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CULTURAL CONFESSIONS: PENANCE AND PENITENCE IN NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S THE SCARLET LETTER AND THE MARBLE FAUN

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From: Renascence
Date: 20050101
Author:Taylor, Olivia Gatti

ACCORDING to Nathaniel Hawthorne's biographer, Henry James, Jr., Hawthorne's heritage as a descendant of the "clearest Puritan strain" served to restrict his literary talent to the exploration of one theme: the "consciousness of sin" (5, 8). In 1858, Hawthorne observed Catholicism as he sojourned in Rome; this encounter enriched his investigation of the effects of sin upon human beings. Soon after his arrival in Rome, for instance, he describes the scene of a "lady, confessing to a priest" within a "wooden confessional" (Notebooks 184). Hawthorne lingered until "the lady fmishe[d] her ...

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