable storyteller. More significantly, through the character his created narrator controls, the frame narrator controls his own life, mitigates his guilt, and prospers as a respectable member o f society. Because the frame narrator projects himself as the created narrator, we can see that the created narrator is no more disinterested in the fate o f Dominicus Pike than the primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack" is in that of

Hippocrates Jenkins. The created narrator's presumed disinterest is a cover for a very interested party-the frame narrator, whose desires are acted out by Pike.

The focus of "passages from a Relinquished Work" is very different from that of "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe," for "Passages from a Relinquished Work" is psychologically revealing. The narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" recounts the tale of someone else-that of Dominicus Pike whose storytelling endures challenges but ultimately brings him the rewards of family, wealth, and social position. In contrast, the narrator of "Passages from a Relinquished Work" retrospectively explores his own life as a storyteller-as, in fact, the brooding Oberon, a figure alluded to in "Alice Doane's

Appeal" and mentioned explicitly in "The Devil in Manuscript."H The life he describes

has made him "a bitter moralist," convinced that "fame is a humbug" and that its rewards

are "an accident... bestowed on mistaken principles" (10:420). Moreover, in choosing

this way o f life, he sees himself as forever alienated from society, indeed from the only

father-figure he has ever known: his guardian, whom he now sees only in dreams-as

from a world beyond. Even as his story frames "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," it has

its own wholeness, too, for the narrator tells it to expose a personally revealing moment

fixed in his mind-the moment when, by burning his guardian's letter, he "made . . . [his]

irrevocable choice between [a] good and evil fate" (10:421)-the choice, it seems,

between continuing to tell stories or settling into a more conventional life of commerce,

companionship, and social responsibility.

He begins by recounting why he became an itinerant storyteller. Ill-suited

temperamentally for his up-bringing, the narrator describes his difficulty complying with

the strict training of his guardian, Parson Thumpcushion. Thumpcushion's forcible

preaching "with the whole weight of the great Bible" to hold "either the Old Nick or

some Unitarian infidel at bay" (10:406) suggests that he is not just a family "patriarch,"

but a religious one as well. Indeed, he is the representative of New England Puritanism,

a "puritanic figure" (10:421) at odds with the narrator's chosen profession. Orphaned,

the narrator believes that "it was . . . [his] chief misfortune . . . [not to have] father nor

mother alive" (10:406), for, he claims, "parents have an instinctual sagacity . . . [about]

the welfare of their children" (10:406) which no one else, "however conscientious," can

have (10:406). Reared according to strict morals, the narrator describes how he had been

"the subject o f daily prayer and the sufferer o f innumerable stripes" (10:405) at the hands

of his guardian who-to the parson's dubious credit-made no distinction in his "paternal

love" between the narrator and "his own three boys" (10:405). However, explains the 109 narrator, this rigid upbringing affected him differently than it did the Parson's sons.

Indeed, he says, the sons became "all respectable men, and well-settled in life" (10:405):

the "eldest. . . [became] a successor to his father's pulpit, the second . . . a physician, and

the third . . . a partner in a wholesale shoe store" (10:405). The narrator, on the other

hand, describes himself as "wayward and fanciful" (10:407). As a result, he says, he

determined to keep "aloof from the regular business o f life," to indulge in "a piece of

light-hearted desperation," and to take up the life o f "a wandering storyteller" (10:407).

But because he must leave home and abandon the principles of his guardian to take

up "the fripperies of the theatre" (10:421), the narrator cannot escape feeling guilty. He claims to understand why the Parson had been "invariably stem and severe" (10:406), and he calls him "a good and wise man" whose "management [of him had simply] failed"

(10:406). But, at the same time, he identifies his "chief motives" in choosing his wayward occupation as "discontent with home, and a bitter grudge against Parson

Thumpcushion; who would rather have laid . . . [him] in . . . [his] father's tomb, than seen . . . [him] either a novelist or an actor; two characters which . . . [he] thus hit upon a method of uniting" (10:408). Still, he has mixed emotions, for regardless of the

"delicious excitement. . . [and] the freedom" (10:410) he felt "when .. . [he] gave up . . .

[his] home" (10:410), he describes how he continued to feel the severe presence of

Parson Thumpcushion wherever he went. In fact, from the start he fears being thwarted by his guardian. He says he "determined not to enter on . . . [his] profession within a hundred miles of home" and even then "to cover [himself] with a fictitious name . . . as otherwise Parson Thumpcushion might have put an untimely catastrophe to . . . [his] story" (10:411). Even so, he is unable to avoid the stem parson. After his performance of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," he received a letter from his guardian which, he

tells us, he "never read," although its receipt "affected. . . [him] most painfully" 110

(10:421):

I seemed to see the puritanic figure of my guardian, standing among the fripperies of the theatre, and pointing to the players,-the fantastic and effeminate men, the painted women, the giddy girl in boy's clothes, merrier than modest-pointing to these with solemn ridicule and eyeing me with stem rebuke. His image was a type of the austere duty, and they of the vanities of life. (10:421)1“ To this day, the narrator claims, he dreams of Parson Thumpcushion who "looks kindly and sorrowfully at... [him], holding out his hand, as if each [he and the narrator] had something to forgive" (10:406-07). And the narrator clearly longs to be back in the fold-but, he knows, not in this life: "With such kindness and such forgiveness, but without the sorrow, may our next meeting be!" (10:407). Still, he understands how unlikely any absolution, outside of fiction, is, for, in burning the letter without reading it, he had "made . .. [his] irrevocable choice between [a] good and evil fate" (10:421). In terminating the relationship with his surrogate father, the narrator has effectively "killed" him and has excised himself from the community of human beings.

Besides the illusory "presence" of his guardian, the narrator is accompanied by a man who seems to be a physical reminder of the Parson's values. Encountering the itinerant preacher, Eliakim Abbott, in the woods and breaking bread with him, the narrator strikes up an odd friendhsip with Abbott. In fact, the narrator claims, "Without any formal compact, we kept together, day after day, till our union appeared permanent" (10:415).

While "perhaps . . . [their] roads are not the same" (10:414), the narrator being inclined toward worldly happiness, Abbott toward spiritual, neither cares where he actually goes.

Home, after all, is "every where or no where" to the narrator (who "gave up . . . [his] home, and took the whole world in exchange" [10:410]) and "no where" (10:414) to

Abbott (who disdains a "home" in this "transitory world" [10:414]). As a result, they may be "pilgrims and wanderers" together (10:414). Moreover, the narrator tells us that he saw a curious resemblance between himself and Abbott: not only were they about the I ll same age, but, as the narrator says, "we were a singular couple, strikingly contrasted, yet curiously assimilated, each of us remarkable enough by himself, and doubly so in each other's company" (10:415). Even though their values are clearly different (Abbott conducts a pathetically attended "religious meeting" [10:418], while the narrator is telling "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" before a packed hall), the narrator concludes,

"I could never have thought of deserting" him (10:415). And indeed he does not. Even after the narrator's humiliating performance-even after he burns his guardian's letter-the narrator still maintains an alliance with Abbott whose presence can scarcely be a comfort to him. "As we walked onward," the narrator reports, "following the same road, on two such different errands, Eliakim groaned in spirit, and labored, with tears, to convince me of the guilt and madness of my life" (10:421).

Certainly we cannot discount the notion that Abbott is the visible presence of the absent Thumpcushion. Not a narrator double, since he, like Dominicus Pike, has no narrative responsibilities, Abbott is clearly a psychological double who, at the very least, reinforces what the narrator has already told us about his troubled soul. Certainly, by not allowing Abbott to narrate, the narrator does prevent Abbott from providing what might be some dreadful specifics regarding the narrator’s guilt-the sort of specifics that we have seen uncontrolled narrator doubles reveal in other tales. But Abbott is such a thinly veiled psychological double that, even though he does not tell a story, his very presence informs against the narrator and suggests that this frame narrator barely subdues a potential narrator double, unlike his created narrator who easily controls Dominicus Pike.

"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" and its frame, "Passages from a Relinquished

Work," then, function quite well as independent, even contrasting, works. Each is dominated by a single voice, but one is resolute, the other vacillating; one is confident, the other insecure; one tells a story of success, the other of failure; one speaks of vindication, the other of guilt; and one relies on the illusion of objective truth, while the 112 other is clearly subjective. These contrasts, however, are what relate the two tales, for in the frame narrator's tale we see demonstrated the metafictive themes described in "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe" which show us that "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is actually more psychologically charged than it seems to be. In fact, the hermetically sealed environment o f the narrator o f "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" becomes less so when we realize that the narrator o f "Passages from a Relinquished Work" has created it,

insofar as he has created its narrator. Thus, through his created narrator, he has also determined that Mr. Higginbotham (a projection of his "father") shall live and that

Dominicus Pike (a projection of himself) shall reap the benefits o f his accidental

heroism.

Actually, the "worlds" of the two tales intersect at various points in the plot. The frame narrator, for example, is acquainted with Dominicus Pike—and under circumstances very similar to the created narrator's acquaintance with the tobacco-pedlar. Pike, we

learn, lives in the frame narrator's home town, too. A s he describes his farewell to his

village, the frame narrator refers to several buildings lost in the mist-among them,

"Dominicus Pike's tobacco-manufactory an affair o f smoke, except the splendid image of

an Indian chief in front" (10:410). Of course, by inference, then, the frame and created

narrators come from the same native village. Additionally, the frame narrator, like the

created narrator, even metaleptically draws the reader into his universe-the same reader,

we presume, that the created narrator invokes to appreciate his humor about Parker's

Falls. The frame narrator, in fact, suggests that the reader probably knows him-at least

by reputation: "I take it for granted," he says, "that many of my readers must have heard

of me, in the wild way of life which I adopted" (10:407). However, the most notable

convergence of the two narrative worlds occurs in a single sentence o f the original

version of the tale when the frame narrator becomes the created narrator of "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe." In this sentence, as printed in the N ew England Magazine. 113 the title, "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" (centered and in capital letters) is grammatically the conclusion of the frame narrator's sentence and simultaneously the first words the created narrator speaks:

After such a salutation, the celebrated Story Teller felt almost ashamed to produce so humble an affair as

MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE

Thus, a sentence that the frame narrator begins, the created narrator of "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe" concludes. Clearly, the two narrators merge at this point, even though the frame narrator creates in his narrator double a personality vastly different from his own. By doing so, he creates the narrator he would like to be-one secure enough to laugh off, by laughing at, a character (Dominicus Pike) who, very like the frame narrator, struggles with his Protean material and is humiliated by his fickle audience. Of course, as we shall see, it is through his created narrator's character that the frame narrator projects himself as gaining what he personally regrets losing in becoming a storyteller.

There is little doubt that the frame narrator has a different personality from his created narrator. The frame narrator is less authoritative, decisive, and objectively truthful, for he is less inclined to ground his story in experiential fact and more inclined to indulge in morbid self-reflection and self-recrimination. Indeed, while their objective reality is the same, the frame narrator treats that reality more subjectively than his created narrator does. In fact, he embellishes his tale much as Dominicus Pike apparently does. Unlike his created narrator, then, the frame narrator is a romantic, prone to follow the will o' the wisp of fortune and fame wherever sign and symbol direct him-perhaps "the whirling of a lea f. . . the green bough, that beckoned. . . or the naked branch that pointed its withered finger onward" (10:411). Picturing his own itinerant life as akin to a romantic quest of the likes of Childe Harold and Don Quixote (10:412), he 114 even renders his leave-taking as the stuff of legend and fantasy. He bids good-bye to his home town, which is shrouded in "a heavy mist" (10:409) and already appearing "more like memory than reality" (10:410). With a "thin vapor. . . diffused through the atmosphere," the streets and buildings seem so "insubstantial" that the narrator remarks on the singularity o f the scene: "that such an unromantic scene should look so visionary"

(10:409). And, as he sets out on his journey, he sees himself as advancing "beneath the misty archway of futurity" (10:411) not to return until he has "been quite round the globe" (10:414).

As "Passages from a Relinquished Work" illustrates, the frame narrator's haphazard romanticism has consequences that affect the "exercise . . . [of his] narrative faculty"

(10:408), for instead of following a careful plan, he indulges, unlike his created narrator, in a "flow of fancy" and responds to "the warm gush of new thought" (10:408)-phrasing which recalls the auto-erotics of the narrator double in "The Devil in Manuscript." As a result, even now his storytelling resists strict chronology as it embraces self-flageilation in "fictional autobiography" (Weber 15). Further, he claims to have less control over his materials than we see him exerting when he speaks through his created narrator. He describes, for example, his rather uncontrolled method of invention:

I manufactured a great variety of plots and skeletons of tales, and kept them ready for use, leaving the filling up to the inspiration o f the moment, though I cannot remember ever to have told a tale, which did not vary considerably from my preconceived idea, and acquire a novelty of aspect as often as I repeated it. Oddly enough, my success was generally in proportion to the difference between the conception and accomplishment. I provided two or more commencements and catastrophes to many of the tales.... (10:417)

It is here as well that he admits toying with the lives of his characters-an admission more explicit than that of the primary narrator in "The Haunted Quack." Indeed, the frame narrator admits that the lives of his characters hang on a narrative thread-their lives or deaths determined by his whim. He tells us that before he performed "Mr. 115

Higginbotham's Catastrophe" the tale was "as yet an unfilled plot; nor, even when I stepped upon the stage, was it decided whether Mr. Higginbotham should live or die"

(10:418). Clearly, it is his created narrator who decides to allow Mr. Higginbotham to live, and, thereby, the frame narrator relieves himself of guilt.

The frame narrator is also more self-conscious than his created narrator. When he metaleptically refers to his readers, he does so to confirm their negative feelings about him because they know his "wild" ways. The created narrator, however, refers to the reader to confirm his positive qualities, especially his veracity. Thus, the frame narrator is more inclined than his created narrator to feel that he will implicate himself personally in his own tale. Because he is so steeped in sign and symbol that he sees significance in everything, he is more sensitive than usual about his image. Even as he decides to become a storyteller, he knows how others will react. He confesses to an inordinate apprehension about the New England reaction to his "dangerous resolution" (10:407).

His "quick sensitiveness to public opinion" (10:407) tells him he has chosen a profession that others equate with idleness and evil. As a result, he feels that others rank him "with the tavem-haunters and town-paupers-with the drunken poet. . . and the broken soldier..." (10:407). Moreover, he has a particularly strong fear of failure. Before he gave his first performance, he tells us, "a slight tremor seized him" (10:415). Indeed, following that performance-which actually was a "failure" (10:415)-he has the door­ keeper "refund the whole receipts" (10:415-16) to soothe his conscience for his debacle, and he is "gratified" with applause, "by way of offset to the hisses" (10:416). He actually claims to have been only "angry and excited, not depressed" by these circumstances

(10:416). But he also admits that "this event. . . in anticipation [would have been] a thing to make a man shoot himself, or run a muck, or hide himself in caverns where he might not see his own burning blush" (10:416). Certainly, then, at the heart of the frame narrator's problems as a storyteller is his fear of personal exposure and public abuse. In 116 fact, he confides as much to us: "A slight tremor seized me, whenever I thought of relinquishing the immunities of a private character, and giving every man, and for money, too, the right, which no man yet possessed, of treating me with open scorn" and abuse (10:415).

To prevent his storytelling, then, from laying bare his soul to the world, the frame narrator creates the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe." By transforming himself into the polished narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," the frame narrator protects himself from "relinquishing the immunities of a private character"

(10:415) that he fears relinquishing so much. Thus, he may safely indulge in wish- fulfillment through the character of Dominicus Pike that the created narrator describes.

Certainly by assuming the identity of an invulnerable narrator, both distant and distinct from Pike, the frame narrator may transcend his fear of failure and of further personal exposure as a storyteller. As the created narrator, his authority and veracity (grounded in what seems experiential fact) would not be questioned by the posited reader as that reader might question his romantic self-indulgence in the frame. And most important, as the created narrator, he becomes a storyteller whose ironic distance from his character protects his privacy, allowing him, with impunity, to tell a story that is really about himself as he wishes he were—a romantic hero rewarded for his behavior and reintegrated into the community by, significantly, a "father." At a distant remove, then, with his created narrator as a buffer, the frame narrator achieves that we sense he longs for-forgiveness by the Parson (and all the elements of society that he represents).

However different the created narrator is from both the frame narrator and

Dominicus Pike, clearly the frame narrator and Pike have a great deal in common. Pike's occupation as a tobacco-pedlar only slightly distracts us from seeing the many similarities: both are itinerants; both tell stories; both desire the approval of audiences and are willing to embellish "truth" to be effective; and both suffer humiliation in the 117 practice of their arts. We must also remember that, like the frame narrator, Dominicus

Pike is only too willing to "kill off' Mr. Higginbotham in the interest o f telling a good story. Perplexed by the "yellow man's" strange corroborating.report, Pike begins to hope that Mr. Higginbotham is actually dead: "'Unhang the old gentleman! it's a sin, I know; but I should hate to have him come to life a second time, and give me the lie!'" (9:111).

Surely, this is a humorous rendition of the frame narrator's more tortured sacrifice of his

"father" to become a storyteller. Moreover, when Pike actually saves Mr.

Higginbotham's life and thereby gains a father[-in-law], we may conclude that the frame narrator is projecting himself into the "son" Parson Thumpcushion would have had him be-a respectable man, not a storyteller, but "well-settled in life" (10:405). In this sense, the "resurrection" of Mr. Higginbotham is the figurative equivalent of the frame narrator's resurrecting his own surrogate father, whom, for all intents and purposes, he had "killed" by choosing to become a storyteller. And the rewards Dominicus Pike receives-howevermuch "an accident. . . bestowed on mistaken principles" (10:420)-are at least romantically apt and represent, if not what the frame narrator wants, at least what he regrets losing by becoming a storyteller. By allowing his created narrator to exert control over the fate of Pike, the frame narrator is able, vicariously, to control his own life. Through his created narrator, the frame narrator has rendered himself into a character capable of being shaped into a participatory member of society.

"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," however briefly, is thus a self-liberating fiction for the narrator of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." Freed from the perils of self-reflexive storytelling, the frame narrator (in the person of his created narrator) averts the murder of a "father" and is thereby exonerated of the guilt he feels for having made in his life the same choice he may make in a fiction-the "killing" of a "father." Like the narrator of "The Haunted Quack," the frame narrator projects himself into a story that transcends his own psychological frame of reference allowing him, if only imaginatively, 118 to forge for himself a link in the magnetic chain of humanity, to integrate with society, rather than be excluded from it. However, also like "The Haunted Quack," this self- liberating fiction is a bubble-an ephemeral ideation. In fact, what "The Haunted Quack" merely hints at (the continuing possibility of guilt in storytelling), "Passages from a

Relinquished Work" and "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" make explicit (the certainty of guilt in being a storyteller). The truth is, no matter how well the created narrator controls his work, the frame narrator is still left vulnerable-both to public ridicule and to private censure. The created narrator, in fact, does not ultimately protect the frame narrator from humiliation, although we see this disgrace only when we reinsert the embedded tale into its frame. Following the performance of "Mr. Higginbotham's

Catastrophe," the created narrator does not have the final word. Instead, the frame resumes, and the frame narrator tells us what really happened during the performance.

He bitterly recounts his failure:

The success of the piece was incalculably heightened by a stiff queue o f horse-hair, which Little Pickle, in the spirit of that mischief-loving character, had fastened to my collar, where, unknown to me, it kept making the queerest gestures of its own, in correspondence with all mine. The audience, supposing that some enormous joke was appended to this long tail behind, were ineffably delighted, and gave way to such a tumult of approbation, that, just as the story closed, the benches broke beneath them, and left one whole row of my admirers on the floor. Even in that predicament, they continued their applause. (10:420)

The frame narrator's very success with his audience has brought him a bitter personal failure because his intentions are misunderstood. In front of his audience, his performance has exposed him as a horse's ass. No wonder he claims that "in after times

. . . [he] had grown a bitter moralizer" (10:420), convinced that "fame is a humbug"

(10:420). Howevermuch Pike's rewards had been an accident-howevermuch they were

"bestowed on mistaken principles" (10:420)-at least Pike became a child of fortune. He acquired a wife, a father[-in-law], wealth, a business-and respectability. Such is clearly 119 not the case of the frame narrator. He is a public failure and thus endures a private failure, too. By tearing up the Parson's letter without reading it, he makes his

"irrevocable choice" (10:421) between a life of good and a life of evil. He continues storytelling, never to be, like Dominicus Pike, in the good graces of a living father (and all that he represents), but to be instead in the perpetual company of Eliakim Abbott, the physical reminder of the "father" he shall never see again. A continual reminder of the frame narrator's guilt, "Eliakim groaned in spirit and labored, with tears, to convince [the frame narrator] of the guilt and madness of... [his] life" (10:421)-of his guilty life as a storyteller.

Thus, "The Haunted Quack" and "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe"/ "Passages from a Relinquished Work" differ from "Alice Doane’s Appeal" and "The Devil in

Manuscript" in addressing more specifically the means by which a storyteller may try to exonerate himself of guilt. In "Alice Doane's Appeal" and "The Devil in Manuscript" narrator doubles reveal the guilt that primary narrators would prefer to conceal. In "The

Haunted Quack" and "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe'VPassages from a Relinquished

Work," primary narrators struggle to create fictions which will vindicate themselves of the guilt they feel as storytellers. The primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack," having been exposed by his narrator double as a murderer, creates an alternative fiction in which his characters not only exonerate him (through his double), but include him (through his double) as a participatory member of society. Through a protective narrator double, the frame narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" casts himself as a character

(Dominicus Pike) and thereby imaginatively reshapes his own destiny. Thus, he compensates fictionally for the guilt he has felt in his own life.

But in neither case will Oberon's "white magic" hold. In the end, all of the stories we have examined suggest the tremendous extent of guilt that Hawthorne's narrators feel in their vocation: they are variously guilty of seduction, auto-eroticism, and "murder." 120

Although they may try to vindicate themselves through fictional wish-fulfillment, they are only partially or temporarily successful. Therefore, if "white magic" is fleeting—if

"black magic" alone is enduring-then little remains for Hawthorne's narrators. In fact, all that does remain, if the narrators wish to free themselves from this demonic power, is to give up storytelling altogether. As we shall see in our study of The House of the

Seven Gables. Hawthorne's narrator will imaginatively arrive at this conclusion, too, for he will convert the magic of Oberon to that of Prospero-and, like Prospero, he will, through his narrator double, abandon his art altogether and commit a kind of artistic suicide. 121

1 External evidence that "The Haunted Quack" is Hawthorne's rests primarily on a letter Hawthorne wrote to Goodrich on May 6,1830, in which Hawthorne refers to "two pieces" he is including "for The Token" (The T .etters: 1813-1843 205), "pieces" presumably for the 1831 edition which would be ready for sale during the Christmas season. In that edition, only "Sights from a Steeple," printed in the Token without attribution, is clearly identifiable as Hawthorne’s, for he reprinted it under his own name later in Twire-told Tales and had himself described as the author o f "Sights from a

Steeple" in publishing four other tales in the Token. But, in his "Historical Commentary" for the Centenary edition of The Snow-Imagp and Uncollected Tales. J. Donald Crowley says: "Assuming that Goodrich accepted both contributions from Hawthorne, 'The

Haunted Quack' is almost certainly the other piece" (399). Crowley supports his view by citing the internal evidence others have used to claim the tale as Hawthorne's:

Franklin Sanborn claimed it for the Hawthorne canon in 1898. Horace Scudder then included the tale in the Autograph Edition of 1 9 0 0 ... Sanborn called attention to Hawthomian characteristics in the tale: a contempt for the "meanness and triviality of village life," a persistent interest in the physician's potentially magical powers, and references to the potion, "The Antidote to Death, or the Eternal Elixir of Longevity." (399)

Moreover-and especially interesting in view of my study-Crowley suggests a similarity between "The Haunted Quack" and "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe": "In its farcical vein," he says, "the tale resembles 'Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe'" (399).

Other scholars, however, are more skeptical than Crowley, less willing to assume that

Goodrich indeed printed both of the stories Hawthorne claimed to have sent him.

Thomas Woodson, for example, indicates his doubt in an explanatory note regarding

Hawthorne's letter to Goodrich. Here Woodson draws our attention to Hawthorne's claim in his letter that he has "complied with . . . [Goodrich's] wishes in regard to brevity" (The

Letters: 1813-1843 205). According to Woodson, "His [Hawthorne's] second piece is 122 generally agreed . . . to be 'The Haunted Quack1" (205), but he qualifies his statement by pointing out the tale's "lack of brevity" (205).

However, it is important to note that the editors include "The Haunted Quack" as qualified by Woodson in the Centenary Edition, Volume 11, The Snow-Imaee and

Uncollected Tales (1974). It also appears as Hawthorne's in the Library of America Tales and Sketches (1982), a work edited by Roy Harvey Pearce.

2 Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Haunted Quack," The Snow-Image and Uncollected

Tales, eds. William Charvat, and others, vol. 11 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974) 251.

Subsequent parenthetical references to "The Haunted Quack" are presented thus:

(11:251).

3 The narrator o f Hawthorne's "The Haunted Mind" suggests how powerless a person may be to repress a conscience-especially at midnight:

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this,. . . the mind has a passive sensibility. . . without the power of selecting or controlling [its thoughts]. (306)

The same work implies the existence of the mind's capacity to imagine situations which fulfill a person's longings, much as the narrator of "The Haunted Quack" manipulates a fiction to present himself in a positive light. The narrator of "The Haunted Mind" thinks

"how pleasant in these night solitudes, would be the rise and fall of a softer breathing . . . the quiet throb of a purer heart.. ." (308). He pictures, in fact, a sensual relationship with a woman:

Her influence is over you, though she have no existence but in that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery spot, on the borders of sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise before you in pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a pervading gladsomeness and beauty. (308) 123

According to this narrator, however, neither the hideous revelations nor the joyous wish fulfillment are within the control of their creator. According to the narrator, "In both

[hideous revelation and joyous wish-fulfillment] you emerge from mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly control, and are borne onward to another mystery" (309).

4 This pose is especially common among the narrators of Hawthorne's sketches. In

"Sights from a Steeple," for example, the narrator declares that such an aloof posture is

"the most desirable mode o f existence" (192). He refers to the value of being "a spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to himself' (192).

The narrator of another sketch, "The Toll-Gatherer's Day: A Sketch o f Transitory

Life" expresses a similar longing for detachment:

. . . how pleasant a miracle, could life be made to roll its variegated length by the threshold of.. . [the observer’s] own hermitage and the great globe, as it were, perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before his eyes without whirling him onward in its course. (205)

^ The reference is to I.iii.146 of Macbeth. It is at least interesting to note that the primary narrator quotes Macbeth while Macbeth is struggling to remain uninvolved in events he hopes (but doubts) may unfold without his active participation-a posture he is unable to maintain.

^ The reference is to II.ii.43-44 of Romeo and Juliet. For rhetorical emphasis, the narrator double adjusts the quotation slightly, revealing his erudition even more astoundingly. The original reads, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

7 Nathaniel Hawthorne,''Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," Twice-told Tales, eds.

William Charvat, and others, vol. 9 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974) 106. Subsequent 124 parenthetical references to "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" are presented thus:

(9:106).

8 Alfred Weber provides the background:

In 1832 Hawthorne made a trip through New England and upstate New York on account of a projected book which was to be quite different from the three preceding works which had brought him no public recognition: the "Seven Tales of My Native Land," written in the Gothic manner; the "Provincial Tales," a collection of historical tales about the colonial past of New England; and Fanshawe. his first book-length romance. (14)

According to Weber, Hawthorne believed that this book would provide him with the literary reputation he had wanted for so long. However, says Weber, such was not to prove true:

[Hawthorne] completed . . . The Storyteller in 1834 as a framed cycle of stories in two manuscript volumes, but it was never published as a whole. Only a number of stories and parts of the frame appeared piecemeal in various periodicals and gift books from 1834 to 1882. (14)

9 In his attempt to reconstruct the outline of The Storyteller as Hawthorne originally conceived it, Alfred Weber identifies two major portions of the work that were published: "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" inserted in its frame, in two installments of the New England Magazine (November-December, 1834); and "Fragments from the

Journal of a Solitary Man," in the American Monthly Magazine (July, 1837).

"Fragments ..." was intended, says Weber, as "the conclusion of the original framed story cycle" (14). Weber believes, however, that this published version is unlike

Hawthorne's original in some respects.

Close analysis shows that [Park] Benjamin [editor of the New England Magazine and later the American Monthly Magazine] tampered with Hawthorne's text and composed these "Fragments" out of the remaining unpublished sections of the work. So an attempt at a reconstruction of the outlines of "The Storyteller" can proceed from the fact that the opening sections appeared in their original form, exactly as Hawthorne had written them. We also know that the 125

"Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man" [simply] formed, or contained, the conclusion of "The Storyteller." (14)

Thus, we may conclude that the only intact portion of Hawthorne's original text of The

Storyteller is the beginning frame (later published separately as "Passages from a

Relinquished Work") and its embedded tale (later published separately as "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe").

I® Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Passages from a Relinquished Work," Mosses from an Old

Manse, eds. William Charvat, and others, vol. 10 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974) 415.

Subsequent parenthetical references to "Passages from a Relinquished Work" are presented thus: (10:415).

11 In treating The Storyteller as a unit, Weber confidently identifies the frame narrator as Oberon, even though the name does not appear until "very much later in the conclusion of the frame ['Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man']" (15).

According to Weber, the frame narrator "adopts" this fictitious name "[i]n order to evade inquiries about his doings and whereabouts" on the part of his guardian, Parson

Thumpcushion (15). Weber sees in this Oberon "a writer who has had no success in life and who can give meaning to his failed existence only by presenting it as a warning example to all those who in their youth tend also to become victims of tempting dreams

and false ambitions" (15).

1“ This passage is reminiscent of the conclusion of Hawthorne's earlier fiction, "The

Seven Vagabonds," in which "a travelling preacher of great fame among the Methodists"

(368) appears strangely out of place among a group of itinerant show people sheltered

from a passing storm in a show-man's covered wagon. In the presence of the "old

magician" (352), the "book pedlar" (354), the musician, the dancing damsel, "the fortune

teller" (360), the "Penobscot Indian" (369), and the narrator (who has joined the party as

an "itinerant novelist" [366]), the minister appears as a stem reminder of religion: 126

"Onward he came sticking up in his saddle with rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in rusty black" (368). Discovering that the camp meeting is over, the Vagabonds part, the narrator joining himself with the Indian in traveling to Boston. But the appearance o f the grave minister is enough to throw "a pensive shadow across. . . [the] mind" of the narrator (369). Interestingly, J. Donald Crowley in his "Historical Commentary," volume

9, of the Centenary Edition o f Twice-told T ales, says that '"The Seven Vagabonds' [was

Hawthorne’s] probable early attempt at an introductory sketch for the collection [The

Storyteller]" (492). 127

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crowley, J. Donald. Historical Commentary. Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 10:499-536.

—. Historical Commentary. The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:379-409.

—. Historical Commentary. Twice-told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat. and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 1974. 9:485-533.

Dunne, Michael. "Varieties of Narrative Authority in Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales." South Atlantic Review 54.4 119891: 33-49.

Folsom, James K. Man's Accidents and God's Purposes: Multiplicity in Hawthorne's Fiction. New Haven: College and UP. 1967.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Custom House." The Scarlet Letter. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1962. 1:3-45.

—. "The Haunted Mind." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 1974. 9:304-09.

—. "The Haunted Quack." The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:251-65.

—. The Letters: 1813-1843. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984. 15:205.

—. "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:106-20.

—. "Passages from a Relinquished Work." Mosses from an Old Manse. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 10:405-21.

—. Preface. The House of the Seven Gables. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965. 2:1-3. —. "The Seven Vagabonds." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:350-69.

—. "Sights From a Steeple." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:191-98.

—. "The Toll-Gatherer's Day: A Sketch of Transitory Life." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:205-12.

Pauley, Thomas H. '"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe': The Story Teller's Disaster." American Transcendental Quarterly 14 (19721: 171-74.

Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York, Barnes, 1961.

Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Viking, 1949.

Weber, Alfred. "The Outlines of 'The Story Teller,' the Major Work of Hawthorne's Early Years." Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 15.1 (1989): 14-19.

Woodson, Thomas. Note. The Letters: 1813-1843. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984. 15:205. CHAPTER IV

The House of the Seven Gables: From Oberon to Prospero

"Some authors. . . indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympa­ thy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out

the divided segment o f the writer's own nature, and complete his circle o f existence by bringing him into communion with it.""

-Hawthorne, "The Custom House," The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne did not limit his use of narrator doubles to his short fiction alone.

Although in The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hawthorne's first and perhaps most acclaimed

romance, Hawthorne used no narrator double, for his second full-length work, The

House o f the Seven Gables (1851), he returned to the strategy of doubling that, as we

have seen, he had used in some of his earlier short fiction. In fact, in The House of the

Seven Gables. Hawthorne created circumstances which allow his narrator to indulge in

wish-fulfillment-much as the narrators of "The Haunted Quack" and the framed "Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe" try to do. That is, once again Hawthorne experimented

with a narrative strategy which might ultimately relieve a narrator of the guilt inherent in

the storyteller's craft. Thus, ostensibly about the past's encroachment upon the present,

among other things, 1 The House of the Seven Gables not only confirms the efficacy of

retribution and renunciation for characters who break ties with the past and who re-estab­

lish social connectedness, but also establishes the means for a narrator to experience a

129 130 vicarious redemption through his narrator double’s return to a state of innocence and sub­ sequent re-entry into society with a new set of values.

Although most o f the story occurs in the "present," the narrator establishes at the beginning the past circumstances which reverberate through the years into the present.

The present is still affected by the consequences of the wrong Colonel Pyncheon com­ mitted against Matthew Maule by having him hanged for witchcraft sometime near the end o f the seventeenth century. By using history, legend, and fireside gossip as his authority, the narrator persistently suggests that greed for Maule land had motivated the

Colonel, thus provoking the curse o f the condemned wizard-"God will give him blood to drink. As if to suggest that the "wizard's" curse extended into perpetuity, the narrator tells how the Pyncheons whose conduct and character resemble those of Colonel

Pyncheon die in a similar manner-choking, it seems, on their own blood-and how other

Pyncheons, not as strong-willed and rapacious as their progenitor, simply decline, becoming progressively more impoverished and ineffectual.

When the narrator picks up his story in the present time, he chronicles the lives of the remaining Pyncheons and the only apparent surviving Maule (known to us throughout most of the story as Holgrave). He introduces us to Hepzibah Pyncheon, whose poverty has forced her to open a cent shop, but whose sense of her own gentility prevents her from being successful at her venture. He tells us about the mysterious appearance of

Clifford Pyncheon, an aging and peevish aesthete recently released from prison and delivered into the care o f his sister Hepzibah. He describes the arrival of the healthy country cousin Phoebe Pyncheon, whose brisk activities and cheerful countenance brighten the dark comers of the house and gladden the lives of the impoverished

Pyncheons. And he introduces the remaining iron-willed Pyncheon, Judge Jaffrey

Pyncheon, whose power, to a large degree, intimidates the other family members.

Indeed, the narrator makes clear that the Judge's physical likeness to the portrait of 131

Colonel Pyncheon and his obsession with recovering the deed to lost Pyncheon land in the East recall those qualities punishable by Maule's curse (as, in fact, he is punished!).

The narrator also speaks of Holgrave, apparently the last surviving Maule, who hovers on the fringe of activity at the House o f the Seven Gables, watching and waiting, it seems, for Destiny to take its course with the Pyncheons.

While, in general, the tone of the work is gloom (lightened by Phoebe's sunny dispo­ sition, hints about her budding romance with Holgrave and comic treatments of Ned

Higgins, Dixey, and Uncle Venner), the narrator provides an ending that is unexpectedly bright with promise. In fact, the curse on the Pyncheons is lifted as a result of two signal events: Holgrave's renunciation of his artistic power to subject others to his will; and

Judge Pyncheon's death, a retributive event that occurs with the narrative complicity of the narrator who, like the primary narrator of "The Haunted Quack," rids the stage, so to speak, of this character. In fact, the narrator of The House of the Seven Gables takes delight in his narrative "murder," for he actively heaps scorn on the Judge's corpse.

During these episodes the boundary between narrator and character is blurred, for

Holgrave renounces his power when his own storytelling reveals just how destructive this power is; and, in his taunting o f Judge Pyncheon's corpse, the narrator reduces him­ self, as John Caldwell Stubbs points out, "just about to the level of his characters" (96),^ thus demonstrating his active participation in his own narrative. It is by means of the narrator's retributive act and Holgrave's renunciatory one that Holgrave is redeemed. He and Phoebe, the youngest representatives of the Maule and Pyncheon families, express their love, marry, and move on to new, happier, and less memory-laden quarters-a move­ ment orchestrated by the narrator who bears the guilt of retribution for Holgrave so that he may be vicariously redeemed in Holgrave.

The fluidity of identity, hinted at elsewhere in the romance but made explicit in this virtual role reversal, suggests a metafictional aspect r>f The House of the Seven Gables 132 through which we may see psychological complications for the narrator. Indeed, if we examine the work from its metafictional perspective, a text which critics almost univer­ sally see as problematic becomes less so, for the work demonstrates Hawthorne's insis­ tent concern with the ethical and moral problems of storytelling and is consistent with what we have seen so far of Hawthorne's use of the narrator double to work out those concerns.

By far the most puzzling critical problem of The House of the Seven Gables is its peculiarly "light" ending which critics contend subverts Hawthorne's expressed moral purpose. As a result, critics variously describe the ending as "a kind of betrayal" (Gray

99) which is "inappropriately jolly" and "contrived" (Cunliffe 85-86), "ironic" (Brodhead

87), and "comic" (Von Abele 58). Still, Hawthorne clearly wished his work to end opti­ mistically and was undeniably pleased with the result, preferring The House of the Seven

Gables to The Scarlet Letter.^ Although Hawthorne offered no explicit reason for his preference, he persistently implied that he was partial to The House of the Seven Gables because it was his most successful attempt to inject into his writing the "cheering light" missing in The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne. The Letters: 1843-1853 312). Indeed, as he confided in a letter to E. A. Duyckinck, it had been his avowed purpose to bring The

House of the Seven Gables "to a prosperous close .. . [even as] the gloom of the past threw its shadow along the reader's pathway" (The Letters: 1843-1853 421). Moreover, as the romance resisted Hawthorne's efforts to control his story's tone, Hawthorne ago­ nized about his struggle. Writing to J. T. Fields, for example, he complained, "I shall probably get this book off my hands in two or three or four weeks. It darkens damnably towards the close, but I shall try hard to pour some setting sunshine over it" (The Letters:

1843-1853 376).

Why Hawthorne cared so much about lightening the tone of The House of the Seven

Gables is partially explainable in terms of Hawthorne's sensitivity to criticism of The 133

Scarlet Letter. As Richard Gray indicates, "The Scarlet Letter had been well received.

Sales, however, had not been overwhelming; and more than one critic had complained about its lack of'geniality'" (91). This criticism, according to Gray, "corresponded with

Hawthorne's own doubts about his first novel, and with his general feeling that an author could hedge his bets w ith his public by offering variety, something for everyone-or, as he put it, firing buckshot at them rather than one lump of lead" (91). As a result, says Gray,

Hawthorne "set about accommodating himself to this criticism" (91). Thus, to Gray,

"Hawthorne was guided by what he believed his public and critics wanted" (92).

However, Gray adds, Hawthorne was also guided by "what, to be fair, a part of him wanted as well" (92).

Although Gray minimizes the significance of Hawthorne's personal feelings, his ref­ erence to Hawthorne's psychological predilection is important, for howevermuch

Hawthorne desired approval fr°m publishers, critics, and the public, he appears to have sensed that bringing his romance to a "prosperous close" was personally desirable as well. In fact, Hawthorne suggested that the work was salubrious for him-perhaps even cathartic. In a letter to E. A. Duyckinck, April 27,1852, Hawthorne alluded to what

appears to have been the cleansing effect o f the work on himself: "It appears to me that

you like the book better than the Scarlet Letter; and I certainly think it a more natural

and healthy product o f m v mind, and felt less reluctance in publishing it" (The Letters:

1843-18531 421). Certainly such an evaluation has no relevance to Hawthorne's desire

for literary or financial success. But it does suggest that Hawthorne understood some­

thing o f the psychological implications of storytelling for the storyteller-enough so to

regard this narrative as "healthy" and, by extension, other narratives as possibly

"unhealthy." Richard Brodhead likewise senses a sort of psychological necessity for

Hawthorne to produce a cheerier tone in The House of the Seven Gables: "Hawthorne’s

wish to let the genial sunshine into his work expresses not merely a taste for a cheerier 134 sort of novel; diversity of tone and an open inclusiveness of subject are necessary to lead his fiction from sickness into health" (70).

Certainly, then, Hawthorne's assertion that The House of the Seven Gables is a "natu­ ral and healthy product of... [his] mind" lends credibility to this study which suggests that Hawthorne not only questioned the propriety, morality, and personal exposure of narrating, but also-through narrator doubling-tried ultimately to negotiate a means of freeing his narrators from the dark shadows of culpability. In fact, as we have seen so far, for Hawthorne, at least, storytelling is a dangerous, but potentially purgative art: dangerous in that it may implicate the storyteller as it exposes his guilt; purgative in that, if controlled, it allows a storyteller access to exoneration through wish-fulfillment. It is no wonder, then, that Hawthorne felt The House of the Seven Gables to be so satisfacto­ ry, for it is his longest, most complex, and, in many ways, most successful attempt to deal with these issues. Thus, Hawthorne's "light" ending is enigmatic only if we insist on believing absolutely Hawthorne's stated (but, admittedly, obligatory) theme. The ending is no longer perplexing if we view the work as metafictive-as, indeed, Hawthorne's attempt to solve the psychological problems of narrating.

A second critical issue concerning The House of the Seven Gables is its curiously paradoxical narrative voice-at once detached and intrusive, oscillating between a

"remarkably sensitive sympathy" and "almost ferocious scorn" (Cunliffe 88). In fact, because The House of the Seven Gables is so autobiographically allusive/* it is tempting to conclude that Hawthorne himself is discoverable within the text-his personality either apportioned to several characters or appearing as a single entity in the narrator.

Accordingly, critics have found no dearth of Hawthorne doubles among the characters in the work, for it is possible to see in any number of characters with artistic temperaments features of Hawthorne. In fact, as Richard Gray points out, we may perceive "that all the major characters are simply reflections of Hawthorne himself or, more generally, that 135 they represent conflicting aspects of the same single mind" (95).^ Given, then, the num­ ber of references in the work to the problematic role of the artist in society, it is but a small step to consider the possibility that Hawthorne is speaking in his own voice as the narrator. Richard Gray, in particular, adopts this position, claiming that "Hawthorne assumes an extraordinary intimacy of approach with his characters" (90):

He speaks to them directly, in love or hatred, almost as if he were one of them. Indeed, apostrophe, a vivid and often exclamatory form o f address, is one of the characteristic devices o f the novel: whether the author is chaffing Hepzibah, arguing with Holgrave, or revealing an almost embar­ rassingly personal sympathy for Clifford. (90-91)

Nor is Gray the only one to equate Hawthorne and his narrator-especially in relation to the death scene of the Judge. Roy R. Male, for instance, refers to this "macabre chapter" as one where "Hawthorne gloats over the Judge's death" (134); Frederick Crews insists that "both Hawthorne and his 'good' characters seem to despise and fear the villain of the

story" (72); and Richard Harter Fogle criticizes the "excess and disproportion" with which "Hawthorne . . . pursues his character [Judge Pyncheon] with an attitude akin to

hatred" (160). In fact, to Fogle, the scene is a failure because of "Hawthorne's lack of

sympathy with his creation" (160). Even Gloria Erlich, who distinguishes between the

narrator and the author in her analysis,^ ultimately equates the two: "The vindictive

chapter," says Erlich, is "spoken entirely in the author's voice" (143). This assumption

that Hawthorne is the narrator-whether intentional on the part of critics or inadvertant-is

so pervasive that John Caldwell Stubbs concludes, "virtually every critic to write on The

House of the Seven Gables has remarked on the fact that Hawthorne himself enters the work to tonguelash his villain with scornful irony" (97).

However, we must once again remind ourselves to be careful about such assump­

tions, for even as we acknowledge autobiographical links between Hawthorne and his

narrators, we are also aware of ironic gaps between them. Certainly the scene in The 136

House of the Seven Gables where the narrator exultantly raves at the Judge's corpse is a case in point. Indeed, it would be as ludicrous to ascribe the voice in this scene to

Hawthorne's personal voice as it would be to do so for the scene in "Alice Doane's

Appeal" where the narrator lecherously attempts to violate the two young girls. To real­ ize how carefully we must distinguish between the author and his narrator, we need only recall Douglas Robinson's absurd picture of Hawthorne as the "mad strolling gentleman who drags two girls up a hill and virtually holds them prisoner until after dark while he harangues them to the point of tears and takes what seems a somewhat monstrous glee in their plight" (214).

Actually, some critics of The House of the Seven Gables, like Marcus Cunliffe and

Joel Porte, are clearly uncomfortable with the Hawthorne/narrator equation, although they are reticent to say so outright. Cunliffe, for example, remarks that such "a passion of distaste and [such] a choleric mocking precision . . . [as the narrator directs toward the dead Judge] are unusual in Hawthorne" (89). Porte is somewhat less cautious than

Cunliffe. Porte claims that such "a Poesque taste for necrophilia is totally alien to the spirit of Hawthorne's writing" (83). Certainly, then, in examining The House of the

Seven Gables we may proceed as we have with other fictions in this study and work from the premise that here, too, Hawthorne and his narrator are not identical-that, like the characters Hawthorne comments on in his "Preface" to The House of the Seven Gables, the narrator, too, is "... really of the author's own making, or, at all events, of his own mixing" (3). Viewed in this way, the narrative voice of The House o f the Seven Gables is problematic principally if we regard that voice to be Hawthorne's and consider the

"voice" to be a peripheral concern of the work. The issue becomes less a problem if we view the work as metafictive-the narrator and his double a central concern of the work.

While we should regard Hawthorne as distinct from his narrator, we can see that

Hawthorne uses his narrative configurations to explore his concern about the 137 narrative/creative process.

Interestingly, howevermuch the narrator's openly venomous attack on a character may be, as Porte claims, "totally alien to the spirit of Hawthorne's writing," the narrator's general character-including a readiness to manipulate his materials and to judge and dis­ pose of his characters-is not, as we have seen, unprecedented. Actually, the narrator's character follows a recognizable pattern-one we have seen before-although, to be sure, the narrator of The House of the Seven Gables exercises less restraint-seems more aban- doned-in allowing his personality to emerge so blatantly. With this qualification in mind, however, we may see this narrator as similar to those we have examined earlier in this study. He is one whose agenda is to suggest detached observation, even as he intrudes upon and manipulates his own story. And his ultimate agenda, as w e have observed in "The Haunted Quack" and the framed "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe," is to resolve the guilt inherent in the hypocrisy of such a position by freeing his narrator double from it.

Because the narrator is so blatantly present even at the beginning of The House of the

Seven Gables, compared to the narrators I have discussed, he is more than usually sub­ ject, as an individual personality, to our scrutiny and evaluation. And from the start we can see that his role in the romance is active, rather than passive-auguring his virtual par­ ticipation in the chapter subject to so much critical debate-Chapter 18, "Governor

Pyncheon." Despite his projection of himself as a "disembodied listener" (2:30) (and, we might add, observer), he is much more. To be sure, he calls attention to himself as "the writer" (2:20) who addresses us, "the reader" (2:28), in an effort to distance himself from the work. But his description of his metafictive apparatus reveals that this "writer" is not merely reporting, but is involved in actively shaping the materials of his story. For example, he clearly has edited the historical introduction to his work, claiming that the entire story is too long:" ... the story would include," he claims, "a chain of events, 138 extending over the better part of two centuries, and, written out with reasonable ampli­ tude, would fill a bigger folio volume, or a longer series o f duodecimos, than could pru­ dently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during a similar period" (2:5-6).

Thus, he says, it is "imperative" to make the work "short" (2:6). He has made this deci­ sion, it seems, almost regretfully, for he recognizes the artistic integrity of the entire his­ tory: the events in and of themselves, he says, possess "a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement" (2:5). Given, then, the narrator's awareness of "artistic arrangement," it is fair to conclude that he has abridged his version of the "history" of the Pyncheon mansion according to his own artistic purpose.

His agenda, it seems, is not to focus on the historical events:

We have already hinted that is is not our purpose to trace down the history of the Pyncheon family, in its unbroken connection with the House o f the Seven Gables; nor to show, as in a magic picture, how the rustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the venerable house itself. (2:20)

Instead, he wants to understand the "interior life" (2:20) o f the house and to expose the truth which lies beneath surface appearances. Accordingly, he exposes us to "truth" from every angle, using every branch of epistemology available to him to satisfy his curiosity

(and to pique ours). He chooses, then, to incorporate into his history an interesting mix of personal observation, written records, oral tradition, and poetic insight. First, he establishes himself as an observer-at least from street level. He fixes this base of author­ ity metaleptically, just as the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" does. That is, he posits an objective reality within which he exists along with his characters and into which he invites his reader as a cohort (the house, after all, stands "down a bystreet of one o f our New England towns" [2:5; my italics]). The narrator is like "every town-born child" in being familiar with the "old Pyncheon House" (2:5). Moreover, he has observed the house for year's. As he points out, "on my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through 139 the shadow of these two antiquities-the great elm tree and the weather-beaten edifice"

(2:5). Later, he reinforces how "familiar" the house is "as it stands in this writer's recol­ lection" (2:10), and he suggests that his interest in the house is not transient. Indeed, the house "has been," he claims, "an object of curiosity with him from boyhood" (2:10), and that curiosity remains, for, it seems, he has returned, in present time, to continue his observations. The house, we learn, is familiar to him even "as it now looks" (2:6), as one standing before it.

His curiosity has taken him beyond mere observation of the now "antique" dwelling.

In fact, over the years he has devoted what must be a considerable amount of time to researching the house, for he provides us with a remarkable amount of information about the house and its inhabitants, information gleaned from other epistemological sources-the written records and oral tradition of his created metaleptical universe. He appears to have sifted through a mountain of this recorded history. For example, he indi­ cates that he can find no trace of "Matthew Maule's descendants" (2:26), because "for thirty years past, neither town record, nor gravestone, nor the directory" (2:25) indicate the existence of any Maule. Further, he appears to have consulted numerous medical records (now some "hundred and sixty years" old [2:10-11]) to determine the cause o f

Colonel Pyncheon's death. According to a Dr. Swinnerton (if the narrator has "rightly understood his terms" [2:16]), the Colonel died "of apoplexy" (2:16). But some reports suggest otherwise. Indeed, Dr. Swinnerton's colleagues "adopted various hypotheses," and their "perplexing mystery of phrase" indicates to the narrator "a bewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians" (2:17), a bewilderment reinforced by the narrator's reading of the report o f the "coroner's jury" who "returned an unassailable verdict of

'Sudden Death'" (2:17). While such confusion and lack of specificity make the narrator suspect foul play in the Colonel's death, he finds no investigation "on record" (2:17), and even the "funeral Sermon" (which, the narrator points out, "was printed, and is still 140 extant" [2:17]) speaks of "the happy seasonableness of... [the Colonel’s] death" (2:17).

The narrator seems satisfied that in the absence of such records to the contrary, "it is safe to assume that... [no suspicions] existed" at that time (2:17). Still, we detect the narra­ tor's doubt regarding the truth o f his own sources, especially when he comments on the funeral sermon: "The pious clergyman," he speculates, "surely would not have uttered words like these had he in the least suspected that the Colonel had been thrust into the other world with the clutch of violence upon his throat" (2:17; my italics).

Thus, written records (or their absence) often fail to satisfy the curiosity o f the narra­ tor in his search to uncover the truth about the house and its inhabitants. A s a result, he often relies upon oral tradition. Because, for instance, "no written record" o f the original property dispute between Colonel Pyncheon and Matthew Maule "is known to be in exis­ tence" (2:7), he tells us that he has relied upon what he has heard: "Our acquaintance with the whole subject is derived," he says, "chiefly from tradition" (2:7). In fact, much o f what he tells us on many issues is what is "remembered," "whispered," "hinted,"

"well-known," or "preserved" by "fireside tradition" and "village gossips" who spread

"rumors" (2:8-9) or even indulge in "wild babble" (2:17). At times, he regards what he has heard as undeniably true: "it is certain," he says, "that the water of Maule's Well... grew hard and brackish," for "any old woman of the neighborhood will certify that...

[Maule's Well] is productive of intestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there"

(2:10). And sometimes written and oral tradition verify each other: "history," he says,

"as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very words" of Matthew Maule's curse,

"'God will give him [Colonel Pyncheon] blood to drink'" (2:8). On the other hand, the narrator is sometimes skeptical of tradition. The traditional view that the discoverers of the Colonel's dead body heard Matthew Maule reiterate his curse is, to the narrator, a questionable one, "only worth alluding to as lending a tinge o f superstitious awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough" (2:16). And he regards it as "folly to lay any stress on 141 stories" about the open window "near the Colonel's chair," the tale of "the figure of a man . . . seen clambering over the garden fence," or "the fable of the skeleton hand which the lieutenant governor was said to have seen at the Colonel's throat" (2:16). The truth is, in the end, the narrator is suspicious of relying on either recorded history or fanciful legend as absolute sources of truth: "Tradition," he says," ... sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip" (2:17); on the other hand, he believes that tradition may be simply "the wild babble of the time" (2:17).^

The narrator's suspicion that there is more to know about the house than history or legend provide rests principally on a third epistemological source: his personal/romantic insight expressed in his metaphoric vision of the housed It impresses him as "a living, sentient organism" (Fogle 162), so "meditative" that "you could not pass it without the idea that it had secrets to keep" (2:27). Indeed, he claims from the very first that the house "has always affected . . . [him] like a human countenance" (2:5). As such, it rises

"in pride, not modesty" (2:11); it has, in its "front gable," an impending brow" (2:28) which throws "a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms" (2:12). Most importantly, it is not the house's exterior-"its white-oak fram e,. . . its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster" (2:27)—that interests the narrator. Indeed, he says, "even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality" (2:27). Because "so much of mankind's varied experience had passed there"

(2:27), the narrator senses that the house, as he later puts it, is "the true emblem of... [a] man's character, and of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life"

(2:230). In fact, in an extended metaphoric passage later in the work the narrator claims that just as a "stately edifice" (2:229) may hide "a corpse half-decayed, and still decay­ ing" (2:230), a man's respectable appearance-"the show o f a marble palace"-hides a man's miserable soul" (2:230). Ultimately, then, it is the secret of the house's heart and thus the secret of a man's soul that the narrator would like to penetrate. And, indeed, he 142 applies "this train of remark somewhat. . . closely to Judge Pyncheon" (2:230) who is the

"modem" objectification of Colonel Pyncheon. As the repository of Pyncheon guilt-past and present-the judge is also subject to a re-enactment of Maule's curse.

In his opening chapter the narrator alludes to his purpose of ferreting out Pyncheon secrets. Having dismissed as his purpose the tracing down of "the history of the

Pyncheon family" and the illustrating of "how the infirmity of age gathered over the ven­ erable house itself" (2:20), the narrator tells us what he would really like to do:

As regards . . . [the] interior life [of the house], a large, dim looking-glass used to hang in one of the rooms, and was fabled to contain within its depths all the shapes that had ever been reflected there-the old Colonel himself, and his many descendants, some in the garb of antique babyhood, and others in the bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, or saddened with the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the secret of that mirror, we would gladly sit down before it, and transfer its revelations to our page. (2:20; my italics)

Later he confirms his purpose and indirectly characterizes himself as "the gifted eye"

capable of penetrating facades:

Now and then, perchance comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the hidden nook, the bolted door, or the deadly hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within. Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life. (2:230)

This gifted ability to "see" through appearances, however, seems to be the exclusive

province o f the Maule family whose descendants, the narrator tells us, are said "to inher­

it" mysterious attributes, which allow them to exercise a "strange power" (2:36). The

narrator tentatively cites a story which refers to the powers of the Maule family:

. . . the posterity of Matthew Maule had some connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, and . . . by what appears to have been a sort of mes­ meric process, they could make its inner region all alive with the departed Pyncheons, not as they had shown themselves to the world nor in their better and happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or in 143

the crisis o f life's bitterest sorrow. (2:20-21)

Exercising a similar power, however, is a goal that the narrator assumes as a narrative responsibility. Indeed, the rest of the story involves the narrator's embracing all that is involved in becoming a figurative Maule, and he prefigures his assumption of that Maule identity at the start when he calls himself "a disembodied listener" (2:30) who, like the

Maule "ghost" of the dead wizard, has "a kind of privilege to haunt. . . [the house's] new apartments" ( 2:9).-^ Always "an attendant spirit" (2:277-78), the narrator hovers within and without the house, poking and probing beneath appearances, finally performing the ultimate Maule-like function of re-enacting the Colonel's death by narratively "murder­ ing" Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon even though the Judge's death within the plot is naturally explainable as a stroke. In the Judge's death chamber, the narrator is finally made privy to the Judge's guilt and to the secrets of the looking-glass. But in the process the narrator imperils himself by indulging in questionable-even criminal-behavior in his narration, for as a figurative Maule, he is a voyeur, mesmerist-and "killer."

As the narrator steps over "the threshold of our story" (2:31), he becomes a voyeur with more insidious propensities than he seems to have had as a street-level observer, for, in entering the house, he is metaphorically beginning to probe the souls o f its inhabitants as well. At first, however, he seems to be a reluctant "Maule," hesitant, perhaps, to sug­ gest to his reader (whom he includes as a companion) that he (or we) will do anything to violate decorum or moral strictures. He addresses his "heroine" respectfully as "Miss"

(2:31) (a form of address that he virtually abandons by Chapter 3). Moreover, he seems to avert his eyes from anything terribly private. For example, he declines to enter "Miss

Hepzibah['s]" bedroom, insisting that "[o]ur story m ust. . . await Miss Hepzibah at the threshold of her chamber," for, as he puts it, "[f]ar from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden lady's toilet" (2:30). He shows, of course, an unwillingness to intrude on Hepzibah that he does not exercise in relation to Phoebe, 144 whose bed-chamber he unreluctantly enters in Chapter 7. Later, the narrator even apolo­ gizes for intruding at an awkward moment in Hepzibah's life: .. we have stolen upon

Miss Hepzibah too irreverently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebian woman" (2:38). To make amends ("since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture" [2:38]), the narrator asks that we, "the spectators of her fate," adopt "a mood of due solemnity"

(2:38) in keeping with Hepzibah's decline in social status.

But, of course, as I have indicated above, the narrator violates his own rules-not only in later chapters, but from the very beginning. He does, for example, use his imagination to assist Miss Hepzibah "at. . . [her] toilet," such that we hear even what is "inaudible"

(2:30): Hepzibah's "gusty sighs," "creaking joints," and whispered "agony of prayer"

(2:30). Moreover, from what we imaginatively hear, the narrator creates a visual impres­ sion. From the "rustling of [her] stiff silks, a tread o f backward and forward footsteps to and fro across the chamber," the narrator creates a picture of what he "suspect[s]"

Hepzibah is doing (2:31): Hepzibah must be "taking a step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her appearance . . . in the oval, dingy-framed toilet glass that hangs above her table" (2:31). From the sound of "a key [turning] in a small lock," the narrator concludes that Hepzibah "has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is probably looking at a certain miniature . . . [which] it was once . . . [the narrator's] good fortune to see" (2:31). A "few more footsteps to and fro . . . [and] another pitiful sigh"

(2:32) signify the end of Hepzibah's morning ritual, and the narrator announces her arrival: "here comes Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time- darkened passage"; she is "a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the stairs like a nearsighted person, as in truth she is"

(2:32). Thus, howevermuch the narrator may disclaim any violation o f another's privacy, we can see even his fantasy as representative of the sly, threatening posture of the voyeur 145 who gains an advantage over others while seeking to protect his own anonymity. Edgar

A. Dryden, in fact, describes the voyeur as just such a dangerous individual:

. . . the position of the voyeur is a problematic one. He seeks to catch the other at an unguarded and intimate moment when the other will be naked and available to his concealed gaze. For the voyeur desires access to the solitariness o f the other. He wishes to experience from the outside anoth­ er's life from the inside. (73)

And to do so, claims Dryden, is to exert power over another:" ... to be the object of the unloving gaze of the other is to be in his power" (69). Thus, from the very start, the nar­ rator of The House o f the Seven Gables puts himself into an equivocal moral position with regard to his characters.

Actually, from the narrator's description of Hepzibah's morning activities, we begin to suspect that all along he has been more than a mere street-level observer. At the very least he has peeked through the windows. Indeed, he not only knows about Hepzibah's

"secret drawer," the quality of the miniature ("done in Malbone's most perfect style"

[2:31]), and the location of Hepzibah's "dingy-framed" mirror (2:31), but also "recol­ lects]" two "ornamental articles of furniture" in an interior room: the map of the disput­ ed "pyncheon territory at the eastward" (2:33) and "the portrait of old Colonel Pyncheon at two-thirds length" (2:33).

Moreover, he knows-and, thus, in some measure, controls-the future. To be sure, he implies his ignorance of some things. Of Clifford's miniature, for example, he at least feigns ignorance: "Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? No; she never had a lover-poor thing ..." (2:32). Still, he knows "what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do" (2:34) in opening a cent shop, even though he pretends he is reluctant to tell us: "We are loitering faintheartedly on the threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invincible reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do"

(2:34). His reluctance, of course, is not "invincible." His "curious eye" takes account of 146

Hepzibah's stock ("still closely curtained from the public gaze" [2:35]), identifying barrels of flour, apples and Indian meal, boxes of soap, candles, and a "small stock of brown sugar,. . . white beans . . . split peas, and a few other commodities of low price"

(2:35). And he makes us witness Hepzibah's indignity, without grudging any detail:

Let us behold, in poor Hepzibah, the immemorial lady-two hundred years old, on this side of the water, and thrice as many on the other-with her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records and traditions, and her claim, as joint heiress, to that princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilderness, but a populous fertility-born, too, in Pyncheon Street, under the Pyncheon-elm, and in the Pyncheon House, where she has spent all her days-reduced now, in that very house, to be the hucksteress of a cent shop. (2:38)

The narrator also knows about Clifford's impending arrival. He claims that Hepzibah

"might have held back" from opening her shop were it not for "another circumstance not yet hinted at [which] had somewhat hastened her decision" (2:39). The circumstance, of course, is Clifford's homecoming, which occurs in Chapter 7, and which the narrator characteristically pretends he knows nothing about (with Phoebe, the narrator questions why, at breakfast, there are "chairs and plates for three": "what other guest did . . .

[Hepzibah] look for?" he queries [2:101].). The point is that altogether the narrator enters the house on what he knows is a pivotal day in Hepzibah's life. Even though he apologizes for his temerity "to introduce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture"

(2:38), he has clearly chosen his own timing. After all, as his "heroine," Hepzibah is in the storyteller's charge and, we must conclude, at his disposal to introduce whenever he wishes.

Certainly, then, given the narrator's treatment of his "heroine," we may conclude that

Hepzibah is "the object" of the narrator's "unloving gaze" (Dryden 69). Indeed, despite his protests otherwise, the narrator's attitude toward Hepzibah is at best equivocal, at worst, cruel. While he seems to pity her for never having had a lover ("poor thing"

[2:32]), at other times, he puts her into unflattering positions, laughs at her, and then (so 147 that we might disregard the lack of compassion in his observations) retrenches, asking us to interpret his laughter as sympathy. He describes Hepzibah, for instance, on her hands and knees in the act of retrieving the marbles she had accidentally dropped in her ner­ vous frenzy to stock her shelves:

Heaven help our poor old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous view of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down upon its hands and knees, in quest of the absconding marbles, we positively feel so much the more inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the very fact that we needs must turn aside and laugh at her. (2:37)

But, of course, he continues to poke fun at her appearance and behavior-her scowl, rusty joints, and ludicrous turban. And even at the end of Chapter 2 the narrator is still justify­ ing to us his mock-heroic chuckle at Hepzibah's expense:

Our miserable Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoyance to a writer, who endeavors to represent nature, its various attitudes and circumstances, in a reasonably correct outline and true coloring, that so much of the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies to him. (2:40-41)

Clearly the narrator w'ould like to blame his indiscreet observations of the manners and behavior of Hepzibah on his role as a storyteller, described here in the terms

Hawthorne used to describe the role of a novelist (in the writer's adherence to "a . .. nninute fidelity . . . to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience" [Preface 1]).

But the narrator's claim to objective, novelistic concerns is certainly false-perhaps even an artful maneuver to conceal his romantic (and thus even more intrusive) concern which he shares with Hawthorne: "the truth of the human heart" (Hawthorne, Preface 1).

Indeed, like other narrators we have seen (the narrator of "The Devil in Manuscript," for instance), this one, too. is willing to plead guilty to a lesser charge so that we might over­ look his greater guilt. The fact is, these superficial observations of behavior (however qiockingly he presents them) are incidental to the narrator's actual purpose. As we have seen, what the narrator cares about is the "interior life" (2:20) hidden beneath 148 appearances, and his behavior involves a more serious encroachment than observation of mere exteriors entails. The narrator wants to gain entry to the house/hearts of the

Pyncheons so he may learn its/their secrets and in some invidious way own its/their essence. Accordingly, he applies his scrutiny, as Jac Tharpe points out, "to the eyes and face[s]" (110), using "the power of vision to determine, influence, and know; to perceive character with certainty" (111). And as the narrator fixes his gaze on the hearts of his characters, he reinforces his analogy between the house and its inhabitants. Indeed, as we shall see below, he describes each heart as analogous to a room of a dwelling.

Hepzibah, Phoebe, and Clifford pose no problem for the narrator's searching eye.

Nor do their hearts disclose any hurtful secrets. Hepzibah, for example, is actually a nicer person than her appearance suggests:

We must linger a moment on . .. [Hepzibah's] unfortunate expression . . . [of her] brow. Her scowl-as the world or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it—her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establish­ ing her character as an ill-tempered old maid . . . But her heart never frowned. It was naturally tender, sensitive, and full of little tremors and palpitations . .. (2:34)

Hepzibah is, after all, near-sighted, giving rise to a scowl that misleads those who try to interpret her character. But, although the narrator probes "the dungeon of her heart"

(2:102; my italics), he discovers only her finer feeling tucked in "the very warmest nook .

. . [of] her affections" (2:34; my italics). While the gaze of the narrator into Hepzibah's interior indeed reveals something positive about her. his very probing is a kind of viola­ tion, suggestive of a malign intent.

Prying into Phoebe's heart is not difficult for the narrator either. Indeed, from the moment Phoebe crosses "the threshold" (2:69) of the story, it is clear to the narrator that she is exactly what she appears to be-a fresh and wholesome "ray of sunshine" (2:68).

The narrator sees her as a purifying influence on the house. Her "homely witchcraft" 149

(2:72) revitalizes the "cheerless and dusky chamber, which had been untenanted so long"

(2:72; my italics). Indeed, Phoebe's bed-chamber (which the narrator this time unreluctantly enters) had, he says, "the night before . . . resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart" (2:72; my italics), for "not a guest, for many years gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber" (2:72; my italics). But Phoebe "purified . . . [the heart/chamber] of all former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts"

(2:72). Thus Phoebe has, as the narrator indicates, "a thoroughly wholesome heart"

(2:137). Indeed, her "body, intellect and heart" (2:137) are so harmonious that the narra­ tor concludes, "nothing more beautiful. .. was ever made than Phoebe" (2:140). Of course, as Hepzibah and others remark, "'Phoebe is no Pyncheon. She takes everything from her mother'" (2:79).

Clifford, though, is a Pyncheon, but the narrator judges Clifford's interior life as worth little examination. When Clifford enters the narrator's sphere of vision (Clifford has crossed the threshold unseen at night), the narrator describes him as a "wasted, gray, and melancholy figure-a substantial emptiness, a material ghost" (2:105). Only occa­ sionally do Clifford's eyes reveal anything but the emptiness of his intellect:

Continually, as we may express it, he [Clifford] faded away out of his place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took their departure .... Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper- gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire,and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant. (2:105; my italics)

Likewise, even Clifford's faded dressing gown is, to the narrator, an emblem of Clifford's suffering, but vacant intellect: "This old, faded garment, with all its pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to translate the wearer's untold misfortune, and make it perceptible to the beholder's eye" (2:105). Wretched sufferer though he may be, Clifford's "ruinous mansion" hides no secret of the sort the narrator is looking for. 150

It is Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, modern embodiment of the old Colonel who first incurred Maule's curse, who hides the dark, corpselike soul within his "stately edifice" of seeming respectability (2:229). The narrator has more difficulty scrutinizing the Judge's character, for the Judge is not what he appears to be, and unlike Hepzibah, who is better than she seems, the Judge is worse than he appears. Perhaps for that very reason the

Judge has more protective layers-more "splendid rubbish" (2:230)-for the narrator to penetrate. Still, the narrator speculates:

Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of the sensibilities are very capable of falling into mistakes of this kind [hidden and repressed guilt]. They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action lies among the external phe­ nomena of life.. .. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man himself. Behold, therefore, a p a la c e. ! .. With what fairer and nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah, but in some low and obscure nook-some narrow closet on the ground floor, shut, locked, and bolted, and the key flung away; or beneath the marble pave­ ment, in a stagnant water puddle, with the richest pattern of mosaicwork above-may lie a corpse, half-decayed, and still decaying, and diffusing its death scent all through the palace! .. . Here. then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character.. . And, beneath the show of a marble palace ... is this man's miserable soul. (2:229-30; my italics)

Although the narrator speaks of men like the Judge, not the Judge himself, he clearly

intends us to connect this description to Judge Pyncheon. He has, after all, characterized

the Judge, in the passage preceding this extended metaphor, as "beyond all question . . . a

man of eminent respectability" (2:228). who has "a high and honorable place in the

world's regard" (2:228), but who, nonetheless, may hide "some evil and unsightly thing"

buried "under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds" (2:229). More­

over, following this lengthy metaphoric passage, the narrator applied "this train of remark

somewhat more closely to Judge Pyncheon" (2:230). Indeed, he lists the "splendid 151 rubbish" (2:230) in the Judge's life-seemingly meritorious behavior which may both

"paralyze" (2:230) the Judge's conscience to a sense of his own evil, as well as cause the public to perceive him as a respectable-indeed, esteemed-man. The narrator refers to the "purity of his judicial character. . . the faithfulness of his public service . . . his devotedness to his party, and the rigid consistency . . . [of his] principles" (2:230). The

Judge is even the "president of a Bible society . . . [and] treasurer of a widow's and orphan's fund" (2:230). besides being a noted horticulturalist. While the narrator claims to describe the Judge this way "without in the least imputing crime" (2:230) to him, he is obviously skeptical, for he has clearly labeled the Judge's public image as "splendid rub­ bish" (2:230). Moreover, he ends his description of the Judge's seemingly unimpeach­ able qualities by questioning: "what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a portrait made up of lineaments like these?" (2:231).

Indeed, much of the remainder of the romance involves the narrator's becoming a fig­ urative Maule who probes into the secrets of that "darker room" which is, of course, the interior of the House of the Seven Gables as well as the heart of Judge Pyncheon. It is the room where, in the death of Jaffrey Pyncheon, the narrator re-enacts in Chapter IS the death of Colonel Pyncheon, the Original Sinner of the Pyncheon family. Indeed, says

Marcus Cunliffe, the re-enactment is so similar to the original death that we may see them as "almost identical" (84). This room is like the hearts of Judge Pyncheon and the

Colonel, for, as Richard Harter Fogle says, it is "the evil principle of the house" (165).

And Richard Gray concurs that in its present-day status it is the room most associated with the Judge:

The parlour containing the chair in which "many a . . . Pyncheon had found repose". . . belongs, without a doubt to the Judge: his image is there from the beginning, in the portrait of his "iron" predecessor, and eventually, inexorably, that image takes him over. (97)

Most important, says Fogle, the Judge and the Colonel (and, we might add, the room) 152

"are linked by the image of the buried corpse beneath a handsome building" (167). As a matter of fact, the narrator invites us, in Chapter 18, to view with him the corpse of Judge

Jaffrey Pyncheon, a corpse which is not just his ruined body, but an objectification of the dead and rotting soul of the Judge.

The Judge's corpse, then, is the "true emblem of the man's character" (2:230), ^ his heart and soul laid bare for us and the narrator to examine. And it is plain that, by exam­ ining the Judge's heart, the narrator has confirmed his previous negative estimate of the

Judge's showy character, now revealed as false. This confirmation is embedded in the narrator's acrimonious taunting of the dead Judge for failing to meet his appointments-indeed, for failing to stir from dusk to dawn. The narrator, in fact, aban­ dons any pretense of simply chronicling his objective observations and of apologizing when he happens to intrude too personally into his subjects' lives (as he does in his observations of Hepzibah). As he views the Judge's corpse, the narrator haunts the text as a virtual participant in it. Indeed, he interacts with the corpse, speculating on his behavior, asking him questions, and giving him orders. Actually, the narrator invites us to share his mocking speculations-especially when he considers the Judge's now impos­ sible change of heart:

. . . will he . . . go forth a humble and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from worldy honor, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow man, and to do him what good he may? Will he bear about him no odious grin of feigned benignity, insolent in its pretense, and loathsome in its falsehood, but the tender sadness of a con­ trite heart, broken, at last, beneath its own weight of sin? (2:282)

Moreover, in sheer scorn, the narrator orders the Judge to do what the narrator knows the

Judge cannot do:

Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, ironhearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, ironhearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, though they bring the lifeblood with them! The Avenger is upon thee! (2:283) 153

The truth is, the narrator is the "Avenger." Having penetrated the Judge's heart and soul, he knows even more firmly than he claims that the Judge is a guilty man: ",. . it is our belief, whatever show of honor he [the Judge] may have piled upon it, that there was a heavy sin at the base of this man's being" (2:283). The narrator's venomous attack on the

Judge, however, suggests that he is acting more upon certainty than "belief."

In this scene, the narrator exhibits another characteristic of the Maules. As we have seen, the narrator demonstrates here his gifted ability to "see" through the splendid facade of the Judge to recognize the sin within. But he also exercises in his fiction the

Maule power which he had earlier alluded to as only a "story" (2:20) about Maule sor­ cery:

. . . [It is said] that the posterity of Matthew Maule had some connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, and that, by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, they could make its inner region all alive with the departed Pyncheons, not as they had shown themselves to the world nor in their better and happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow. (2:20-21)

Knowing "the secret of that mirror" and transferring "its revelations to our page (2:20) is, we will recall, key to the narrator's purpose in his story. It is also key to our seeing the narrator's function in the romance as a figurative Maule who acts covertly, now acting overtly in that capacity. While he watches and taunts Judge Pyncheon's corpse, the nar­ rator indulges his "fancy" (2:280) and conjures up before us a vision of these "departed

Pyncheons," and he transfers those "revelations to our page." He does appear reluctant for us to connect his power to that of the Maules. Still, even as he refers to the "ridicu­ lous legend that, at midnight, all the dead Pyncheons . . . assemble in this parlor" (2:279), even as he claims he is really making "a little sport with the idea" (2:279), the narrator does use the power imputed to the Maules: he describes an array of deceased Pyncheons parading to the portrait of the Colonel-"the stout Colonel" himself, "aged men and grand- ames, a clergyman . . . a red-coated officer of the old French war... the shop-keeping 154

Pyncheon . . . the periwigged and brocaded gentleman [together with his daughter] . . . the beautiful and pensive Alice" (2:279-80)-and others. The source of the narrator's imaginative vision is clearly necromantic. The narrator admits to "have partly lost the power of restraint and guidance" (2:280) as his vision presents not only the past, but information not yet known. Even the narrator seems surprised at the appearance of an "unlooked for figure . . . of a young man, dressed in the very fashion of today"

(2:280). According to the narrator, the young man looks like "young Jaffrey Pyncheon. the Judge's only surviving child" (2:280) who, it appears, is dead, although knowledge of his death has not as yet circulated. At the end of the vision, the narrator hastens to dis­ claim any powers of witchery. This "fantastic scene," he says, "must by no means be considered as forming an actual portion of our story," for he claims he was "betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver of moonbeams" (2:281). Still, he acknowledges that what he has seen has metaphysical qualities: ".. . the quiver of moonbeams . . . dance hand in hand with shadows, and are reflected in the looking glass, which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the spiritual world" (2:281). Clearly, this narrator is a "seer"-a wizard. He exhibits Maule propensities in his preternatural insights about hidden guilt and in his necromantic vision of the spirit world.

The narrator is also a mesmerist and is, thus, further linked to the Maules. He works his mesmerism principally on us, his readers, much as Matthew Maule (of Holgrave's story) mesmerizes Alice Pyncheon, and Holgrave (the Maule descendant) mesmerizes

Phoebe with his story. In one respect, the narrator behaves as any other narrator might.

In selecting and shaping the materials of his story he is, like other narrators, influenc- ing-shaping-the attitudes of his reader. But the narrator of The House of the Seven

Gables goes further. He unabashedly seduces us as co-conspirators. His writing is, he claims, "our tale" (2:6), "our story" (2:29). Indeed, as we abandon history and enter pre­ sent time with the narrator, we stand together at "the threshold of our story" (2:31). The narrator is so concerned, in fact, that his ideas be "adequately translated to the reader"

(2:6) that most of his subsequent comments about his writing are designed to keep the reader on track. He wants his eyes to become our own-so that we may see as he sees.

Throughout the work, the narrator carefully clarifies his points, adjusting his word choice to communicate with us better. He describes Hepzibah, for example, moving

"nervously" (2:37) around her shop as she arranges "some children's playthings" (2:37).

But he immediately qualifies his adverb: Hepzibah is not just moving "nervously," but

"in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say" (2:37). Later he describes Clifford's "saluta­ tion" o f Phoebe (2:104), clarifying immediately that the word "salutation" is not quite accurate:" ... to speak nearer the truth [Clifford's gesture was] an ill-defined, abortive attempt at courtesy" (2:104). Moreover, the narrator also adds intensifiers in his insistent attempt to win us to his view of the truth. Hepzibah's "deportment" as she readies her shop is, says the narrator, "... overpoweringly ridiculous-we must honestly confess it"

(2:61; my italics). Citing the "tradition" that Uncle Venner "was commonly regarded as rather deficient. . . in his wits" (2:61), the narrator confirms the belief: "In truth . . .

[Uncle Venner] had virtually pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such suc­ cess as other men seek" (2:61; my italics). Apart from these directive comments, the nar­ rator tries to enhance his own credibility by asking us to tolerate an unpleasant descrip­ tion that he claims he regrets providing. When Hepzibah is treated as an inferior by her customers, the narrator tells us that Hepzibah's responses "were little short of acrimo­ nious" (2:54), adding, "... we regret to say, Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind," for she suspects that others simply "wish to stare at her" (2:54; my italics).

Finally, the narrator takes great pains to explain his points. Hepzibah's bluntness with Phoebe, he says, "had not the inhospitable bluntness with which they might strike 156 the reader, for the two relatives . . . had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understand­ ing" (2:73). Later, the narrator points out that we should not concern ourselves with the fact that Phoebe has no "claim to rank among ladies" (2:80). "It would be preferable," he says, to regard Phoebe as the "example of feminine grace and availability combined in a state of society . . . where ladies did not exist" (2:80). After Phoebe leaves the house to visit her home, the narrator tells us that Hepzibah's woebegone aspect" (2:224) prevents customers from entering her shop. But, the narrator assures us, "It was no fault of

Hepzibah's " (2:224)-more likely the weather. In these instances and elsewhere the nar­ rator tries to direct our eyes-and thus control our judgment-for, as he tells us, "if we fail to impress it [the truth] suitably upon the reader, it is our fault [the narrator's], not that of the theme" (2:37). Because the narrator manipulates us so consistently and so well to accept his vision as our own, by Chapter 18 the narrator can enter into his scornful tirade directed at the judge assured of our cooperation and equal zeal.

Certainly, then, the narrator reveals through his storytelling that he is not what he pre­ tends to be. He is not the unobtrusive, aloof observer/reporter, but an active participant in his work-a controlling and manipulative force over his characters and over his audi­ ence. Still, the narrator is guilty of yet another sin: the narrative murder of the Judge. To be sure, other candidates exist and have been put forth as such by critics intent on discov­ ering a flesh-and-blood murderer. Alfred H. Marks, for example, points to Clifford

Pyncheon as the guilty party because the narrator's repeated comments about Clifford's physical appearance as "a material ghost" (2:105) link him to the Maule "ghost." Marks contends that the shock of seeing Clifford as a spectre causes the Judge to die, presum­ ably from his inherited tendency toward apoplexy (355-69). Clara Cox, on the other hand, disputes Marks' contention and puts forward Holgrave, the direct Maule descendant, as the likely killer.^ Cox contends that "[w]ith. . . [Holgrave's] powers,. . .

[he] could have mesmerized the Judge to confront him not only with the sins of his 157 ancestors but also with those of Jaffrey himself, a revelation that upset the Judge to the point of death" (101). Cox's argument, however, rests in part on the fact that "Hepzibah cannot find her boarder in his chambers" (101), even though "the manner in which she finds his possessions" (101) suggests that he is nearby. Hepzibah's conclusion (and

Cox's) is wrong. The narrator makes clear that "at this period of the day . . . the artist was at his public rooms" (2:249) and thus unavailable for any confrontation with the

Judge. The guilt, then, must be imputed to the narrator. As a figurative Maule, the narra­ tor has a motive to kill the Judge, for the narrator is more like the "ghost" of Matthew

Maule in the house than Clifford or Holgrave. In this sense, the narrator has a personal interest in fulfilling Maule's curse. As the storyteller, the narrator also has the power to

"kill," for, despite his pretensions otherwise, he is the creator and controller of the met- aleptical reality he functions within. We need only recall Oberon of "The Devil in

Manuscript " (who, in burning his manuscripts, destroys his "offspring") to understand how the storyteller's supreme power to create carries with it the supreme power to destroy. Indeed, like the narrator of "The Haunted Quack," the narrator o f The House of the Seven Gables rids the page of an unwanted character.

It is the narrator, then, who decides that the Judge must die, and so-within the narra- tive-he does. By eliminating the Judge from his narrative, by giving him, as it were, blood to drink, the narrator functions like a Maule to perform the retributive act neces­ sary, as we shall see, to allow Holgrave to reap the benefits of his repudiation of the

Maule legacy. Thus, by narratively exercising Maule's curse one final time, the narrator also exorcises Maule's curse for Holgrave and his progeny. Indeed, as Richard Harter

Fogle points out, the characteristics of the Pyncheon family punishable by Maule's curse die with the Judge: "The Pyncheons have died in the person of Judge Pyncheon, the re-embodiment of the original sinner and founder of the family and the representative of its determining force" (151). Clearly, the narrator of The House of the Seven Gables is 158 mired in guilt. He is a voyeur, mesmerist, and killer. Indeed, w ere it not for his creation of and control over the destiny of Holgrave, his narrator double, the narrator would likely remain unredeemed. Even so, the redemption he experiences through Holgrave is vicari­ ous.

Holgrave is different from most of the narrator doubles we have observed thus far.

First, the narrator doubles in "Alice Doane's Appeal," "The D evil in Manuscript." "The

Haunted Quack," and even the framed "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" are identifiable not only as psychological doubles, but also, very early in the fictions, as narrator dou­ bles whose paths, in some sense, intersect with the primary narrators. When thev interact with the primary narrators as storytellers, the narrator doubles, as we have seen, become subversive forces, undermining the innocence of the primary narrators. Holgrave, on the other hand, is a character whose similarities to the primary narrator mark him-for much of the fiction-as only a psychological double. Holgrave does not emerge as a narrator double until very late in the romance when, in Chapter 13, he tells Phoebe the story of

Alice Pyncheon. Moreover. Holgrave and the primary narrator never meet, talk, or merge.

Second, the narrator doubles of "Alice Doane's Appeal," "The Devil in Manuscript," and "The Haunted Quack" are represented as subconscious-and thus uncontrollable- emanations of the primary narrators' psyches when they interact with the primary narra­ tors. As a result, they are dangerous to the primary narrators because they give us access to hidden information which the primary narrators would prefer to conceal. They become, as it were, provenders of Oberon's "black magic." Holgrave has the same potential. Still, because Holgrave exists as a character consciously created by the prima­ ry narrator, the menace of Holgrave exists primarily in the primary narrator's sometimes risky choices in how he develops Holgrave as a character. Because Holgrave is control­ lable within the metaleptical reality that the primary narrator controls, Holgrave is 159 similar to the narrator of "Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe," who is a conscious creation of the narrator of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." Such a strategy allows the pri­ mary narrator more power to control the "white magic" of his storytelling. As a result, the primary narrator of The House of the Seven Gables is able to use Holgrave to his advantage. Indeed, through Holgrave, the primary narrator explores the implications of his own behavior, monitors the degree to which his own guilt is exposed, and ultimately supplies an ersatz redemption for himself. The primary narrator, accordingly, treats

Holgrave differently than he does the other characters. He does not, for example, treat him with the ironic condescension that he applies to Hepzibah. Nor does he treat him with the sarcastic contempt he reserves for the Judge. At the same time, he does not describe Holgrave as wholly likable, as he suggests Phoebe is; nor does he characterize him as pitifully sympathetic, like Clifford. Because he and Holgrave are "related"

(Maule in heart, if not in blood), the narrator needs both to sympathize with him and to distance himself from him. As a result, the primary narrator treats Holgrave as a para­ dox: both "dangerous" (2:84) and "respectable . . . orderly" (2:30), "grave and thought­ ful" (2:43)-in short, "a gentleman . . . with clean linen" (2:43). Such a contradictory description is appropriate to the primary narrator's ambivalent attitude toward Holgrave, for Holgrave must serve as both an other and a self: an other for the primary narrator to blame; a self for the primary narrator to exonerate.

As an other, Holgrave is a scapegoat for the primary narrator-someone on whom to shift the blame for the primary narrator's intrusive-and immoral-behavior. To distance himself from Holgrave, then, the primary narrator characterizes Holgrave as somewhat different from himself, but necessarily with the same propensities (Holgrave is, after all, a flesh-and-blood Maule!). Holgrave, like the primary narrator, is an artist, but (until

Chapter 13) is a daguerreotypist, not a storyteller. Holgrave, unlike the primary narrator, has a personal history as something of a vagabond: he has been "a country schoolmaster," 160 a "salesman in a country store," a "political editor of a country newspaper," a "peddler" of cologne, a dentist, and "a supernumerary official" who had traveled to Europe (2:176).

The primary narrator, by contrast, supplies us no personal history and appears more sta- tionary-existing necessarily close enough to the Pyncheon home to visit it over the years and to research it in depth. Perhaps as a result of his more narrow sphere of activity, the primary narrator even knows from personal observations certain things unknown to

Holgrave. We learn, for instance, that Holgrave has not seen the Malbone miniature of

Clifford, a picture the primary narrator boasts of having had the "good fortune to see"

(2:31). But, because the house's history is part of his personal heritage, Holgrave knows information that the primary narrator only intuits: for example, the secret of the deed to lost Pyncheon lands concealed behind the Colonel's portrait. Still, both the primary nar­ rator and Holgrave are obsessed with the House of the Seven Gables, even though their goals appear different: Holgrave is obsessed with destroying the structures of the Past, the primary narrator with exposing the Past's secrets.

Most importantly, however, to make Holgrave his scapegoat, the primary narrator characterizes Holgrave as more dangerous an intruder than himself. Certainly, as a phys­ ically existing being (unlike the "disembodied" narrator), Holgrave is a more sinister, imminently threatening force. Indeed, we learn that before the primary narrator even crosses the threshold, Holgrave is already there-"a lodger in a remote gable" of the house

(2:30). Because he lives there "with locks, bolts, and oaken bars on all the intervening doors" (2:30), we sense the threat of Holgrave's physical presence, a threat Holgrave's own words seem to confirm: Holgrave tells Phoebe, "'I am pursuing my studies here [in the house]... The house, in my view, is expressive of that odious and abominable

Past... I dwell in it awhile that I may know how to hate it'" (2:184). In addition, the primary narrator develops Holgrave's character as menacing both in his own voice and through the voices of his other characters. For example, the narrator tells us that 161

Hepzibah "hardly knew what to make of him [Holgrave]" (2:84). Indeed, the primary narrator reports, Hepzibah claims to suspect Holgrave of a certain lawlessness and dis­ cusses with Phoebe Holgrave's strange "companions" (2:84), his reformist speeches and his rumored practice of "animal magnetism," suggestive of his study of "the Black Art"

(2:84). As a result of what she hears, Phoebe herself suggests that Holgrave may be

'"dangerous"' (2:84), a fear she later articulates to Holgrave when she questions his inten­ tions with regard to Hepzibah and Clifford: '"And let me tell you frankly,'" she says,..

I am somewhat puzzled to know whether you wish them well or ill'" (2:216). In fact,

Phoebe goes further in her accusation:

"You talk as if this old house were a theater; and you seem to look at Hepzibah's and Clifford's misfortunes, and those of generations before them, as a tragedy, such as I have seen acted in the hall of a country hotel, only the present one appears to be played exclusively for your amuse­ ment. I do not like this. The play costs the performers too much, and the audience is too coldhearted." (2:217).

Although the daguerreotypist demurs, the primary narrator admits for Holgrave that

"[there was] a degree of truth in this piquant sketch [of Phoebe's]" (2:217). Thus, even though this behavior resembles his own, the primary narrator encourages this exposure of

Holgrave because the primary narrator is trying to protect his own image as a harmless observer by making Holgrave appear to be the more actively malevolent force.

Even in his voyeurism, Holgrave seems more blatantly evil than the primary narrator about piercing facades to reveal the secrets that lie within. And again there is physical evidence. Holgrave is demonstrably capable of revealing hidden character traits by means of his dageurreotypes. Holgrave, in fact, virtually depends on his pictures to reveal the truth: a daguerreotype, he says, "'goes beneath the merest surface . . . [and] brings out the secret character"' (2:91) of the individual pictured. He has proven his point already with the Judge:

"... the original wears, to the world's eye-and for aught I know, to his 162

most intimate friends-an exceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence, openness of heart, sunny good humor, and other praisewor­ thy qualities of that cast... Here [in the picture] we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and withal, cold as ice. Look at that eye! Would you like to be at its mercy? At that mouth! Could it ever smile?" (2:92)

Holgrave wants likewise to examine Clifford. Having never seen the miniature,

Holgrave desires proof of Phoebe's suggestion that "'the original [Clifford him self]. . .

might defy the sun to make him look stern and hard'" (2:93). '"Is there nothing dark or

sinister anywhere?"’ asks Holgrave. "'Could you not conceive the original to have been

guilty of a great crime?"' (2:93). And he even wants to scrutinize Phoebe: "'Any bright

day,"' he says, "'if you will put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and come to my rooms

in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of sunshine, and make a picture of the flower

and its wearer'" (2:94). Certainly, as we have seen, the primary narrator is guilty of simi­

larly intrusive behavior. But what the primary narrator does covertly Holgrave does

overtly. Thus, the primary narrator has made Holgrave appear more accountable for his

crime.

The primary narrator even suggests that Holgrave is capable of killing. Holgrave's

reformist tirades about destroying vestiges of the Past are also veiled references to his

own family's past that he must purge himself of:

"Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? . . . It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body! In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were com­ pelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word." (2:182-83)

The "young giant" Holgrave is surely alluding to his ancestor Matthew Maule, whose

curse-and "ghost"-must be laid to rest. Indeed, to Holgrave, "'Whatever w e seek to do,

of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us"' (2:183). "[W]e live,'" says

Holgrave, "in Dead Men's houses; as, for instance, in this o f the Seven Gables" (2:183). 163

Moreover, Holgrave's threat recalls Phoebe's earlier fear that Holgrave might bum down the house: "'The house,"' he says, "'ought to be purified with fire-purified till only its ashes remain!'" (2:184) (A recollection of the fire created by the manuscript-burning in

"The Devil in Manuscript.") While Holgrave is ostensibly giving vent to his "reformist" ideas, it is clear that he is also thinking of his ancestry and of his own role as, seemingly, the only remaining Maule, for he ends this discussion with Phoebe by inquiring, '"By the by, did you ever hear the story of Maule, the wizard, and what happened between him and your immeasurably great-grandfather?"' (2:184). Thus, just as "'the original perpe­ trator and father of this mischief. . . still walks the street'" (2:185) in the person of Judge

Pyncheon, the original avenger appears still to dwell in the house, waiting to bring down

Maule's curse once again. The narrator, then, develops the character of Holgrave as more dangerous than his own-more dangerous as a voyeur, more dangerous as a mesmerist-and potentially more dangerous as an avenger, perhaps even a killer. As such, Holgrave may serve as someone who can absorb the primary narrator's guilt. He may serve as a scapegoat.

On the other hand, the narrator cannot avoid regarding Holgrave as a se//-both the narrator and Holgrave, as it were, existing as Maules. Thus, while the primary narrator passes the blame for his own behavior onto Holgrave, the narrator is, paradoxically, pro­ tective of him. That is, while the narrator emphasizes Holgrave's intrusive voyeurism, he actually shows him doing nothing to warrant that reputation. Indeed, the primary narra­ tor shows Holgrave performing services for the Pyncheon household-not wreaking their destruction. For example, Holgrave is Hepzibah's first customer in her cent shop. When he enters, the narrator tells us that Holgrave comes "freshly. . . out of the morning light,

[and that] he appeared to have brought some of its cheery influence into the shop along with him" (2:43). Moreover, Holgrave is there, as he says, "'to offer... [his] best wish­ es, and to ask if... [he] can assist... [Hepzibah] further'" in getting her shop ready 164

(2:43). Hepzibah, indeed, responds to Holgrave's "kindly tone" (2:44) and refuses to allow him to pay for his purchase. To be sure, the two disagree on social issues:

Holgrave takes issue with Hepzibah's despondency at her lost gentility, pointing out that she should "'hardly exp ect. .. [him] to sympathize with sensibilities of this kind"' (2:45).

But their dispute is not unfriendly. They agree to disagree, and Holgrave departs,

"leaving . .. [Hepzibah], for the moment, with spirits not quite so much depressed"

(2:46). Furthermore, for all of Phoebe's misgivings about Holgrave's character, she can scarcely impute danger to the man who "'dig[s], and hoe[s], and weed[s]'" the Pyncheon garden '"for the sake of refreshing'" himself (2:191) and of '"enrich[ing] Miss Hepzibah's table"' (2:193).

Moreover, although Phoebe may not "'much like pictures o f the sort'" (2:91)

Holgrave produces in his ’"sober occupation'" (2:91), she and Holgrave cooperate well in the garden-Phoebe agreeing to tend the flowers and the chickens, while Holgrave works with the vegetables. In fact, their relationship hints at the narrator's later comparison of the two to Adam and Eve, dividing labor in a new Eden. Even with Clifford, the artist poses no threat. Once he sees Clifford and "establishes] an intercourse" with him

(2:156), the "sinister" look leaves Holgrave's "deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes"

(2:156), and the look becomes simply "questionable" (2:156), as though Holgrave is pre­ occupied with other matters. Clearly, then, Holgrave's reputation as a menacing voyeur is based more on rumor than on fact.

Actually, throughout most of the romance Holgrave's reputation as a mesmerist is likewise exaggerated. To be sure, the narrator tells us that Phoebe, even early in her rela­ tionship with Holgrave, feels his hypnotic influence: she senses, the narrator tells us, "a certain magnetic element in the artist's nature, which he exercised towards her, possibly without being deeply conscious of it” (2:94). Additionally, as we have seen, Hepzibah wonders about Holgrave's "queer and questionable traits" (2:154), including his practice 165 of the "Black Art" (2:84). And, certainly, we learn that Holgrave recently "had been a public lecturer on Mesmerism" (2:176). Still yet, until Chapters 12 through 14, the only actual instance that the narrator records of Holgrave's use of his power seems innocent enough-even laughable-for, as proof to Phoebe of his "very remarkable endowments"

(2:177), Holgrave puts "Chanticleer [the Pyncheon rooster], who happened to be scratch­ ing nearby, to sleep" (2:176-77). Thus, the narrator asks us to accept two contradictory views of Holgrave: he is at once dangerous and malevolent, and harmless and benign.

As a voyeur and as a mesmerist, Holgrave is both more—and less-dangerous than the pri­ mary narrator. But Holgrave is not a killer.

The fact is, the primary narrator cannot sustain his paradoxical characterization, for in Chapters 12 through 14, he reveals that the menace of Holgrave as other is actually the menace of Holgrave as the primary narrator. Here, in an effort to demonstrate more con­ cretely the "other's" dangerous mesmeric powers, the primary narrator takes a risk. He chooses to allow Holgrave to reveal that he is a storyteller. When Phoebe questions

Holgrave about his obsessive attitude toward the Pyncheons which approaches "'lunacy'"

(2:186), Holgrave responds:

"I believe I am a little mad. This subject has taken hold of my mind with the strangest tenacity of clutch since I have lodged in yonder old gable. As one method of throwing it off, I have put an incident of the Pyncheon family history, with which I happen to be acquainted, into the form o f a legend, and mean to publish it in a magazine." (2:186)

Indeed, he tells Phoebe that his story of the Pyncheon family is not the first writing he has done for publication: "'Yes, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon,"' Holgrave says, '"among the multitude of my marvelous gifts I have that of writing stories; and my name has figured,

I can assure you, on the covers of Graham and Godey'" (2:186). And, of course,

Holgrave demonstrates his ability as a narrator by producing "his roll of manuscript" and beginning "to read" the story of Alice Pyncheon (2:186). 166

In a style not discernibly different from the primary narrator's, Holgrave recounts the story of Matthew Maule (grandson of the original Matthew Maule) and his revenge on

Gervayse Pyncheon (grandson of Colonel Pyncheon), whose greed for the lost Pyncheon land causes him to sacrifice his daughter Alice to the mesmeric gaze of Matthew Maule.

Ostensibly using Alice as "a kind of telescopic medium" to locate "the lost document [the deed]" (2:206), Matthew Maule achieves a mesmeric triumph over and virtual rape of the spirit of Alice Pyncheon, whose "high, unsullied purity and preservative force of woman­ hood" seemed to make "her sphere impenetrable," but whose "might" was not equal to

"man's might" (2:203). She bows, as Matthew Maule says, to "'the strongest spirit'"

(2:206): "A power that she little dreamed of," narrates Holgrave, "had laid its grasp upon her maiden soul. A will, most unlike her own, constrained her to do its grotesque and fantastic bidding" (2:208). Indeed, "her spirit passed from beneath her own control, and bowed itself to Maule" (2:209). As an indirect result of Matthew Maule's hypnotism,

Alice dies. Summoned to Matthew Maule's side (indeed, to his wedding ) by this

"unseen despot" (2:209), Alice falls victim to a wasting disease and thus bears "her last humiliation" (2:210). Although Matthew Maule "meant to humble Alice, not kill her”

(2:210) the narrative makes clear that Maule is nonetheless responsible:" ... he

[Matthew Maule] had taken a woman's delicate soul into his rude gripe, to play with-and she was dead!" (2:210).

In choosing to allow Holgrave to tell a story, the primary narrator puts himself in peril, for he has thereby drawn Holgrave closely into his own sphere of activity. Thus, instead of developing Holgrave as a dangerous other, he actually develops Holgrave as a dangerous self. The menace of Holgrave is nowhere more apparent than in the effect of his story on Phoebe, for Holgrave not only divulges the story of Maule power, but illustrates it on Phoebe. As he ends his narrative, Holgrave observes in Phoebe "a certain remarkable drowsiness . . . the effect, unquestionably, of the mystic gesticulations by 167 which he had sought to bring bodily before Phoebe's perception the figure of the mes­ merizing carpenter" (2:211). Indeed, he has mesmerized Phoebe, his audience:

Holgrave gazed at her, as he rolled up his manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage of that curious psychological condition which, as he had himself told Phoebe, he possessed more than an ordinary faculty of pro­ ducing. A veil was beginning to be muffled about her, in which she could behold only him, and live only in his thoughts and emotions. His glance, as he fastened it on the young girl, grew involuntarily more concentrated; in his attitude there was the consciousness of power, investing its hardly mature figure with a dignity that did not belong to its physical manifesta­ tion. It was evident, that, with but one wave of his hand and a corre­ sponding effort of his will, he could complete his mastery over Phoebe's yet free and virgin spirit: he could establish an influence over this good, pure, and simple child as dangerous, and perhaps as disastrous, as that which the carpenter of his legend had acquired and exercised over the ill- fated Alice. (2:211-12)

The narrator suggests to no avail that the effect on Phoebe is "wholly unlike that with which . . . [his own] reader possibly feels himself affected" (2:211). Even though the narrator jokes about putting his audience to sleep by being boring, the physical symp­ toms are similar to those of mesmerism. And because the power of Holgrave is repre­ sented in sexual terms, it is reminiscent of the "rape" perpetrated by the primary narrator of "Alice Doane's Appeal." Truly, we can now see that to be a storyteller is to be a

Maule.

But the primary narrator, now unable to use Holgrave as a scapegoat, moves quickly to redeem Holgrave and thus, vicariously, himself: first, he has Holgrave repudiate his

Maule heritage and become (much as Phoebe is "no Pyncheon") no Maule; second, the primary narrator becomes the scapegoat by performing an act of retribution in Holgrave's stead. Holgrave, the narrator tells us, relinquishes Phoebe from his control and thus becomes less a Maule. Making "a slight gesture upward with his hand" (2:212),

Holgrave releases Phoebe from his spell, and, according to the narrator, becomes "forev­ er after" (2:212) one whose integrity is sound: 168

Let us, therefore-whatever his defects of nature and education, and in spite of his scorn for creeds and institutions-concede to the daguerreotyp- ist the rare and high quality of reverence for another's individuality. Let us allow him integrity, also, forever after to be confided in; since he for­ bade himself to twine that one link more which might have rendered his spell over Phoebe indissoluble. (2:212)

Indeed, following Holgrave's release of Phoebe from bis occult power, both he and

Phoebe come under the sway of human love, and, we suspect, the narrator himself, through Holgrave, becomes vicariously humanized. Holgrave, in particular, senses a release and a renewal:

"After all, what a good world we live in! How good, and beautiful! How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or ageworn in it!... Could I keep the feeling that now posssesses me, the garden would every day be virgin soil, with the earth's first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and the house! It would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming with the earliest roses that God ever made." (2:214)

And Phoebe responds somewhat in kind: "'I never cared about moonlight before. What is there, I wonder, so beautiful in it tonight?"' (2:214),

However, Holgrave's conversion is not complete; nor is his redemption absolute.

Hidden in Holgrave's renewal is his sense that something yet remains to be done.

Although he now suggests that he takes a ’"kindly interest"’ in the house and its inhabi­ tants (2:216) and pledges himself "'to lend these unfortunate beings whatever aid I can'"

(2:217), he sounds an ominous note as well: he has "'a conviction that the end draws nigh'" (2:217); he wishes "'to witness the close'" to '"derive a moral satisfaction from it"'

(2:216-17). Even Phoebe is alarmed, claiming, "'you speak as if misfortune were impending'" (2:218). Indeed, Holgrave responds, "'I cannot help fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe'" (2:218), and he suggests that they part as

'"friends'" before Phoebe "'entirely hate[s]'" him (2:218). Such ominous overtones in this

Eden-like environment hint at a repetition of the Fall and suggest that Holgrave's (and

the primary narrator's) renewal is incomplete. Holgrave, it seems, will not be entirely 169 free as long as the Judge lives. The death of the Judge is what Holgrave awaits as the

"'fifth act,'" and his presumed role in that act is why he fears Phoebe may "'entirely hate'" him (2:218). Thus it is that the primary narrator performs that act for Holgrave (and thus for himself). The primary narrator, as we have seen, is narratively responsible for the death of Judge Pyncheon. The primary narrator, then, becomes the scapegoat he had originally intended Holgrave to be and, paradoxically, by assuming the guilt for

Holgrave, the primary narrator achieves a vicarious redemption in Holgrave.

The effect of the Judge's death on Holgrave is immediate and stunning. When

Phoebe finds Holgrave in the house after he has found the Judge's corpse, the narrator describes Holgrave as happy: "His smile," says the narrator," ... was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression [of it] that Phoebe had ever witnessed" in Holgrave (2:301). Even though Holgrave characterizes the Judge's death

as a ’"terrible event'" (2:301), there is little doubt that he feels relieved for the ’"catastro­ phe, or consummation"' (2:303) has taken place. Indeed, the narrator notes, there was a

"calmness . . . [to] Holgrave's demeanor" (2:303). While Holgrave "appeared . . . to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge's death," still he "had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably"

(2:303)-and happening, certainly, without his direct involvement. As a matter of fact,

Holgrave interprets the death medically, as '"an idiosyncrasy with . . . [the Judge's] fami­

ly for generations past"' (2:304), and even denies the operation of Maule's curse in the

whole affair: "'Old Maule's prophecy,"' he says, "'was probably founded on a knowledge

of this physical predisposition in the Pyncheon race’" (2:304). The death, Holgrave

claims, "'seems the stroke o f God upon him [the Judge], at once a punishment for his

wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clifford'" (2:304).

This is a signal event for Holgrave, one that frees him to explore human relation­

ships in a positive way. He asks Phoebe, '"Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has 170 made this the only point of life worth living?"' (2:306), and he is finally able to tell

Phoebe, '"I love you"' (2:306). Phoebe feels likewise: "'You know I love you!"' (2:307).

Suddenly, the narrator tells us, it is Eden all over again, now without qualification:

And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle was wrought without which every human existence is a blank. The bliss which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this youth and maiden. They were conscious of nothing sad nor old. They transfig­ ured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the first two dwellers in it. (2:307)

Thus the primary narrator has negotiated a vicarious redemption for himself through his

narrator double's return to a state of innocence, and both reenter society with a new set of

values. Holgrave recognizes that every generation is responsible for making a house

what they will: "'Then, every generation of the family might... alter... the interior [of

a house], to suit its own taste and convenience"' (2:314), and he and Phoebe happily live

in "Love's web of sorcery" (2:319). Because he is redeemed as well, the narrator match­

es Holgrave's euphoria and ends his story quickly and happily, providing, as Marcus

Cunliffe says, "prizes for everybody . . . [even] Uncle Venner and . . . little Ned Higgins"

(98). Richard Gray, as well, notes the narrator's optimism: "The Judge is dead and quick­

ly forgotten; the house is abandoned; Clifford, Hepzibah and company all change for the

better" (104). The narrator even helps Holgrave provide the final elucidation of the

house's mystery. He tells us, smugly perhaps, that "the history and elucidation of the

facts, long so mysterious, had been obtained by the daguerreotypist from one of those

mesmerical seers, who, nowadays, so strangely perplex the aspect of human affairs, and

put everybody's natural vision to the blush, by the marvels which they see with their eyes

shut" (2:311). Surely the narrator is referring not-so-obliquely to himself as one who

now does good with his power, rather that evil.

Critics, to be sure, object to the rapidity with which the story ends. Cunliffe

remarks, "One senses the author's desire to polish the story off. The pace quickens to a 171 trot" (98). Gray concurs: "Nearly everyone, including the narrator, seems to wash his hands of the past" (104). However, implicit in this criticism is the point: the narrator must waste no time, for he wishes to avoid as much as possible revitalizing any vestige of guilt that he has just washed away. Indeed, Gray's criticism of the ending virtually articulates its point:

. . . the plain fact is that. . . [the narrator] is withdrawing-and withdraw­ ing in a fashion that is oddly reminiscent of that other observer and writer, the young daguerreotypist: who, as we have seen, after weaving his spell. . . suddenly dissolves it, breaks the enchantment and releases Phoebe from his power. (106)

Thus, the narrator, like Holgrave, is "[ajbjuring his rough magic" (Gray 106) and ending

The House of the Seven Gables as Shakespeare's Prospero. By giving up his magic, the narrator may return himself/Holgrave and us "to a more prosaic world where certain crudely specific and rather simple-minded choices are to be made" (Gray 106), but where, we might add, the reward of social integration is possible.

Thus, we can see why Hawthorne felt so satisfied that he had brought The House of the Seven Gables to a "prosperous close." The metafictive apparatus, inherent in his strategy o f narrator doubling reveals that The House of the Seven Gables is, indeed,

Hawthorne's most self-liberating fiction. Thus it is, as Hawthorne characterized it, a

"natural and healthy product of my mind" (The Letters: 1843-1853 421) and, as Richard

Brodhead phrases it, a work which "lead[s]" Hawthorne's "fiction from sickness into health" (70). Clearly, the work is Hawthorne's most successful attempt at creating a nar­ rator who, through his narrator double, is capable of wielding Oberon's "white magic" to his own advantage-of wielding it far more completely than the narrators of "The

Haunted Quack" or the framed "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" are able to do. The primary narrator of The House of the Seven Gables remains in control of his narrator 172 double and, through him, is able to effect a redemption for himself and, vicariously, to experience the same rewards as Holgrave: a secure future in the bosom of family and friends-a future of social integration similar to what the narrators of "The Haunted

Quack" and the framed "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" want for themselves, but never quite achieve.

We must note, however, that this victory over "black magic" is bittersweet. The narrator of The House of the Seven Gables achieves his goal at the expense of his craft.

Indeed, in this work, Oberon becomes Prospero who abjures his magic to become an ordinary person. While Hubert H. Hoeltje does not explore the implications, he, too, senses the change:" ... The House of the Seven Gables." he says, "ends with all the serenity of Shakespeare's Tempest after Prospero has disposed o f his enemies" (357-58).

Oberon's magic, then, is ultimately too dangerous-control of his "white magic" too frag­ ile—for a narrator whose very occupation leaves him vulnerable to the "black magic" of psychological exposure. Indeed, as we have seen, in other fictions, the primary narrators are exposed as guilty by their narrator doubles: variously, they are seducers, onanists, murderers, and parricides. And certainly every step of the creative process leaves the narrator as indictable-storytelling, storywriting, characterizing-and even choosing to become a storyteller. While indeed The House of the Seven Gables ends prosperously enough, it does offer only one disquieting option for a storyteller. The choice is clear.

The only sure way for a narrator to avoid guilt is to give up his craft. 173

1 In his "Preface" to The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne obliges the reader with a statement o f his "moral prupose"-"the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advan­ tage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief (2). However, it is clear that

Hawthorne does not want to seem "deficient in this particular" (2). Indeed, apropos of this study, Hawthorne implies that other meanings may exist in his work: "When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one" (2). Moreover, Hawthorne insists that he has no intention "relentlessly to impale the story with its moral," thus

"depriving it of life" (2). It is clear, then, that Hawthorne himself resisted limiting our understanding of the book's purpose to a single perspective.

2 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, eds. William Charvat, and others, vol. 2 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965) 14. Subsequent parenthetical references to The House of the Seven Gables are presented thus: (2:14).

3 One of the few critics to comment on the role reversal of the narrator and Holgrave,

Stubbs recognizes that such a strategy allows "the levels of reality in the book. . . [to become] blurred" making "storytelling . . . an integral part of the action" (96). However, he offers a facile explanation of the significance of the strategy, suggesting first that the narrator "gains artistic distance from the reader and cuts down the empathy the reader may wish to feel for the characters" (97) and then concluding that "above all what

Hawthorne makes us aware of is that this is just a story, one way of looking at life"-this way "merely the most optimistic" (98). While Stubbs' conclusion is a "safe" one, he indeed avoids grappling with the fundamental relationship between the narrator and

Hoigrave throughout the work, a relationship which necessitates this role reversal for the psychological well-being of the narrator. 174

^ Written during the fall and winter o f 1850-51, Hawthorne's second full-length romance, The House of the Seven Gables, is, according to Hawthorne himself, a more

"cheerful one" than The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne, Tfte Letters: 1843-1853 421).

Writing to his friend Horatio Bridge in February, 1850, Hawthorne had characterized his first romance as lacking "sunshine" (The Letters: 184^-1853 311) and declared The

Scarlet Letter "a h-ll-fired story into which I found it almost impossible to throw any cheering light" (The Letters: 1843-1853 311-12). This was a situation which he set about remedying in The House of the Seven Gables. Although contemporary opinion generally rated The Scarlet Letter as superior to The House of foe Seven Gables. Hawthorne appeared more satisfied with his second romance. Indeed, he affirmed this position in a

January, 1851, letter to publisher J. T. Fields: "I. . . prefer it [The House of the Seven

Gables] to the Scarlet Letter" (The Letters: 1843-185j 386).

^ The House of the Seven Gables is not only Hawthorne's "lightest" full-length romance but, interestingly (in view of Hawthorne's assessment of it), thought to be his most personal, for it draws heavily on Hawthorne's own experience and on family m emo­ ries. Certainly, for example, the sternly oppressive figure o f Judge Pyncheon is a carica­ ture of Hawthorne's political foe Charles W. Upham who had been instrumental in removing Hawthorne from his post at the Salem Custom House. As Gloria C. Erlich points out, Pyncheon and Upham are similar, both having "a forebear who was a Loyalist during the American Revolution" and both having "served one term in each branch of the state legislature" (139). Further, the curse on the Pyncheon family echoes a piece of

Hawthorne's family tradition involving Hawthorne's ancestors, William Hathorne and his son John, both Puritan magistrates. As Marcus Cunliffe points out, these Hathomes

"were dynasts of dubious renown" (81):

As magistrates, they had handed out harsh justice against the Quakers. A fellow judge of John Hathorne, indeed, had sentenced a Quaker named 175

Thomas Maule to imprisonment in 1695. Three years earlier, Judge Hathorne had played an active part in the Salem witch trials. According to tradition, he had been cursed by one of the victims, though in fact the curse had been aimed at his colleague Nicholas Noyes to whom the accused woman said, "I am no more a witch than you are a wizard-and if you take away my life, God w ill give you blood to drink." (82)

Family legends provide an autobiographical anchorage for two other strands of The

House of the Seven Gables: the dream of a claim to eastern lands and the power of

redemptive love to bring together two feuding families. Erlich traces the former connec­

tion to Hawthorne's maternal ancestors, the Mannings (139). Philip Young likewise

points out that the Mannings maintained a "claim to a vast tract of land in Lincoln

County, eastern Maine, purchased from Robin Hood and other sagamores" (37). The lat­

ter connection, according to Cunliffe, stems from the resolution of hostility between the

families of Judge John Hathorne and John English, animosity resulting from the arrest of

the Englishes on charges of witchcraft in 1692. Cunliffe claims that "the bad feeling that

resulted between the two families was patched over many years later through the mar­

riage of a grandson of Judge Hathorne with a great-granddaughter of John English" (82),

much as the Maule/Pyncheon dispute ends with the marriage of Phoebe Pyncheon and

the Maule descendant Holgrave. Cunliffe also points out that "the English house, one of

several substantial old homes in Salem that may have served as a model for the House of

the Seven Gables, passed into the possession of a Hathorne" (82).

Still other strands of plot and character seem intimately connected with Hawthorne.

According to Hubert H. Hoeltje, "The beginnings of the imaginary Clifford and Holgrave

seem to have sprung from Hawthorne's first recorded observations of his cousin Eben

Hathorne" (348). An "old bachelor, truly forlorn-lonely, and with sensitiveness to feel

his loneliness" (348), Eben is suggestive of Clifford. At the same time, Eben is similar to

the energetic reformer Holgrave, for, as Hoeltje indicates, "Eben had given vent to the

most arrant democracy asserting that nobody ought to possess wealth longer than his 176 own life, and then it should return to the people" (348). Such politics, Hoeltje says, are

"very much akin to those of the fictional young Yankee Holgrave" (348) who loathes the past and believes that no one should build a home for posterity. Another character,

Phoebe, likewise has a real-life antecedent. Richard Gray, among others, notes a strong resemblance between Phoebe and Sophia, Hawthorne's wife. Phoebe, he says, is like

Sophia "in her diminutive size, her practicality, her cheerfulness and apparent redemptive power-and in her name; for Hawthorne gave Sophia the pet name of Phoebe during the early years of their marriage" (90). Clearly, Hawthorne blends references both to his past and to his present into the fabric of The House of the Sevep Gables.

6 Although Holgrave is, as Frederick Crews has noted, "the character who most near­ ly resembles Hawthorne as artist" (173), Hepzibah, he claims, is likewise suggestive of

Hawthorne and may represent Hawthorne's reclusive side as well as his fear of the pub­ lic: "He [Hawthorne] as well as Hepzibah, if they are to stay in business at all, must fol­ low the cynical advice on modem salesmanship offered by the earthbound Yankee, Uncle

Venner" (189) who suggests that Hepzibah smile brightly as she hands the public what they want. Crews likewise perceives strong connections between Hawthorne and

Clifford, "the artist manque, [who] is both squeamish and vicariously sensual, both 'ideal' and secretly vicious" (190). Indeed, to Crews, Clifford "is an extreme version of the withdrawn Hawthornian artist" (190), a conclusion similar to that of Hoeltje who sees both Holgrave and Clifford as "expressions of two aspects o f Hawthorne's own charac­ ter" (349): Holgrave as "the man of action" and Clifford as "the man of beauty" (350).

^ In her study of The House of the Seven Gables. Erlich refers to Judge Pyncheon as

"a toweringly oppressive paternal figure" (138) who victimizes those with artistic tem­ peraments. She suggests that he oppresses "not just a single quavering artist. . . but two artists, three if we include the narrator who forgets his carefully cultivated urbanity when dealing with this formidable 'kindred enemy'" (138). Later she refers to the "narrator's Ill response to the open-eyed corpse" (143) of Judge Pyncheon. However, some few lines later, Erlich makes a leap of faith in identifying the narrator's voice as "the author's"

(143).

8 This system of profiding different sets of information regarding the same set of cir­ cumstances is what Yvor Winters, identifies as Hawthorne's "formula of alternative pos­ sibilities" (Cunliffe 86), a phrase that Marcus Cunliffe, Richard Gray and others later use.

This "formula," as Gray points out, is the means "whereby every major occurrence is provided with both a natural and a supernatural explanation" (34). According to

Cunliffe, "Hawthorne wishes us to entertain both sets of explanations as far as we can"

(87), for these sets of explanations, he claims, "are meant to support rather than clash with one another. They are not so much alternative as complementary possibilities" (87).

However, as my study has shown, the narrator not only provides both a natural and supernatural explanation of events, but also investigates the sources of this information: written and oral tradition. While indeed Hawthorne's narrator rarely rejects the possibili­

ty of truth in either written or oral tradition, he does not reject the possibility of w /2 truth in

them either, thus, the paradox that Cunliffe speaks of is still broader than he suggests:

Hawthorne's "alternative possibilities" or even "complementary possibilities" may simul­

taneously be "alternative" or "complementary" impossibilities. Certainly, in The House

of the Seven Gables, the narrator pursues truth by means of a third route which he sug­

gests is ultimately more reliable than either records or local tradition. He explores truth

as it is evinced in his personal observation, an observation so keen as to penetrate surface

reality to reveal the secrets beneath appearances.

^ Critics commonly remark upon the significance of the house as a symbol in The

House of the Seven Gables. Richard Harter Fogle, for example, claims, "The house itself

is a symbol more comprehensive than any of the human characters" insofar as "family

and house are interchangeable" (162). Roy R. Male, in his Darwinian examination of the 178 work, contrasts the house as "organic, feminine, and integrated" to "the street [which] is essentially mechanical, spatial, masculine, and atomistic" (128). To Male, "the two mas­ sive symbols of house and street" (130) contribute to "the book's theme-the interpenetra­ tion of the past and present" (138). Marcus Cunliffe claims that "the House symbolizes the fate o f its owners" (84) but otherwise serves principally as "a witness of terrible events" (85). To Cunliffe, the house "matters to the story, as the Mississippi matters in

Twain's Huckleberry Finn. But like the Mississippi, it is ultimately no more than a wit­ ness, a physical fact" (85). More closely allied to the perspective of my study are the views of Richard Gray, Joel Porte, and Frederick Crews, who point to the metafictive and psychological implications o f the house as a symbol. Gray, for instance, sees "the house

. . . [as] an analogue of the book" (99) insofar as everyone-narrator, characters, and read­ er-must cross the threshold o f the house in order to enter the scope of the story's action.

Porte develops the metafictive nature of the work even further by claiming, "The past of the house, the varied life, and the secrets o f the heart are all caught up in one comprehen­ sible metaphor that defines the function o f the romancer" (76). He perceives the function of the romancer as one who tries "to get the house to respond, to open up" for "it is the romancer's job to present the 'truth of the human heart"' (76). Unlike my argument, how­ ever, Porte claims that the task of "forcing the house to yield up the secret of its 'inner heart'. . . will be successfully completed by . . . Holgrave" (76). While Porte's point is indeed insightful, he does not account for the narrator as a romancer who himself pene­ trates the "inner heart" perhaps more insidiously than Holgrave does. Finally, Frederick

Crews provides an insightful commentary-certainly relevant to my treatment of the nar­ rator as one who assumes guilt to free his surrogate. According to Crews, "the Pyncheon estate embodies a mental condition in which an uneasy re-enactment of guilt will be made necessary by the effort to avoid responsibility for that guilt" (178). 179

Roy R. Male likewise refers to this "ghost," but claims the ghost is Holgrave:

"Early in the first chapter Hawthorne cites the prediction that old Matthew Maule's ghost would haunt the 'new apartments' of the Pyncheon house. This prophecy comes true in

the person of Holgrave, who lives in 'a remote gable' o f the house, barred from the main portion" (129). While Holgrave is a Maule descendant, he is far too much of flesh and blood to be a "ghost." As an unseen presence-a "disembodied listener" (33)-the narrator

more closely resembles this haunting presence.

11 Richard Harter Fogle notes that the Judge himself wants to dissociate himself

from the house:

The Judge's life . . . is thus pictured [as a corpse]; while the house was built upon the buried Maule, it concealed the secret of the dead Colonel and ironically is to conceal the hidden corpse o f the Judge himself. It seems a fine touch that the Judge in his practical wisdom has no interest in the house but dwells in a pleasant modern country estate. (167)

12 Cox argues that since the Judge expects Clifford in the parlor at any moment, it is

doubtful that Jaffrey Pyncheon would be "startled by this appearance" (100). Further,

Cox suggests that although the Judge's death might have benefited Clifford, "a person of

his [Clifford's] delicate nature could not have withstood such a horror while it occurred"

(100). 180

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brodhead, Richard H. Hawthorne. Melville, and the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.

Cox, Clara B. "Who Killed Judge Pyncheon? The Scene of the Crime Revisited." Studies in American Fiction 16.1 (1988): 99-103.

Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne’s Psychological Themes. New York: Oxford UP, 1966.

Cunliffe, Marcus. "The House of the Seven Gables." Hawthorne Centenary Essays. Ed. Roy Harvey Pearce. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1964. 79-101.

Dryden, Edgar A. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Poetics of Enchantment. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

Erlich, Gloria C. Family Themes and Hawthorne's Fiction: The Tenacious Web. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1984.

Fogle, Richard Harter. Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1964.

Gray, Richard. '"Hawthorne: A Problem': The House of the Seven Gables." Nathaniel Hawthorne: New Critical Essavs. Ed. A. Robert Lee. Totowa, NJ: Barnes, 1982. 88-109.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 2. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965.

—. The Letters: 1843-1853. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 16. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965. 2:1-3.

—. Preface. The House of the Seven Gables. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965.

Hoeltje, Hubert H. Inward Skv: The Mind and Heart of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Durham: Duke UP, 1962.

Male, Roy R. Hawthorne's Tragic Vision. New York: Norton, 1957.

Marks, Alfred H. "Who Killed Judge Pyncheon? The Role of Imagination in The House of the Seven Gables." PMLA 71 (1956): 355-69.

Porte, Joel. "Redemption Through Art." Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Collection of Criticism. Ed. J. Donald Crowley. New York: McGraw, 1975. 75-85. 181

Robinson, Douglas. "Metafiction and Heartfelt Memory: Narrative Balance in 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Emerson SorWy Quarterly 28 (1982): 213-19.

Stubbs, John Caldwell. "The House nf the Seven GahW Hawthorne's Comedy." Modern Critical Views: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 85-98.

Tharpe, Jac. Nathaniel Hawthorne: % pfitv and Knowledge. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1967.

VonAbele, Rudolphe. The Death of ftjtist. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft, 1955.

Young, Phillip. Hawthorne's Secret: tJn-Told Tale. Boston: Godine, 1984. CH A PTER V

The Narrator Behind the Narrators: Hawthorne

"A sad smile gleamed faintly from beneath the black veil, and flickered about his mouth ..."

—Hawthorne, "The Minister's Black Veil: A Parable"

Of course, Hawthorne did not give up his craft, committed as he was to writing and faced as well with financial exigencies-including his wife Sophia's pregnancy and his apprehensions about supporting his growing family. Indeed, in 1851, the same year The

House of the Seven Gables was published, Hawthorne produced The Wonder Book, a collection of myths adapted to children. The following year he published The Blithedale

Romance. Tanelewood Tales, another children's book, followed in 1853. Hawthorne's last full-length romance, The Marble Faun, appeared in I860. Apart from these works, we have the manuscripts of two projected, but unpolished, works of the 1860's, published posthumously as The American Claimant Manuscripts and The Elixir of Life

Manuscripts (because these manuscripts are not polished products, it is not clear whether they would have contained narrator doubles or not). Certainly, then, Hawthorne did not appear to act, in any absolute sense, upon the solution proposed to the artistic dilemma posed by The House of the Seven Gables. That is, he could not commit a Prospero-like artistic suicide. Still, Hawthorne was not unaware of the work's import for himself.

Indeed, his behavior during its writing, as well as the choices he made in narrative strate­ gy for subsequent works, suggest an increasing anxiety about, and attempt to cope with,

182 183 self-reflexive and self-implicating narration which must necessarily reflect upon the author himself.

Hawthorne's difficulty in writing the conclusion of The House of the Seven Gables speaks to his concern about its potential message for narrators, including himself.

Despite Hawthorne's satisfaction with this work once he had finished it, he had difficulty bringing The House of the Seven Gables to his desired "prosperous close." Hawthorne's period of greatest difficulty, according to Cathy N. Davidson, occurred following the two scenes that I have identified as pivotal: Holgrave's story (and his renunciatory act) and the Judge's death (the narrator's retributive/redemptive act). "Not surprisingly," says

Davidson, "Hawthorne came down with a severe case of writer's block!" (690).

Davidson attributes Hawthorne's inability to write for two months to his having "written himself into an impasse" (690), where he may have questioned the direction of his work.

Indeed, claims Davidson, Hawthorne may have feared he had produced "a final testa­ ment to the impossibly egotistical-even violent-impulses of the representational artist"

(690). My study has, in fact, exposed Hawthorne's fear of such impulses. This study of

Hawthorne's doubling narrators has shown Hawthorne's uneasiness with the compromis­ es that storytelling entails for the storyteller, and the kinds of narrative dilemmas

Hawthorne portrays in these works seem to lead inevitably to the resolution depicted in

The House of the Seven Gables: to abandon art. Indeed, The House o f the Seven Gables led Hawthorne into the predicament of producing a work of art which says he must repu­ diate art if he is to live a fulfilled, guiltless life. According to Davidson, facing this predicament was a crisis of sorts for Hawthorne: "Faced with the discrepancy between the promise [of a 'prosperous close'] and the macabre fictional premises out of which any ending must be forged, Hawthorne fell into a 'Slough of Despond' and stopped writing for nearly two months, an abject mood which Sophia Hawthorne . . . documented in her diary" (691). Finally, when Hawthorne picked up his manuscript in January, 1851, he 184 solved the problem, as Davidson puts it, "by enacting in his plot a symbolic suicide"

(691)-a dire conclusion for Hawthorne, though an auspicious one for Holgrave/the pri­ mary narrator.

Davidson suggests that Hawthorne's anxiety over what The House o f the Seven

Gables implies about writing caused not only his "writer's block," but also "portended future failures-a decline from the power and promise of The Scarlet Letter into a series of more predictable fictions" (691-92). However, whatever one might make of

Davidson's judgment of Hawthorne's subsequent work, at the least, we can recognize that in these later works Hawthorne tries to use narrative strategies which mitigate the dire consequences for art implied in the "prosperous close" of The House of the Seven

Gables. Unable to avoid guilt by committing artistic suicide, Hawthorne tries to adjust his strategies to ameliorate the effects of guilt.

In The Wonder Book, for example, Hawthorne mitigates the sinister role of the narra­ tor. He makes light of the tension between art and life and, in some measure, neutralizes its danger by bringing into the open the malevolent possibilities of his own power and demonstrating that his narrator/audience/characters are fully aware of those possibilities.

Primrose, one of the children who listen to Eustace Bright's stories, questions Eustace about the author who has brought them all-even Eustace-into existence:

"Have we not an author for our next neighbor?" asked Primrose. "That silent man, who lives in the old, red house, near Tanglewood avenue, and whom we sometimes meet, with two children at his side, in the woods or at the lake. I think I have heard of his having written a poem, or a romance, or an arithmetic, or a school-history, or some other kind of book." "Hush, Primrose, hush!" exclaimed Eustace, in a thrilling whisper, and putting his finger on his lip. "Not a word about that man, even on a hill­ top! If our babble were to reach his ears, and happen not to please him, he has but to fling a quire or two of paper into the stove, and you, Primrose, and I, and Periwinkle, Sweet Fern,.. -yes, and wise Mr. Pringle with his unfavorable criticisms on my legends, and poor Mrs. Pringle, too-would all turn to smoke and go whisking up the funnel! Our neighbor in the red 185

house is a harmless sort of person enough, for aught I know, as concerns the rest of the world; but something whispers me that he has a terrible power over ourselves, extending to nothing short of annihilation." (169- 70)

Apart from the obvious reference to the manuscript-burning, which, as we have seen, is autobiographical, the reference to "two children at his side "seems to be an allusion to

Hawthorne's two children, Una and Julian. Thus, Hawthorne clearly draws our attention to himself as the author behind the entire narrative-including this passage. However, in drawing attention to himself and his power in a humorous and candid way, Hawthorne moderates our sense of the sinister relationship he has with us, his narrator, and his char­ acters.

Certainly, Hawthorne's writer's block during his work on The House of the Seven

Gables, as well as his playful treatment of the author's power in The Wonder Book, sug­ gest that Hawthorne's own role as a storyteller began to worry him in ways that affected even those fictions that followed The House of the Seven Gables. Indeed, in these works we can see Hawthorne's continuing attempt to mitigate the lesson of The House of the

Seven Gahles and to avoid as much as possible a resurfacing of what we have termed

Oberon's black magic potential. In both The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun

Hawthorne avoided using the sort of multiple layers of narration that we have examined in this study, perhaps in recognition of the danger-for himself-inherent in such an obvi­ ously self-reflexive strategy.

In Thp Blithedale Romance, for instance, Hawthorne drastically changed his narra­ tive strategy. Indeed, The Blithedale Romance is Hawthorne's only full-length romance that he wrote exclusively in the first person, from the point of view of a named character,

Miles Coverdale. Coverdale narrates a tale about himself and thus, by narrative design, is necessarily a participant/character in his own narrative, unlike the narrators we have studied who pretend they are not. To be sure, Coverdale is not substantially different in 186 his interests and personality than those unnamed, theoretically nonparticipating primary narrators who claim merely to observe and report, even as they intrude upon and manipu­ late their own fictions. Coverdale, like Holgrave, takes a part resembling "that of the

Chorus in a classic play,"* but he is more intrusive than a Chorus. Indeed, we see him peeking through the leaves of a tree (his private retreat at Blithedale) and peering into windows where, as in Boston, he can learn what is going on in another's life. Further, in keeping with a Maule-like character, Coverdale's voyeurism is connected to sex.

Coverdale persists in thinking o f Zenobia in sexual terms, wondering, for instance, what

Zenobia would look like clothed like Eve and speculating about whether or not she had ever brought to consummation "the great event of a woman's existence" (3:46). Still and all, Coverdale is a character who participates in his own narrative-not a narrator who pretends he is not a character. Because we think of Coverdale as a human (rather than a disembodied presence), we are more alert to possible flaws and biases in his perceptions than w e are to the flaws/biases in the (presumed) observer/narrators. As a result,

Coverdale seems not to violate his contract with the reader in as sinister a way as the other narrators in this study do.

It is interesting, too, that Coverdale is the flip side of Holgrave, for, unable to commit him self to love, or even friendship, Coverdale represents a return to the artistic isolation of Fanshawe, the "hero" of Hawthorne's first romance. Coverdale retreats to his bachelor quarters in town where his "subsequent life has passed . . . [if not happily], at all events tolerably enough" (3:246) and where, twelve years after his Blithedale experience, he is still alone. Although he has "given . . . [poetry] up" (3:246), he is still writing, for his product is The Blithedale Romance. Coverdale's "tolerable" life as an artist, however, may speak to his acceptance of what Keith Carabine refers to as the "costs of authorship"

(187), an understanding of what he has missed out on in life by the choices he has made.

That is, he accepts the notion that if he commits his life to art, he will likely do so at the 187 sacrifice of social relationships-including love. This is, of course, an acceptance

Hawthorne did not allow Holgrave and, thus, a hint that Hawthorne was examining the flip side of Holgrave's conversion to come to terms with aspects of his own vocation.

Moreover, in The Blithedale Romance we are denied access to Coverdale's psyche and thus to any private, subconscious feelings of guilt. By having Coverdale tell his own story, Hawthorne avoids the meditation of a primary narrator between himself and

Coverdale. As a result, Hawthorne produced in Coverdale the "other" that the primary narrator of The House of the Seven Gables is unable to produce in Holgrave, thereby suggesting that Coverdale bears the brunt of narrative guilt. As F. O. Matthiessen main­ tains, "We must remember that Coverdale is not Hawthorne any more than Prufrock is

Eliot, that in each case the author has exorcised a dangerous part of his experience" (229) by deferring to the experience of another.

Actually, even within his own narrative, Coverdale is not subject to comparison with other narrators and their tales, tales that we have seen bring to the surface elements of the demonic that the narrator would ordinarily suppress. Thus, because The Blithedale

Romance lacks narrator doubles, Coverdale's narration is not subject to commentary, cri- tique-or exposure-by any apparatus other than his own. Even Zenobia’s legend of the silvery veil and old Moodie's story of Fauntleroy, though set off as embedded stories, are not actually examples of narrator doubling, for Coverdale introduces no new narrators, but simply provides his own version of what Zenobia and Moodie presumably said. In fact, he makes his own authorship quite clear, preceding each. Before he tells us

Zenobia's legend, Coverdale points out that his "version" of the story may not preserve

"the pristine character" (3:107) of the original. Preceding Moodie's story, Coverdale remarks that he has further researched "the main facts" and suggests that he has added his own coloring to the story:" ... in writing it out, my pen has perhaps allowed itself a trifle of romantic and legendary licence" (3:181). Thus, to suit himself Coverdale adjusts the 188 stories of Zenobia and Moodie, who, if allowed to tell their own stories, might have been narrator doubles. These adjustments may help us understand the choices Coverdale makes as a writer and may lead us to suspect him of manipulating another's text, but the tales themselves do not undermine Coverdale's text. At best, we suspect that they could have, in the hands of the original narrators. Thus, howevermuch Coverdale may expose his own limitations and biases as an author and reveal in his own text discrepancies between his words and behavior, he does not open the subterranean passages of his psy­ che by turning any portion of his fiction over to other narrators.

Hawthorne changed his narrative strategy again in The Marble Faun, his last full- length romance. While Hawthorne returned to the unnamed observer/narrator as the sto­ ryteller of The Marble Faun, again he provided no narrator double as a subversive ele­ ment in his narrator's text. And, we should note, at least in passing, that this single, unnamed narrator shows signs of some sensitivity toward his relationship with us and his fiction, an indication, perhaps, of Hawthorne's own growing sensitivity to avoiding his own implication in the behavior of his narrators and their fictions. The observer/narrator of The Marble Faun is quite different from the primary narrators we have examined in this study, and strikingly so in comparison to the primary narrator of The House of the

Seven Gables whose self-interest in his own narrative is unmistakable. Certainly this study of narrator doubling has exposed the fallacy of accepting even the possibility of a disinterested, purely objective narrator. Still, Hawthorne's narrator of The Marble Faun at least approximates the role of "disembodied listener" far more successfully than does the primary narrator of The House of the Seven Gables. Indeed, the narrator of The

Marble Faun is innocuous by comparison.

Most importantly, this narrator exposes his narrative choices to us and, in making those choices visible, avoids the appearance of undue manipulation of either his text or his audience. For instance, he frequently enters the text simply to locate us within the 189 fiction; he sets the scene and/or moves us about verifiable locations in Rome, almost as a travel guide. At the beginning, he directs our view from the window o f "one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery, in the Capitol, at R om e:"^

From one of the windows of this saloon, we might see a flight o f broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate Forum . . . At a distance beyond . . . rises the great sweep of the Coliseum . . . Far off, the view is shut in by the Alban mountains .... (4:6)

Throughout the work the narrator assumes this travel guide role, supplying us a view o f

Rome, its customs, its art galleries, and its pieces o f art.

Also in the interest of keeping us located within his fiction, at times the narrator sim ­ ply jogs our memories or gives us directions. When Kenyon arrives at Donatello's castle in the Apennines, the home of the Counts of Monte Beni, the narrator takes us there as well: "Thither we must now accompany him, and endeavor to make our story flow onward ..." (4:213). Back in Rome, Hilda sighs, longing for Kenyon, and the narrator reminds us, "That very afternoon, as the reader may remember, Kenyon felt Hilda's hand pulling at the silken cord that was connected with his heart-strings, as he stood looking toward Rome from the battlements of Monte Beni" (4:343).

Trying to remain exterior to the work, this narrator also implies that some informa­ tion is beyond his ken and thus must remain unknown to the reader, too. When the guilty

Miriam passes with Donatello beneath Hilda's window and cries, "Pray for us Hilda! We need it!" (4:177), the narrator claims not to know "whether Hilda heard and recognized the voice" or not (4:177). In a chapter significantly titled "Fragmentary Sentences," the narrator pieces together "a few vague whisperings" and "mystic utterances" (4:92) from a conversation between Miriam and her persecutor, claiming that unless he does so "there must remain an unsightly ghp . . . in the narrative" (4:93). Still, what he does not hear he does not record. At the end of the conversation as we have it, the narrator notes, "The 190 wind has blown away whatever else they may have spoken" (4:97).

In other comments about his narration, the narrator makes his storytelling choices both visible to the reader and rationally explainable in terms of his plan. He delays telling the background of Miriam's persecutor because, he says, "In the first place ... we must devote a page or two to certain peculiarities in the position of Miriam herself"

(4:20). Later he explains why he has not described Miriam's beauty: "we forebore to speak of Miriam's beauty earlier in our narrative, because we foresaw this occasion to bring it perhaps more forcibly before the reader" (4:49). At the end, the narrator even explains why it is in the reader's best interest that he not elucidate all of the remaining m ysteries:

The Gentle Reader, we trust, would not thank us for one of those minute elucidations, which are so tedious, and after all, so unsatisfactory, in clear­ ing up the romantic mysteries of a story. He is too wise to insist upon looking closely at the wrong side of the tapestry, after the right one has been sufficiently displayed to him, woven with the best of the artist's skill, and cunningly arranged with a view to the harmonious exhibition of its colours. (4:455)

(Of course, Hawthorne's Not-So-Gentle Readers demanded an explanation, forcing

Hawthorne reluctantly to provide a Postscript-which actually clarified very little.)

The narrator of The Marble Faun, then, participates in his own work to the extent that

I have described and certainly to that extent must be held accountable for manipulating his fiction and his readers. But his intrusions are so innocuous that he bears little resem­ blance to the far more sinister narrator of The House of the Seven Gables. Indeed, it is likely no accident that in The Marble Faun most mysteries-most revelations of human guilt-are exposed in the characters' dialogue, rather than narrative exposition. Thus, what he cannot hear, the narrator suggests, he will probe no further. While still a voyeur, this narrator seems to resist violating the human heart, as the narrator of The House of the Seven Gables does not. W hile, as we have discovered, to be a narrator is to be 191 judged guilty, surely the narrator of The Marble Faun would receive a lesser sentence-and so would Hawthorne. What we have shown, then, is that Hawthorne's anx­ iety about his role as an author did not diminish, but, if anything, increased following his writing of The House of the Seven Gables, so much so that he took measures to avoid past mistakes. Unable to commit the artistic suicide of his narrator/narrator double in

The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne adjusted his storytelling methods to negoti­ ate at least a compromise between unmitigated guilt and extenuated guilt.

Hawthorne, certainly, was aware of the mirror-like properties of fiction, and he con­ sistently took measures that he hoped would render the mirror opaque. His efforts are a recurring theme in his prefaces where he typically issues a disclaimer that the reader will find anything of the essential Hawthorne in his works. In "The Old Manse," Hawthorne's preface to his collection of stories, Mosses from an Old Manse. Hawthorne denies that he would allow his fiction to reveal himself:

So far as I am a man of really individual attributes, I veil my face; nor am I, nor ever have been, one of those supremely hospitable people, who serve up their own hearts delicately fried, with brain-sauce, as tid-bits for their beloved public. (33)

In his preface to the new (1851) edition of Twice-told Tales. Hawthorne again deals with

his readers' insistence that he and his narrators are similar based "on the internal evidence of his sketches" (7). The reader, Hawthorne suggests, had assumed that the "mild, shy,

gently, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not very forcible man" of Hawthorne's

sketches in some way "symbolize[d]" Hawthorne's own "personal and literary traits" (7).

However, hidden in his denial is Hawthorne's suggestion that the narrators of his sketch­

es have a character he might like to have:

He [Hawthorne] is by no means certain, that some of his subsequent pro­ ductions have not be.en influenced and modified by a natural desire to fill up so amiable an outline, and to act in consequence with the character assigned him; nor even now, could he forfeit it without a few tears of ten­ der sensibility. (7) 192

Interestingly, even here, Hawthorne "veils" himself by using third, rather than first, per­ son to refer to himself, thereby positing an implied author who may, or may not, be him­ self.

Hawthorne continued to be plagued by unfavorable comparisons to his own narrators.

Faced with the charge that even his prefaces revealed his personality as "egotistical, indiscreet, and even impertinent" (Preface, The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales 4),

Hawthorne answered the charge with a challenge. In a dedicatory preface to Bridge for

The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Hawthorne disclaims any revelation of the essential Hawthorne in his prefaces but offers a tantalizing challenge regarding his fic­ tions: But the charge [that Hawthorne was egotistical, etc.], I am bold to say, is not a reasonable one, in any view which we can fairly take of it. There is no harm, but on the contrary, good, in arraying some of the ordinary facts of life in a slightly idealized and artistic guise. I have taken facts which relate to myself because they chance to be nearest at hand ... These things [however] hide the man, instead of displaying him. You must make quite another kind of inquest, and look through the whole range of his fictitious characters, good and evil, in order to detect any of his essen­ tial traits. (4)

In this study, I have, in effect, taken up Hawthorne's challenge (issued, significantly, the same year as his publication of The House of the Seven Gablesk I have ultimately held up the mirror of Hawthorne's own fictions to the author himself. While I have not, indeed, examined his "whole range of fictitious characters," I have studied those works which are the most glaringly self-reflexive-those that contain narrator doubles. And in these fictions we have seen that Hawthorne explores graphically and most explicitly the complications inherent in the act of writing. By revealing his narrators' strategies (of try­ ing to hide behind another character), Hawthorne actually exposes his own strategy and thereby lifts the veil hiding himself. Ironically, these are the works where Hawthorne must have felt himself most protected, buttressed as he was by layers of narration which seem to distance him from his work. However, as we have seen, such fiction is the most 193 self-reflexive of all, for narrator doubling provides access to subterranean psychological

depths which inevitably reflect upon the ultimate narrator-the author. 194

1 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance, cds. William Charvat, and others, vol. 3 (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1964) 97. Subsequent parenthetical references to The

Blithedale Romance are presented thus: (3:97).

2 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, eds. William Charvat, and others, vol. 4

(Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968) 5. Subsequent parenthetical references to The Marble

Faun are presented thus: (4:5).

i 195

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carabine, Keith. '"Bitter Honey': Miles Coverdale as Narrator in The Blithedale Romance." Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 179-95.

Davidson, Cathy N. "Photographs of the Dead: Sherman, Daguerre, Hawthorne." South Atlantic Quarterly 89 (1990): 667-701.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale Romance. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 3. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1964.

—. The Marble Faun. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 4. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968.

—. "The Old Manse." Mosses from an Old Manse. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 10:3-35.

—. Preface. The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:3-6.

—. Preface. Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:3-7.

—. The Wonder Book. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 7. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1972.

Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford UP, 1941. LIST OF REFERENCES

Baym, Nina. The Shape of Hawthorne's Career. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1976.

Brodhead, Richard H. Hawthorne. Melville, and the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976.

Brodwin, Stanley. "Hawthorne and the Function of History: A Reading of 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 4 11974V 116-28.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narratives. New York: Random, 1984.

Carabine, Keith. '"Bitter Honey': Miles Coverdale as Narrator in The Blithedale Romance." Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 179-95.

Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Garden City: Doubleday, 1957.

Colacurcio, Michael J. The Province of Pietv: Moral History in Hawthorne's Earlv Tales. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.

Cox, Clara B. "Who Killed Judge Pyncheon? The Scene of the Crime Revisited." Studies in American Fiction 16.1 (1988): 99-103.

Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes. New York: Oxford UP, 1966.

Crowley, J. Donald. Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage. New York: Barnes, 1970.

—. Historical Commentary. Mosses from an Old Manse. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 10:499-536.

—. Historical Commentary. The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:379-409.

196 197

—. Historical Commentary. Twice-told Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio Sta te UP, 1974. 9:485-533.

—. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Humanities P, 1971.

Cunliffe, Marcus. "The House of the Seven Gables." Hawthorne Centenary Essays. Ed. Roy Harvey Pearce. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1964. 79-101.

Dauber, Kenneth. Rediscovering Hawthorne. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977.

Davidson, Cathy N. "Photographs of the Dead: Sherman, Daguerre, Hawthorne." South Atlantic Quarterly 89 (1990): 667-701.

Dryden, Edgar A. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Poetics of Enchantment. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.

Dunne, Michael. "Varieties of Narrative Authority in Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales." South Atlantic Review 54.4 (1989): 33-49.

Elias, Helen. "Alice Doane's Innocence: The Wizard Absolved." Emerson Society Quarterly 62 (1971): 28-32.

Ephreneis, Anne Henry. "Gaskell and Hawthorne." Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 3 (1973): 89-119.

Erlich, Gloria C. Family Themes and Hawthorne's Fiction: The Tenacious Web. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1984.

Fogle, Richard Harter. Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1964.

Folsom, James K. Man's Accidents and God's Purposes: Multiplicity in Hawthorne's Fiction. New Haven: College and UP, 1967.

Fossum, Robert H. "The Summons of the Past: Hawthorne's 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Nineteenth Century Fiction 23 (1968-69): 294-303.

Gray, Richard. "'Hawthorne: A Problem'": The House of the Seven Gables." Nathaniel Hawthorne: New Critical Essavs. Ed. A. Robert Lee. Totowa, NJ: Barnes, 1982. 88-109. 19S

Gross, Seymour L. "Hawthorne's 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Nineteenth Centurv Fiction 10 (1955-56): 232-36.

Hawthorne, Julian. Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Alice Doane's Appeal." The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:266-80.

— . The American Notebooks. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 1972. 8:16.

—. The Blithedale Romance. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 3. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 1964.

— . "The Custom House." The Scarlet Letter. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1962. 1:3-45.

— . "The Devil in Manuscript." The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:170-8.

— . "The Haunted Mind." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:304-09.

— . "The Haunted Quack." The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:251-65.

— . The House of the Seven Gables. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 2. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965.

— . The Letters: 1813-1843. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984. 15:205.

— . The Letters: 1843-1853. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 16. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1985.

— . The Marble Faun. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 4. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968.

— . "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:106-20. 199

—. "The Old Manse." Mosses from an Old Manse. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 10:3-35.

—. "Passages from a Relinquished Work." Mosses from an Old Manse. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP,1974. 10:405-21.

—. Preface. The House of the Seven Gables. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965. 2:1-3.

—. Preface. The Snow-Image and Uncollected Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 11:3-6.

—. Preface. Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:3-7.

—. "The Seven Vagabonds." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:350-69.

—. "Sights From a Steeple." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:191-98.

—. "The Toll-Gatherer's Day: A Sketch of Transitory Life." Twice-told Tales. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1974. 9:205- 12.

—. The Wonder Book. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Vol. 7. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1972.

Hennelly, Mark. '"Alice Doane's Appeal': Hawthorne's Case Against the Artist." Studies in American Fiction 6 (1978): 125-40.

Hoeltje, Hubert H. Inward Skv: The Mind and Heart of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Durham: Duke UP, 1962.

Johnson, Claudia D. The Productive Tension of Hawthorne's Art. University, Al: U of Alabama P, 1981.

Male, Roy R. Hawthorne's Tragic Vision. New York: Norton, 1957.

Marks, Alfred H. "Who Killed Judge Pyncheon? The Role of Imagination in The House of the Seven Gables." PMLA 71 (1956): 355-69. 200

Martin, Terence. The Instructed Vision: Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and the Origin of American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1961.

—. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Twayne, 1983.

Matthiessen, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford UP, 1941. —. "Hawthorne's Psychology: The Acceptance of Good and Evil." Casebook on the Hawthorne Question. Ed. Agnes McNeill Donohue. New York: Crowell, 1963. 296-308.

Normand, Jean. Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Approach to an Analysis of Artistic Creation. Trans. Derek Coltman. Cleveland: P of Case Western Reserve, 1970.

Pauley, Thomas H. "'Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe': The Story Teller's Disaster." American Transcendental Quarterly 14 (1972): 171-74.

Porte, Joel. "Redemption Through Art." Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Collection of Criticism. Ed. J. Donald Crowley. New York: McGraw, 1975 . 75-85.

Robinson, Douglas. "Metafiction and Heartfelt Memory. Narrative Balance in 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Emerson Society Quarterly 28 (19821: 213-19.

Shroeder, John. "Alice Doane's Story: An Essay on Hawthorne and Spenser." Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 4 (1974): 129-34.

Stubbs, John Caldwell. "The House of the Seven Gables- Hawthorne's Comedy." Modern Critical Views: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 85-98.

Swartzlander, Susan. "'Appealing to the Heart': The Use of History and the Role of Fiction in 'Alice Doane's Appeal.'" Studies in Short Fiction 25.2 (1988): 121-28.

Tharpe, Jac. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Identity and Knowlexjge. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1967.

Turner, Arlin. Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Introduction anH_Interpretation. New York: Barnes, 1961.

Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Viking, 1949.

Von Abele, Rudolphe. The Death of the Artist. Folcroft, PA: Folcroft, 1955. 201

Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1963.

— . "Introduction to Third Edition." Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Holt, 1970. iii-viii.

Weber, Alfred. "The Outlines of 'The Story Teller,' the Major Work of Hawthorne's Early Years." Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 15.1 (1989): 14-19. Williamson, James L. "Vision and Revision in 'Alice Doane's Appeal."' American Transcendental Quarterly 40 (1978): 345-53.

—. "'Young Goodman Brown': Hawthorne's Devil in Manuscript." Studies in Short Fiction 18 ( 1981V. 155-62.

Woodberry, George E. American Men of Letters: Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, 1902.

Woodson, Thomas. Introduction. The Letters: 1813-1843. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984. 15:3-89.

— . Note. The Letters: 1813-1S43. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Eds. William Charvat, and others. Centenary ed. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984. 15:205.

Young, Philip. Hawthorne's Secret: An Un-Told Tale. Boston: Godine, 1984.