Hawthorne의 역사와 사회변화에 대한 인식 : 그의 단편소설들을 중심으로

Abstract

As is widely known, Nathaniel Hawthorne showed his primary concern about earlier American history, especially that of the Puritans, in his major works. Through his historical stories about Puritans, he attempted to analyze and interpret the nature and various modes of acceptance and influence of human sins on individuals and their community. His obsession with Puritans and human sins is closely interrelated with the state of his contemporary American society of the mid-nineteenth century, when it underwent a rapid movement from that of traditional agriculture to that of industrial revolution and scientific progress. Hawthorne found that his contemporaries and his Puritan ancestors have something in common: they had lived in a stable society with fixed values but were later challenged by the new demand for social paradigmatic change due to either political or economic reasons. Puritans were thrown into confusion when their society based on their pursuit for religious freedom and moral codes were challenged by others’s need for religious/ideological freedom of individuals or by the struggle between the colonials and British government; while his contemporaries had difficulty in adapting themselves to a new environment where industrial development and scientific progresses asked them to prepare for a new society where the masses assume the leadership from the few selected. John Endicott in “Endicott and the Red Cross” and “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” is the typical Puritan leader who rules his community with his firm and austere moral standards and punishes the violators relentlessly. But he is also presented as a patriot who stands against dictatorial rule of England. The irony is that he vindicates the religious or political freedom of Puritans while he persecutes Quakers or Merry Mounters who follows their own belief or conscience. Hawthorne’s pangs of conscience about his ancestors’s persecution of Quakers are vividly revealed in his early work “The Gentle Boy,” and his poignant criticism on bigoted faith is also found in “The Man of Adamant” or “Young Goodman Brown.” Unlike these accusations on the biased Puritans, Hawthorne finds hope in Robin of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” that one can overcome the intimidating advent of a new society through one’s own will to adapt oneself to a new milieu. Though his hope of relying on his influential uncle for his future is frustrated by the colonial riot, he is cunning enough to adapt himself to a new social change and, in addition, is lucky enough to be advised by a kindly gentleman. While Hawthorne was convinced of America’s move towards egalitarian society based on democracy, he was hesitant to approve of the rapid and hasty ways in accepting the changes. In an allegory “The Celestial Railroad,” he disapproves of the radical attempt to change social values and an inclination to materialism relying on economic boom of his time. He believed that social changes should occur gradually through discreet methods, which is expressed well in his historical stories.