Placing himself in the position of these
beings, then, and conscious of all the strong and various potencies of
emotion which his own nature, inherited from them, held in curb, it was
natural that Hawthorne should give weight to this contrast between the
intense, prisoned life of shut sensibilities and the formal outward
appearance to which it was moulded. This, indeed, is the source of
motive in much of his writing; notably so in "The Scarlet Letter." It is
thus that his figures get their tremendous and often terrible relief.
They are seen as close as we see our faces in a glass, and brought so
intimately into our consciousness that the throbbing of their passions
sounds like the mysterious, internal beating of our own hearts in our
own ears. And even when he is not dealing directly with themes or
situations closely related to that life, there may be felt in his style,
I think,--particularly in that of the "Twice-Told Tales,"--a union of
vigorous freedom, and graceful, shy restraint, a mingling of guardedness
which verges on severity with a quick and delicately thrilled
sensibility for all that is rich and beautiful and generous, which is
his by right of inheritance from the race of Non-conformist colonizers.
How subtile and various this sympathy is, between himself and the past
of his people, we shall see more clearly as we go on.
Salem was, in fact, Hawthorne's native soil, in all senses; as
intimately and perfectly so as Florence was the only soil in which Dante
and Michael Angelo could have had their growth.
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