Transatlantic Repurposing: The Castle of Otranto and the Construction of Puritan Allegory in The House of the Seven Gables

Abstract

In his The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne offers definition of romance that has informed scholarly approaches work for decades: When writer calls his work Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes claim certain latitude, both as its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled assume, had he professed writing The latter form of composition is presumed aim at very minute fidelity, not merely possible, but probable and ordinary course of man's experience. The former--while, as work of art, it must rigidly subject itself laws ...--has fairly right present truth under circumstances ... of writer's own choosing. (2:1) (1) Scholars have interpreted Hawthorne's statement in variety of ways, from viewing it as means divert reader from primary plan of revenge (Johnson), or as technique imagin[e] alternative society [Hawthorne] inherited (Brook 196), seeing it as attempt prove that distinction he makes is less matter of [a romance's and novel's] relation reality than of their relation real estate (Michaels 88), or as ploy ward off local charges, including possible lawsuit, of slanderous misrepresentation (Buell 75). (2) Later in Preface, however, Hawthorne explicitly links his theory of romance his work's moral, the truth, namely, that wrong-doing of lives into ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes pure and uncontrollable mischief (2:2). While offering useful approaches text, critics interpreting romance's opening have yet note that beneath surface of Hawthorne's theory of romance and tale's moral lie allusions Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) that, like corpses in Gothic tale, are crying out be exhumed and examined. (3) In his own Preface First Edition of anonymously published Otranto, Walpole, writing under guise of translator William Marshall, states, am not blind my authors defects. I could wish he had grounded his plan on more useful moral than this; that of are visited on their children third and fourth generation' (6). While he complains of defects, Walpole certainly intends for his romance offer such moral, and he critiques alleged author because he wishes hide his own authorship behind (Gothic) veil. After throwing off cloak of anonymity and admitting authorship in Preface Second Edition, Walpole, whose work Hawthorne read and referenced in letters and journals (Lundblad, Gothic Romance 26; Ginsberg 28), announces that his Gothic tale is an attempt two kinds of romance, ancient and modern. (4) In former all was imagination and improbability: in latter, nature is always intended be, and sometimes has been, copied with success (9). The second kind of romance which Walpole refers is not romance at all but rather--based on contemporary works like Samuel Richardson's The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), which Walpole deplored--what Hawthorne terms a Novel. (5) Like Hawthornes desire to mingle Marvellous rather as slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of actual substance of dish (2:1), Walpole claims that he wants blend romance with reality so that the mortal agents in his drama would think, speak and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women would do in extraordinary positions (9). Walpole merges remarkable with ordinary, and in doing so, creates model of romance that Hawthorne would later champion and that would become major literary form in America for over century. (6) Hawthorne's allusions Walpole's work are emblematic of much stronger relationship that exists between two romances: both deal with people dispossessed of their rightful family estate; both detail effects that sins of fathers of one generation have on successive ones (Walpole 6; Hawthorne 2:1), especially those in present; and both depict removal of dispossessors while offering vision of future. …