Date of Award

2-1938

Degree Type

Bachelors Essay

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Literatures, Languages, and Cultures

First Advisor

James Purcell

Second Advisor

Donald J. Keegan

Abstract

As prescribed by the law of widowhood, a twenty-seven years’ old woman had begun its hindoo-like observance by seclusion, - a seclusion which only death, forty years later, would break. Seldom after this event was the four-year old boy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, to have any close family ties with his bereaved mother whose husband died at sea. It was the beginning of events and factors which were to overshadow Hawthorne’s attitudes and reactions to womanhood, and which would ultimately be cast in his novels.

There were three women who were to indelibly impress the receptive mind of Hawthorne; they were: Mrs. Hawthorne, Elizabeth Hawthorne, and Sophia Peabody. There had been other women of his acquaintances, as Margaret Fuller, and even his own sister, Louise, whose effect had been transcendental, at least not sufficient enough to recognize their types in the author’s works. Of the former three, Mrs. Hawthorne played the leading role of his personal development as a youth; therefore, it would be well to consider her personality apart from the others.

Comments

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the College of Liberal Arts of Marquette University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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