Inspiration or Competition? Catharine Sedgwick's Influence on Nathaniel Hawthorne

Abstract

Despite Catharine Maria Sedgwick's many personal and professional links to Nathaniel Hawthorne and her international renown as an author in the nineteenth century, few Hawthorne or Sedgwick biographers or literary scholars have considered her possible influence on Hawthorne. Fifteen years Hawthorne's senior, Sedgwick was well established in her career by the time he began publishing in 1830; for the next twenty years the two authors' short works were often published in the same journals and gift-book annuals--including The Token, The U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review, Godey's Lady's Book, and Graham's Magazine--even appearing side by side. (1) By the time Hawthorne's first stories appeared anonymously in The Token and The Salem Gazette, Sedgwick had published five books and eighteen short stories and sketches. Because, like Hawthorne, Sedgwick initially published anonymously, in her case with a "by the author of" byline, readers might mistakenly assume that Hawthorne was unaware of whose work he was reading. But from the outset Sedgwick's authorship was no secret, particularly in Boston and New York City circles, as several sources attest, including the private correspondence of Elizabeth and Mary Peabody in the 1820s. (2) Not only did Hawthorne undoubtedly read Sedgwick, but evidence suggests that his career was, in some part, influenced by hers. Nevertheless, in my incomplete survey of a dozen Hawthorne biographies, from Newton Arvin's of 1929 to Robert Milder's of 2013, only half contain Sedgwick's name, two literally just her name. Of the four others, Robert Cantwell (in 1971) gets Sedgwick's age wrong--by a decade--in his two sentences about her presence in Lenox (433), and Arlin Turner (in 1980) mentions only a tea party (211). James Mellow (in 1980) is the only one to acknowledge Sedgwick's "international reputation"; his four sentences include Hawthorne's "rather feeble" reference to the "most truthful" Sedgwick in A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (323). Most recently, Brenda Wineapple's three brief mentions (in 2004) culminate in Sedgwick's negative comment (in a private letter to her niece) about The House of the Seven Gables, removed from its largely positive context. (3) In all, that is about ten sentences in 84 years. (4) Only two biographical studies of Sedgwick exist: Mary E. Dewey's 1871 Life and Letters of Catharine M. Sedgwick (excerpted letters with biographical segues, as Dewey knew Sedgwick personally), and Edward Halsey Foster's 1974 Twayne series volume. Neither book is a comprehensive biography. Both include references to Hawthorne but no sustained analysis of the two writers' points of contact. In recent decades, several introductions to works by or about Sedgwick have helped to fill gaps in her biography, but none include an examination of the possible literary connections between Sedgwick and Hawthorne. (5) By retracing the known biographical links between Sedgwick and Hawthorne and exploring a few of their literary connections, I hope to demonstrate the need for further scholarly investigation of both. The evidence I have gathered here suggests that Hawthorne looked to Sedgwick as he figured out how to be a writer. He was part of a social and literary circle that admired her, and he interacted with her both personally and professionally. Commonalities in the two authors' subject matter and publication venues suggest that Sedgwick may have served as a model for Hawthorne as he chose what and where to publish. He thought enough of her to compliment her in print and to "talk back" to her, writing the occasional story in response to her own, revising or arguing her position. Taken together, these points of contact should provoke further comparative study. I. Intersecting Lives Hawthorne's explicit references to Sedgwick in several stories demonstrate his knowledge of her work, but exactly what he read by her, and when, is not known. Marion Kesselring's transcription of Hawthorne's borrowings from the Salem Athenaeum, 1828-1850, reveals that only 24% were works of literature, and that of these very few were by Hawthorne's American contemporaries, aside from fiction published in English and American magazines (8, 11). …