Nathaniel Hawthorne

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works which he later retracted. The retracted piece's time set was early Salem, Massachusetts. The story involved a family structure much like that of Hawthorne's own family. The two siblings in the work, brother and sister, lived in deep affection, "lonely and sufficient to each other" since they alone survived an Indian attack. Mother and father having died, the sister becomes his, and throughout the work the theme of incest is heavily suggested. The events and family situations contained in the work closely mirror that of Hawthorne's family. His father died at age six, and his mother became solitary within their home soon after. These events left alone in the world with his sister Ebe. The two siblings were deeply attached. Fifty years later Ebe, also preoccupied with sibling incest, referred to the retracted piece by Hawthorne as, "an example of his (Hawthorne) special genius". (McGoldrick 82)
Hawthorne's retracted work not only suggests his own incestuous ...

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and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for many a long year back, would argue to exist--may be now and henceforth removed (Hawthorne: Introduction to The Scarlet Letter).
As the Pyncheons in The House of Seven Gables, Hawthorne took it upon himself to bear his ancestor's guilt, and he displayed the inherited guilt and sin through his literary works.
In Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, through diverse symbolism, Hawthorne writes of a man who in his coming of age learns that there is darkness in everyone. Upon this coming of knowledge he is forever changed. Hawthorne describes Goodman Brown as a good Puritan who is devoted to his wife Faith, a name Brown uses to ...

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