Hawthorne Romanticism Essay

The stories The Maypole of frosty Mount, The Ministers Black Veil and The marriage Knell by Nathaniel Hawthorne contain themes that deal with the judgement of darkness and ending coming to overtake life. The pieces of romanticism present in these stories represent the extremes of this movement. Romanticism deals with freedom and spontaneousness in happiness and brightness, and it also deals with wildness of constitutionespecially the dark case, such as storms and dark atmospheres. In his handling of the characters, plots, and settings in these stories, iodin finds that Hawthorne uses these elements to conflict with for each one other.Therefore, in these three stories champion finds the lighter side of Romanticism coming under attack from the darker side in a symbolic representation of good versus evil. In The Maypole of Merry Mount, the scene opens to festivities, as the people in the town are armyn to start out great celebrations around the Maypole. The carefree gaiety does reflect the idea of spontaneity and vivacity that is an element of Romanticism. Yet Hawthorne combines this with the darker (black letter) side of Romanticism in his declaration that conviviality and lugubriousness were contending for an empire (Hawthorne, 55).This foreshadows the coming of a damper on their festivities, as Hawthorne identifies shadows in human (Puritan) form that come to cover the brightness of the celebrations and accommodate them ungodly. This shadow is representative of hypocritical evil and darkness that come to backtrack the light and the good by making illegal the use of the Maypole in dance and merriment. In this way, Hawthorne identifies both the Romantic gaiety and the gothic gloom and pits them against each other in a fight that is won by the darkness. Hawthorne demonstrates this idea of gothic evil attacking light-hearted good also in The Wedding Knell.During the wedding of two elderly persons, the funeral ring (knell) of a perform bell starts spontaneously sounding. The dark meaning of this occurrence becomes evident in a spectators remark, Good heavens What an omen (Hawthorne, 27) The idea of the mournful funeral bell tolling when wedding festivities should be occurring gives a gothic element to this story as well. The story becomes ominous, as the idea of bad mass for the marriage is implanted in the minds of the characters and readers. Hawthorne (through the character of the groom) puts on a show as the groom enters the church in the center of a grouping of mourners.He writes, When the spectral procession approached the altar, each couple separated, and slowly diverged, till, in the centre, appeared a form, that had been worthily ushered in with all this shadowy pomp, the death knell, and the funeral (Hawthorne, 31). The assemble of this is also Romantic in the gothic sense, and does demonstrate a mixture of mixing or struggle between gaiety and gloom. Finally, The Ministers Black Veil also demonstrates the got hic side of Romanticism as this Puritan subgenus Pastor, Mr. Hooper, persists in wearing a veil throughout the decades that he serves his town.He even wears this when with his wife and to his grave. The fact that the veil is sorry reminds one of death and darkness that are characteristic of the gothic aspect of Romanticism. This black veil is a symbol of the evil of hypocrisy that men contract a tendency to harbor. It can also be seen as yard of the common theme in all the stories that of the conflict between the gloomy and festive sides of Romanticism. The ministers wife says to him, There is nothing unholy in this piece of crape, except that it hides a face which I am always glad to look upon. Come, good sir, let the sun take from behind the cloud (Hawthorne, 45).From this speech it can be seen that the veil prevents the ministers wife from experiencing the joy of seeing her husbands face. It represents, therefore, an strive made by shadow to obscure the light of happiness an d freedom. The three stories by Hawthorne contain strong themes of the conflict between good and evil, and each of these two contenders is represented by two extremes of Romanticism. The events in the stories find laughing(prenominal) situations being frowned upon by the law, circumstances, or by people. In each case, gothic darkness triumphs in its attempts to dispel happiness and freedom.