Page 2 - Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Fac$ile
Name
Date of birth Place of birth Family
Educa7on Early career
Nathaniel Hawthorne 4 july 1804
Salem, Massachuse;s
Nathaniel was the only son of Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Manningn. His father, a sea captain ,died in 1808 of yellow fever while at sea.
Bowdoin College
In 1836 he was editor at the
American Magazine of useful and entertaining knowledge of Boston’ In 1839 Hawthorne accepted a job at the Boston customs office and in 1849 he was inspector of the port of Salem. Hawthorne was mainly a short story writer in his early career. Wakefield was published in 1835.
His four major novels were wri;en between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet le/er (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithdale romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). His ficPon works are considered to be part of the romanPc movement.
Died
Wri7ng career
19 may 1864
Wakefield
The narrator tells a bizarre story he has read in a paper about an ordinary middle aged man who disappeared and secretly lived one block from his house and wife for 20 years. ATer two decades, the man returned home and conPnued living as nothing had happened.
Hatwhorne creates the character of Wakefield to explore together with the reader the mind and thoughts of such a man, to understand the reasons for his eccentric behaviour, but in the end this exploraPon is frustrated and the character’s real moPvaPons remain a mystery. Wakefield is not only a psychological study but also a sociological study about the role of the individual in a complex society. In this short story Hawthorne writes about one of his favourite themes, the loneliness and alienaPon of modern life.