CRITICISMS

Many influences in Hawthorne's environment served to condition and
mold him as a writer. Salem had reached its highest prosperity in all
lines and was just beginning its retrogression in Hawthorne's time;
the primeval forests of Maine produced a subtle and lasting influence
on him during his sojourn in Maine for his health; transcendentalism
was the ruling thought at the time when Hawthorne was in his most
plastic and solitary age; his interest in _Brook Farm_ brought him in
contact with all the good and bad points of that social movement; his
life in the _Old Manse_ in Concord and in the Berkshire Hills
contributed largely to the deepening of his convictions and
sympathies; and over all, like a sombre cloud, hung his ancestral
Puritanic training which penetrated and suffused all his writings. He
is the most native and the least imitative of all our fiction writers.

Hawthorne did not write on the common subjects and facts of his day,
but chose to have his readers go with him, away from prosaic life, out
into a world of mysteries where we may revel in all kinds of imaginary
sports. By this process he succeeded in producing poetic effects from
the most unpromising materials. His writings are fanciful. He enjoyed
subjects that deal with the occult, such as mesmerism, hypnotism, and
subtle suggestions. He harked back to the rigid beliefs and laws of
the Puritans, but he and his subjects are spiritually advanced far
above the crude, ponderous, and highly theological tenets of his
forefathers.

Hawthorne is very provincial. He travelled little until he was fifty