Europe in Hawthorne's Fiction

Abstract

From the publication of Irving's Sketch Book up to the middle of the nineteenth century, preoccupation with the lingering past is a common feature in American imaginative prose dealing with Europe. Some writers, like Cooper, may denounce the political dead hand of the past, but by far the most popular books were those of Irving and of writers like Longfellow, who frankly modelled hinmself on Irving, or of journalists like Nathaniel Parker Willis-all of whom approached the Old World primarily in the spirit of romantic pilgrims. That the appetite for such pilgrims' news persisted into the latter part of the century is made clear by the continued popularity of The Sketch Book as well as by the popularity of Hawthorne's Mlarble Faun as a guide-book to Rome. But Hawthorne's concern with the past, that of England as well as that of Italy, was a long way from Irving's. Linking the question of the Old World firmly with the problem of morals, he turned to a careful comparison of values-to weighing the moral burden against the esthetic wealth both of which resulted from the European past. And as we look back through the perspective of a century, the development of the picture of Europe in American fiction, from Irving's naive and often sentimental reverence to Hawtlhorne's painful analysis, appears as part of the growth of national maturity. Before 1853, when Hawthorne went as consul to Liverpool, Europe played no part in his work.' But in Italy in 1859 he